If they were able to swap out Billy Campbell (and that horrid Jordan Hayes!) for Richard Dormer (and that wonderful Verónica Echegui!) Helix may have stood a chance. Though internally logical scriptwriting would also have helped.

Holmes' non-present family and their "crowbar" method of relationship loomed large enough here to encourage my hope that we'll be able to seem them in the final episodes. How great would it be to see Kitty and/or Irene mixed up with Mycroft, and to finally meet the Father (played in my imagination by Charles Dance)

Will Holmes' be able to fully get past Mary's vegetarianism and horridly inconsistent sartorial judgement? Only time will tell.

It was great to see Tio Salamanca back from Belize and far more eloquent than ever.

The big "overarching" mystery seems to be: what does Pettigrew's sensor reading indicate is under the surface, and why did it get him killed? At this point, I wouldn't be completely shocked by an ancient alien space vessel. A mastodon graveyard would be too obvious, and an oil field would just be ridiculous.

It's 8:15, and that's the time that it's always been.

Thank you AV Club. While checking for follow-up comments from last week's The Americans, I noticed a picture on the TV Club page of a weathered Michael Gambon tying one on. What was this? I followed the links to discover an unknown British program with many A-ish grades and just a few dozen commenters. And Stanley…

Didn't the Centre offer Gregory a job as an adviser in Angola when he balked at Moscow? I wish he had gone that route and opened up future plot possibilities.

I guess my little scenario was less clear (and far less amusing) than I imagined. It was simply meant to be Henry pondering whether he would go FBI or CIA, much as he ponders everything from Star Trek movies to video game systems. Ratting out his parents was not a consideration; Henry would never do that, he's a good…

In the U.S. we are far more likely to hear a black South African accent (like Negobo's), which is closer to other Sub-Saharan African accents than it is to the Afrikaans accent used by the white South Africans.

In the choice between subtlety vs. dramatic effect, The Americans will often forego some technical accuracy to tell an exciting story. A "liberal church?" That means the pastor gets arrested at an anti-nuke rally! Paige is getting baptized? Should we sprinkle her head over a font, or immerse her in a powerful shot…

D'oh! Here they've made a major plot point of grooming Paige for espionage work, and the Centre didn't even think of this! Whatever will they do when the job application asks whether their parents are Soviet agents? Too bad Philip and Elizabeth didn't take measures to hide their professions.

Oh, please. I would normally be the first to defend the integrity of English language from "impoverishment," but the battle over the word "terrorism" is long since lost. Ever since a certain eloquent President declared a "War on Terror" to justify terrorizing a significant chunk of the world. For many years,…

I love that this show has matured to the point that it is contributing its own euphemisms to the TV culture vocabulary. "Pack the suitcase" is the new "send to Belize," and Swedish is the new French.

Did you consider that it probably just took five times for your kids to tire of humoring you? Perhaps they are simply "slow" to lose patience with the admonishment to "let Dad think he's clever." It wasn't until they were teenagers that I understood my own children had been on to me for years.

Huh? Until very recently, mainline Protestantism was dominant in America and youth groups such as Paige's were very common, though they were certainly far down the path to demise by the 1980s. Unitarianism is a whole other thing. Yes, today 99% of "youth groups" are associated with Republican churches (they hate that…

Henry is definitely an FBI man. Though I imagine he would spend a great deal of time deeply pondering the choice. "Well, the CIA would be less uptight, and they probably have cooler cover identities. But the FBI aren't sneaky deviants and I wouldn't have to kill underprivileged foreign children. And the FBI offers…

It was the Cold War. The United States and the Soviet Union were involved with everything. The United States propped up and supported the Apartheid Regime, so the Soviets supported the opposition. In this case, as with Nicaragua, the Soviets gained extra points in the sense that their "side" was actually more…

In the sense that "terrorism" is a tactic, then you are correct that the ANC were "terrorists." Along with every other fighting force of the past hundred years. In common usage, "terrorist" is simply an epitaph for "bad guys," in the sense that "freedom fighter" is used for "good guys" who happen to use terrorism as a…

I am counting on some sort of master plan to somehow bring Nina back into the narrative fold, though I can't imagine how it would be accomplished. I agree that this business of following her travails in isolation has grown very tedious. Either move things forward or phase the thread out.