The real life illegals were also married to each other. However, these were not arranged marriages, but either agents who happened to be married or the existing spouse of an agent was recruited.
(Incidentally, one of the agentslater gave an interview and his details are surprisingly similar to P & E). He was not tortured, according to him the FBI was polite and professional. Their kids knew nothing about the life and it was an adjustment period when they moved to Russia.
You do remember reruns, don’t you? I did not watch either My Favorite Martian or Bewitched or anything else produced in the 60s in first run. I graduated high school in 1980, so I’d be a few years older than Paige (maybe as much as four) if I were trying to be more exact. Sorry to get you all excited.
Oh snap!
The way she was panicking, it sure seemed like she was envisioning prison time for herself. Which annoyed me, because she has not shown any sign of doubting Clark’s legitimacy before. I mean, she’s been trying to take in a foster kid with him! And she almost put his name on a job application until Clark’s “sister” talked her out of it just in time.
On another topic: it was disappointing, but not too surprising for a white guy of his generation, to see that Stan’s a little racist (complaining about the guy who bugs him at work, and adding that he’s a black guy for no apparent reason).
Well, Stan had been undercover with white supremacists. Maybe some of their verbiage rubbed off on him.
He may have thought he was trying too hard to “prove” himself since he was black, which as I recall was a common belief among white people of the era (less than 20 years after the gains of the Civil Rights movement).
I’m sorry. I should have known better. It was a foolish thought.
:o (embarrassment)
I wouldn’t make too much of Stan saying the guy (Agent Aderholt) is black. Maybe it does bother him - it certainly seems to me/some of us that there’s more to Aderholt than meets the eye. Now Phil knows there’s a new black guy that Stan doesn’t like. Also Aderholt already caught a KGB illegal. Won’t be too hard for Phil/KGB to pin something on Aderholt.
The KGB illegal Aderholt nabbed was a real guy: Col. Rudolph Albert Herrmann
Article from the CSmonitor published 1980
Sounds…interesting. 
Saying he was black wasn’t just a throw away, I think it’s partly a bit of racism of the times, lots of people were none too happy with affirmative action, and partly an over zealous agent brought in seemingly to investigate never makes the workers too happy.
Oh, yeah. Remember Paper Chase? They devoted an entire episode to the subject!
And Stan was probably around during the reign of Hoover, who didn’t like the idea of black FBI guys. (Thought they were all suspect.)
I think that it would be really compelling to see a flashback of Stan during his undercover days with the White supremacists.
I’d love to see some scenes featuring Noah Emmerich in his days as a WS infiltrator. It would make for a great episode.
AAMOF, they could devote several episodes to telling that story and I would be **tickled red **
(I know “tickled pink” is the ordinary expression. But I’m talking about the FBI and Communism)
Yep - in addition to what others have mentioned about married suburbs being the perfect cover - Paige’s story line makes clear the soviets intend to use her.
Looking at the real illegals that were busted a couple years back - most didn’t “look” American in their mugshots. Now I’m not saying they weren’t good, but the stories made them seem a little pathetic. I doubt they acted anywhere near as flawless as non foreigners as the two main characters do on this show. Their kids would be able to pass:
TVO (Ontario, Canada) showed Rebellion last night, about Litvinenko, Putin, and the KGB/FSB. Did anybody here watch it?
Really, really scary stuff! :eek:
In regards to the situation with Paige, how can this NOT have an ugly ending?
It’s clear Elizabeth knows Paige is forming her political views–which appear to be heading toward the liberal side–providing the opening E needs to begin to ease Paige into the fold…using Paige’s political leanings to foster attitudes which if not anti-American, would certainly be anti-government.
E is trying to move Paige into the so-called “choice” of eventually turning, basing the whole enterprise on the her having been involved in the anti-war/social change movement of the 1960’s, prior to Paige’s birth.
She’s not going to come right out and say day, “Hey, Paige we’re actually KGB and now you are too”. Instead, she’s going the whole “we’re about change…fight the power” route.
Problem is, Elizabeth seems to be on the verge of compounding her original lie about being an ordinary American family with another lie…claiming they were part of the protest movement of the sixties, which is obviously not the whole truth.
Eventually the lies will have to end, and E will be forced to tell her daughter the truth…“we want you to work for us.”
As I have noted before, this is not 2015…it’s early 1980’s America. Height of the cold war. I was in my late teens in 1982-83, and those of you who were alive at the time would know the Soviet Union was not looked upon sympathetically by the vast majority of the population, regardless of whether they were left or right politically. A prime example would be the Soviet shoot down of Korean Air Flight 007 on 9.1.83. This killed all on board, including a US congressman, and the reaction to it among Americans was almost universally negative.
To put it succinctly, the Soviet Union was the enemy to most Americans.
As one poster put it earlier, Phillip is right. He seems to have a pulse on the attitudes of the American public…as the poster stated, remember how he knew there wouldn’t be a coup in the Reagan assassination attempt episode? He knows there is no good ending here.
What will the endgame be?
Things changed drastically after they invaded Afghanistan at the very end of 1979, leaving Carter looking like the complete ass he was and the rest of America feeling it had been royally duped. This was one reason why the US victory over the USSR in ice hockey at the 1980 Winter Olympics was so sweet.
Putin is a really scary guy. It seems that people who oppose him are killed with great regularity.
Carter could have done nothing to prevent the invasion of Afghanistan, and his only retaliation options were complain and cancel Olympic participation, which he did, or arm and train the Mujaheddin, which he did not. The Reagan administration did arm and train the Mujaheddin (but didn’t start a direct war, even Reagan wasn’t that off the rails) and the Mujaheddin became the Taliban and Al Queda. Osama bin Ladin was a Mujaheddin who was taught our methods. The reason that Carter and the Democrats didn’t want to arm and train the Mujaheddin is because they were religious fanatics that hated us. We will be fighting this for the next 100 years at least.
Many Americans were genuinely frightened of the escalating arms race and hostility between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Paige’s involvement in the anti-nuclear movement seems to me historically accurate, since she is a teenager who is becoming politically conscious in the early 1980s. And of course she has the backing of her church. I wonder whether the show will touch on the sanctuary movement at all, since that might be something else the church could participate in as well as being an additional way for Elizabeth to influence Paige’s political leanings.