Solnichka

What did Helena say after she was injured? "I haf stick in baby"? The line, the delivery, the look on her face & the otherwise non-reaction had me laughing & laughing. Geez TM is simply amazing. And yes, I know. I already have my handbasket; I know where I'm going. I also can't follow the convoluted plot but am here for the acting. TM, Donnie and Felix better find good stuff after this, so I can continue to watch them on my teevee.

WHAT was with that jacket??? It was as if she mussed her regular one & the only replacement was some dude's, 6 sizes too big. I was so distracted by it, & I'm not normally one to pay any attention to clothing on shows.

Hey I was in that Moscow McDonald's in the summer of 1993! Had been eating awful dorm food for 6 weeks (lots of grey mush & everything was swimming in oil) & a bunch of us spent hours at the McDonald's, eating I think 3 rounds of food. We were so hungry for familiar foodstuffs! Fun fact: I don't think McD's did this, but early french fry makers in at least St. Petersburg served their fries with little wooden fork-thingys. They were a cross between a toothpick & one of those wooden spoon-stick ice cream utensils from way back. It was this short wooden stick with 2 prongs at the end to stab your fries so you didn't get greasy hands. Folks were fancy with their french fries in Russia back then! :) On the rationing, Wikipedia tells me there was only widespread bread rationing until 1935 & in the 1980s under Perestroika. So call me confuzzled (when do we think P was born? Though I think it's fair to think it lasted longer than official reports), though thank you @Umbelina for the great info/resources!

Svoloch! The fella Oleg was grilling didn't say "Son of a bitch," but rather "Bastard," which I agree is a 'softer' term. I wondered why they used SOB, though long ago I gave up trying to understand Russian translations for profanity. I'd guess it's because WE use SOB more often than bastard, but who knows. The lumps Papa Philip brought home were bread rations. It was obvious to me because they so closely resembled the rations on display at the blockade museum in St. Petersburg. These fist-sized bits of bread were what was allotted to citizens during the blockade, and they were mostly sawdust and got smaller as supplies dwindled. But when the heck was this scene supposed to be? Pre-WWII USSR? I couldn't figure that out, but because of what the bread looked like, it was obvious to me that they were rations, heated up by the fire to soften them, as they were described as hard as rocks. But also as obvious was that they weren't in St. Petereburg during the blockade in that scene. So I have no idea what that was about, but it was a ration of bread. Lots of people having dinner this ep. P & P had Chinese & discussed Paige's problems (ordered in). Oleg had the Dating Game Dinner where he told his father off (cooked by the girlies but uneaten). Philip flashed back to dinner in silence after his dad brought home their rations (eaten). McDonald's with Tuan & P where P can't eat. Also McDonald's was one of those things that was the epitome of "America" to the Russians & it was huge when they moved into Russia. Misha didn't get to eat. Good father-child parallels. Also I'm thankful for this board for reminding me of the loud-banging younger child in Philip's former flashbacks. Gah you guys, they DIDN'T EAT THE BABY! But I do wonder if the baby was sacrificed, so to speak, because Philip showed some kind of aptitude for a better life (tougher? Smarter - good at math?) or because he was the eldest son. & so rather than eaten (gah!), the younger one was more left to starve, or given less. I'd thought the classmate killing P did may have been before our flashback tonight, but I agree with others that the killing was when P was older. I do think it's important what happened to the baby. Fun fact: during the blockade, there was cannibalism. Quite a lot of it, and the best place to find meat (you didn't ask what kind) was the "Haymarket Square," which is the square that the subway station was that was bombed this week. Okay not a fun fact, but that was also my metro stop when I was there 20 years ago. So it made me sad. So, fathers and children. Lots of fathers and children! I have to believe that the early scene with Henry breaking in to a neighbor's house to play video games was not a random dropped storyline. I think Henry is being set up to be the one with all the aptitude for the spy game but he's going to be overlooked for Paige. But WHY? I don't so much see how this fits in, at least not in a way that makes sense to me. I think P is closer to Paige because she's the eldest, and the eldest get the best of everything, like he did. I'm sure this is overthinking, but what the hell. What does P do with that when he meets Misha?? I thought it was curious, too, that the scene with Tuan & P was outside playing catch instead of, say, watching from a bedroom window. He can't say he's proud of Henry but he goes out to play catch with Tuan. Hmmmm... Finally, I thought Rhys after Elizabeth told P about the wheat strains & feeding the world - wow. That was some amazing acting right there. I think he went red with rage with the lab guy, because of what he'd been through as a child. Hunger is no joke - it's traumatizing, especially in children. & to find out that not only were they wrong & they killed him for no reason, but it was the exact opposite, and the lab was actually trying to prevent the very horrific thing that P had to go through when he was a wee one? His abject horror at what he had done - it was as if he alone condemned the Soviet citizens to starve because he over-reacted to the situation. I was floored by him - I love this show but I also can't wait to see him move on to other great things. Well done. I felt vindicated that they talked about the food transportation problems in this episode, & I hope they keep adding more to this story because it's still too vague for me. Next week I'll have to watch sooner so I can better participate in the discussion!

I wish the Oleg story - with his job, his motivations, & with the shopkeeper - was a little clearer. I'm enjoying it so much, and generally like the somewhat mysterious stories that take time to understand & unfold, but my take on it is obviously incomplete & with all the questions I have & that I've seen asked here, I'm not sure if on this storyline, it's a bit too vague to really get the point out of it. I'm confident that they're trying to convey the stark differences in food availability/accessibility between the US and USSR during that time. That seems obvious. But the corruption by the shopkeeper, and Oleg's compassionate humanity bumping up against his job to root out corruption leaves me wondering if I'm supposed to feel sympathetic towards the shopkeeper or think she's a corrupt, selfish capitalist gaming the system & hurting others. Or am I supposed to think she's the smart, scrappy capitalist who Gets Things Done when times are tough? Oleg's honest, yes I agree, and also seems sympathetic to the plight of our corrupt tangerine hoarder, but also is the one coming down on her (is forced to?), hard (& one just has to wiggle their eyebrows on that one - it IS Oleg after all - and suggest him "coming down on" someone might not be the worst thing on the planet...ahem). Anyway, I hope we continue to find out more on this & do really like how they are bringing the stories together over food.

Gah - once the wars were over & the mass executions stopped, there were more people to feed. Ugh. & thank you for that first part that explained meeting production quotas much better than my attempt.

With no free market, it wasn't a matter of changing distribution. I was fascinated by this utter inability for this vast, lush country to feed its people, so it's really interesting but my memory ain't as good as it used to be. It was more just that there was no central control & communication - everyone was focused on saving their own skin by meeting their department's goals - so it was a situation where Worker #1 put all the apples on the truck, and where the truck went wasn't #1's problem. Transportation Worker #1 actually sold his apple truck to Rando Worker #1 so he could send his kid to the US for a better life (or for some other bartering reason), so the apples never made it to wherever they were supposed to do. It's a subject of much study, so it's great to see it play out on screen, even if a bit muddled. I think Oleg is doing all he can & all he knows how to do. In Russia at that time, you're lucky to work, to eat, to survive outside of a gulag. So if Oleg knows spy work that actually hurts the "common" worker, then that's what he has to do. It's not quite the level of the talk with his mother, but it's a parallel for sure. I'm sure he's conflicted, especially since we know he has a kind heart & wants to do what's right. His solo conversations with the shopkeeper seemed very compassionate & it seemed to me that both of them knew the verbal game they were playing & that neither of them was going to budge - which is why Oleg came back, or had to come back, with Boss Man. It's sad - I mean, all of it was sad - but when the government looked at the problem with the food, they saw the "corruption" of the shops/shopkeepers getting more than their share rather than the broken system that was letting the food rot. Ah, communism. You can't admit that the problem is the system, because all hail to the glorious worker of communism! If there are flaws, then the flaws are with the people. I bet most folks in Oleg's place would have taken the oranges - even if they could go without, most everyone knew someone who was malnourished. Love the observation about P mentioning the soup and especially his hesitation in answering the question! This is also a topic of study for me (it's like this show was made for me!) & I LOVED that comment because of what I've read about Russian 'cuisine'. Because the Russians have spent so much of their history starving - from WWII on to Communism & the Soviet era, and then when capitalism came roaring in with plenty of food utterly out of price range for almost anyone - so there's not so much of a culture of cuisine there. I mean, don't get me wrong, Russian food is amazingly delectable & delicious with rich historical significance...but when you add 100+ years of not enough food for a majority of the people, then you create a different culture that doesn't much care about food in the way we do. I'd say the average Russian that I knew would consider a good meal one you walked away from no longer hungry. Love those scenes - whenever we enter the Jennings' house, someone is in front of the TV noshing on something. The Burovs like to sit quietly, also often without lights on & near the light coming in from the window (another difference I always noticed with Russians is that I wanted to turn on the light hours - hours! - before they ever wanted to). I appreciate all the comments here that help enhance my experience watching. I'll be more closely watching the food consumption in upcoming episodes for sure. & apologies for the generalities - I'm trying to convey my own experiences & what I remember from what I've read & not trying to speak for all Russians at all times. It's an awfully big place with a lot of varied folks...I saw & know about only a few in a limited circumstance for a limited time.

About the store, this is my take from what I know about the problem there back then (I'm not Russian but lived there for 3 years in the 1990s & have studied their history extensively) - it was mainly a supply chain problem in the 1970s-80s. Wherever something was grown (wheat, apples, tomatoes), the growers/local community were on very strict orders not to consume it themselves but rather send everything to the central distribution place, which would then allocate everyone their fair share. Strict orders not to keep what was grown in any given place often involved gulags when disobeyed. Anyway, the transportation wasn't centrally controlled & nothing was controlled properly, so most of the foodstuff were literally rotten & inedible once they got to the stores & consumers because of all the delays & no one knowing what anyone else was doing. Everyone knew there was bountiful food rotting in trucks & warehouses all over Russia while the people starved - it was awful. Anyway, one of the only ways to survive, literally, was to be part of the black market that somehow smuggled/rescued edible food before it spoiled in transport. Probably the only way to catch these black market set-ups back then was to see the "well stocked" stores & come down hard on them as Oleg is. Our shop doesn't appear to be a 'beryozka' (what they called the special stores for foreigners & that were well-stocked with the best of the best Russian & non-Russian products), but rather a regular market that had better produce than other markets - the shopkeeper kept saying she just has special skills in choosing the best produce - when everyone in the room knows that the produce she'd normally be picking from just doesn't look anywhere near that good. The Russians I knew were very bitter about that time, the lack of food & rationing, so while they wouldn't be quite as loud about it as Pasha's dad (sorry can't remember his name), they did recall it with disdain & anger back when it was recounted to me. Sorry to go a tad off the topic here, but I think they've been less than clear on this storyline when understanding it in the greater context of the season - I think - adds a lot. With Henry casually tossing food in the trash for wasteful reasons, the midges, angry PashaDad, the repeated scenes of dinners out & large amounts of food, etc., the theme of having enough/not enough/too much comes through effectively. The Jennings' are almost always eating or munching on something when we see them in their home. The Burovs? Not so much. The contrast in the different homes is something I find very effective. I agree too that Gabriel's attitude is different toward P&E this season, being more along the lines of 'suck it up' than previously. This is in line with his conversations with Claudia in the theme of nowadays the spies are soooooo coddled & if they only knew what it was like back in the day. But I wonder if it also is because P&E are different in their relationship to each other and the Center. At the start of the show, in S1, E was suspicious of P wanting to defect, & I wonder if Gabriel's more paternal, understanding, soft attitude toward them was a reflection of working them to get them closer to one another. Now that they are solid together, he can push them farther than he could before & they'll rise to the occasion instead of splintering - because they're just so good together. Just spitballing but I thought the comment on Gabriel acting differently toward P&E was interesting. Probably overthinking. Be gentle - first post. :)