S05.E01: Amber Waves

[Sarah 103]

40 minutes ago, SunnyBeBe said:

Did anyone else get the feeling that Oleg got a really crappy position? When the guy was describing it, I got the feeling that this is not a good position.  You are likely to step on some toes and you might go down over this.  

I'm wondering if it's more than what it seems. There may be something else going on here that we are not aware of. On the other hand, I'm the same person who thought that Oleg's father wasn't actual the Minister of Transportation and that it was a cover for something else. Either the assignment isn't what we think it is/what we've been lead to believe, or Oleg just got a lousy assignment.

[millennium]

WTF was with the digging?

I felt like I was watching an Andy Warhol movie called "Digging." 

Nice to have the show back, but I dread the arrival of Philip's son.    Paige is bad enough.  The show doesn't need to be more kid-focused.   I had forgotten how much I dislike Paige.  And the actress's portrayal.    Sucks that Martha had to go so that Paige's story could move up in prominence.   It would be great if Paige gets killed off.

I don't like what's happened to Stan.   He seems to be getting soft and hokey.  And jeez, that guy who plays Stan's boss -- does his agent get called every time the script calls for an officious noodge?

[Dev F]

4 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

In the flashback scene he says he's been admitted to a "leadership program." I don't know if "leaving" there refers to Russia or just going to the Academy, because he tells her in that scene that he's going to be away for a year. So she may be saying that she lied about the baby so he'd go to that program for a year and she hoped they'd be able to get back again together.  

But then, we know Elizabeth was recruited, seemingly knowing it was to be an Illegal, at 16. And Philip was in Moscow with Irina. So...I got nothin'. Makes no sense. Did she realize she accidentally sent him away forever and then decide there was no point in the baby anymore and become an Illegal herself? Was she just not good enough when he was? Ugh.

Man, that episode could not have been less clear about anything in the flashbacks, could it? But I think the "Hooray, I'm going away to the special thing!" scene is the reason why I always assumed that Irina was not a deep-cover illegal. To me the implication seemed to be that they were both studying to be intelligence officers, but he was clearly better at it and was going to be devoting his entire life to it, whereas it would be essentially just a job for her.

[Inquisitionist]

2 hours ago, Sarah 103 said:

This is only a guess, because I have no idea how the FBI actually functions. If someone is an undercover agent for the FBI, they are most likely not allowed to say what they do (because of the whole undercover thing). However, once they are no longer an undercover agent and are going to be spending the rest of their career behind a desk in headquarters or a field office, I would assume it would be okay to tell people you work for the FBI, just not reveal anything specific about what you do or any state secrets/classified information. 

A purported FBI agent agrees with this.

Quote

While working as a FBI Special Agent, I would answer the question in various ways.  My answer depended on the situation or if I knew the person.  My answer would vary from "I have a federal job" "work for DOJ" "I'm a law enforcement officer" or "FBI Special Agent".  Depending on my comfort level with the person.  Sometimes I would avoid telling someone because there are some crazies or very nice people that want to talk your head off.

[chocolatine]

53 minutes ago, Dev F said:

Man, that episode could not have been less clear about anything in the flashbacks, could it? But I think the "Hooray, I'm going away to the special thing!" scene is the reason why I always assumed that Irina was not a deep-cover illegal. To me the implication seemed to be that they were both studying to be intelligence officers, but he was clearly better at it and was going to be devoting his entire life to it, whereas it would be essentially just a job for her.

I thought the KGB separated Philip and Irina on purpose because they had feelings for each other. It was part of the "training" like Elizabeth being raped by her supervisor and Philip being made to have sex with a man.

[gwhh]

One of the things Ronald Regan did as president.  Was make the Soviet Union buy everything (grain was the big thing) from the USA in hard currency instead of rubles. 

Post cold war history from inside the old USSR says that action.  Taking away the hard currency for the civilian, military and KGB elite.  So they could but goodies for themselves and equipment for there "special projects".   

Was one of the big things that that started to make the wheels come off the soviet union in such a way they could not be put back on! 

Everyone started to steal from the state and the corruption got out of control from the top down!  The elites give up on any pretense of caring about the common soviet citizen!   And that started the final death knell of the USSR  

The Kill Count:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheAmericans/wiki/kill_count

Edited March 15, 2017 by gwhh

[sistermagpie]

3 hours ago, Chaos Theory said:

I got the feeling that his boss was after his father and using him to do it.    

But wouldn't it be more difficult to get his father using Oleg? I mean, why assume he's going to help you rather than side with his father and let his father use him to get the other guy?

44 minutes ago, chocolatine said:

I thought the KGB separated Philip and Irina on purpose because they had feelings for each other. It was part of the "training" like Elizabeth being raped by her supervisor and Philip being made to have sex with a man.

But that's so soapy. Philip was years away from going to America at that point and could have flunked out. But he was so important the KGB broke up this couple of teenagers? And Irina herself still wound up being KGB anyway too? (It's funny that they would see that much potential in Philip at 16 and seem to treat him like the red-headed stepchild ever since!)

I mean, it's certainly possible but God it makes Irina the character even more annoying. She already acts as if she's some dramatic romantic heroine when in person she's bland and boring except when she's a irritating people.  Now she's a teenage victim too? Blech.

Btw, what do people think Tuan's backstory might be? I lean toward thinking he actually was a Vietnamese immigrant brought to the US as a kid. I could be wrong, but I like the idea that he truly does see himself in Pasha's situation, wanting his mother to stop babying him and wanting him to punish his disloyal father. Plus it's timely in an organic way--the immigrant kid who gets "radicalized" after being in the west. It's not just a recent thing. His exile from Vietnam makes him cling to it all the more fiercely.

Edited March 10, 2017 by sistermagpie

[SlackerInc]

Nah, I think he was in Vietnam until recently.

56 minutes ago, gwhh said:

One of the things Ronald Regan did as president.  Was make the Soviet Union buy everything (grain was the big thing) from the USA in hard currency instead of rubles.

I find it extremely unlikely that this would have been a new thing.  Under Carter, you're saying they accepted rubles for Midwestern grain?  What would the farmers do with those?

[chocolatine]

44 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

But that's so soapy.

Not based on what we've been shown. The entire first season we kept hearing how P&E's marriage (and even their children) was part of their job, how they had no emotional attachment to each other for a very long time. Emotional attachments are a liability in the KGB world.

ETA: Just rewatched the scene between Oleg and his new boss, that someone upthread said the subtitles possibly didn't match the dialog. It all matched up to me. "Yes, colonel" was "так точно, товарищ полковник". The literal translation would be, "that's right, comrade colonel", close enough.

Edited March 10, 2017 by chocolatine

[Milburn Stone]

On 3/8/2017 at 4:42 AM, SlackerInc said:

...they went through his computer and got the information they needed to get William the codes to go steal the super virus.  Then William was caught before he could actually deliver the goods, so he infected himself instead.

I could say that I forgot that William infected himself expressly to make his own body the virus delivery system, but the truth is I didn't realize that at the time either. Thank goodness for these boards.

[SlackerInc]

5 minutes ago, Milburn Stone said:

I could say that I forgot that William infected himself expressly to make his own body the virus delivery system, but the truth is I didn't realize that at the time either. Thank goodness for these boards.

Thanks, but I'm not sure that's necessarily the case.  It could have been simply, as Gabriel said, to keep himself from being interrogated over an extended period of time.  Getting it from his exhumed body is probably just a "bonus", I tend to think.

[Milburn Stone]

9 minutes ago, SlackerInc said:

Thanks, but I'm not sure that's necessarily the case.  It could have been simply, as Gabriel said, to keep himself from being interrogated over an extended period of time.  Getting it from his exhumed body is probably just a "bonus", I tend to think.

Ah. Yeah, that's the explanation I understood at the time. But I like the thing I thought you said much better! :)

[sistermagpie]

11 hours ago, chocolatine said:

Not based on what we've been shown. The entire first season we kept hearing how P&E's marriage (and even their children) was part of their job, how they had no emotional attachment to each other for a very long time. Emotional attachments are a liability in the KGB world.

Those situations aren’t comparable at all. P&E were two agents who work together and they got a new handler who frankly seemed to all on her own decide that Elizabeth needed to hate her husband more. She didn’t like Philip and it was her job to carefully monitor and manipulate the emotional state of her charges.

But here we’re talking about two teenagers dating. Obviously Irina would have made her choices under the influence of everything she’d been taught and that means KGB influence at least. She herself claims both to Philip and to Mischa Jr. that she made a choice herself. She thought it was better for Philip to go away so she lied and manipulated him. That’s on her. Putting on the Centre just seems to erase all that—and why wouldn’t Irina say that now that she was an adult who appeared to be making choices based completely on what she wanted and wasn’t above asking or sympathy?

And again, Philip and Irina weren’t officers back then. They were potential KGB, not yet Illegals. Basically, I just don’t think the Centre had any need to manipulate covertly back then given the power imbalance. They could have broken them up by simply ordering them to stop seeing each other. Or assign them to different training Centres. That’s exactly what was happening, in fact.

To me it just seems like Irina makes for a better parallel with Elizabeth’s mother than the Centre. The Centre makes the offer and you can refuse it. Philip already knows the Centre manipulates. The Centre's motives and priories were open. Philip and Elizabeth both had one person in their lives to influence them to say no. Both women chose to push them away. Irina did abandon Philip, just not for another man.

Edited March 10, 2017 by sistermagpie

[Ina123]

10 hours ago, millennium said:

WTF was with the digging?

I felt like I was watching an Andy Warhol movie called "Digging." 

Or "Holes" with Jon Voight and Shia LeBeouf.

[AllyB]

I've never had the impression that Irina was a deep cover illegal like P&E. She and Philip most likely met and started a relationship while in KGB training. Philip was tapped to train for the illegals programme. Irina likely had a different path planned for her as she is presumably multi-lingual (because the Centre would probably have chosen an agent who speaks at least some Polish and fluent French to pretend to be a Polish immigrant living in Montreal). An agent with those skills would have been more valuable in short term assignments as she could work in various countries when needed. Between assignments and during training she would have been in Russia and able to have a relationship of some sort with Mischa Jr, who would have lived with her family. She, as a KGB agent, probably had enough power to ensure Mischa attended a school where he learned English and possibly other languages. The KGB would probably have approved of this as he might have followed in her footsteps and if he hadn't experienced what he did in Afghanistan could have well been on that patriotic path.

Though it does make Irina's decisions to run from the KBG all the more asinine and unbelievable. To be honest, I had initially assumed she was lying to Philip as an assigned test of his loyalty, which Philip half failed for not stopping her but half passed for not going with her. 

[gwhh]

16 hours ago, SlackerInc said:

Nah, I think he was in Vietnam until recently.

I find it extremely unlikely that this would have been a new thing.  Under Carter, you're saying they accepted rubles for Midwestern grain?  What would the farmers do with those?

 

I was shock to read that also.  I guess that the different between real leadership and just guys being charge.  RR change that to real leadership! 

As unreal as it sounds. Its true. No one up to RR did that with the soviets. All his advisors write about how they made they pay in hard currency.   And than got the Saudi Arabia to lower oil prices to hit them with the double whammy of losing hard currency and lower world oil prices.   Plus RR got several other European nations to do the same thing. 

The Soviet Union did not buy directly off USA farmers.  Everything in the USSR was run by government. No forgein stuff come in or did anything go out. Without going through a government agency or several of them. They brought off of the USA government who turned rubles into dollars and than paid USA famers with check made out from the federal government 

Edited March 10, 2017 by gwhh

[shura]

9 hours ago, SlackerInc said:

9 hours ago, Milburn Stone said:

I could say that I forgot that William infected himself expressly to make his own body the virus delivery system, but the truth is I didn't realize that at the time either. Thank goodness for these boards.

Thanks, but I'm not sure that's necessarily the case.  It could have been simply, as Gabriel said, to keep himself from being interrogated over an extended period of time.  Getting it from his exhumed body is probably just a "bonus", I tend to think.

Although, if William was indeed genius enough to anticipate that his body wouldn't be cremated and if he had some kind of beacon implanted in his butt, that could explain how P and E knew exactly where to dig, couldn't it ;)?

Speaking of butts, there was this fantastic moment in the scene where Alexei was ranting about how bad things are in the Soviet Union. He kept speaking English throughout, but at the end dropped this little Russian phrase that everything is done "cherez zhopu" in the USSR. The phrase, that almost literally means "ass-backwards," is very common, but it's more irreverent and exasperated and funny in its mild vulgarity than bitter and angry. Did they subtitle that? I don't think they did, but I was laughing so hard when I heard him use it that I may have missed it. If I were a spy sitting there pretending not to understand Russian, I wouldn't have been able to keep a straight face. And the actor did a fantastic job there, above and beyond, he delivered it with such passion and gusto, absolutely organically. 

[teddysmom]

I wondered last season when they would start showing what was really going on in the USSR back then.  That Philip and Elizabeth think they're working for this great socialist society when they're actually working for a corrupt gov't that starves its people, takes everything for the oligarchs, and blames America for its problems.

The Point A that will lead us to the current Point B. 

[txhorns79]

Quote

That Philip and Elizabeth think they're working for this great socialist society when they're actually working for a corrupt gov't that starves its people, takes everything for the oligarchs, and blames America for its problems.

The Point A that will lead us to the current Point B. 

I think Elizabeth might believe that, but I think Phillip has had doubts about what they are doing for the USSR for quite some time. 

[sistermagpie]

2 hours ago, AllyB said:

 

I've never had the impression that Irina was a deep cover illegal like P&E. She and Philip most likely met and started a relationship while in KGB training. Philip was tapped to train for the illegals programme. Irina likely had a different path planned for her as she is presumably multi-lingual (because the Centre would probably have chosen an agent who speaks at least some Polish and fluent French to pretend to be a Polish immigrant living in Montreal). An agent with those skills would have been more valuable in short term assignments as she could work in various countries when needed. Between assignments and during training she would have been in Russia and able to have a relationship of some sort with Mischa Jr, who would have lived with her family.

 

I think back in s1 it was natural for people to look at a Russian posing as a Canadian with perfect English who had gotten burnt out faster than Philip did and assume she was an Illegal like Philip--but we weren't told that straight-out, and other people (you being an example) drew different conclusions. The part-time stuff would explain how she was traipsing around with a picture of the kid and has some relationship with him (though not so strong a relationship that she wouldn't pull a runner and possibly make things hard for him).

We also don't know that he lived with her family. Philip asked if he "had anyone" as if he thought Irina was his family. She said she had a husband who died. If you thought she was an Illegal, the guy would have been an assigned husband like Elizabeth; if she was part-time she married a guy in Russia. In answer to Philip's question Gabriel said the kid had a grandfather, not that he was raised by his grandfather. Maybe that guy raised him when she was out of the country. 

24 minutes ago, txhorns79 said:

I think Elizabeth might believe that, but I think Phillip has had doubts about what they are doing for the USSR for quite some time. 

Yeah, I think it's more complicated too. For Philip, especially, it seems like he's long since stopped believing that his actions are directly and absolutely making the world a better place and he doesn't see the USSR as some shining example of how to run a country in every way, despite probably still believing in the basic ideas of socialism. But people have always fought for their country despite its having massive flaws or not working the way it's supposed to. I think he could believe stories of corruption and still root for people like himself and his mother. Last season Gabriel was openly admitting to everybody killing each other when he was a young man.

Edited March 10, 2017 by sistermagpie

[teddysmom]

Quote

I think Elizabeth might believe that, but I think Phillip has had doubts about what they are doing for the USSR for quite some time. 

You're right. Or at least that Phillip didn't think the US was the devil.  

[dubbel zout]

40 minutes ago, txhorns79 said:

I think Elizabeth might believe that, but I think Phillip has had doubts about what they are doing for the USSR for quite some time. 

I think even Elizabeth is starting to wonder. She's still the hardliner, though. Philip seems to be rather soul sick at this point. 

[FormerMod-a1]

I think Philip loves his country, but not socialism.  And because of that, he doesn't hate the USA or their way or think they're evil.  But since he does love his country, he keeps doing what he's told/asked of...  more or less.  It's been a long haul though.  I doubt either of them thought they'd be at it as deep undercover this long - 20ish years.  That'd be tiring and trying no matter what.

[DoubleUTeeEff]

13 hours ago, chocolatine said:

I thought the KGB separated Philip and Irina on purpose because they had feelings for each other. It was part of the "training" like Elizabeth being raped by her supervisor and Philip being made to have sex with a man.

I thought the supervisor was taking advantage of his position rather than truly "training" her.  He might have told her that but I thought different.

Man, that scene of Philip having sex with progressively older and less attractive people was wrenching.  Not because they were old and unattractive but that he had to do it as part of his job.

[Milburn Stone]

1 hour ago, teddysmom said:

I wondered last season when they would start showing what was really going on in the USSR back then.  That Philip and Elizabeth think they're working for this great socialist society when they're actually working for a corrupt gov't that starves its people...

I thought the episode handled their "cognitive dissonance" over this believably. They acknowledge their people are hungry, but justify it--with a grain of truth (no pun intended), I might add--on the starvation inflicted by WW2, and the fact that progress from such a setback can be slow. (They compare the situation now to when it was so much worse when they were children; and they focus their thinking on the progress made since then, rather than the distance still to travel.)

Of course, Stalin was starving his people long before Hitler invaded Russia, but that's a detail that precedes their own childhoods, and is easy for them to be in denial about.

[sistermagpie]

16 minutes ago, DoubleUTeeEff said:

I thought the supervisor was taking advantage of his position rather than truly "training" her.  He might have told her that but I thought different.

He didn't tell her that either, iirc. He just raped her. When he met her again he said it was just a perk of the job that he could rape cadets if he wanted.

[teddysmom]

48 minutes ago, DoubleUTeeEff said:

Man, that scene of Philip having sex with progressively older and less attractive people was wrenching.  Not because they were old and unattractive but that he had to do it as part of his job.

What? Was that in this episode? I just watched it this morning did I miss something? 

[sistermagpie]

2 minutes ago, teddysmom said:

What? Was that in this episode? I just watched it this morning did I miss something? 

No, it's from Season 3 Salaang Pass.

[crgirl412]

1 hour ago, dubbel zout said:

I think even Elizabeth is starting to wonder. She's still the hardliner, though. Philip seems to be rather soul sick at this point. 

I wasn't sure of the exact meaning of soul sick though I was able to infer correctly.  I then looked it up and was blown away for a couple of reasons.   http://jaoa.org/article.aspx?articleid=2094068 

Philp definitely is soul sick and EST is helping him realize that.  Elizabeth wouldn't even believe it exists and would be horrified if Philip ever tried to explain it to her.  When she went to an EST meeting we saw her confusion and skepticism which I'm sure could move to hostility in a few seconds if she felt threatened or that the mission was.

Also, there was a time that I was soul sick and had I known then what I know now, I would've found a DO for a PCP rather than an MD for sure.  I am a huge fan of DO's.  I'm an RN and work with DO's and MD's everyday and it doesn't surprise me at all the it comes from the Osteopathic worldview.  They are different than MD's and it's the training in this kind of sickness and how to heal it that makes them so good.         

[teddysmom]

Quote

No, it's from Season 3 Salaang Pass.

Thanks! I thought I dozed off or something.  :)

Quote

Of course, Stalin was starving his people long before Hitler invaded Russia, but that's a detail that precedes their own childhoods, and is easy for them to be in denial about.

a little ot but I think there's a movie coming out about that very subject. 

[Chaos Theory]

If P&E defect to the US it would be catastrophic to the KGB.  They paired them specifically because they had no previous history and they made a good match on paper.  Elizabeth spent the majority of their marriage informing on Philip because he liked America too much.   The last thing the KGB wanted was to send two agents in love over to America.  They would fear their loyalty would be to each other and not Mother Russia.   Hell right now P&E have been ordered to train their own daughter which in the KGB's mind is a tool born out of a fake union.  They would never have  allowed a real one.  Not for something this important.

Edited March 10, 2017 by Chaos Theory

[kokapetl]

16 hours ago, gwhh said:

One of the things Ronald Regan did as president.  Was make the Soviet Union buy everything (grain was the big thing) from the USA in hard currency instead of rubles. 

Post cold war information says that action.  Taking away the hard currency for the civilian, military and KGB elite.  So they could but goodies for themselves and equipment for there "special projects".   

Was the thing that that started to make the wheels come off the soviet union in such a way they could not be put back on! 

Everyone started to steal from the state and the corruption got out of control from the top down!  The elites give up on any pretense of caring about the common soviet citizen!   And that started the final death knell of the USSR  

The Kill Count:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheAmericans/wiki/kill_count

The Soviet Union really tore itself apart. Glasnost unleashed ethnic right wing nationalist movements throughout the USSR, and that's what ultimately caused Moscow to lose control. 

[gwhh]

Speaking of food.  Things are so BAD in Venezuela is that last year the average resident of that nation.  Lost 19 pounds because of food shortage!

Edited March 11, 2017 by gwhh

[AllyB]

4 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

I think back in s1 it was natural for people to look at a Russian posing as a Canadian with perfect English who had gotten burnt out faster than Philip did and assume she was an Illegal like Philip

She didn't have a perfect western accent though, which 'in show' seems to be the standard necessary for deep cover agents. (In real life it seems to have been common to explain accents with complicated back stories.)

4 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

We also don't know that he lived with her family. Philip asked if he "had anyone" as if he thought Irina was his family. She said she had a husband who died. If you thought she was an Illegal, the guy would have been an assigned husband like Elizabeth; if she was part-time she married a guy in Russia. In answer to Philip's question Gabriel said the kid had a grandfather, not that he was raised by his grandfather. Maybe that guy raised him when she was out of the country.

I have quite a few friends who grew up in Eastern Bloc countries and growing up with grandparents either fulltime or as their day care seems to have been the absolute norm. So I'm just assuming Mischa Jr, who has a living grandfather, grew up with him. But even if he grew up with Irina's late husband, she'd still have had contact with him and possible influence on his education.
 

[sistermagpie]

9 minutes ago, AllyB said:

She didn't have a perfect western accent though, which 'in show' seems to be the standard necessary for deep cover agents. (In real life it seems to have been common to explain accents with complicated back stories.)

Did she not? I don't remember her having any accent at all, besides an American one. (Iirc, a Canadian friend thought she didn't sound Canadian but did sound American, which afaik the actress is.) 

9 minutes ago, AllyB said:

I have quite a few friends who grew up in Eastern Bloc countries and growing up with grandparents either fulltime or as their day care seems to have been the absolute norm. So I'm just assuming Mischa Jr, who has a living grandfather, grew up wit

I assume that too, but I just mean we weren't told that his grandparents raised him instead of his mother. Since it seems like they established that Irina's family already lived in Moscow (since they were there to watch her and Philip kissing there) there'd be no reason Mischa Jr. wouldn't grow up close to him, but he didn't necessarily live with him full-time instead of Irina. 

Edited March 10, 2017 by sistermagpie

[AllyB]

9 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

Did she not? I don't remember her having any accent at all, besides an American one. (Iirc, a Canadian friend thought she didn't sound Canadian but did sound American, which afaik the actress is.) 

I just remember thinking she didn't sound even remotely like she came from Montreal.

[SlackerInc]

9 hours ago, gwhh said:

 

I was shock to read that also.  I guess that the different between real leadership and just guys being charge.  RR change that to real leadership! 

As unreal as it sounds. Its true. No one up to RR did that with the soviets. All his advisors write about how they made they pay in hard currency.   And than got the Saudi Arabia to lower oil prices to hit them with the double whammy of losing hard currency and lower world oil prices.   Plus RR got several other European nations to do the same thing. 

The Soviet Union did not buy directly off USA farmers.  Everything in the USSR was run by government. No forgein stuff come in or did anything go out. Without going through a government agency or several of them. They brought off of the USA government who turned rubles into dollars and than paid USA famers with check made out from the federal government 

I'm still not buying this unless and until I see some evidence cited.

8 hours ago, teddysmom said:

I wondered last season when they would start showing what was really going on in the USSR back then.  That Philip and Elizabeth think they're working for this great socialist society when they're actually working for a corrupt gov't that starves its people, takes everything for the oligarchs, and blames America for its problems.

I can't speak to how it was in 1984, but this was not an apt description of how things were in 1990.  I moved about freely and met lots of people, with no "minders" around.  And in fact what I found was that people, especially younger people, were in fact very dissatisfied with their system and their government (so it certainly was not the case that the authorities set up some elaborate ruse to make me only think I was randomly meeting regular people, who happened to sing the praises of their government and economic system).  But their dissatisfaction revolved around what I would call petty matters.  There was no shortage of food or clothing in the stores, and no one seemed to be starving or even abnormally thin.  But the average unconnected person had difficulty obtaining Western "brand name" stuff only available for hard currency: Levi's jeans, Coca-Cola, Heinekin, etc.  And this meant a loss of social status.

They also had the erroneous belief that in America, the streets were almost literally paved with gold: that since their government had lied and propagandized to them for so long, they were sure the images they saw on the news of homeless people on park benches in Washington, D.C. were manufactured and false.

Later in the '90s, I became friends with a group of Russian emigres in Minnesota.  They had all become disenchanted by what they actually found in the U.S., as opposed to what they had expected.  But when they tried to tell their relatives and friends back home, no one would believe it.  (This was before Putin came along and whipped up anti-American sentiment, so it's probably different now.)

And to tie this more directly back to the episode, keep in mind that of the three Soviet emigres we met in this episode, all of whom had very recently lived in the USSR, two of them were not buying into the negative picture the other one was painting.

Just an alternate viewpoint to consider.

[Chaos Theory]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2014/jul/14/soviet-union-collapse-in-pictures#img-9

The final years of the USSR are plagued by empty grocery stores, queues for food and widespread shortages

As for the Russian family.  No matter how bad things get there will always be people who think fondly about their homeland.  The father has a good job and sees the prospects he would never have had in Soviet Russia.  We know the son doesn't have many friends and is having trouble with the language.  My guess is if someone other then Tuan befriended him it would be just a matter of time before he was Americanized.  Same with the mother.  All they need is someone.  The mother is even now hoping for a job and a place to go.  

[JennyMominFL]

There was actually and embargo on selling grain to the soviets prior to Reagan. The embargo went on for much of Carter's presidency. 

[chocolatine]

29 minutes ago, Chaos Theory said:

No matter how bad things get there will always be people who think fondly about their homeland.

Speaking for myself and my family, it's mixed feelings. There was the fear, deprivation, and discrimination, but there are also many happy memories, and in a way it was a much simpler life than what we later had in Germany, and I now have in the US. Every Soviet expat I know would tell you that leaving was the right decision, but that doesn't mean we don't miss certain things about our old lives or that it was easy to adjust to our new lives.

[dr pepper]

On 3/9/2017 at 5:25 AM, Chaos Theory said:

And Alison Wright is playing a secretary.   

I'm not interested in the show, but i am curious to see Wright in a broad shouldered 40s sweater.

[dr pepper]

On 3/9/2017 at 7:43 AM, sistermagpie said:

It clearly isn't, though. I think the story was telling us that Kimmy ultimately wants a friend and father figure and actually likes having him that way. He's a good friend to her. If it starts weirding her out he'll have to switch it up, but given everything she said she really is genuinely lonely and missing that more than desperate for an older boyfriend.

 

If they decide that Kimmy needs sex to keep her on board, they can introduce her to Tuan. Assuming he can avoid muttering "capitalist pig!" in his sleep.

[sistermagpie]

4 hours ago, SlackerInc said:

And to tie this more directly back to the episode, keep in mind that of the three Soviet emigres we met in this episode, all of whom had very recently lived in the USSR, two of them were not buying into the negative picture the other one was painting.

Yes, this is something I loved in the ep. It's obviously complicated with them. It's not just, I don't think, that they think fondly of their home, though of course that's part it. I believe the mother when she says she didn't see the country the same way her husband did. The father was obviously irritated deeply by things he saw every day. Mom and Pasha possibly weren't. They may very well not be as impressed or relieved at the things in the US he thinks are so great.

The son will no doubt assimilate and the mom will get better too. But since they didn't leave, it doesn't seem, out of fear or the feeling they had no future there, we don't know how they'll ultimately feel about it all. They might end up going back and forth.  Pasha may feel like an outsider there too because of being Americanized. Though if he's 15 or so he's pretty old already. He might be able to make a home there alone if he chooses.

45 minutes ago, dr pepper said:

If they decide that Kimmy needs sex to keep her on board, they can introduce her to Tuan. Assuming he can avoid muttering "capitalist pig!" in his sleep.

If Kimmie decides she needs sex, she'll need it with Jim. She can get sex--possibly is getting sex--just fine on her own with boys like Tuan. (Err...boys like Tuan is pretending to be.) They sent Philip to work her because she wanted a father. She just assumed sex with an older man was the way to get it.

[magemaud]

On 3/8/2017 at 4:06 PM, SWLinPHX said:

By the way. Martha, Alison Wright, has a small part in the AMC series, "Feud".

She also has the role of "Marjorie" a con artist on the Amazon series "Sneaky Pete." When I saw her I thought, "Uh oh, that means Martha won't be back on The Americans," but Margo Martindale has a major role on Pete and apparently she could appear in both shows. 

[Ellaria]

On 3/8/2017 at 11:51 AM, qtpye said:

In the first season I thought Stan was going to be a pretty awesome character.  Now he breaking open a six pack of Miller Lights because he handed a shapely lady in a purple leotard a paper cup.  This and having no life outside of Phil and Elizabeth's family is really making him look pathetic.

On 3/9/2017 at 0:55 PM, icemiser69 said:

Stan's fettucini alfredo really cracked me up.  Those dried pasta pouches don't make that many servings to begin with.  How is he going to serve that many people with one little pouch?  It doesn't take any real cooking knowledge to prepare it.  It wasn't like Stan reinvented the wheel.

On 3/9/2017 at 8:02 PM, millennium said:

I don't like what's happened to Stan.   He seems to be getting soft and hokey.  

On 3/8/2017 at 2:50 AM, Bannon said:

Hopefully, all the Stan face time is not an indicator that the character is going to get as many scenes as he did prior to season 4. He remains the major character who is most poorly drawn, and I don't think he is salvageable .

Guess I'm not the only one that is confused by Stan. I keep thinking back to his actions in the early episodes...like sneaking into the Jennings' garage. At that time, his character seemed formidable and a real threat to the Jennings' cover. Now, his entire purpose seems to be "divorced dad in the '80s" who makes dinner while still wearing a tie. I find it a little creepy - and pathetic - that he is so invested in Paige and Matthew's relationship. I sometimes think that I am watching a different show when Stan is on screen; one with dropped plot lines and no character development. 

Why did he refer to his ex-wife Sandra in the past tense? Why did he ask Phillip if he remembered her? (I think the statement was "Remember Sandra? She was a good woman.") Didn't he accuse Phillip of sleeping with her? 

Last season, his interactions with Martha were well-done and provided his character with a purpose. Of course, that might have had more to do with Aderholt. (Will he be back this season?) Before too long, Stan will run into the hard truth - that his best buddy is a Soviet spy - and I can't wait to see how the show handles it.

On 3/8/2017 at 9:07 AM, ChromaKelly said:

Forbidding Paige to see Matthew is going to bite them in the ass. 

Yes...yes it will. I'm not quite sure what they should be doing instead but this tactic will not work. I'm not looking forward to more of Paige, the Junior Spy in Training.

Overall, glad that this show is back. There is so much to consider in every episode.

[millennium]

4 minutes ago, Ellaria Sand said:

 

Last season, his interactions with Martha were well-done and provided his character with a purpose. Of course, that might have had more to do with Aderholt. (Will he be back this season?) Before too long, Stan will run into the hard truth - that his best buddy is a Soviet spy - and I can't wait to see how the show handles it.

 

I thought Gaad kept Stan grounded (what a waste to kill him off) and on his toes.   Now Stan seems to be adrift, no anchor.

I feel that Stan knows on some level that Philip is not his friend, but just opens another beer and pushes the thought back into the shadows.

[Ellaria]

15 minutes ago, millennium said:

I thought Gaad kept Stan grounded (what a waste to kill him off) and on his toes.   Now Stan seems to be adrift, no anchor.

I feel that Stan knows on some level that Philip is not his friend, but just opens another beer and pushes the thought back into the shadows.

Nice observations here. Agree about the loss of Gaad.

I think that on some level Phillip is - or wants to be - Stan's friend. The part of Phillip that likes cool cars, football, beer, etc wants to have a buddy like Stan. Then, of course, there is the other part of Phillip that knows it can never truly happen. He is such a conflicted character.

[Milburn Stone]

16 minutes ago, Ellaria Sand said:

Before too long, Stan will run into the hard truth - that his best buddy is a Soviet spy - and I can't wait to see how the show handles it.

You raise the possibility in my mind that the reason they are making Stan so soft and vulnerable this season, so gaga and goofy over Paige and Matthew's relationship, so needy of Philip's friendship, is so that his crisis will be all the more personal when he first begins to suspect the truth. And so his determination to bust the Jennings will be stoked by the fire of a thousand nuns, as they say on the internet.

[Chaos Theory]

Stan's emotional rawness does make some sense.  His marriage is over and done.  Nina is dead.  His girlfriend is gone.   He formed a strange friendship with Oleg who his bosses wanted him to hard turn even though he knew it would never work.  Martha has been spying on them for who knows how long.  Things have been on a steady decline for Stan for a very long time.  I can see him clinging to what he has left out of necessity.  The Jennings have always been good friends to him and now his son is dating his best friends daughter. In his mind things are looking up.  

If he only knew the truth.

Edited March 11, 2017 by Chaos Theory

[sistermagpie]

3 hours ago, Ellaria Sand said:

Why did he refer to his ex-wife Sandra in the past tense? Why did he ask Phillip if he remembered her? (I think the statement was "Remember Sandra? She was a good woman.") Didn't he accuse Phillip of sleeping with her? 

I think he referred to her in the past tense to show us he knows it's over. The relationship is over. The time in his life when Sandra's going to be giving him insight is over. The line about remembering her was a joke to Philip because he tried to beat him up over her. That was Stan's attempt to make light of that.

3 hours ago, millennium said:

I feel that Stan knows on some level that Philip is not his friend, but just opens another beer and pushes the thought back into the shadows.

Interesting--why would you think he knows he's not his friend? Stan's definitely shown himself to sometimes have intuitions that he's not aware of consciously, and I think once he gets suspicious there will be a part of him that feels like he always knew. People always say there are no secrets about things like that. But I don't get a lot of signs from Stan that he's ever specifically had to brush aside the feeling that Philip isn't his friend. He has moments where he seems like he's curious/suspicious of some things, like when he asked about Philip and Elizabeth going away unexpectedly or asked Henry about whether he asked his father about women the way he was asking Stan. Like there are certain things he instinctively asks for more information about. But the only sign I can think of where Stan seems to see Philip as the enemy is that scene when he accused him of sleeping with Sandra. That showed that Stan at least seemed to think it was possible that Philip could actually be against him, but I don't know whether that came from a general feeling of paranoia on Stan's part or him specifically having doubts about Philip deep down.

After all, Philip actually has been a good friend to him, and not in a way that's just about manipulation.  He gave him a deal on a vacation to help his marriage, gave him a refund when it didn't work out, opens his house to him for dinner at a moment's notice, trusts Stan with his kids. Even unbeknownst to Stan he was partly responsible for Matthew being back in his life (okay, that part was probably about making things better after the EST thing). And he doesn't use the friendship to ask him about his work or anything like that. If Stan has suspicions I feel like they're more along the lines of the suspicions he had in that first ep--that he feels something "off" about him because Philip seems like a really open, friendly guy but he's actually really closed off. Like I think underneath he probably thinks there's more going on with Philip than meets the eye and he pushes those thoughts away. The one time Stan got angry at him it was actually over a real friend thing. That is, it wasn't that Philip was doing anything against Stan, he was trying to fix his own emotional problems and Stan, rather than having any interest in what Philip might get from EST, just made it about him.

Quote

Stan's emotional rawness dies make some sense.  

I think it does too. The cop whose great at his job but has a terrible homelife is a pretty common type and it makes to me with Stan. Really, he chose Philip as a friend surely in part because he thinks he has nothing to do with his job, so he's almost consciously allowed himself to be pathetic with these people. And Philip encourages him to see him as non-threatening, which is why it was such a problem when he thought he was sleeping with Sandra. The second Philip tried to find his own real relationship and emotional comfort (in EST and Sandra) it was a problem. Because he can't get that vulnerable with Stan.

Edited March 11, 2017 by sistermagpie