“This is a show where sex is a weapon and deceptions pile atop deceptions. It’s all part of the job.” — Robert Gifford

“America can’t protect you. Allah can’t protect you. The KGB is everywhere.”

The KGB may be everywhere, but it’s no more in control than the Americans are. The agency can’t stop Philip’s routine mission in the crackerjack opening scene from descending into a bloodbath that leaves both Afghans and an innocent busboy dead. It can’t stop Leah and Emmet, the two Directorate-S officers working with the Jenningses, from being executed along with their teenage daughter in their hotel room. We’re only one episode into the season and the bottom has already fallen out — no one is safe, no one is in control, no one can protect anyone else. It’s quite an opening act.

Aside from Philip’s badly botched mission — the idea was to leave one Afghan alive to send a message — “Comrades” begins with a relative idyll for the Jennings family. After many ups and downs last season, Philip and Elizabeth’s marriage is in a good place. They’re making out in front of the kids, hanging out with commie spy buddies Leah and Emmet and 69-ing at home. Philip doesn’t even seem jealous when Elizabeth has a three-way with Leah and a dorky Lockheed employee as a part of a honey pot sting. This is a show where sex is a weapon and deceptions pile atop deceptions. It’s all part of the job.

This gives the middle third of the episode a slightly airless feel. With the FBI off Philip and Elizabeth’s tail and no marital drama to speak of, the stakes feel disarmingly low — we’re not used to seeing the Jennings family happy and functional. There’s a lot of setup, especially in the FBI segments. Sanford, the degenerate gambler who led the Jenningses to the colonel with info on Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative and subsequently sold them out to the FBI, has been written off as a liar and an investigative dead end by Stan Beeman and his colleagues. (They really should be smart enough to follow up on the only lead they have, but apparently not.) Sanford winds up dead, killed by the colonel, but this also feels more like an inciting incident than a payoff. We aren’t really invested in Sanford’s fate and Stan and Gaad are only beginning to sense there might be more going on than they originally imagined. Even Stan’s home life feels a bit inert — he’s still distant from his wife and still totally fooled by Nina. (Although Nina’s analysis of The French Lieutenant’s Woman is pretty great.)

Meanwhile, back in suburbia, the show turns to Paige’s growing suspicion that there’s something weird going on with her parents. Integrating the protagonists’ kids into the narrative is a difficult trick to pull off. Homeland — in many ways a flashier but dumber and more inconsistent cousin to The Americans — has had many of its worst moments whenever it focuses on the Brody children. On the other hand, Game of Thrones‘ Stark children, particularly Arya, are among the strongest members of its ensemble. The difference is that Homeland‘s kids are usually irrelevant to the main plot. You get the sense that, whenever the show turns to them, it’s simply to give the child actors something to do. The Stark kids, on the other hand, are central to the narrative and just as important as any other characters.

So far, The Americans is doing a pretty good job with Paige and Henry. Paige seems to occupy the same place Sally Draper does in Mad Men or Walter Jr. does in Breaking Bad. She’s the long-term moral stakes of the series, a child that could easily be ruined by the sins of her parents. She’s her own person, but her arc is as much about her parents as it is about her. (Meanwhile, Henry is the series’ Bobby Draper: mostly there for comic relief.) When Philip and Elizabeth abandoned their kids at the mall last season (they were busy getting tortured by their own people), forcing them to hitchhike with a knife-wielding, beer-swilling stranger, or when Paige investigates her mom’s dirty laundry (symbolism alert!) or walks in on her parents having sex — giving the sight of Elizabeth chewing on a slice of bacon unseemly connotations — it’s clear that the show is as much about family life and how the sins of parents do long-term damage to their children as it is about spycraft.

There are a few spots when the episode falters and doesn’t feel as subtle as it should. The very first scene, with Elizabeth nearly running over a doe and her brood, might as well be stamped with a giant red “SYMBOLISM!” sign. Leah and Emmet feel more like signifiers than real people. The show is usually fantastic at giving even minor characters realistic shading, but Leah and Emmet are pretty much there just to reflect the Jenningses’ hopes — that they could be a happy, all-American family with a cheerleader daughter and a son at Carnegie Mellon (while still working the occasional mission for the Motherland) — and fears — that they could wind up massacred along with their children.

But those complaints feel minor in comparison to everything “Comrades” does right. Leah and Emmet may not be much more than symbols, but the moment when Philip and Elizabeth discover their bodies is as good a scene as the show has done. (The real kicker is when we hear the son’s — the only survivor — offscreen anguished howls.) There’s a lot of setup in “Comrades,” but that’s a hell of a payoff — and there’s only more to come.

Tidbits:

-There’s no pop music in this episode, which is nothing short of a sin. The show’s use of contemporary music — particularly Fleetwood Mac’s “Tusk” in the pilot and “Siamese Twins” by The Cure in “Mutually Assured Destruction” — was one of the best things about the first season.

-There are some signs of an increased budget, such as the gorgeous autumnal helicopter shots of Philip and Elizabeth driving home from the cabin.

-The discussion of selling arms to the Afghans suggests the conflict in Afghanistan might be the locus of the season, the same way Philip and Elizabeth’s attempts to get info on the Strategic Defense Initiative provided a vague through-line to season one.

-Claudia was Leah and Emmet’s handler. Hopefully that means we’ll get to see more of Margo Martindale this season.

-Oleg, the KGB agent with a taste for Rod Stewart, should prove an interesting addition to the ensemble.

-Annet Mahendru (Nina), Susan Misner (Sandra Beeman) and Alison Wright (Martha) were all added as regular cast members this season, so expect to see plenty of them.

-Speaking of Martha, she barely shows up in the episode (mostly just to remind us the bug is still in Gaad’s office and to operate a weird, Star Wars-esque filing robot thing) but she is the reason for the reverse-Godfather-esque final shot, with Elizabeth waiting by an open door while Philip stays over with his second “wife.”

-That small smile that crosses Nina’s face when she realizes how completely hooked Stan is is a small moment of acting genius.

-Sandra is a fan of The Love Doctor. And hugging.