# Obvious things about a creative work you realize after the millionth time (OPEN SPOILERS POSSIBLE) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 24, 2009, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-things-about-a-creative-work-you-realize-after-the-millionth-time-open-spoilers-possible/504117 "2009-07-24T13:20:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 6041
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2024, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-things-about-a-creative-work-you-realize-after-the-millionth-time-open-spoilers-possible/504117/6041 "2024-11-19T22:23:10Z")
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](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-in-tv-movies-books-etc-who-were-bad-at-their-jobs-spoilers/831094)) 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. 😉 --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-things-about-a-creative-work-you-realize-after-the-millionth-time-open-spoilers-possible/504117)._