The show understands that in the wrong hands, belief, whether ideological or supernatural, may be no more than a kissing cousin to the violence it justifies.
Trust, you might say, is simply the time we spend waiting for the other shoe to drop, and in The Americans, it always does.
Professionals in the art of reading people are most vulnerable to misapprehension when their judgment is clouded by the personal.
A master class in suspense, not only of spies caught in a tightening net, but also of characters whose choices begin to feel less like liberty and more like entrapment.