Episode discussion post: "Cardinal"

[jae]

Aired:
5 March 2014 in the U.S. and Canada
9 March 2014 in Israel
22 March 2014 in the UK

This is a discussion post for episode 202 of The Americans, intended for viewers who are watching the show on the U.S./Canadian schedule. (Feel free to dive in to the discussion if you're reading this later and have already seen subsequent episodes, but please take care to keep comments spoiler-free of anything that comes after season two, episode two.)

Original promo trailers

"Next On: Cardinal" (Watch on YouTube)

"The Americans: Exclusive Scene from Episode 2" (Watch on YouTube)

Episode recaps

From Vulture
From Hitfix
From The AV Club
From The Huffington Post
From IGN
From Think Progress
From SpoilerTV
From Zap2it
From Television Without Pity
From TV Ate My Wardrobe
From Filmthrasher
From showratings.tv
From Newsmanone
From Screenrant
From the LA Times
From Geekbinge
From tvrage.com
From Unreality TV (UK)

Comments

[treonb]

Prediction: Nina is going to have Oleg killed or otherwise got rid of, one way or another.

Ooh, I hope not. I like him :-)

Akady keeping the mic open to Dameran while shouting about getting someone able to see the walk-in in person was deliberate.

I'm pretty sure he wasn't actually speaking to anybody. But I didn't get why Arkady didn't want to be seen. It's not exactly secret who he is, is it?

Prediction2: The gun Martha is talking about getting is going to be used, quite possibly on Philip, before the end of the series.

I hope so! I'd love to see a showdown between those two.

[quantumreality]

Plausible deniability on Arkady's part, I think. The FBI and CIA know that he knows he's the Rezident (and therefore almost certainly KGB), but for all intents and purposes he's the Chief Ambassador or whatever the head honcho's title is in an embassy, as long as he doesn't make it obvious he does the intelligence stuff on the side.

[lovingboth]

I don't think he's the ambassador - too many official functions.

Isn't Rezident the word for 'KGB station chief' aka 'top KGB officer in the embassy'?

Apparently for years, the MI6 station chief at any British embassy always had the same cover job, to the point that thee rest of the world knew that who ever was the 'second secretary' (or whatever it was) was the local British spy. Arkady's cover job has been mentioned, but I don't member what it is... something like trade?