News Corp and CBS crossovers do happen. Martha Plimpton stars in  Fox's "Raising Hope" but she still guest stars on CBS's "Good Wife".

I love how the show doesn't have a big baddie. The most "malevolent" person on the show was Claudia. Elizabeth accused of Claudia setting her up to kill Patterson in order to ship her back to Russia. And it turns out Elizabeth was wrong about Claudia. Claudia wants to protect Elizabeth and Philip  from both the Center…

The Jennings have two hiding places: the electrical box that has been shown in previous episodes and the space behind the laundry machine that debuted in this episode. Since they have to move the laundry machine and grate to access this second stash, I'm assuming they keep really top secret and personal stuff there,…

Even if CBS picks up the pilot, it seems both Margo and the show runners want Claudia for season 2. Plus, new shows gets canceled all the time. In theory, Margo's sitcom could be picked up and canceled before season 2 of The Americans starts production.

It's relationships, not plot, that matters the most on this show. The audience knowing that Elizabeth would survive the gun shot reminds me of the audience knowing the Feds weren't behind the mole hunt: the outcome wasn't the surprise, but the surprise was how the outcome would affect the various relationships.

Joe Weisberg has talked about the US spies who had to have a sit down moment with their kids to tell them that the reason they have been acting weird all these years is because they  are spies. It would be a very dramatic storyline if Philip and Elizabeth had to have that talk with Paige and Henry. Maybe instead of…

FX is holding a special screening of the season finale for TV critics and invited guests. There's also Q&A with the cast.  Hopefully this is sign that FX isn't panicking about ratings just quite yet.

I wouldn't underestimate how far this show is willing to push the audience. This show had "good guy" Stan cold-bloodedly shoot innocent Vlad in the back of the head while he was eating a burger. Gregory has "heroic" death by shooting cops. Elizabeth contemplated aborting her second child and not telling her husband…

@avclub-4f18f486a356810b3ef8008243bcba7a:disqus According to Noah, Stan didn't consciously know that Nina would interpret his words to mean she should have sex with Vasili to get the information.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDW…

The "family resemblance"  line is another example of  "We see what we see in people. Things that aren't really there."

Clark from the pilot:
 "So, referencing our meeting this evening… obviously, you understand it's been classified top secret by the the internal affairs division of the committee to oversee United States counterintelligence agencies."

These are the facts that Nina knows. When Armador was missing, Stan aggressively demanded that she find out who took Amador. The mystery caller told Arkady to release Amador or Vlad would be killed. Stan tells Nina that Arkady had a chance to make an exchange but didn't do it. It is suspicious that Stan would know the…

@avclub-443461f22c379e8d6c249374e586581e:disqus Joe Weisberg said Nina is a KGB agent on her first tour. https://www.youtube.com/wat…

I wonder how much those words about protecting the Motherland and Directorate S actually mean to Nina.  Her first act as a double agent was to tell Stan that a Directorate S officer was killed. As far as the audience knows, this  was the first time the feds identified a Directorate S officer.  Plus, she also…

I don't think Stan killing someone harmless would necessarily bother Nina.  Nina is upset that Stan  killed her harmless friend Vlad, but she was perfectly fine with helping Stan frame her  harmless  boss for treason, even though she knew that the Soviet might execute Vasily.  It's not what Stan did that made Nina…

I think Stan being the one who killed Vlad, and him lying to Nina about it also played a role in her confession. Stan was the one she was relying on to get extradition. If he lied about Vlad after she poured her heart out to him about her friend, then how can she trust him about extradition? Without extradition, Nina…

I think it's very funny that Todd and Genevieve said the Zhukov flashbacks didn't work because we didn't know that Elizabeth and Zhukov were close, but Hitflix's Sepinwall said the Zhukov flashbacks didn't work because we already knew that Elizabeth and Zhukov were close.

Regarding Elizabeth's personal loyalty to Zhukov.

Elizabeth and Philip marriage was strictly a business arrangement when she was seeing Gregory. The idea of love and fidelity wasn't on the table.

In every interview with Keri, Matthew, and co-creator Joe Weisberg, they all say the main focus of the show is the relationship between Philip and Elizabeth.