NitneLiun

I would love to see the Baseball Furies show up on TWD. I wouldn't like to see the Baseball Furries. That would be creepy.

Good point about Lubyanka, but they still have problem with the many enemies they have made in the KGB, Soviet military and GRU. We can only assume Claudia made it back to the USSR and spilled the beans about Elizabeth's "disloyalty".

What makes you think Arkady can even protect himself? This episode was set in December of 1987. The failed coup against Gorbachev was in 1991, IIRC. That's a long time to the many enemies they now have in the KGB. Seems like there is a good chance Arkady, Philip and Elizabeth ended up in Lubyanka Prison with bullets in the backs of their heads.

We saw the end of Paige. She is going to die like a sad, lonely Russian -- guzzling vodka to the point of a premature death.

Arkady already knows. That's why he sent Oleg to Washington.

You have to remember that this was 1987. Many in the West still did not know what to make of Gorbachev. Some thought he was a wolf in sheep's clothing. Good point about Claudia's obvious contempt for anything American, especially P and E's American kids.

Agreed. I think Aderholt has a lot of respect for Stan and would never completely discount anything he has to say.

I was a little disappointed that Elizabeth didn't pull out her pistol and give Granny two in the chest and one in the head.

I suspect Stan's chat with Philip had a purpose. He was clearly watching P closely to gauge his reaction. Even The Americans Twitter account posted a gif last night showing Stan watching P more closely than he would have in a normal conversation.

If the writing had been this bad halfway through the first season, I would have stopped watching. Unfortunately, I'm invested now and hanging around only to see who dies and who doesn't and whether their deaths will be gory.

The pact may have technically been a non-aggression pact, but I'd say they became allies when they decided to invade Poland and carve it up. That's the kind of thing BFF's do.

Sorry, but I think you are way off base here. It is not uncommon to see movies about the Soviet side of the war here. I can remember even in grade school being taught about the number of Soviets who were killed in the war. The truth is that it is the Russians who downplay the role of the West in the war. They never even mention the Pacific war, which they sat out. They never mention how much food and military equipment they received from the West, particularly the U.S. (enough to equip 80% of Allied forces in Western Europe. They also never mention the massive effort made by the United States in winning the naval war in the North Atlantic, North Sea, Baltic Sea and Mediterranean Sea, South Pacific and North Pacific. They never mention that it was largely the U.S. Army Air Corps that destroyed the Luftwaffe in the tactical and strategic air campaigns. North Africa, Sicily, Italy, the Asian subcontinent and Pacific were not meaningless sideshows. The Soviet Union fought a one-front ground war that they were able to fight largely because of American planes, tanks and trucks that were given to the USSR (for which repayment has never been received). Oh, they also never mention that until June of 1941, the USSR was an ally of Nazi Germany and invaded Poland along with Germany.

Yes, but Elizabeth is still in and the travel agency is still very much a part of her cover. The Centre should make sure the agency does not go into bankruptcy and Henry stays at the prep school. Elizabeth needs the agency for her cover and Henry would be a much greater asset for future recruitment with the contacts he makes at the prep school.

That isn't how it works. If he failed to meet academic or disciplinary standards, they would just revoke the scholarship and tell him to get lost. The scholarship students usually have to meet higher academic standards. There is no "2.0 and go" for them. They typically have to maintain a minimum GPA of 3.0 if they want to retain the scholarship.

A couple of comments on the prep school issue. First, most of the elite prep schools offer many scholarships to students who would not be able to afford tuition. Those scholarships are typically full scholarships that would be revoked only if the student fails to meet academic or disciplinary standards. If the school wants you there, money will not be an object. The Ivy League schools are much the same way, particularly for athletes. The brother of one of my high school girlfriends played football at Harvard, but his parents never paid a dime, even though the Ivies do not offer athletic scholarships. Harvard wanted him there, so money was never an issue. A cousin of mine played soccer at Harvard. It was much the same situation for him. His parents were working class, but Harvard wanted him, got him and kept him. Money was never an issue.

Sophia and Gennady are both meatheads. IRL, the FBI would probably just let them twist in the wind, as they produced no actionable intelligence and were pains in the ass. Stan must have told Gennady he has a certificate in marriage counseling, because Gennady sure seem to think Stan has all the answers to his marital problems.

Oh god.

You just won the internet this week.

Yep.

Honestly, cruising in parks has been around as long as parks. I can remember seeing such things in the 70s at a park near my grandmother's house in south St. Louis. I didn't know it was cruising then, as I was a child, but later it became pretty clear to me. I even encountered a couple of "free candy" guys there when I was a tween/teen.

I think the last question is more to the point. Also, he was probably thinking that there might be serious repercussions if he ignored the signal. As a former KGB officer who has essentially left the KGB and still lives in the U.S., he probably feels like a vulnerable potential target of both the U.S. and Soviet Union.

Good point. The original idea of having second generation illegals was to place them in organizations like the military, State Dept., CIA, etc and establish careers in those organizations. It was a long play. Having Paige do espionage grunt work is more likely to lead to her discovery and arrest -- definitely not a long play.

If Philip is keeping his office wall calendar current, this episode was set in October 1987.

I'm curious to know if The Americans is broadcast in other countries. Perhaps someone here knows where else it is seen. Would it be a hit or a hoot if broadcast in Russia?

The calendar in P's office turned to October 1987 made me try to recall what I was doing at that time. I was a 1st Lieutenant in the U.S. Army on a 7-week temporary duty assignment in Europe. In late September, I had been approached by a man who turned out to be a Soviet GRU officer. For a variety of reasons, his cover story was not credible and caused me to be suspicious of him immediately. Long story short, I reported him to a U.S. Army Intelligence officer who kicked the matter up the chain-of-command and over to the German police counter-intel people. He was identified in Holland a few days later and detained by the Dutch authorities. It's kind of amusing now to think that Elizabeth and I were in the "spy game" at the same time.