Just how many hours in a day do Philip and Elizabeth have?
Especially Phillip:
– runs a travel agency full-time
– has a wife and two children he loves and spends time with. At least he eats dinner with them most of the time.
– Has a second wife he has a schedule with. (Martha)
– maintains a weekly relationship with Kimmy
– Regular EST seminars
— regular Scrabble games with Frank Langella
And then between all of this has miscellaneous one-off adventures in new wigs and outfits.
This guy has to be pounding the Adderall big time.
Sadly, we only saw some bits of their intensive deep-cover preparatory training. We were never shown how they were rigorously trained in Advanced Diary Management, Multi-tasking Essentials, Optimising Time for the Killer Elite, and the Seven Habits of Highly Effective Assassins.
The show is about the interesting stuff in their lives, it’s not 24, it doesn’t all happen at once.
I enjoyed this show a long while back……until the introduction of the Pastor Tim plot dynamic. Dedicating your entire lives to the infiltration of a decadent enemy only to be……
The ending was a real letdown in multiple ways that included
(a) Elizabeth having a change of heart when ordered to whack Gorbachev’s man,
(b) Elizabeth and Claudia parting ways peacefully,
(c) Pastor Tim not being exposed or whacked,
(d) Stan not blowing the kneecaps off Philip, Elizabeth, and Paige when he had them cold.
There were other disappointments, but those four were the worst.
He goes away for “sales conferences” and such fairly frequently. And there are a lot of nights where he isn’t at home. It gets mentioned a few times in dialog though they don’t show it much on-screen. IIRC he spends 3 nights per week with Martha. At some point it’s revealed that Paige thinks her father is having an affair due to all of his time away from home.
Also, as was already noted, the show isn’t in real time. The regular scrabble games were probably a monthly thing, not a daily thing.
The long hours and general fatigue gets to be more of a plot point as the show goes on.
Admittedly, the spy stuff is pure Hollywood nonsense. However, the overall plot of the show is loosely based on real spies. Google “operation ghost stories” if you want the real version. In the real-world cases, the children also had no idea that their parents were spies.
Martha is based on a real KGB program that I think was called The Secretary Offensive. Her character is based on multiple women, but IIRC the one that she was most closely modeled on was executed by the KGB. Several other women committed suicide when they found out that their husbands were actually KGB agents. Unlike Philip, the real KGB agents who took part in the Secretary Offensive didn’t wear disguises.
I enjoyed the ending. It’s one of the few shows that managed to tie everything up at the end in a way that made sense.
I’m on record saying I hate the show because the enemies of America get away with it. Stan should have plugged the lot of them. But Stan was always bad at his job, why not this part, too, I guess.
Still, I want to see the follow on, where Elizabeth settles down in mother Russia in her fifth floor walkup with no hot water and intermittent heat, and she has to stand in line for a meager ration of bread. And the sign on the door of the meat market, in this perfected Communist state, says “You do not need meat today.” Riding around in the Skoda taxis, remembering the Camaro, and she says, “You know, maybe America isn’t so bad.” Too late!
I don’t know how valuable the disguise would be. I guess she could cross paths with his other identities but it isn’t that likely in a big city. Plus she could figure out he’s wearing a disguise with prolonged close contact. Probably better off not bothering.
I don’t know what it would be on in the US, but you might enjoy a reverse perspective in the fantastic German spy series - Deutschland 83, followed by sequels … 86 and 89.
Less remorselessly gritty and dour than The Americans (and actually quite fun), and following deep cover spies in East and West Germany in 1983, then three and six years later. The 89 series particularly covers the shattered expectations of both sides with the collapse of communism.
A huge problem I have always had with this show is any and all of the conversations where people express positive feelings about the USSR… A longing to be there, a delight at returning, the idea of that somebody would be happy to be there. Yeah, I understand we all have attachments to the place we grow up no matter what, but it’s a grim fucking place. I don’t know about now but when it was the USSR it was fucking horrible for the average person. What was good about it? What was worth returning to? Even the fucking weather sucks ass.