Gabriel tells Elizabeth and Philip what happened to William, and tells them they need to extract the virus from William's body. Elizabeth, Philip and Hans (along with other KGB agents) dig up where William has been buried (by Fort Detrick), cut a piece of the plastic bag encasing William's dead body, and cut part of William's flesh off, putting it in a plastic bag. However, when he's trying to climb out of the hole, Hans accidentally cuts himself on the contaminated knife, and Elizabeth has to kill him so he doesn't infect anyone else.
Along with that old assignment, Elizabeth and Philip have a new assignment; posing as parents to Tuan (Ivan Mok), a Vietnamese agent posing as a high school student, so they can ingratiate themselves with Alexei (Alexander Sokovikov), a recent Soviet defector now working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as well as his wife Evgheniya (Irina Dvorovenko) and son Pasha (Zack Gafin). Alexei is enthusiastic about living in his new country, but his wife and son don't seem to be adjusting as well.
Mischa heads to Yugoslavia, carrying with him a letter from his mother, who left him instructions on how to look up Philip when he got to the States. Gabriel tells Claudia he knows Mischa has left home, and guesses his ultimate destination, which worries him.
Elsewhere, Oleg is back in the Soviet Union, living with his parents, and gets a job working to expose corruption within the Soviet food trade organizations. Also, over Elizabeth and Philip's objections, Paige and Matthew continue to see each other, and since Paige is still having nightmares about Elizabeth killing someone in front of her, Elizabeth decides to teach her to fight.
This episode contains examples of:
- Boom, Headshot!: How Elizabeth kills Hans after he infects himself.
- Call-Back: Wolfe tells Stan he doesn't believe the KGB knows Oleg tipped Stan off about the virus.
- Continuity Nod: Oleg's mother is still upset about Oleg's brother being killed in Afghanistan.
- Foreshadowing: Tuan tells Elizabeth and Philip Pasha is unhappy in America and at school, which becomes important later, as does the Soviet Union's food shortages, Stan telling Philip about meeting a woman at his gym, and Oleg being followed, without his knowledge, on his way home from work.
- Shout-Out: As a way of maintaining his cover, Tuan watches The A-Team on TV.
- When Tuan first meets Pasha at school, Devo's "That's Good" is playing.
- Paige is reading The Hotel New Hampshire.
- Titled After the Song: Or the lyric, anyway - "Amber Waves" is from the opening line of "America the Beautiful" ("O, beautiful for spacious skies/For amber waves of grain")., which is appropriate in that Alexei spends the episode talking about how beautiful he thinks America really is.
