Crossbreed

With the revelation of being wrong about the wheat, a pivot is made to salvage something from the mission. The wheat is valuable, if they can get it home then the Soviet Union won’t be reliant on buying from others.

The mission and the stress aren’t over. The center wants Philip and Elizabeth to stay on their Topeka marks. Elizabeth is also given the task of getting intel from a psychologist’s office. She does some recon and comes away from it that his security to get files won’t be difficult to get by.

The eyes on Alexei’s wife have expanded. Knowing that she’s teaching Russian to FBI agents his a huge lead so that mission has expanded to others figuring out her schedule and who she meets. Tuan will continue to work on Pasha to get more inside info from home.

This episode spent a lot of time with Philip. He’s recalling much more about his childhood. Remembering things about his father coming home from work with “things.” Clothes and boots that he’d give to his wife to clean off blood. Philip’s mother never told him what he did and the concept of the other kids bullying him “for no reason” was because of what his father did for work. Philip never had a relationship with his father and times were really tough for his family. His current position, living as a spy in America with everything he needs makes him reflect a lot on his passed. Then, when Gabriel tells them he is going back home, that he’s done, Philip is essentially losing his father figure. They’ve known and worked with Gabriel for a long time so this is a deep cut to them. With time running out to talk to Gabriel, Philip asks him about his father. He tells him he was a guard at a prison camp but didn’t know what he did specifically. There were good guards and there were cruel guards but it was work. He was just a nobody working with the other nobodies. Gabriel tries to ease him down a bit saying it was so long ago, it’s fading into the past.

So now Philip comes to see that he is more like his father than he ever imagined. Both worked for the government and did terrible things (his father likely, Philip definitely with the lab worker’s death fresh in his mind). He didn’t know his father and Henry doesn’t know him. With finding out Henry is gifted at math from his teacher, Philip doesn’t know his own son. And for the audience, who watched Gabriel send Mischa away, Philip also doesn’t know his other son, whom he has never met, came looking for him.

Elizabeth and Philip are very isolated. They do have each other (as they confide in each other more, Philip especially)  but they are certainly floating around their own heads dragging around a crushing amount of weight.

It shows up on the kids. Henry leaves the (once again) empty house and brings leftovers to eat with Stan. They have what could only be described as a father and son scene when Henry tells him about a new girl he likes (and Stan even knew about a crush he has had on a teacher). Henry is way more open to a neighbor than he is his own parents. Paige answers the door to get a sales pitch from a Mary Kay sales rep and Elizabeth shuts it down quick. She is in no mood to have a walking, talking embodiment of capitalism (which comes up when she sees Paige reading about Karl Marx) at her doorstep. Paige is put off with how her mother wasn’t “very nice” to the rep. Elizabeth  Elizabeth’s mark can feel her anxiety and in one of the season’s most humanizing and grounding scenes, he teaches her Tai Chi.

Also, Elizabeth’s mark can feel her anxiety. In one of the season’s most humanizing and grounding scenes, he teaches her Tai Chi. Philip is haunted by his father and Martha. Elizabeth has her guilt with destroying Young Hee’s family last season.

It was a pretty dreary episode as a whole. Oleg might have had the better moments depending on how you weigh his day. It made rather big moves on his work, getting to a distributor in the food corruption scene. When he and his partner squeeze him for more information, he refuses and they take him into custody. He looks down (literally) at the man in his cell. Whether his work will amount to anything is debatable, but it is progress. When he goes home he destroys the evidence the FBI dropped on him in order to turn. Oleg has firmly made his decision on the matter.