The Americans, Season 2.

[Charlie_Wayne]

@eenerms

Stan is the stupidest spy ever! Not thinking anything past his dick. Geezer it’s uncomfortable to watch.

He certainly is not too savvy. I hope to watch the episodes through again sometime and try to spot something more about his skill level.

But, I sure do get a whole other level of interesting info when I watch a show like this when I am in my 50s then when I am in my teenage years.

It never previously occurred to me that when a very young person whatches this show, they can’t possibly hope to get a real understanding of what is happening than they could if they were in their middle aged years.

So much has happened since the events depicted in this show that it is just much more interesting to learn than it would be if you watched when you were in your teenage years.

[alphaboi867]

So Vasili is not only still alive; he’s in charge of one of the KGB’s luxury science gulags? :eek: How the fuck did he pull that off?

[LawMonkey]

@Charlie_Wayne

I would think that any outsider to Nina and Stan’s relationship would know that a lady as beautiful and attractive as Nina would never be in love with a plain (ostensibly boring) man like Stan and would
be able to either tell Stan or tell someone else in the FBI that something untowards is going on between the two of them. It just seems so bizarre that Nina would be in love with Stan - so unlikely that could be on the level.

Christ, am I the only hopeless romantic here who thinks there’s more to human romantic relationships than relative looks? Sure, I know Nina’s playing Stan, but I know that because I get to see her to back to the Rezidentura, not because she’s hot and he’s not. I’m sure someone more knowledgeable than I in pop cult could come up with some examples. I’ll offer Brie Bella (hot) and Daniel Bryan (not, though he looks better now that he’s got a beard covering his hossface) of the WWE. (To clarify: their relationship is real, not kayfabe.)

Anyway, even if that’s your cynical view of human relationships, it’s not too hard to believe Stan is lying to himself because he wants to believe it.

@alphaboi867

So Vasili is not only still alive; he’s in charge of one of the KGB’s luxury science gulags? :eek: How the fuck did he pull that off?

It appears to be in the middle of BumFuck [del]Egypt[/del] Siberia, so I don’t think it’s exactly a prestige posting.

This weeks episode, New Car, was great. AV Club gave a shoutout to my hometown, Norwood, Ohio, where the Camaro z-28 was built. (The factory shut down in the late 80s or early 90s, iirc, replaced by a shitty strip mall and discount movie theatre.) Beeman tried to go to the fucking ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES to get clearance in his crazy ass plan to protect Nina/take out Oleg. And the boy kid, whose name I forget, got caught breaking into the Palace of Intellivision, and had that scene at the end crying and saying he was a good person…

[Charlie_Wayne]

@LawMonkey

<snip>
Anyway, even if that’s your cynical view of human relationships, it’s not too hard to believe Stan is lying to himself because he wants to believe it.

Yes. OK. I can certainly go along with you on that.

[Chefguy]

@eenerms

Stan is the stupidest spy ever! Not thinking anything past his dick. Geezer it’s uncomfortable to watch.

On the contrary, it’s a time honored way to turn an agent. Normally intelligent, loyal agents and other government officials have fallen for this scheme over and over again. Once you give them something, even if it’s innocuous, you’re compromised. Some, instead of just coming clean and taking their lumps, continued to provide more and more relevant information, usually for pay, but mainly to keep from being exposed and going to prison.

I offer Felix Bloch as a prime example. He was screwing a hooker who turned out to be a Soviet employee. When he was threatened with his wife and employer being told, he chose to betray his country. Last I heard, he was driving a school bus in Georgia somewhere.

[LawMonkey]

Forgot something above: Where do they get all of these cars? I never thought about it before, because they did have their sensible family sedan. But in this episode, Phil comes home in the bitchin’ Camaro, and we then cut to Elizabeth in a nondescript black sedan (more or less). And now that I think of it, they’ve always had access to a spare ride when necessary. I guess the Rezidentura just has a fraudulently licensed motor pool tucked away in garages all over DC, with keys on the dash for Direktorate S agents to take as needed?

[Charlie_Wayne]

@LawMonkey

Forgot something above: Where do they get all of these cars? I never thought about it before, because they did have their sensible family sedan. But in this episode, Phil comes home in the bitchin’ Camaro, and we then cut to Elizabeth in a nondescript black sedan (more or less). And now that I think of it, they’ve always had access to a spare ride when necessary. I guess the Rezidentura just has a fraudulently licensed motor pool tucked away in garages all over DC, with keys on the dash for Direktorate S agents to take as needed?

It’s an interesting plot line. Phil is talking to his son about a new hot car and I think he’s referring to the Camaro. He said something about “400 horsepower” which would make it quite the dream for a 15 or 16 year old boy.

Maybe they will make it clear in a future episode that he took it for an extended “test drive”? But whatever happens, I’m expecting there to be some further developments with this Camaro.

It’s very interesting that Phil who ostensibly spent his entire youth in Russia and would not likely have a great appreciation for hot cars would choose such a cool car.

Maybe the Rezidentura recognizes the importance of the “cool” factor and keeps someone around who schools the agents on being cool?

[Coriolanus]

@Charlie_Wayne

It seems very strange to me now that anyone would knowingly illegally enter an FBI agent’s home just to play video games.

Intellivision had very good graphics for the early 1980’s. It was an expensive rich-kids gaming system. I didn’t have any friends with one (not being a rich kid). Utlimately, Atari 2600 had better marketing and it was the most successful till all gaming crashed in 1983.

(As corrected above, it was another neighbor). Not that I think it would have mattered. In modern terms, let’s say they had a PS4 with a 75" 3D TV. What kid would not want to try that out?

@Charlie_Wayne

Why wouldn’t he get a job instead and save up and buy the game? Was Phillip that strongly opposed to that video game such that he would not allow his son to buy one? Even if the boy worked and saved up to buy that game?

I don’t care much for the childrens’ enhanced plots this season: The girl gets religious, the boy does things that any kid would. I think he’s like 13, so he’s not old enough to work (maybe a paper route?). But those gaming systems were expensive. Perhaps a future plot for the son will involve him getting caught stealing the BoneStorm video game and getting sent off to military school.

[E-DUB]

Why didn’t Vasili get a bullet in the head? He’s undoubtedly got dirt on somebody.

[amarinth]

@Charlie_Wayne

Do I understand this one plot-line correctly about Phillip & Elizabeth’s son?

Did he really enter into his next door neighbor’s home (Stan the FBI agent) in order to play Intellivision?

If so, that was very interesting in that they showed he was up to something nefarious. We didn’t really know what it was he was up to and it was quite a surprise to learn that he had such a strong need to play that video game system that he would illegally enter his neighbor’s home in order to play that video game.

He’d been begging his parents for an Intellivision for multiple episodes. He’d talked about the neighbors getting one. We knew exactly what he was going to do the second we saw him watching them get in the car. This didn’t come remotely out of nowhere.

It seems very strange to me now that anyone would knowingly illegally enter an FBI agent’s home just to play video games.

The Intellivision owning neighbors are a different family than the FBI owning neighbors.

Why wouldn’t he get a job instead and save up and buy the game?

Because he’s 12ish? And kids that age aren’t really good at long term planning.

[amarinth]

@LawMonkey

But in this episode, Phil comes home in the bitchin’ Camaro, and we then cut to Elizabeth in a nondescript black sedan (more or less). And now that I think of it, they’ve always had access to a spare ride when necessary.

The thing about the Camaro is that it’s really flashy and really noticable.
Their old car was an unobtrusive, brownish sedan, the kind that goes alongand blends in with all the other cars when you’re driving either to or from a kidnapping, safe house, dropsite, or assassination. It never looks out of place. Law enforcement doesn’t pay attention to it. Potential witnesses aren’t going to remember it was even there or that it sped past them 20 minutes ago.
People see the Camaro. It seems like one of the worst possible car choices for a deep cover spy.

[Headrush042]

The Camaro also seems to be setting up some ideological tension between Elizabeth and Phillip – note their conversation about him wanting to just enjoy life once in a while, whereas she’s a prole through and through and doesn’t think their luxuries are deserved while there are poor people starving just down the street, with the implication that Phillip is becoming too Americanized.

[LawMonkey]

@Headrush042

The Camaro also seems to be setting up some ideological tension between Elizabeth and Phillip – note their conversation about him wanting to just enjoy life once in a while, whereas she’s a prole through and through and doesn’t think their luxuries are deserved while there are poor people starving just down the street, with the implication that Phillip is becoming too Americanized.

Phil had some second thoughts after he heard about the submarine, though.

[SlackerInc]

@EllisDee

Here’s a brief summary of Nina’s arc:

Stan catches Nina buying contraband and threatens her; exposure of her crime would get her sent back to Moscow in chains, so she agrees to turn double-agent.

During her double-agent time with Stan, Nina realizes that she can manipulate and control Stan, using him for her own (and Mother Russia’s) benefit. So she goes to her section chief and comes clean on the contraband, getting caught by Stan, and turning double-agent.

Her section chief decides to keep her in play with Stan, turning her into a triple-agent. They collude to feed Stan real but generally meaningless intel to keep him on the hook so that Nina can get intel from Stan.

Around this time, New Guy falls in lust with Nina. He uses his connections to find out Nina’s story. He doesn’t get the whole puzzle, though; some of it turns out to be super-duper double classified. While he could use his connections to get that intel, doing so would probably play his hand too much, possibly “using up” those favors. Instead, he decides to confront/bluff Nina to see if he can get her to break. Nina, of course knowing that New Guy is blind with lust for her, immediately seduces him when he confronts her. This effectively neutralizes him from her point of view.

The section chief decides to further play Stan, using New Guy to tell Stan that New Guy discovered Nina, and New Guy can out her to her superiors. If Stan really loves Nina he’ll help New Guy, which basically he does. This gives further proof to section chief that Nina owns Stan.

The only person we’ve seen Nina show true feelings for is the guy Stan shot in the head and tossed in the dumpster. The show has given us no reason to believe that she cared for the old section chief (who she got arrested and deported), Stan, or New Guy.

I don’t agree with some of the assertions in this summary. We can’t be 100 percent sure of her inner feelings, but I wouldn’t say that she was necessarily completely insincere about Stan before he killed Vlad. That shook her pretty deeply, and she also began to feel pangs of regret about betraying her country based on some patriotic, stirring type stuff her boss said (IIRC; this was last season but it’s the way I remember it).

I also don’t think she “immediately seduces” New Guy. I would say she was holding him at arm’s length until the polygraph thing. Sure, that can be a kind of mating dance of its own, but she was shutting him down to a greater degree than necessary to flirt with him or play hard to get.

I also don’t know that we have any evidence that the station chief orchestrated New Guy’s meeting with Stan. I don’t really know for sure either way, but my assumption had been that New Guy cooked that up freelance and didn’t share it with anyone from the station until afterward.

[BrokenBriton]

@AK84

So what would the Jennings do now? I wonder if they removed all identifying papers and changed plates, but engine and chassis number could still get them busted anyhow.

I’m only here, at the end of S2E4: I really like this show, even more given what being achieved on a budget that wouldn’t support a wedding feast on Game of Thrones. I’ve een thinking about this and wrote some down. …

International politics is no kind of entertainment anywhere but here we are with a complete spectrum:
[ul]
[li]The last decade of the decaying – and we now see through the new character – corrupted Soviet empire[/li][li]The infant but emerging Israeli confidence in operating in the US[/li][li]The youthful beauty (literally personified) of the Sandinista cause vs. that other imperial empire of the early 80s[/li][/ul]

Layered above we seem to have the huge moral and emotional dilemma of children growing up exposed to unwelcome influences, the two leads are effectively sociopaths psychopaths - or both, and then there’s the usual John le Carre spy stuff of who’s zooming who and is it a double or triple bluff.

Sure it’s a bit ridiculous at times but the real strength for me is the themes and the way moral dilemmas and hypocrisy are juxtaposed. It’s really really smart structuring, and using historical events to do it.

Fwiw, in this episode it seemed to become clear the employee in the travel agency who got a couple of lines must be Mossad. Like the way Jennings presumably got his new car out of this …

[TonySinclair]

@amarinth

The thing about the Camaro is that it’s really flashy and really noticable.
Their old car was an unobtrusive, brownish sedan, the kind that goes alongand blends in with all the other cars when you’re driving either to or from a kidnapping, safe house, dropsite, or assassination. It never looks out of place. Law enforcement doesn’t pay attention to it. Potential witnesses aren’t going to remember it was even there or that it sped past them 20 minutes ago.
People see the Camaro. It seems like one of the worst possible car choices for a deep cover spy.

Exactly right. The first rule of spying is, “Blend into the background, don’t stand out.”

And does a Camaro even have enough trunk space for bodies?

[Charlie_Wayne]

I would like to ask about an episode from the first season - probably Episode 2 or 3.

Phillip had taken his (approx 12 year old) daughter Paige to a mall. They got slightly separated but Phillip remained close enough that he could still see what she was doing. She was approached by a man (approx 30 years old) who had his arm around a very young girl (maybe approx 13 years old) and he was treating this girl as if she was a romantic interest and definitely not his daughter. When he saw Paige, he started sweet talking her and seemed interested in her. It appeared that if Phillip had not intervened, he would have tried to get Paige’s phone number or tried to pick her up or tried something that no father would ever allow. In fact, because of the way he was behaving, most fathers would’ve wanted to do some harm to this guy.

Anyway, later on, Phillip went to this man’s house and beat the snot out of him. It was definitely very satisfying to watch Phillip beat the snot out of this creep. But it left me feeling a little disturbed about one aspect and I’d like to ask about that.

I’m not complaining this episode was unrealistic. It was definitely unrealistic. But this is a TV show and as such, it’s not really supposed to be realistic. But I still want to ask a question.

This question is directed towards people with experience in self-defense or mixed martial arts techniques. Perhaps people who have significant training in a martial art or in some other form of combat experience. I have read that martial arts experts say that physical violence should be avoided at all costs and should only be used as a last resort. It is said that when you resort to physical violence, you have lost the conflict.

My question is that even if someone has expert level training in physical combat, isn’t it always possible that if they decide to beat the snot out of someone that they just may well come up against someone who will beat them instead?

It seems to me that in this situation, even though Phillip has been trained and possesses expert-level fighting ability, the odds are still close to 50-50 that the other man may also have been trained and been able to beat him. Or, worse, the other fellow may have been carrying a gun and he may have been able to pull it out and shoot Phillip dead. He may even have been a cop (although the odds are small) and then it would have been very difficult for Phillip’s family to get any justice.

So, I’d like to know. If someone possesses expert level combat experience, does it make sense to do what Phillip did? Or wouldn’t it be better to let the police handle this or find some other way to handle this.

FYI, Phillip did wear a disguise so that his victim would likely not have recognized he was the same person from the mall. But I don’t know why that is important to the story.

I don’t care that Phillip behaved in a way that was not terribly realistic. I’d just like to know how someone with expert combat training would have handled this incident. Would you try to go to his home and beat the snot out of him? Phillip didn’t even use the element of surprise. I would have approached the guy from behind so he wouldn’t have seen me coming. But Philip didn’t do that.

I would have loved to beat the snot out of this guy. But I probably would have arranged for some friends who were armed to come with me - just in case he gets the upper hand. Or I would have contacted a lawyer and asked the lawyer to contact the police to handle this. There are several reasons why it is much better to let a lawyer contact the police instead of contacting the police directly (one of which is that the guy may have been a policeman).

[SlackerInc]

The guy was big and tough looking; but Philip had the drop on him which always makes a huge difference.

But sure: in real life you are definitely going to be better off just dealing with it through legal means.

[TonySinclair]

Yeah, the way he did it was dumb. As I remember the episode, all he did was go over to the guy’s house and beat him up, with no surveillance of the house beforehand. Which means that he could have run into the guy’s friends or brothers (in fact, IIRC, the guy was barbecuing or something out back at the time, which implies guests), or dogs, or even a wife who had a gun.

Also, it seemed like he wanted to teach the guy a lesson, but not kill or maim him. That’s great, but it removes a lot of the edge a trained fighter has over an untrained fighter, especially when the untrained guy is a lot bigger. Phillip’s biggest advantage in “normal” fight situations is that he knows lethal techniques, and is willing to use them.

And also IIRC the guy was very aggressive with Phillip in the store, so the odds of him being used to fighting go up a notch.

[BrokenBriton]

wasn’t that our intro to the split personality theme …