The only way that she could have left some info for some other agent was if she picked that restaurant and let those other people know beforehand that she would leave something for them.
Alternatively, if the person for whom she left some info was following her all the time and saw her go into that restaurant, they could have then gone in to get that info.
But the showrunner would have had to have given the audience some kind of clue that someone was following her or that she picked the restaurant if we were to be able to know she was leaving info for them.
I have to agree with The Second Stone about her helping herself to his fries and ketchup. That was indeed very strange. I don’t think we can conclude anything from that. But if the showrunner had given us some other clue that linked to that, it would have been a lot of fun to discuss that.
In The Rhinemann Exchange Nazi and Allied agents meet in Buenos Aries to make a wartime deal that both sides desperately need. The idea of a Gentleman’s Agreement between deadly enemies is interesting.
Boom!, you said it. There are 20 examples of Gaad letting E & P get away.
If Gaad were spying for the GRU (Soviet military intelligence) he might be both a traitor and out to get the embedded KGB agents. The KGB and CIA were adversaries. The KGB and GRU were bitter enemies and sometimes at war with each other. But the writers are not going to go there.
If Gaad is not a traitor then he is a bungling bureaucrat and an almost comic foil for P & E.
I wrote a whole post about French fries but deleted it because it was undoubtedly boring. The gist was that an ordinary Soviet citizen in 1982 likely wouldn’t have ever seen American-style French fries, much less eaten them dipped in ketchup. But I think the defector is meant to have worked for the U.S./Canada Institute (or something like that). So she presumably had more contact with North Americans than the average Soviet citizen, even though she probably hadn’t traveled to the U.S. prior to her defection.
I agree that helping herself to Stan’s fries was an odd thing for her to do. She doesn’t know Stan well enough to help herself to food from his plate. Maybe she was trying to prove that she is au fait with American customs but her actions actually reveal the opposite: she gets it wrong.
She’s just being Russian! No one wasted food. Hell, I wasn’t allowed to waste food. Helping yourselves to the leftovers was optional. Yes, even in the 80s (our parents were children either during the war or during the rationing after).
Liking very sugary chocolate bars is slightly different, that’s a different food thing.
As for the Milky Way bar, she could have only encountered it previously via some foreign connections. Maybe an American visitor gave her one at some point. In the immediate post-Soviet years, Snickers bars became wildly popular in Russia (probably irrelevant bit of trivia :))
A good friend of mine was a research scientist in the mid to late 80s and he participated in a joint project with the USSR. We installed seismic equipment in each other’s countries to monitor nuclear bomb testing. My friend began a relationship with one of the Soviet engineers and when she came over here, he had her stay at his house. He made her breakfast in the morning which was just eggs and some cereal.
She absolutely loved the cereal and asked that he get more when they went shopping later that day. She thought that cereal was cereal and he’d get another box. She was totally gobsmacked when she saw that there was an entire aisle of cereal and like thirty different kinds and that some kinds had three or four varieties. It was beyond her comprehension. Then later she realized that she could go into a clothing store and they would always have stuff in stock that was her size and in more than one style and it was the same thing all over again.
It’s hard to imagine how bleak things were in the USSR in those days. To have such an abundance of food that you would just throw some away if you felt like it would have been way out of her understanding.
So where is the defector story going? We’re following her for a reason. If she’s not a double agent, then perhaps she plays a role in unmasking the illegals. Maybe she’s Philips sister… who knows?
I also wonder where we’re going with Nina. It seems like a dead end, regardless of what she does with the Belgian.
There is a touch of Hank and Walt from Breaking Bad going on with Beeman and the Jennings. It will be very interesting to see how the writers deal with the inevitable reveal. Hopefully it won’t take place in Phil’s garage with Stan saying “it was you, all along, it was you.”
It is contrary to Russian etiquette to help yourselves to food from the plate of someone you barely know. Even people who experienced serious shortages like my mother-in-law, who lived through the siege of Leningrad and certainly knew what hunger was, would never dream of doing such a thing. I do think it’s an intriguing moment when Zinaida takes a French fry from Stan, for the reasons I mentioned above and because it seems like an attempt to flirt with him. But as a gesture it backfires. Stan is right not to trust her, I think.
Sandra started going on her own which was ultimately what got her to decide to leave Stan. He started going to find out what the deal was and in large part to get her back.
My theory is that she covers herself in glory by extracting some really important intel from the Belgian, and as a result, is posted back to the USA. After all, she has a relationship with an FBI agent (Stan) that could still be exploited.
I wouldn’t go that far. I think the best case scenario for Nina if she succeeds with Miss Belgium would simply to be released from prison, and live a normal life in the Soviet Union. Maybe the KGB retains her in some capacity, but she’ll be kept on way too tight a leash to be allowed to leave the Eastern Bloc again.
Does that mean that things were bleak for a time back then but have now become better? Does it mean that was only a temporary shortage and things are now fine again and are expected to remain fine for the foreseeable future?
I have no idea. My understanding is that there was always a shortage of goods in the USSR and that is expected to continue for the long term. Is that not correct?
I’m fairly certain that Nina will be coming back to Washington D.C. That is because she is still listed in the opening titles and on the IMDB page. Nina is a star of the show.
I don’t know if her return to America will have anything to do with Miss Belgium or with Stan’s defector. But I’m guessing it will be connected to one of those two ladies.
As far as EST goes, I wrote a very large post about EST and its similarity to Scientology. The basic story is they are very similar in that they are really evil scams that empty the bank accounts of members or more usually members’ elderly parents or aunts or uncles or grandparents and transfers all their money directly into the bank accounts of the one person who is at the top of the organizational chart.
I guess the only thing I want to say is that these kinds of orgs are extremely cruel scams and the people at the top deserve to go to a special kind of jail. It’s the kind of jail with no doors. They just lift it up and put people like L. Ron Hubbard in a cell and then lower the prison back down on top of him so that he is locked into his cell forever and never gets out. So many elderly relatives lose all their money and it goes directly into the bank accounts of the scumbags at the top of the org chart - like Hubbard.
You won’t find too many est or Scientology supporters here. est was started by a former high level Scientology staffer. That has since morphed into today’s Landmark Forum which is silly but not so evil. Scientology is still horrible and nasty.
nm. I started to rant about Scientology and quickly realized it was not at all appropriate to post it here. I just get so crazed when I … oh, shit. Never mind. I just can’t hardly control myself when it comes to those bastards.
For those people who are interested, there is a news story titled, “Why are girls flocking to ISIS?”
It seems to me this story is very much on point with Paige and her being conned into becoming a spy for Russia or for the USA.
How can the above story be relevant to this show? It’s about how Paige might get conned into becoming a spy for Russia or the USA or who knows what. In post #237, I suggested that Paige could be very vulnerable to a teenage youth and might be willing to do most anything he suggested to her.
It’s actually very similar to Phillip and the way he is working that very extremely (almost creepily extremely young) girl he approached with her fake ID. It’s very similar and very sad. But teenage girls and teenage boys as well (remember Jarred?), seem to be so crazed about “love”, they are vulnerable to being tricked into doing most any kind of crazy thing they would never do if they were in their right mind.
I think it’s very difficult to explain. AAMOF, I don’t think that I am the best person to explain it and I’m quite certain that someone else here could explain it much better than I could.
But, take a look at the above story and I would venture a guess those young girls are even vulnerable to become suicide bombers - based on their desire for love from a young man.
I just hope that someone here will step up and explain this phenomena in a way that I never could.
The gist was that an ordinary Soviet citizen in 1982 likely wouldn’t have ever seen American-style French fries, much less eaten them dipped in ketchup. But I think the defector is meant to have worked for the U.S./Canada Institute (or something like that). So she presumably had more contact with North Americans than the average Soviet citizen, even though she probably hadn’t traveled to the U.S. prior to her defection.