On balance that was probably Spy X Family’s best episode so far for me.  As I’ve mused before this is a series that has many faces – appropriately enough.  While I love DamiAnya as much as the next guy, SxF can sometimes be a series that takes the easy way a little too often.  I find it works best when it continually shifts gears, and when Anya – as she was here – is a change of pace rather than the main focus.  At least for several eps in a row.

While Anya geta a lot of the headline comic moments and the series’ schmaltzy side revolves around her, at heart I think this series is about what this episode was about.  To wit, how living a lie can come in many forms.  That, and Loid’s lack of control over his life when he seeks to be in complete control of it.  The question I keep asking is, how can a guy be so suspicious of everything and yet have so little clue about what’s really happening?  If he’d have left that bug in place for a while, he would have gotten a very rude awakening.

Yuri, for his part, is an important catalyst but kind of a lot to take.  He’s like Loid in the sense that he’s shockingly slack for someone in his position.  His blind spot for his sister is a huge red flag for someone in his job, as his sempai kept trying to tell him (and pretty creepy to boot). If he’d actually remembered to bug the apartment as he’d intended that would have placed Loid in a pretty difficult position.  Obviously he’d have found them – that part of his job he’s good at.  But what then?  Removing them is basically blowing his cover, but it’s not like he can let himself be wiretapped.

Yuri almost letting “I’ll have you executed!” slip out – seriously, he’s a worse secret policeman than Loid is a spy, by far.  Even without taps in the apartment Loid is still in a tough spot, because he can’t take Yor’s innocence at face value.  Yuri and Yor working together to get close to Loid would be perfectly logical (though Yuri’s behavior would not).  Loid really has no choice but to rule that out – planting a bug on Yor is a must.  But actually disguising himself (as Yuri’s sempai) and confronting her in the street was a cold move.  It’s not surprising he’d feel guilty about it – if Yor was innocent that would be a really cruel thing to do.

Ah, the irony.  Again, Loid is so paranoid yet still can’t see the forest for the trees.  Why is a secretary able to beat the crap out of a secret police interrogator (while hammered) and easily subdue a male spy who approaches her?  Why does it not occur to Loid to be suspicious of that – to see the lie Yor is actually living, rather than the one he imagines she is?  He’s someone who’s been groomed too well, it seems to me – to look for certain patterns to the point where he can spot them with ease, but miss anything that doesn’t fit with them.

Anya is the one caught in the middle of all this – the only one privy to the truth but totally lacking the experience (and smarts, if we’re honest) to understand it.  She can certainly sense that her “parents” are in a rough patch, which Loid attributes to the perceptiveness of children (this particular reality is unlikely enough that I can’t blame Loid for not seeing it).  As for Yor, she seems remarkably able to compartmentalize her secret life and her mundane one – both of which are a lie, as it happens.  For her it seems like being an assassin is the only thing in her life she truly understands, and it’s much easier than being a wife or mother (even a pretend one).

What a sorry trio this is, but it’s not limited to them – from Damian’s lonely isolation to Yuri’s unhealthy obsessiveness to Franky’s callow superficiality, pretty much everyone we meet is a mess.  As Loid says just about everybody is putting on an act in their lives, even if they don’t realize it.  It’s just another case of his seeing so much while at the same time being totally blind to what’s right in front of him.