True. It's very likely that Phil and Liz will follow the trail to the mysterious recipient of the custom midge eggs and discover that they're just some random pesticide company, or perhaps some other lab that's researching some other, even weirder insect species that feeds exclusively on this one and they're just…

Hahaha! And he "never asked" because the subject was so boring. I can totally see it. . .and meanwhile Gabriel is going insane with a web of photographs tacked to the wall connected by pieces of colored string. . . the Lhassa Fever virus. . .the Orange Wheat Blossom Midge. . .YAZ. . . how is it all connected??? And…

Yes. The only reason I can think of for why Gabriel hasn't mentioned the smallpox blankets already is that they're saving that line for later.

Interesting. So this really could be some dull, obscure research project with a completely benign purpose. It would be awesome to get a scene with Stan Beeman questioning a befuddled Deputy Secretary of Agriculture about why he thinks Russian Agents might be killing workers at some building in Oklahoma that belongs to…

The fact that we farm out some of our chip production to China and some of those items get installed in our own military hardware should concern us.

Totally plausible that we'd create a weapon that doesn't work so that our enemy steals the plans and incorporates those flaws into their own design. Even better would be to build such a weapon and make it appear to be functional yet totally useless.

There were some other troubling details, though. The bugs behind the glass weren't naturally occurring pests. Although they're apparently based on a species found in Australia, he said that the lab had "derived" them. That doesn't sound like an attempt to solve a problem existing in nature. . . it sounds, if anything,…

True; but one of the minor chords that the show has been playing from the outset is just how hopelessly outclassed the Soviets are by this point in the Cold War. Until this season, we've only ever been shown indirect glimpses of what the United States is like on "offense". . . but those glimpses are intentionally…

Probably. That's what I was thinking too, until the scene with that guy in the lab. He looked, for all the world, like someone haunted by his conscience.

I've been thinking that too, but the guy at the bug lab looked. . . guilty. Like, he knew what he was doing was utterly wrong, and he half-expected to face a reckoning for it.

Exactly. That was Stalin's greatest crime, and it's the reason why historians still argue to this day about whether Stalin was the most evil, or merely the second most evil leader of the Twentieth Century. Either way, he's a lock for either the Silver or the Gold.

Maybe. But the show has modeled how professional intelligence operatives should act, and that ain't Tuan. His incessant complaints about Pavel and his traitor dad are deeply emotional and unprofessional. Plus, he's preaching to the choir. Yes, yes, he's a traitor to the International Proletariat who deserves to die…

Ah! That would seem to be the inspiration for this storyline, then. But the plot that Liz and Phil are unraveling (if it doesn't all turn out to be a big misunderstanding) is several orders of magnitude darker than what actually happened.

Yes. I thought he was an actual refugee who just happened to organically hate the United States and had been recruited. It seemed plausible. More plausible than his actual back-story, in fact. . .

I think that the show has subtly hinted at it. When Tuan mock-angrily said, "Me? A Communist? After what the Communists did to my country?" he seemed to accidentally reveal a core of real hatred underneath the acting. I don't think he likes the Russians (or anyone, anywhere, ever). I think Tuan's moral universe is…

I'm not completely up on all the history of the late Cold War, but I'm pretty sure that the United States didn't actually attempt to engineer a massive famine in Russia. . .

She didn't actually look all that confused. She was sounding out the Cyrillic labels on the products, which means she's quickly picking up Russian. Also: the fact that she's able to shop in this place probably means that she's being treated as part of the Soviet elite. I'm still pulling for her to be reintroduced at…

The horror of that is, the CIA might know that someone worse than Oleg will replace him. In fact, they're counting on it, because they actually want corruption and starvation and misery to spread and spread and spread across the Soviet Union.

Still could be!

Oh, yeah. I've been waiting for the show to reintroduce Martha as a KGB badass, Strelnikov-style. If there's any justice at all, she'll be put in charge of Phil and Liz through Gabriel.