Nash

The odd thing is that I saw e1 of s2 in the welsh version and loved it but for some idiotic reason thought it was a one off drama and didn’t follow up on it. I can see a spoiler above, so I guess I can say that having just finished s3, that I feel quite vindicated at never having trusted Prosser from the start; I always suspected he was guilty of something, I just wasn’t sure what.

So that’s what happened to the Welsh language element on Netflix. Idiotic decision. I mean, no one batted an eyelid at the Russian dialogue in The Americans....so this means that Hinterland has welsh, welsh/english and english only versions? Is that some kind of record? I know they filmed each scene twice, often in quite horrible weather.

I know what Emily will be doing - she’s thinking “I hope no one finds out my real name is Jennings”.

I managed, I think, one and a bit series of House of Cards but then dropped it. I simply could not empathise with the leads. i don’t think I wanted the FBI to break the network to end the series either; I wanted them to do so because during the FBI scenes, that is what they were trying to do and the writing and acting made me invest in the characters. Having watched the end s6 FX panel on YouTube, I am still hugely conflicted over the ending. In one sense it is a gift in that we can write our own ending. In another it’s a curse as canon has the beauty of being a finite conclusion. I got over the endings of Blake’s 7 and Sandbaggers as a teen and I’m sure that had say, E&P been shot or taken by the FBI and the end showed Paige being shown into a Moscow flat by Arkady, I’d have got over it. Noah Emerich commented that the future of the characters belonged to everyone not the writers or actors. That’s a very diplomatic thing to say; part of me still thinks that the writers managed to cop out of answering tough questions. To think of the Wire, the end montage settled the fates of the characters and provided solid closure. I miss that - though the ambiguity here does reflect some of the moral ambiguity of espionage.

In terms of a general retrospective, something that just struck me was how effective Americans was in getting me onside with the various and diverse protagonists. By way of background, I watched The Wire back to back and then tried to watch S1 of The Sopranos. I found that the Wire had made me “Real Police” and that while I’d followed Omar, Bodie and Big Chris over the series, my full viewing loyalty was with the Police. So, i found myself absolutely rooting against the mobsters in Sopranos, I had zero sympathy and just wanted them infiltrated and arrested. Or just suicided by cop. Now, with Americans, I found I related to the Illegals (how are they going to infiltrate POTUS’ laundry and switch labels with the one with a radio bug? I related to the FBI - what would they need to break the network? And I related to the Rezidentura - damn those FBI who are trying to break our network. what I found painful wasn’t so much the killings of the random security guards but the way that someone was getting subborned, seduced, betrayed by someone they like, love or trust and who isn’t who they think they are. Some times I couldn’t watch that. I never wanted the Jenningses to go to the chair or be broken under brutal interrogation. But I did want the FBI to break the network. doublethink in action - and good writing and acting. I wanted Stan to work it out and for Phillip to get away. Elizabeth, somewhat less concern there tbh. And I could see how Oleg and Arkady wanted to turn in a good job and keep the Management happy. And spread World Communism of course. Maybe that makes me far too morally plastic. Or something.

Both P&E are highly dangerous and work best as a team but I think there are a few key moments that reveal something. P kills the rapist-defector in e1 in a moment and without hesitation. Not for the mission but because of what he did to E. He goes after the creep in s1 off the books. He is, I think, revulsed by his role with Kimmy. He makes it brutally plain to Paige that her training is a joke. In e1 when he tells her the creep is to big to fight she simply doesn’t understand that he’s not talking about himself. It’s pretty plain that without him, E wouldn’t have escaped from Chicago and he is the only person who could have got them out of the carpark without bloodshed. He’s also a stone killer. But I think that were this a series about NATO agents in the USSR, we’d be pretty much unconcerned about the morality of the bodycount - this is not Le Carre where George Smiley consoles himself that “they were brutal, so were we but we had the lesser brutality”. This series was hyped up espionage violence at the sharpened up, sexed up end of the tip of the spear. If we were upset by the killing and manipulation of innocents, we should have stopped watching a long time ago. So. I actually like Philip. He is a dangerous and manipulative killer but you can see that it’s damaged his soul. And in between that he’s tried to do the right thing. He needs E and she him but I think he’s more honest about it. As for defection? Yes, he’d have done that because at that point it was the only thing that might offer survival for E, the kids and him. He thinks beyond the mission his soul is damaged but not lost.

I was presuming that if she was a recruited local agent she would still work for S. If Renee is kgb she is an agent, not an officer. She has a rock solid story because it’s real. thats what baffled me about the 2nd generation idea - they would have solid cover but their parents story could still be broken. Meanwhile you’d have the question of training, ideology, loyalty all sorts of issues, not least that the kids are far more American than Russian. I am curious as to what the real illegals achieved cf their cost when compared to recruited, turned agents. The very fact they existed created an existential threat I suppose and in a war scenario they’d assist spetznatz sabotage teams.....

In which case her cover will stack up but it’s a question of her holding to her story. Wonder what her dead letter drop/debrief routine is? I presume the general tendency is that she’s KGB?

Around s2 I wondered if there had been a soviet agent in the 1940s (like the burgess/Maclean/philby & co) who was able to create a shedload of real fake identies for the KGB. Then I read more about it and learnt that one job the Rezidenturas had was finding IDs that could be used. The ever popular one being children who died very young. So the IDs were solid but not that solid. To be honest, the Renee issue only makes sense as a plot device, a bit of misdirection. The cast interviews suggest that about 80% of the cast thought she was a spy. And the younger actors seemed pretty cranked up about it not being resolved, KS in particular. It does seem insane to try to join the KGB on a fake ID but perhaps some genius had thought Stan could oil the wheels for his wife in the way it would work in Moscow?

I think the FBI will want to get every single ounce of intelligence out of this. They have the home (and E didn’t destroy anything) plus a good few safe houses. Paige, Henry, Stan, Renee all know stuff, some of which they don’t know that they know. Even Henry. There is going to be a long process of interviews. In short, to get the info they need, the FBIs best move is to put initial pressure and then gain cooperation via a deal. So I don’t think PH or Stan do time. In fact, they could spin Stan as the hero. This is not about justice. The next few weeks will decide Renees fate as her background will get the kind of deep research no false legend will withstand. If her ID is a child who died very young, she’s burnt. She knows that - hence the wistful look at the Jennings house, they got away. On that basis, I think Paige is actually just sinking vodka until the Feds arrive (the flat must be on the list to check). And, at the hockey? What we don’t see is the wire stan is wearing or the agents stacked up at the door

On a note of more or less unrelated nostalgia, Georgi Markhov was killed by a ricin tipped umbarella. For years my friends and I joked about being nervous around umbarellas. Some time in 87, say, we are all having a beer and someone is messing around with Tim’s (no, not that one) collapsing brolly, not realising it had a trigger. Took out a very large glass ashtray. I think it went about 6 foot across the bar before gravity took over.

It’s just occurred to me that the FBI did have an intelligence led success here. I suspect I’m the last one to realise that it was Op Teacup - gennadys courier pouch that gave the Feds the X-ray of the circuit board mcguffin thus leading them to the Chicago mission and thence to Harvest (and the somewhat late realisation that it ain’t just women who can entrap men....). so only a short time after Aderholt wondered just what the heck Teacup ever gave them, the answer is Harvest, The Priest, the Jenningses and a whole lot of worried illegals. I think as well that a dead LEGAL KGB agent with a silenced weapon (looked like a welrod type pistol) on the streets of DC will take a lot of explaining.....

Yes, growing up in the 70s meant that in between playing d&d we were reading and watching the various Cold War threats and crises. At one point the UK and USSR were expelling each other’s diplomats on a daily basis; Georgi Markhov getting assassinated, defectors, spy swaps. Non stop Cold War mayhem. Reading about it later is very revealing - and quite worrying - my home town had three nuclear targets. the Able Archer exercise almost kicked off WWIII because it fitted the profile of what the WarPact expected pre war prep moves to look like. At the time we were quite like Henry, getting on with teenage life - most Saturdays our parents only had a vague idea of where we were. So the “where’s Henry” thing isn’t that silly really. Trust me, I was there :-)

Ahem. I call it that too.....

That illustrates just how diverse this forum is :-) put it this way, I remember the Falklands War. In a loosely related story, I read that back in 1982, the British naval attache in Moscow was summoned by an admiral in the Red Navy and was loudly carpeted for the “imperial capitalist aggression etc” fir sending the Task Force. The Admiral - of Claudia’s generation - then said more quietly “now, that’s done, you make sure you give those fascists the kicking they deserve”. And that was a very good analysis of Paige and Henry, bravo.

It’s a factor of a lot of things - age, interest in politics, memory and even whether you associate tv entertainment with the real world. My ears pricked up when the Coup was mentioned and thinking of the dates, I thought it was what I’ll call a “proto Coup” ie not the real coup but writers licence using probable hardliner concern about Gorbachev even in 87, to create a plot device.

It may be age but a lot of my colleagues and all my friends know about the Coup.

This reminds me of an essay we had to write in school called “a spy in our town”. My friend Phil (no not that one) write a story with our headmaster as the spy. He was told it was “silly” and given a poor mark for the essay. We all thought it a good idea. This is what you get when people fill in the spaces themselves. There’s no right or wrong and unless there is clear evidence to the contrary of a particular idea, the fans can write whatever endings they want. So Claudia’s thoughts on the coup failing are her opinion, not fact. P&Es comments that they’ll manage is their hope. Both and neither could be right or wrong.

I can see your argument and it fits with a zero sum rule of Kremlin infighting. my theory is that in the shadow feud in Moscow, this proto coup has been stopped, a defeat for the hardliners. That’s a win for the progressives and when Head of S has to explain, he needs a sacrifice. If Arkady set it up right, he has top cover from the progressives in the politburo and is safe, he and his aren’t going to take the rap. In fact Oleg is paying for them. A convenient scapegoat .....Claudia. Why? She’s there and the Head of S doesn’t really care if it’s not his head on the block.

The things I’d change, in no particular order are: Less Paige, more Henry. Possibly no spy Paige and a realisation that Henry is the one to recruit. Less Pastor Tim and possibly an ambiguous but sad demise A long game played with Stan’s gradual suspicions about P&E conflicting with his friendship with P. More Rezidentura, Arkady, Oleg, the good bad guys playing mind games with the Feds. Gaad not getting killed or if he did that it meant something A swifter end to the Nina plotline in Russia Misha - either a plot that went somewhere or not written at all Renee - give stan a break; how many illegals are there? Come on, at this rate one of us is one. Not me, I didn’t go to Cambridge. Less bodycount more tradecraft, more FBI gradually building the case around the network. E chopping Claudia I’m firmly on side with those who think that P&E were just too valuable for a lot of the missions and that the KGB would have shipped in a team to do the dirty “wet jobs”. These two were STRATEGIC assets, not TACTICAL. The USSR had a very clear school of operational art (maskirova and provokatsiya being two concepts we’ve got used to hearing about). Using elite, well placed officers to burgle and kill while they could develop assets in the Govt was not part of it; they played a longer game. They might not have been able to turn or recruit a western agent but they only had to make the FBI think there was a mole and the ensuing mole hunt would wreak chaos - in which they might pick up a disaffected potential mole. And you should all watch “the sandbaggers”.

Why? Because it could be the price of survival. There’s always a fall guy. The Coup faction has lost (for now) and someone has to pay. Music stops, no chair for Claudia.

There is that but look at Rokossovsky - victim of the Purge and rehabilitated in 41. That’s the reverse of my suggestion but the Byzantine politics of the USSR made the whole place a nest of vipers. One dead officer, two blown, how many dead FBI at a time when we are talking to them? Even if he hates Gorbachev, the Head of S might feel the need to drop Claudia in it to save himself or deflect the flak.

Who says Claudia made it home? Perhaps the apartment was super clean for a reason? Arkady has access to resources and perhaps he had a very detailed plan. Perhaps that’s why he looks so calm when he picks up P&E (and does so alone, no goons). It wouldn’t be the first time an old school chekist didn’t get the welcome they expected....

Absolutely. “Didn’t know well enough to really care”....you’ve just passed Dept S school part 1. Please remain at your location and the welcome team will arrive shortly.

Fair point re Paige’s appearance, I’d forgot that. In which case i wonder how long she’ll last on the street before the FBI catch up with her? i think that if the end was that cut and dried there would be less discussion :-)