Was the first guy that Philip killed (the one whose throat he slit) the same guy that Elizabeth originally got the info on Larrick (I think that was his name) from? I thought he looked familiar for some reason.
It was an amazing scene. It worked on so many levels, Phillip putting on gloves before entering the church, the dark of night juxtaposed against a brightly lit risen lord, was he going to kill again? Was he seeking revenge against the church? Or was he seeking absolution?
The hate in his eyes, was it untoward the minister, himself almost too pious to be real, was he creepy for taking a girl’s money? He was raging against Jesus being chosen over him to his daughter. Or was it more Phillip turning inward, in a lot of pain, creating self loathing not being able to cope with the seduction of capitalism over the blood he’s steeped in over the cause. I thought all of that mixture of emotions bubbled up and almost over, but the pulling back was the most thrilling moment on television.
I would like to pose a hypothetical scenario and ask for your opinions how Phillip & Elizabeth could best handle it. It deals with what would happen if and when P&E ever get caught as spies and arrested.
We have seen the following kind of scenario several times: In Season 1 Episode 5 (during the “Previously on The Americans” portion) Elizabeth rings some man’s doorbell and tells him that she is working for some agency and the DoD has authorized her to do a “top to bottom” check of his company’s security and she has to ask him some questions. Of course, she is really trying to get some info from him on his company’s top secret projects. Interestingly however, I never could find this scene in any previous episode although the announcer said it happened “Previously on The Americans” during S1E5.
But suppose this man doesn’t trust her and decides to go to his company’s security agent or suppose he approaches the FBI directly and tells them what happened. Suppose the FBI believes him and decide to wire this man and his home and tells him the next time she comes to see him that he should just play along with her and they instruct him what to say and how to behave.
Then, they follow Elizabeth and they are all over her. She leads them back to her house and then the FBI is all over Phillip and their travel business. Then, they learn that P&E are def spies and they decide to arrest them. After following them for say 3 months, they have caught them in a murder or two and have enough to lock them both up forever. The FBI decides the best way to arrest them is not to tell them they are under arrest for being spies. But instead, they decide to come at them sideways in the hope they will learn more than they would if they came at them direcly.
So, one day, they either get the local police’s fraud squad or they impersonate that fraud squad and swoop down on their travel business and arrest everyone there and haul them all into jail and keep them all separate. They tell P&E that one of their empolyess has been using their company checks to defraud some people somehow and they need to question all their employees to find out what is going on. They tell them it is an extremely serious matter involving some federal agencies but they tell them very little else.
By arresting P&E using this “charade”, they figure they might get more info than they would if they approached them directly. But from the moment they enter the travel business, they have already decided that P&E will never again see each other or talk to each other or their kids - never for the rest of their lives. They will both be imprisoned in a sort of solitary confinement for the rest of their lives because they have been caught as spies against the USA and they’ve also done some murders.
So anyway, after about 12 hours in custody, P&E start to get nervous about their kids and they will tell the cops they haven’t defrauded anyone and they need to go home to care for their kids. So, the first part of this scenario is:
- What will P&E say when the cops ask them who they want to take care of their kids while they are being questioned? This will likely be a big problem because no matter who they name, it will mean big trouble for them. The won’t name a fellow Russian agent for sure. They don’t have any family members they can name. Can you imagine if they name Stan and his wife? Stan the FBI Counter-intelligence agent?
This can become a real big problem. They may even be tempted to tell the cops something true about themselves to get out and take care of their kids. The alternative is to let some child welfare agency take them and I can’t see them doing that. So what would they do? Assume the USA has some strong espionage laws so if they ask to see a lawyer, they won’t get one because they won’t have hardly any rights - certainly not the same rights as a regular citizen abd they are not citizens after all.
OK. So, after maybe 12 hours, the cops approach them and tell them (separately) that they have a problem because they got search warrants for their house, their business and their car and they found all kinds of things that no American citizens who run a travel business would have. They found weapons and secret-code radios and all kinds of other spy equipment. Plus the cops found some evidence linking them to some other spying-type crimes.
If P&E have never planned for this kind of situation, they won’t have their stories straight and they won’t both tell the same story to the cops. They may even wind up telling the police different stories and get into some real big trouble because they can’t talk to each other and decide on the same story.
OK. Well, I think this is far enough. Seems to me they are in real deep shit here because if they actually believe these are local cops and they are investigating some kind of fraud by one of their employees, they may actually give away some info about their spying activities that they would never give away if the federal cops came at them straight and told them they were FBI agents.
So, the next part of this scenario is:
- What can P&E tell these cops? Will they try to get out of this bogus fraud crime by offering the cops some info about more serious crimes? Will they try to rat on some other people so they can get out of jail?
If they ask for a lawyer, they will be denied and I don’t think the cops would even have to give them a truthful reason. They could probably come up with some bogus reason. Maybe they would say the fraud involved some federal agencies and the cops will tell them they believe one of their employees is a spy. If nothing else, that could cause them to spill some info they would ordinarily never divulge.
Anyway, given that the cops have decided that no matter what, P&E will never ever get to see or talk to each other or their children ever again, what can P&E do under these circumstances, If you were one of them, what would you do? My guess is that anything they say will just make things worse for them and the best thing they could do is just remain silent and accept their life sentences. But will they do that?
I’d really like to know what you think of this whole scenario. If they are ever caught in the act, is this the best way for the feds to come at them? And if and when they are caught, what can they do to try and help themselves? Phillip might well try to offer the cops some kind of deal to get his imaginary millions of dollars that he wants. But I doubt that would ever happen if they are caught red-handed for a murder. Maybe the cops will just use that to make things worse for them somehow. Or at least to get more info and help them do a better job of fighting the Russians?
So, what do you think? What can P&E do under these circumstances and what will they likely do?
My only quarrel with this episode: Stan goes to extraordinary lengths to get an audience with the spooks and convinces them to give him access to a highly classified super-secret project, signs his life away, and even then the spooks are unwilling to discuss an exclusive and equally super-secret meeting, and then Stan basically blabs the whole thing to his secretary? He’s either the worst FBI agent on the planet or the dumbest. I know that it’s for the purpose of plot furtherance, but it’s just not how the real world of classified information works, and it bugged me. End rant.
It’s the threat of paperwork, which made it so awesome.
Basically, Gaad said that he has a missing American agent on tape saying that he was tortured by Soviet spies on American soil. If that leaks to the press, then the US will have to pretend that it is shocked and outraged that there are spies here. SPIES! and respond by pulling diplomatic permissions for everyone currently here from the Soviet Union. And the Soviets will have to re-staff the whole embassy - which is time consuming and a general bureaucratic PITA. Plus, it’s also really embarrassing internationally when your spies get caught or even sort of caught.
So, Gaad wants Arkady to tell Moscow that “hey, DC’s a dangerous place, shit happens” and convince them to pretend not to know that the FBI shot Vlad in cold blood, so that the US doesn’t have to react to Vlad being shot in cold blood & Gaad doesn’t have to get fired.
I love this show.
I love it too, but I don’t at all buy that it would have such ramifications. They have no proof that he was kidnapped by Soviet spies, and the diplomats could plausibly claim to have nothing to do with it anyway. There was that army guy caught in the ’80s giving secrets to the Soviets; there was the guy in the '70s they portrayed in The Falcon and the Snowman; there was the discovery of a bazillion bugs in the US Embassy in Moscow; and I’m sure various other scandals as well. AFAIK none of these resulted in expulsion of Soviet diplomats (how would they access the UN?), and neither did the invasion of Afghanistan or the shooting down of the Korean airliner (with a US congressman aboard, even).
ETA: Chefguy, you certainly have a point. But how else would he do the research he needs to without bringing her into the loop?
He would have to retrieve the records himself. In a routine business office with top secret documents, everybody in that office has a TS clearance. Even so, access can be on a need-to-know basis. But if you, with a TS clearance, require entry into, say, the communications vault at the Embassy, all the equipment is shrouded and the file safes are locked down. So Stan’s secretary would have had normal office staff document clearance, but for something that compartmentalized, she would not. In fact, it’s more than likely that the spooks would have flat refused to deliver said documents to Stan’s facility, let alone allowed them to be in a room accessible to anybody other than Stan.
But hey, it’s fiction, and sometimes real world experience gets in the way of just enjoying the ride. 
The State Department and CIA would just love that since the Soviets would be certain to do the exact same thing to the US embassy in Moscow.
WHich makes me think that Arkady called Gaad’s bluff.
If he does/did, I will feel much more sanguine about this gambit, as a failed stab at a bluff that Gaad probably knew was a longshot.
I may be mistaken. But it seems to me that we have seen Nina tell Oleg that she loves him and that Stan Beeman means nothing to her and that we have also seen her tell Stan that she loves him.
Do we know whether she is telling the truth to either one of these men? And if so, which one?
For some reason, I have difficulty trying to remember all the details of the plots of this show and so I may well have missed the truth here. But does anyone know what that truth is as it regards Oleg & Stan?
If the truth has never been revealed to the audience, then it will be an excellent plot device and my opinion of this show will go up yet another notch. My opinion of this show is already extremely high. Like many of you, I really admire this show. It is wonderful.
All the actors are superbly skilled. IMHO, the same goes for the writers and the directors. This show is one of those very rare examples of a show where all the people participating in the production are just hitting on all the cylinders and all of them are just doing a superb job.
I am very, very happy to have discovered this gem. It is just terrific!
For anyone who does not know but is interested.
IRL, the actress who plays Nina - Annet Mahendru - is an extremely accomplished lady. She speaks something like 6 languages. She has a brown belt in karate. In addition, I seem to recall that she has quite a few other accomplishments.
It’s hard to believe that she is still single. I would have thought that someone would have snapped her up real quick by now.
What a beauty! I have had several dreams about her and all of them were very nice dreams!
http://knowcelebs.com/article/celebrities/annet-mahendru-biography.html
http://www.tvduck.com/Annet-Mahendru-celebrity-photos.html
http://www.reddit.com/r/AnnetMahendru
LOTS OF PICTURES HERE:
The following link (same as the above link) seems to contain a very nice joke that was apparently told by Annet:
I hope you enjoy this joke. I know that I certainly did!
Something else about Annet:
I seem to have come to the opinion that Annet may have been deliberately cast to contrast with the actor playing Martha Hanson (Alison Wright).
It is very difficult to describe Martha and say that she is somehow “ugly”. However, I would like to know if you think that the producers deliberately try to make Martha appear unattractive to contrast her with Nina.
I do remember that one plot point has a few of the office staff members laughing at Martha and that Phillip doctored a tape to make it appear they called her “ugly”.
Do you think the producers are deliberately attempting to contrast these two actors and deliberately make Martha appear ugly in contrast to Nina?
I’m sorry but I think I failed to get my opinion across in the above post. What I meant to say was something like this:
I believe the producers try to contrast Nina and Martha as one being beautiful and the other being the opposite of beautiful. I want to ask you if you believe it may be true they do this as a plot device to compare Stan having an affair with the attractive lady while Phillip has an affair with the “unattractive” one.
I’m not sure what they think they accomplish by doing this except maybe to make the point that the job of being an agent sometimes requires people to pretend to “love” others of all diff levels of attractiveness.
If you agree that this may be true, then I sure would like to know why they do this. What is the point they are trying to make?
For anyone here who watched Season 2 Episode 8, the scene with Henry crying and apologizing for entering the neighbor’s home and playing with their Intellivision was just plain embarassing.
I was left wondering why his parents failed to insist that he pay back his debt somehow. Like maybe mowing their lawn every other week for the summer? Or maybe, if I was Phillip, I would have insisted that he put himself in my shoes and tell me just what I would be thinking and how I would feel every time I left my home to go to work and I saw the neighbor coming out of his home and going to work.
I would have liked Henry to tell me just what he would think I’d be feeling and what I’d be thinking every time I saw the neighbor.
Maybe then, that would help him to understand the humiliation that I would feel as his father. Maybe then, he would begin to understand the consequences of his actions.
Dumbass little kid needs some way to pay for his stupidity. The funny thing is … I have done the exact same thing as a kid. But there has to be some way for him to understand what it feels like to get caught.
The best way is to show him, y’know, get caught. Which they did.
They’re not contrasting the two women at all, IMO. If anything, they’re comparing Martha with Stan as being similar. It was common to have an attractive agent target someone who was ordinary-looking, preferably someone who appeared to be lonely or bored with his life and who had access to classified material. Neither Stan nor Martha have movie star looks and are flattered by the attention of an attractive person. Both are relatively unhappy/bored in their lives, so a little sexual adventure is appealing.
I don’t consider ‘Clark’ attractive at all. He’s rather nerdy, even considering the era. Amador. Didn’t Amador have a past with Martha? I think she is shy and lonely, and that’s why Clark was able to woo her, not that he was desirable as far as looks go. But then when she discovered what an animal he can be…that sealed the deal! Stan chose Nina because she was vulnerable, not because of her looks. That she is attractive was what enabled her to turn the tables on him.
If I was running the operation to take advantage of Martha, I would have made up Stan to look almost exactly like he does look. If he was any more attractive, it would not have made much sense for anyone who saw them together to believe that he would have found Martha desireable enough to want a relationship with her.
I understand that a small segment of men do wind up with unattractive women and there are many reasons for that. But I would think a good spy would not deliberately try to draw negative attention to himself.
I’m sorry to disagree with you. But IMHO, in the spectrum of desireable females, Nina would be around the 90 percentile and Martha would be around the 20 percentile.
Nina is extremely beautiful and even more attractive because she is very clever and I would guess she is a lot of fun to be with - both inside and outside the bedroom.
Martha is not at all physically attractive and she has quite a few unattractive attributes. She is very “needy” and will always complain about the relationship. She strikes me as someone that no matter how much more Clark gives her of his time and attention, she will always complain that she needs more.
I firmly believe that if Phillip was looking for a woman to spend time with, he would never look twice at Martha. I’m sorry if it insults any of you when I say this. But Martha is a very ugly and unattractive woman. Nina is a great beauty and extremely attractive.
Of course all of this is just my personal opinion. These issues are almost entirely subjective and everyone may well hold a different opinion.
I don’t think Martha is ugly, but she is just plain, average, you know, like most women who aren’t on TV. She does have some personality traits that render her less attractive than her looks alone would warrant, but Amadore was obviously interested in seconds, so…