Yay!
As soon as I saw her, I thought: bad news a-comin’. We’re enjoying this show so far. If Homeland can stagger into a third season, this one should be able to maintain fairly easily. I just home the soap opera aspect doesn’t take over.
My current pet theory is that Philip is not Russian. He could be Ukrainian, Baltics, from the Caucases, Central Asia etc. That could also explain his less enthusiastic embarce of Mother Russia.
Yeah, for those who are not familiar with the great series, Justified, you won’t know that the new handler, Claudia, won a well-deserved Emmy for her role as Mags. When my SO and I saw her appear in The Americans, we knew good times are a comin’! She might look like the sweet little granny down the street, but don’t turn your back on her!
That was a great spin on the Reagan shooting. Never dawned on me how this might have all been misinterpreted at the time. (Yes, I know this show is fiction, but still - nice spin on the story.) My own little footnote is that about 4 weeks prior to Reagan’s shooting, I had gone to visit my parents who were in DC for a convention. They were staying at that same hotel and we had gone out and waited for a taxi at this back entrance, on the exact spot where Reagan was shot! And I do mean the exact spot.
Another nice touch is how they were able to saunter over as neighbors during this world crisis situation and just have a friendly chat with the FBI dude who spilled every bean. I really think this is something people do/would have done at such a time.
And when they went to interview the nurse and, upon leaving, said, “Here is a pin from the Vice President.” Another nice little touch.
My older brother started to watch this series, but has stopped. Why? He said he finds it “too scary” - almost like a horror film (which he hates) and it made him queasy just watching that FBI agent going through the car in the neighbor’s garage. At least that is what he told me. I think he is more upset that the KGB are kind of the “heroes” of the series in a weird way, and my staunch conservative Republican brother just finds that too hard to buy into.
I’m looking forward to seeing some of his back story. (There was that picture of a girl, but something more than that.) He does put family over his job or country - something must drive that. His line “I’ll win any way I can” after the the racquetball game was interesting. And he gets America more than Elizabeth or the rest of their handlers do.
I’m really liking this show so far.
I’ve only watched the first 2 episodes so far, but really like this show. I was impressed by how much we learned in just the pilot, and how we could sympathize with both sides of the spy war. A couple of thoughts:
In the first episode Rhys opens the safe and listens to an explicit recording of his wife having sex with another guy, and appears to be uncomfortable with it. Obviously he’s having business sex too, but I have to wonder when his discomfort with the business sex of his wife, whom he appears to genuinely love, will become an explosive issue.
I’m a bit uncomfortable with the show’s attention to the body and sexuality of the 13-year-old daughter. As a parent, I totally get that they’re coming to terms with the maturation of their little girl, but they do have an older daughter, so this isn’t new territory for them. The portrayal of the youngest daughter’s changing figure and the interests of an adult man toward her set off an alarm in me. It’s true that most girls her age don’t realize the effect that their bodies can have on adult men even while their interest is only in boys, but there’s something maybe too voyeuristic about the show’s attention given to this little girl’s sexuality. It’s probably setting up some terrible thing that will occur, but it just feels like too much attention.
I absolutely loved the country boots dance scene, and the appreciation of the other people in the store. I thought it “showed not told” a lot about Rhys’ infatuation with America.
Phillip and Elizabeth only have one daughter, Paige. Their other child is a boy, Henry.
The “older daughter” you saw is actually their babysitter.
I was very young at the time but I recall there was a decent sized, very brief freak out over Haig’s choice of words. It wasn’t a coincidence that he resigned later that year.
One has to wonder if they were ragging on Oliver Stone :D. He apparently had the same idea.
Feb 27 episode
Spoilering, though not sure if we need to keep doing it this far into the thread/show.
I was very surprised that the Soviet handler/US defense guy meet-up climaxed with
Elizabeth shooting the American defense guy, in broad daylight, on the street. Logistics/detection aside, they (presumably her superiors) chose to eliminate a person who had been giving them very good information about Star Wars. I mean, the FBI already knew the Soviet guy was a spy, so by observing them together it wouldn’t seem the FBI would gain much new knowledge. As it is, they’ll find the American guy dead on the sidewalk with a bullet hole and a briefcase full of classified info.
Another enjoyable episode. I do think the way they handled the radio encryption issue was greatly simplified for dramatic purposes, but I don’t object too much.
[spoiler]Remember what one of the embassy Russians noted - that if he went down he would compromise an entire network of half a dozen people. So while he was the key agent in that network, his loss may well have prevented the loss of several other lesser agents to the FBI. In addition nailing a member of the embassy staff red-handed would be an embarrassing propaganda blow and the instant deportation of what is presumably a skilled handler back to the USSR.
I agree doing it broad daylight was suboptimal, but I’m willing to fanwank that away as part of the normal meet routine that they didn’t want to disrupt so as not to make him more nervous. Presumably it was in a fairly desolate part of town.[/spoiler]
This is getting sillier by the week:
[spoiler]
A smoking hot young woman suddenly offers an old man a blow job.
A day or two later, the FBI somehow acquires very sensitive info known only to a few, and the old man is one of them.
The old man happens to be one of the top KGB spies, and he’s seen it all. But he can’t put two and two together.[/spoiler]However, there was one golden moment:
When she said, “Like you told me to,” and the FBI agent’s spluttering denial fades into shamed silence.
Sadly, I can’t disagree with you - obvious city. I’ll give them a pass if it settles out next week, as that revelation would have been at the end of this week’s show. Otherwise it is a glaring example of the writers creating drama through artificial stupidity. Which is a cardinal sin at any time, but a particularly bad one in a show centered on espionage.
I’m confused. I saw the pilot, somehow missed the second episode, saw the third episode. Previously seen shot in ep 4 made me think they were skipping or showing out of order, but it could be the episode I guess I missed. I looked at On Damand and didn’t see it there. I’m confused.
I’m liking the show. Different perspective on the Cold War, something we can finally do.
I definitely took it as 2, show that the character is extremely defensive of his family. He’s got skills. He knew he couldn’t confront the guy in the store, that would break his cover. But he was really put off by the guy talking up his daughter. So he disguised himself and confronted the guy. He trusts his ability to move around without being noticed and sneak into the yard unobserved. If the guy does file a police report, he was wearing a disguise that didn’t look much like him, so it’s unlikely to lead back to him. But he takes direct action.
They’re starting in 1981. That’s 8 years. Eight years is a long run for most TV shows.
She was wanted and in the news, this closes the loop. She’s found OD’d. Done. No clues to follow, body found, end of story.
He is a communist sympathizer, a home grown radical. Me met Elizabeth during the MLK marches, and is an idealist. His ideology and passion was the first honest connection Elizabeth had, so she recruited him. His ties to the organization he runs keeps them in the dark about the role they play.
This week’s episode puts Philip’s little scene with the perv from episode 1 in a bit of perspective. He’s obviously very protective of his family, a bit of a hothead, and he doesn’t really draw a bright line between family and his spycraft. He doesn’t understand that the methods he uses “at the office” are really not appropriate for the normal (well, relatively normal) conflicts of life. When he was getting ready to go off and dish up a bit of vigilante justice on the encryption guy, he says something about being Elizabeth’s husband, and indicates that this is the appropriate way for a husband to react.
Well, look–a normal husband wouldn’t be in this situation. But even then, murdering someone is pretty much not how normal husbands deal with much of anything. Strong words, fists perhaps, lawsuits more likely. But going directly for the silenced 9mm? Not so much.
I liked the episode. Despite the ending, which I can forgive/ fanwank. I really hope that they try and bring the Afghanistan War into this. With Nina (and possibly Philip) they have the perfect excuse. The actress who plays Nina is an Afghani Tajik after all.
See, I just thought it was silly that
[spoiler]The FBI changed their codes - why wouldn’t they work out a system to not compromise their mole?
Also, what the heck is with that encryption system? A plastic punch-card, huh? This is the eighties, isn’t it? (Not that I understand what the thing in the trunk was doing.)[/spoiler]
On top of which, he was unable to detect two yo-yos following him down a street with no cover to speak of.
I assumed he DID detect them. That’s why he went down there in the first place - he knew the FBI was probably aware of the meet so he was drawing them to the waterfront while the real “meet” was happening elsewhere. He didn’t wave or anything, but that doesn’t mean he was unaware of their presence.