Warning: Full spoilers for the episode follow...
This week, in "Welcome to America," more Christopher Guest players (including Guest himself) entered the scene as Tom's American cousins; with Fred Willard playing the "Fred Willard" of the group, Ed Begley Jr. as a podiatrist obsessed with Native American survival skills, and Guest as a North Carolina man with a missing Peruvian wife.
I think it was this episode, more so than the ones previous, that colored the entire story with a bit of salty sadness. We knew that Tom was having a rough time after losing both his job and his girlfriend, but in this chapter he basically brought some of that subtext to the surface, thinking that this trip was just what he needed to help him get over his current low point. And then he continued to marvel at the most un-marvelous things; from being able to wear shorts, to sitting in a hot tub, to tacky interior design. It's all mostly indicative of just how excited Tom is to meet so any new faces, and to have an instant, forced connection to them because of their family lineage, but as we all saw, they wound up being just a bunch of comically unimpressive misfits - just like back home. So I expect that Tom's journey will inevitably lead him back to the start, and to a re-examination of his own life.
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