As in, Elizabeth tells him to charm and seduce her own daughter to help mold her in the “right” direction? That’s a fascinating idea…
Hey Kath,
I hadn’t considered that. But I suppose if Elizabeth feels sufficiently pressured to do something with Paige, she might try and see if there is any chemistry between the two of them.
However, for something like that to work, if Paige feels that her parents are pushing her into some kind of relationship with a boy, that would be bound to fail. Why? Because the last thing Paige would want to do is whatever her parents are suggesting to her.
I would think there are many young men available that are perhaps 3 to 5 years older than Paige and Elizabeth’s overseers (sorry, I don’t know the correct name) could concoct some reason why the two of them would be thrown together. One excellent approach was the way Pastor Tim (is that his name?) asked Paige if she would help some boy set up the food. The first step would be to find a boy that Paige likes. Then they could pursue that relationship.
It’s a good thought though and I’m sure that E will give it a try and see how that goes.
I can’t see why not. At this stage, I get the feeling that E feels locked into some kind of struggle with her husband and would do just about anything to achieve the goals of Mother Russia - no matter what that meant for her daughter.
After all, do you remember what E said about her own mother? She said her mother just told her, “Go!”. That was all her mother had to say about serving Mother Russia.
Pretty scary, isn’t that?
I love this show. All the relationships are based on deception to one extent or another, which makes for fascinating dynamics and conflicts. The most recent episode was excellent, probably the best so far this season IMO. Stan’s destruction of the ladies’ room was both paranoid and perfectly rational. I certainly think he is right not to trust the defector entirely. The scene with Philip and Kimberly is also brilliant, when we see clearly how uncomfortable he is with the situation. Also great use of music.
I really appreciate the fact that the Russian characters speak real Russian with (mostly) authentic accents. Sometimes the language is a bit stiff and bookish, not entirely natural speech, but it is leagues above what one usually hears. I always think that the least plausible aspect of the show is that we are meant to believe that Philip, Elizabeth, and so many other native speakers of Russian have learned English so well (and absorbed American cultural customs and habits so thoroughly) that they can blend into the U.S. population and nobody bats an eyelid. I find that much less plausible than the many murders, kidnappings, disposals of bodies, etc. Though I’m perfectly willing to suspend my disbelief, I’ve often thought it would be intriguing to see Philip or Elizabeth make some sort of cultural misstep.
Right. Paige wouldn’t know that there was any connection between the boy and her parents at all, and they could presumably pretend to be all opposed and worried about the situation, using reverse psychology to push them together even more. Although of course I can’t see Phillip going along with this at all. I’m not sure if we know whether he’d recognize Elizabeth’s protege on sight.
Who else aside from them? There are a very small number of other deep cover spies, who we’ve met a few of. Then there are people like their handlers who, as far as we know, do NOT pass themselves off as natives. Maybe Gabriel’s cover is that he’s an immigrant from Romania or something. Phillip and Elizabeth were trained extensively on how to blend in, and at this point have been doing it for their entire adult lives. If we were watching a series about their first couple of years in America then it would be more likely they would slip up from time to time, but (assuming the center is not morons) they were probably also doing absolutely nothing at all other than acclimatizing themselves, so that by the time they’re starting to actually engage in espionage, their facade is all but perfect.
Claudia, Kate, Gabriel, the other couple (Jared’s parents) are all presented as speaking perfect English, in addition to Philip and Elizabeth. Unsurprisingly, of course, since they are all played by native speakers of English. But it is utterly implausible that these characters could actually blend in so easily. In the actual sleeper spy scandal a few years ago, it was obvious to everyone who knew them that the spies weren’t native English speakers.
I’m always amused when Matthew Rhys’ American accent slips. His fake American accent is actually fake. 
On another note, I wonder whether Philip will end up helping Martha pursue a foster child placement. If he can recruit another young person, presumably a disaffected member of U.S. society who would be vulnerable to the tactics of a trained operative, Philip might be able to spare Paige a similar fate.
A good way to avoid such situations is to set them up as, say, the behind-the-scenes owners of a small business. The less contact they have with run-of-the-mill Americans, the lower their chances of exposing themselves.
I’ve noticed that P&E’s employees seem to be real immigrants who really wouldn’t be attuned to such things as cultural slips. Every time Stan and his wife get chummy, however, they start twitching nervously.
Anyway, if you’re talking to an otherwise white-bread American who makes a weird reference to something you’ve probably never even heard of before, is your first reaction really going to be “Goddamn, this person must be a Commie spy! I’d better report them to the FBI right away!” :eek: ?
Unless you actually observe someone, e.g., actually taking coded messages over a hidden radio, suspicions are normally built up over a long period of time (and a lot of people might not twig to things even then).
It’s highly unlikely that anyone (except possibly Stan) would figure out that Philip and Elizabeth are actually KGB agents. That wouldn’t be on anyone’s radar. But it would be more believable to me if someone (a neighbor, a teacher, another parent in the P.T.A.) betrayed a bit of uncertainty about their origins. Or if Philip or Elizabeth were to commit some minor cultural blunder. Their perfect language skills and complete ease in American culture really aren’t plausible, even taking into account the amount of time they have lived in the U.S. As I said above, I’m more than willing to suspend my disbelief, as there is so much to like about this series.
There was a similar BBC series some years ago, in which the sleeper agents were indistinguishable from the locals. Since it was an English program, there was of course a class element in their cover stories: one of the agents had a successful career in the City, the other was a working class trade unionist. It was also essentially a comedy so the lack of realism was part of the entertainment.
One of the things that really hurt Stan’s defector lady in my eyes was the way that she helped herself to the fries and ketchup on his plate. I’ve gotta think that this is behavior that she has either seen before in America (we don’t know about previous visits) or been instructed is okay in America. And they are not close enough for her to be familiar enough with Beeman to do this American to American.
Every week I open this thread with trepidation; what have people come up with now. Last week it was some kind of paedophilia and #dentistgate, this week it’s Agent Gadd – who’s about as much use as John Boy ever was, and P&E setting up their 14-year old daughter with a mid-20s South African wannabe spy: if nothing else, the ideas are …. imaginative
Anyway, there is no way Gadd is a double agent. There is no way Paige is getting involved with a mid-20s wannabe spy. And, fwiw, the Russian defector is surely just being a foreigner and enjoying the different local foods. Onwards. …
So, according to Phillip’s moral compass, Paige is too young at 14 yet he’s been sucked into getting 16-year olds stoned in order to recruit one. The look he exchanged with E said he knew. Opps.
I loved the way Paige saw the opportunity to play her parents in an instant (what do you want to do on your birthday …) and then followed through without even blinking. She is awesome and every inch the daughter of her mother. Fwiw, I thought P&E were at least as pissed off at being played as by the fact of the Baptism.
I also like that the Pastor – now with Mrs Pastor! – were such instant and eager participants of the play. So we now see them as a couple of switched on manipulators right on the ball. And he sees the angles as well (the sign-slogan, Jesus, Peter exchange) – and Paige was right on that. From what I could gather, he goes back to student protests bout Vietnam …
Fwiw, I am slightly interested in the lady who approached Stan after the meeting. In terms of creating a plausible scripting setup, it’s a stretch but possible …. Actually, I don’t think so but duly noted. Not sure where they are going with Stan’s new-found honesty but how about if he ends up back with Sandra and guess-who appears back on the scene from Gulag Grumpy Pants?
You know, when the big reveal comes, Paige is going to be like … ‘is that all?’. She’s just waiting, maybe even bringing it on.
Wouldn’t he have been looking for something she’d have left hidden in the ladies room for someone else to come retrieve, later? (A note; a microfiche sheet; a cassette–that sort of thing.)
I agree with all this. It doesn’t make sense that Gaad would be a Soviet double agent.
But none of that rules out his being a double agent for, say, the People’s Republic of China. In the 1980s they may not have been working as many espionage assets in the US as the Soviets were–but they were surely working some.
(It was odd that Gaad was out doing grunt work the night Elizabeth obtained that list…)
The one place we didn’t see Stan check was the toilet paper roll. We know that one KGB woman was fond of that particular hiding place.
I’d imagine that someone is being set up to the the Richard Hansen figure, the one who turns against his country and the FBI counter-intelligence operation he is running. There is no reason to not introduce a guy named Richard Hansen. He’s never going to be able to get out of prison and sue.
Sherrerd, introducing third power espionage into this series could be interesting. Everybody spies on everybody. But Chinese spying probably was not the issue during the 1980s that it became in later years.
Second Stone, from what I have observed The Americans is very careful about depicting real historical characters. We never actually saw Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger in Season 1, did we? Richard Hanssen’s current status as a Federal prisoner does not preclude him from bringing a lawsuit against anyone.
By the way, who was that “CIA agent” who retrieved the Afghanistan list from Gaad after he got it from Elizabeth? The petite Elizabeth who decked a physically fit FBI agent. The senior FBI official working a routine stakeout. But as far as the other G-men are concerned that list is safe and its all legit.
Finally, how did Gaad learn that Nina had been sentenced to death in Moscow? Not the sort of unpleasant news the Soviets used to publicize. There are ways for American intelligence to find out these things. Unless Gaad heard it from his real master, Oleg.
I will admit to the skeptics that:
A) Elizabeth is at least as well trained in the martial arts as any FBI special agent. A loyal Gaad would not have been expecting such a fight from a woman.
B) Retrieving that list was extremely important. So it is not surprising that Gaad might have felt the need to oversee the operation himself.
We’re not skeptics, we just have a reasonable grasp of storylines.
The writers and showrunner have not spent over a season developing plots involving P marrying Gadd’s secretary for “filler”.
Why did Gadd stop and not driveby when E was on the street, Gadd was on duty and actually made the call himself to override the CIA and roadblock E … there are like 20 examples of Gadd trying to bag P&E and, he’s right, they are getting closer.
If you really think Gadd exposed himself as a Soviet spy by telling Stan of Nina’s sentence, then … I just don’t know what to say.
I seem to recall that many of the higher level CIA agents have a secondary source into foreign agencies - like the KGB - so they can exchange unofficial info from one agency to the other. Kind of like a way they can do each other favors.
I forget what these people are called. But I remember one example from the film, “The Sum Of All Fears”. Does anyone who saw that film recall the name for such people?
Something that means, “Secondary Sources”. But I can’t remember the exact name.