Obvious things about a creative work you realize after the millionth time (OPEN SPOILERS POSSIBLE)

Inna and I are watching (re-watching for me) The Americans. She’s impressed by the quality of Russian dialogue (if not the accents) in the show - only one time has she said “they used the wrong form for that word”.*

Going to spoiler this, eh, just because…

Anyway, in Season 2, Stan Beeman (an FBI agent who sucked at his job) has a dream where he is in his office, along with Martha (a secretary turned into a spy) and his boss, agent Gaad (last name, played by John Boy Walton (Richard Thomas)). As Stan makes his way across the office, Martha very openly takes a classified file and places it in her bag, whereupon Stan goes on and does his business, never once challenging Martha (or even noticing her doing this).

It’s a good bit of misdirection there, as Stan doesn’t openly suspect Martha of anything for at least one more season or so, yet his subconscious was noticing that something was amiss early on.

*The word was “operation” which was to mean “combined effort to achieve a shared goal” (“Eisenhower led the D-Day operation”), but the show’s writers used the form meaning “surgery” (“I had an operation to remove my tonsils when I was a baby”).

Would like to note that to Inna, misusing the Russian language is an obvious thing about…, so it’s still on topic. :wink: