Is he that different from 20 year old Elizabeth, do we think? Even at the start of the series, and even after five seasons' worth of development she's still a hardliner. I would have no trouble believing a young Elizabeth sermonizing about the sacredness of their mission and petit bourgeois concerns.

You don't have lines like "I just don't want Stan to be another Martha," and "I want to see my kid graduate high school," if nothing bad is going to happen to Stan.

Who played the judge at the hearing? He looked familiar (maybe even from this show?), but I couldn't place him.

That's not entirely true, since the point of the little lies is to get her to believe those, so the big ones will seem more manageable. If they'd dumped everything she knows now on her in season 3, it would have crushed her. But now she's used to the lifestyle on some level, even as it's destroying her (and them).

The title of the show, and basically everything that happens in it, show that this isn't quite so simple. They can't live as Philip and Elizabeth Jennings for years, have children as Philip and Elizabeth, and not expect that to bleed into who they "really" are. This is especially obvious in Philip's case.

Huh. Talk about doing your research/

Maybe it was just that his absence brought heightened suspicion?

So maybe it was just an abnormally cold April day? Odd, but I can buy it. Henry moving up a grade in April doesn't make much sense, but I guess that's TV for you.

What is the time frame for this season? Season 4 wrapped up on Super Bowl Sunday 1984 (we know because they were watching the game). This season appears to take place either in spring or fall of 84, since the characters have been dressing relatively heavily and last week Paige said she was cold on her walk with…

The Centre has to know about this, right? I can't imagine they'll be pleased.

And their other son goes AWOL, and we all know, though Philip doesn't, that his other (biological) kid came to see him but was rebuffed.

I believe he said a couple weeks ago that he has some nieces and nephews, implying that he has no children of his own.

Directly ordered, anyway. The whole story in season 3 was about him desperately avoiding actually doing it while still completing the mission (and he seems to have succeeded, even Kimmy has given up making passes at him (so…less creepy than it otherwise would be?(I wonder how she'll look back on that relationship in…

Most of what the characters do can be described as a dick move, one way or another.

In the first place, you can never be too careful. But if the government shows up one day, she probably wants to leave as little evidence as possible.

The show isn't pro-America, and it sympathizes with its Russian characters excellently, but it's pretty anti-Soviet Union, this season especially. We've seen brutal murders, gross violations of freedoms, and starvation caused by sheer incompetence.

This is true, but I think the "every season is better than the last" model the show had been on wasn't likely to hold up perfectly. Plus they know exactly where they're going and have 15 episodes left to get there, so I'm optimistic that this is just a bit of a lag before things start to jump off.

I feel like if anybody's getting a happy ending, it will be Oleg.

I do think it's interesting that they paired him with another minority after saying Amador was one of the only ones. But it's probably not all that significant.

When did he tell that story?