shura

Wouldn't that require acting ability?

In case the assassination attempt is unsuccessful and she must protect the general and his anti-Gorbachev side? Gotcha, yes, that makes more sense. Because it really makes no sense to conceal the existence of Dead Hand from the adversary, it's only useful as a deterrent. I mean, what good does it do to the Soviet leadership if it is deployed in complete surprise after this leadership is all dead? I wonder how one gets funding to develop Dead Hand, considering that people signing off on it will never have a chance to see if it actually works.

My question is, what exactly did she learn there that she now has to kill herself in order to prevent giving it away if captured? That the Russians have some super duper mythical-sounding weapon? That's what is not to be revealed under any circumstances? Someone should tell Putin, he just said pretty much the same thing the other day in his State of the Union address on TV. Did they have face masks? I didn't notice and was actually thinking "wow, they really did not take kids safety that seriously in the 80s" when it looked to me like their faces were completely unprotected. And that was some seriously terrible hockey they were playing, by the way. Wayne Gretzkys they are not. My favorite bit was when, after watching the movie, Elizabeth goes "Wow, I can't believe what Moscow looks like now!" and in the next shot we get the show's usual, depressing blueish-gray-lit Moscow. And then I learn that Mexico is pastel- and golden-hued all over.

AND Magellan's expedition had just circumnavigated the world in Copernicus' time. Refute that, Professor Flat Earth! Funny how Team BB barged in on a legitimate lecture. I wish they'd stayed and tried to pass the exam. The shorter, older guy in the beer tub had the weirdest face. I've always pictured satyrs looking like that.

I don't think she is unable to make the poster, just absolutely unwilling to do make an effort as long as she can get Bow to do it for her. What was that about Dre sorting his sneakers into "keep" and "sell" categories? Seemed like it needed to be fleshed out a bit more. Is that a thing, a highly paid executive selling used expensive sneakers? Is that how the Johnsons are solving their financial problems and financing Bow's new stay-at-home lifestyle? Maybe she should start selling her half-finished wine bottles then. too. Out of a modern, glass and steel, but at the same time full of mold and asbestos office, evidently. Which, I'm sure, will be forgotten by next week.

But why? Why goats? Why yoga? Just because goats are cute? Then why not goat bird watching? Or goat SAT prep? Or goat orthodontics? I'll never understand, I'm sure. Was she the lady who was drunk? I don't remember the bags, but I do remember someone, quite possibly Bolo, getting directions from a local who was utterly wasted. I was then thinking, well, what else is there to do in Iceland? What is this I am reading here about this season being only seven weeks long? Are they doing away with NELs or running two-hour episodes?

It will prevent repeated attempts though. I'll show myself out.

It's not just the convenience, it the whole way of life, the routine. The way you organize your life, the way you move around, shop, the people you interact with. Everything you know would all be gone and replaced with something completely unfamiliar. You can't really look forward to that without uneasiness even if you anticipate that things will be fine. Even something as trivial as watching your favorite TV shows - if you were to drop everything and move to a country where you know you won't be able to keep watching The Americans (a more gripping season that this one, let's say), wouldn't that give you pause? He'd make a perfect Stewie Griffin, wouldn't he? I almost died when he declared that he'd reported P&E for entertaining and acting upon petty bourgeois thoughts.

There is a certain logic there though, even if it's based on a false premise. Tuan believes that he taught Pasha well enough to survive, and if Pasha does, as Tuan expects, the attempted suicide just might convince his mother to take him back to Russia. And if all this doesn't go according to his plan and Evgeniya ends up not returning to Moscow, so what, she is not returning to Moscow the way things are anyhow, the operation (in Tuan's view) is already down the drain, so why not try this? You miss 100 percent of the shots you don't take, to go with a hockey quote. Now, why Tuan thinks that P&E have exhausted all other possible options, I have no idea, he may be absolutely and terribly wrong there, but the rest of the plan computes.

Tuan's idea is that Evgeniya will want to go back to Russia after this regardless of whether Pasha survives or not, either out of despair or to finally protect Pasha from all this. It's a theory he is testing, I suppose. I am actually kind of fascinated with how he approached the problem. If what he was doing wasn't working, he figured they'd need to escalate. What would get to Evgeniya finally? Say, Dee, do you have kids? What's that like? You'd do anything for them, huh... I mean, his solution was absolutely sick and possibly short-sighted, but he was goal-oriented to the extreme. Yeah, there's no way that scrawny dude is a hockey player ;). The whole situation was a laugh riot. Sofia and him show up, our FBI guys are like "what the...", Gennady is all "I love what y'all are doing here, with the treason and stuff, very cool, I'm behind that one hundred percent. Thanks so much. Here's some memorabilia. Btw, $500 doesn't seem enough." And Aderholt was priceless, his face kept going between the "what the hell?" expression and all kinds of polite and "happy for you" faces you make during your normal social interactions. Sofia doesn't even have to be a plant. If she simply reported Stan and Aderholt's contact, and the KGB decided to use it, this is exactly what it would look like. They'd tell her to mention a guy the FBI would be interested in, then introduce him in person, then he'd try to ingratiate himself with them. Really, she has been leading this whole thing, the FBI is just reacting. At least they know not to trust all this blindly, it appears. My take on P&E's visit to Pastor Tim was that they may not necessarily have done it for the value of his advice, but maybe in part to show him they trust him completely and value his opinion, just to tickle his sense of self-importance. And he does have experience counselling on this sort of things, this is what he does for a living, so why not listen to what he has to say? Although yes, just coming out and telling him they are taking the kids to the USSR looks a bit risky.

Well, she has produced Gennady who they are interested in as a KGB courier. Plus the autographed picture of the 1976 Soviet hockey team - there's return on investment right there.

All the KGB needs to know is that the FBI is looking at Sofia. Then they offer up a double agent and see where it goes from there. And like Aderholt (or Stan) said, the way Gennady was approaching them was exactly like a lesson at Quantico on how a KGB spy would do it. I did love how Gennady and Sofia just showed up there and started negotiating like that.

The foot rowing was invented to keep hands free to hold an umbrella, is that what Phil said? Someone should start working on a foot rice-planting technique so those poor rice farmers could finally chuck their large hats.

That's exactly what Oleg's story line is. It's like a middle school play written by a six grader who is not very good at it. We are told a linear story that boils down to "and then this person they caught named that guy, then they talked to that guy and he named the next person, and it's all so impressive in it's scale and scope." But we never know any of these people to care or feel anything particularly impressive there (we are just told it is all impressive). Nor do we ever get a chance to figure out anything that is not fed to us by this "writer." Once I got that there is bribery and corruption, there is nothing interesting shown there anymore. "You don't know who you are dealing with! It's Kirillov himself!" Who?

Yes, remember how visibly happy and optimistic she was when she was with Matthew? Me neither.

That's got to be some kind of psychological weapon, right? Between the Pom-poms and the tutus, who could muster enough seriousness to attack these guys?

Yes and no. For many Soviet citizens, especially of the kind P and E are, with their upbringing, a religious wedding was not really their roots. A Soviet person wouldn't automatically think "church" when thinking about getting married. They really would think "City Hall." One (Soviet) Russian word meaning "to make a marriage official" was "raspisat'sya," which literally means "to sign on the line." And Claudia or some other commanding officer from the embassy could probably officiate for them (provided it was permitted, desirable, precautions taken to protect their identities, etc.) But I absolutely agree that, as a symbolic act, this was the best for Mikhail and Nadezhda. Nothing "official" or "legal," all that was irrelevant for them, I think. It was just real and true, with their real names, real language, real feelings. Even Elizabeth got into it.

That threw me too, I didn't realize she just flies in to see Stan once in a while. This is not at all like Deirdre's and Ben's deal in Topeka, right? I am looking forward to Stan and Aderholdt storming a bathroom stall at JFK to grab the Soviet hockey guy and his pouch (yeah, I heard it). I like how Sofia was like "You rented this nice empty apartment in my building, huh... You know, I got a guy now. Gennady... Can the FBI help me with babysitting?" I am a little surprised Philip even thought to have a church ceremony. I'm sure he was not brought up in the USSR thinking that this is how things should be, a religious ceremony per se probably means nothing to him and Elizabeth (as evidenced by his "I know, God, right?" to Elizabeth), it does not in itself make their marriage real. Funny, too, how the priest was telling them that, as soon as one of them gets to Moscow, they need to file the paperwork to make the marriage official with the Soviet state. But it really was something real for them, something they entered into as their real selves, without disguise.

Do we know this? I've honestly not been sure and wound up thinking Oleg was the older one. Am I forgetting a time when they made it clear? Oleg is the older one. His dad said "Your mother got out... We had you, then Zhenya" in this episode. You know, I am not sure it's even possible to use a biological weapon defensively. You can't really deploy it against invaders in your territory because it will start killing your own population. I have no idea what Philip meant when he said "maybe it wasn't about protecting us after a nuclear attack." Who, and for what, is going to send into a nuclear wasteland troops that can be fought off with bioweapons? And if we think that a defensive bioweapon is something kept for deterrence, that still implies willingness to use it against the enemy in the enemy's territory, which is hardly defensive when it comes to it. "Mr. Jennings, please, I told you we can only reimburse mileage for one car trip to Harrisburg. Please don't submit more than one even if you used three cars." True story - my colleague once had to explain to our finance person that no, Naked Juice is not an adult movie, but a drink he bought during a business trip and would like reimbursed.

To me, it's like missing the ferry from Zanzibar - if you arrive later than the other teams, you just have to wait until the next ferry. Brooke was welcome to wait until the next demonstration started and see all the required steps.

Unless you actually want it to end right then and there. I mean, Scott probably doesn't believe they can ultimately win it with Brook's temperament, nor does he enjoy having to interact with her. So why prolong it?

It's possible she was rehabilitated after Khrushchev exposed Stalin's abuses of power in 1956. Then her record probably wouldn't hold back her husband's career.

He is all right, I guess, although seriously reptilian-looking. I was a bit puzzled at how defensive he became when Oleg mentioned that he knew about his mom's gulag past. There was really nothing there that had to trigger his defensiveness. All that "I could have left her, many people did, but I stuck with her because I am good" - that didn't seem to flow naturally from the situation. I guess the writers just needed him to expose how terrible the Soviet life was. Which, btw, is why I don't think Oleg is about to uncover just the mob behind the food distribution thing - there is nothing particularly Soviet about that, it's got to be the Party higher-ups. Speaking of people's looks, does anyone else think Major Kuznetsov (?, the guy investigating Oleg) is seriously good-looking? He has this presence about him, this dignity and confidence that somehow still comes across as not disrespectful to the person he has in his sights.

This disillusionment kind of paints P and E as very naive, I think. They knew they were stealing a weapon in that virus. Did they really believe it was never going to be used as a weapon if need be? Who would promise such a thing to them? It was used against the very same enemies one of which Philip himself has killed before. Is it the repulsive nature of this weapon that shocks him so much? But it's not much different from what P and E used on Weinberger's housekeeper's son. They've seen and done all of this before, they shouldn't have been expecting anything different no matter what Gabriel told them otherwise (if he did). If they feel misled and betrayed by the Center now over this, that's Paige's level of naivete. That's a burn on Oleg's dad, right?

I thought he was a KGB informant rather than a spy. It was weird though, why did he call the meeting? He didn't really say anything there that seemed to be urgent. His Eminence drinks? Well, I assume he is Russian, so yeah, valuable intel there. It looked like he, too, was lonely after Gabriel's departure and just wanted to talk to someone. And Philip was, understandably, like "Yeah, sorry, man, I've got enough friends. Also, if we meet again, could you maybe wear something less conspicuous?" Funny how Martha is apparently entertaining the concept of a "suitable" man she could be introduced to in Moscow. Wonder what that would look like. And Chris is going there, don't forget that. Is it common for someone to write a letter of recommendation like that for a kid without touching base with his parents?