Are You Watching “The Americans” on F/X? If Not, You Should Be
To this day, I’m unsure if the mother of one of my college friends was actually a KGB operative in the 1980s and early 90s.
The woman was a gorgeous former ballerina with long, velvety red hair who grew up in Soviet-controlled Poland and emigrated to the US, ultimately becoming a flight attendant for Pan Am back when that job was still pretty much the equivalent of being a supermodel. She’d vanish here and there for long periods, and whenever she’d resurface it would be in remarkable proximity to some Cold War-related event that just happened to explode in the news as she was setting her bags back in her closet from her return flight home. After Gorbachev’s toppling and the subsequent dismantling of the former “Evil Empire”, she sort of lost her zip and drive…and seemed permanently disappointed . She stopped flying soon after that…and was honestly never quite the same.
This is all one of those in-jokes amongst my college friends, and has been for years…with us speculating as to whether or not this woman really was a KGB field agent operating under a flight attendant’s cover. Usually, when we’d get on the subject, we’d ultimately decide that “Nah, she couldn’t be. Someone would have put it together. But she sure SEEMS like she could have been KGB. But, NAH…” It didn’t help, of course, that whenever asked about it (in a roundabout way) she’d either be evasive…or would firmly deny it, but with a quick wink at the end that she’d ALSO deny was anything other than “just a blink”.
There’s a new show on F/X that’s well worth your time, called The Americans. It stars the woman who played “Felicity” — back when America was enthralled with her hair (until she cut it and destroyed so many psyches) — and the guy who played Sally Field’s gay son on Brothers & Sisters (obviously, he was one of the brothers, but he ended up with a better guy than any of the sisters…and I’m not just saying that because the character “Scotty” totally reminds me of my own boyfriend, Justin, and some people say I look like this actor). The two of them are KGB agents who were selected for a longterm, deep cover operation in suburban Washington where they pose as a husband and wife team…complete with children who have absolutely no idea that their parents are Russian spies. Kind of, maybe, like my college friend (we think).
The Americans is set in 1981, which is an awful lot of fun for me to watch as it’s just shy of the earliest period I can remember in life. I was around 4 or so when Ronald Reagan was shot, and I don’t remember a thing about the assassination attempt or his recovery. I can remember the 1984 presidential election…but anything earlier than that is just memories of school and family vacations and birthday parties. So, in a way, shows like The Americans kind of fill in missing memories for me of a time when I was alive but just not paying attention to the world outside my little bubble in Cleveland.
I have a strict rule for any show, in that I don’t recommend it to someone else unless I’ve seen three or four episodes and it holds up. A lot of shows have great pilot episodes…but then no follow through or real course ahead. The Americans is fascinating…and just gets better as the episodes progress.
It’s interesting to see Felicity and the Gay Brother ducking down to their laundry room to send coded messages to their handlers…while a few doors away there’s actually an FBI agent and his family who just recently moved in…and the big mystery of this season, for me, is whether that FBI guy really knows these people are spies and that’s why he moved there. It could all be a big coincidence, and the FBI guy might ultimately figure things out…or he could go the entire series without ever having a clue. I love a show that has so much room to twist and turn.
And I also like how the show very much reminds me of trying to figure out if my friend’s mother was a KGB agent…or if she really was just a flight attendant who enjoyed messing with people.
I also sort of nostalgically miss the Cold War, because everything seemed so much simpler back then. Some people like to say “we were all so afraid of nuclear war”, but I don’t remember the 1980s like that. I never had any fear of a nuclear strike because I knew that if the Russians were dumb enough to hit us they’d just seal their own doom. That mutually-assured destruction policy made me sleep easy at night.
It’s such a far cry from today, where the great enemy of our nation (and the West in general) is “the religion of peace” that is Islam, which is neither a religion nor peaceful. Islam is a militarized death cult patiently waging a clandestine, guerrilla war for world domination…and the Ministry of Truth that is our national media gleefully runs cover for them. Hollywood won’t use Muslims as villains even in movies with terrorist-takeover themes…instead employing North Koreans as, supposedly, the biggest threat to civilization today. Ridiculous.
I miss the days when our enemy was rational, sane, and afraid of retaliation from us. With Islam, not only are our enemies insane and motivated by pure hate…but they know we will never hit them back. New York and Washington DC are hit with major terrorist attacks…and, yet, Mecca and Medina sat unscathed. The Soviets knew if they ever pulled a stunt like 9/11 that Moscow and St. Petersburg would have been parking lots.
We’re in this weird holding pattern with Islam where far too many people are scared to death of speaking the truth about “the religion of peace”…in much the same way that the cowards of the 1930s were terrified of saying anything bad about the new regime in Berlin and the lunatic who was calling the shots there. It’s so much scarier living in Chicago in the year 2013 than it was being a kid in Cleveland in the 1980s because today could be the day that Muslims decide to bring jihad to the shores of Lake Michigan and blow something up in spectacular fashion…when I never for even one day ever thought that the Soviets would ever send a missile into the Midwest.
I really think you’d get something interesting out of watching The Americans. I like it so much that I bought one of those season passes from Amazon Instant Video, which I rarely ever do. With most things, I just wait until Netflix gets the show or I read the recaps that people do of programs that are on cable. Hulu had a few episodes of The Americans but it stopped getting the new ones…and so I signed up for the Amazon pass. It’s totally worth the $2/episode they charge because I end up watching the episodes several times.
It’s very rare for Justin to watch a show with me because he has a touch of ADD and it’s hard for him to sit through a TV program…but he’ll walk through the living room when I have The Americans on and he’ll get mesmerized…and then, of course, he’ll spend the rest of the episode asking me questions about everything that’s happening (which is a Justin trademark).
I really can’t say enough good about this show or the fascinating things I learn or end up thinking about after watching it. I really hope at some point they have a character on it who is a flight attendant for Pan Am…based on a certain person I know…so I can say “I KNEW IT!” and think of someone winking at her TV wherever she’s now retired.
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QUESTION for COMMENTS: Have you seen this show too? If so, what do you think of it?
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© 2013, Kevin DuJan. All rights reserved.
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Good call on this show, couldn’t agree more with everything you said. One kind of scary thought though is I read an interview the the creators of the show and they said their goal is for everyone to root for the KGB spies, kinda like people rooted for Tony Soprano and the mob on the Soprano’s (I personally wanted to see Tony sent up the river John Gotti style in the last season but that never happened). I don’t think cheering the KGB is gonna happen though (at least I hope not).
I am sure there will be plenty of cheering for the KGB spies if this show is screened in the current White House.
So happy to see your new columns and glad you are feeling better.
I watch this with my husband and find it very interesting – especially the evolving relationship between the husband and wife – and his thoughts on Americans and America in general.
I’ll make it a point to watch now. The best thing I’ve seen this season so far is “House of Cards”. I didn’t watch it all in one fell swoop, watched over a week and a half but it will scare the heck out of you.
I’m not a big television watcher so I usually only give something one shot and if it doesn’t appeal to me I never watch it again.
Thanks for the House of Cards tip. That is on my list to watch. We have the Netflix streaming service and I was planning on getting to that.
When you say “scare the heck out of you”…what do you mean?
As in…scary like a horror movie…or scary like “this is how things really work”. Because I thought it was a political show about Congress.
If it’s a scary-like-horror show then I have to watch it when Justin’s not around because he gets freaked out by horror shows/movies. And if I have one on, he’ll walk through the room and see it…and I will warn him, but he’ll sit and watch with me anyway…and then that’s all I’ll hear for a month is how freaky that was. So, to spare myself that I just wait until he’s at his parents to watch the scary stuff.
It is a political drama, no horror stuff. It’s hard to further comment as I don’t want to inadvertently give anything away but it scared the heck out of me and those with whom I watched. It sparked a lot of conversations and got people to think. It’s very well done.
We’ve also gotten sucked into the “House of Cards” universe in our household. We’re only into the third episode but it’s got us hooked. It is scary and a bit discouraging to realize that this is probably how most of DC works.
Will make it a point to start watching “The Americans.” Have been wanting to but didn’t get around to it yet. Thank goodness for streaming video.
Love the show! I, too, watch it with my husband who is crazy about it. Until this, my favorite was Homeland (but we have to wait until we can buy the 2nd season to see that).
We’ve watched SO MANY great shows from England on Netflix including House Of Cards which, while super anti-conservative, is still great (but a bit over-the-top).
We’re also into Sons of Anarchy (who knew?) which I liken to a biker version of The Sopranos.
I’m on the computer all day which I love–and parts of the night, too–so I really look forward to sitting on the couch after dinner with our new dog every night watching great things on tv (thanks to Netflix and so many shows from Great Britain as well as some other sources, we haven’t had too many dry spells).
Welcome back–glad you’re posting again.
I actually bought Homeland on Amazon Instant Video and I watched two episodes and had to stop. It was just so upsetting. A good friend of mine died in the Towers on 9/11 so shows about terrorists really get to me on an emotional level. I have to take it easy with them and be in the right frame of mind to watch that.
Homeland looked excellent and was fascinating, but I was too rattled to keep going. I need to sit down and watch it one episode a day and just be in the right mindset for it. I think that show needs to be a summer show for me. When the weather is warm and nice and it stays light until 9 o’clock. In the winter in Chicago when it’s so cold that my skin hurts when I go outside and it’s dark at 4pm I just have so much trouble staying positive and focused on important things that Homeland is an energy-destroyer for me because of its subject matter.
In the summer, though, I would be able to handle it just fine because the apartment will have this awesome breeze blowing through it and I’ll be in a good enough mood in general to weather anything the terrorists on the tee-vee throw at me.
I end up listening to Homeland but even the music creeps me out. They tell me, the watchers, that’s it would freak me out more than 24 freaked me out, so I’m avoiding it completely. I’ve gleaned that it’s way too plausible.
I watched a friend of mine realize she’d left her car unlocked. She literally opened the back trunk and inspected the entire car. I watched in amazement. Her response “I watch homeland, I’d never drive a car I left unlocked without inspecting it”. Now, I guess I’ll do the same, must be something awful that precipitated this change in behavior after watching something on homeland.
Funny, my parents taught us to look under our car when we were going to retrieve it in garages. You can do that from afar. Guess now I will remember to always lock the car so I don’t have to add inspection to my routine.
I always check the backseat before I get into a car to make sure no one is hiding inside.
When I was a kid, my mother used to leave the car unlocked in our driveway. Mind you, this was in downtown Cleveland in the 1980s and early 1990s…so this is not something a reasonable person should ever do. She said she didn’t like having to unlock the door when she’d want to use the car, so she’d just leave it unlocked. I will let you decide if that was a smart thing to do or not.
One morning in the dead of winter my father found a man sitting inside her car’s backseat. He wasn’t hiding or anything and it turned out it was the people across the street’s father, who was in early stages dementia. So it wasn’t someone who was a murderer or car thief or whatever.
You would have thought my mother would have learned her lesson…but, no, she still refused to lock the car. It would drive me insane because I lived in terror that she’d be murdered by someone hiding in the backseat. I left for school before she drove to work in the morning and I’d always have to check the car to make sure no one was in it, and then I would lock it so that no one could get into it before she’d come down to leave for work.
I just don’t know why she did this.
She wouldn’t lock the house when she’d leave either. Said it was too much trouble and that she’d be back soon…but she’d go to the store and then would decide to go somewhere else and would be gone for hours. It was always so bizarre. The funny thing is that she grew up in downtown Cleveland too, so it’s not like she lived in some idyllic, rural area where people didn’t lock their doors. So there’s never been any explanation for why she did this that made sense to me…aside from her just not living in reality in this regard.
This is so totally off-topic, but the ramification of all of this is that at 36 I make sure the apartment is FORTIFIED before we go to sleep. Not just the door lock and a deadbolt but I have boards that I set up to barricade the door…and I even put a chair and things that would make noise on top of that if the chair was moved and they fell in the night. My boyfriend Justin thinks it’s all nuts but I explain to him that I was so scared growing up of her leaving the house unlocked and wide open for anyone to come in that I’m never going to be okay unless I fortify the place before I close my eyes.
And then there’s the checking the backseat before I let Justin get in the car.
Thanks, mom!
One important thing about Homeland…the Claire Danes character (Carrie Mathison) seems to be going through the same, intense frustration that my husband and I have felt ever since we started (before he became president) writing and talking about who Obama really is to a multitude of brainwashed zombies who just won’t wake up!
Carrie Mathison just can’t seem to get quite enough proof about the Damien Lewis character to wake people up! Her reactions keep escalating as did ours before we just had to tone it down after Obama won the 2nd time–our attitude now to all the friends and people who don’t get it is: “fuck ‘em”.
BTW, Damien Lewis is a fantastic English actor who has been in Band of Brothers as well as the terrific “Forsyte Saga”. Interestingly, the younger star of Sons of Anarchy who plays “Jax” is also a British actor!
Love the Americans – so nice to get in the ground floor of a great new show (had to catch up 2 seasons of Justified and 4 of Breaking Bad!)
And, Kevin, it is SO nice to have you back. You’ve been missed. Cleveland says “hey.”
Pam –
I can’t watch any show or movie about drugs or the mob. I don’t know what it is, but I’ve always been like that. I just can’t stand movies about drugs or mobsters. I just think it’s all so stupid and if you’ve seen it once, you’ve seen all of them. That’s especially true for anything involving Spanish-speaking drug mules or cocaine people or any of that garbage. A movie totally loses me when it has even a single scene in it that’s in a jungle somewhere and white powder’s in plastic bags. Somebody’s always killing somebody, screaming in Spanish, and just overacting. I would rather watch paint dry.
I know Breaking Bad isn’t about that sort of drugs, but even Weeds bothers me and I like the actress who plays in it. The drugs topic just doesn’t do it for me. It’s like my straight male friends ever watching Project Runway or something like that…or RuPaul’s Drag Race. I just love shows where people have to make costumes or outfits out of nothing….and especially if they have to make stuff out of candy or pet supplies or stuff from the produce section or whatever. When they have an episode like that, it’s like the Super Bowl for me, I get so excited. And a straight guy would have to have a gun to his head to sit through that.
That’s how I feel about Justified and Breaking Bad. It’s like kryptonite for me for some reason.
Love your analogy to Project Runway! You’re so right Kevin! My husband would definitely have to have a gun to his head to even sit down in the living room with me if I’m watching that!
Welcome back, Kevin!
Yes,my husband and I have been watching The Americans.
Last episode, when Reagan was shot, they were freaking, was that us (KGB)? And, when Alex Haig stated that he was ‘in control’, they automatically assumed that it was a military coup because that was the way of their world view.
Also, I was wondering if that was supposed to be Ft. Marcy Park where they were transmitting their messages? And, think about it, nowadays no one would have to sneak into the woods to ‘transmit to Vladimir’.
Off topic, but was Ft. Marcy where Chandra Levy was found murdered?
Remember Gary Condit, the luckiest man on 9/11/01?
I think you might be right about Ft. Marcy Park.
I’m glad you mentioned Chandra. It reminds me to put her on the list of things to revisit and see “whatever happened to”. If I remember correctly, Condit actually ended up being cleared of involvement in her death but was clearly doing a lot of inappropriate things. I don’t know if they ever did find her killer, or if they figured out if she was targeted or if it was just a random thing. So scary thinking about what happened to her.
But you are right…apart from the people who didn’t get on planes that day because they overslept or they got caught in traffic and missed flights, Gary Condit was one of the only non-Muslims who benefitted from 9/11.
They nailed some illegal immigrant for Chandra’s murder. Seems to me there was something in the news recently about that case, can’t remember exactly what it was.
Oh, and Condit was a Democrat but the reporting usually described him as conservative leaning so he was mostly assumed to be a Republican.
Whenever a scandalous story about a politican is reported, if it is a Republican that fact is either in the headline and/or in the first sentence or two. If it’s a Democrat, you will have to look deep into the story to find that out if it is mentioned at all.
That’s exactly right, Sue. In fact, if the party is not mentioned, you are very safe in assuming it’s a leftie if the story is about a sex scandal, embezzlement, etc.
Kevin — this column really makes me smile because when I was a kid, my dad traveled ALL THE TIME and was probably only home for a total of 6 weeks each year. He was always coming home, leaving again, coming home, leaving again. I didn’t find out until many years later that all of my closest friends thought he was in the CIA! They never said anything to me! Turned out that my dad was always quitting jobs and looking for a new job and since he loved to travel, he preferred to look for work in different cities from where we lived. It also made it much easier for him to cheat on my mom, which we also never knew about until we were older. Nothing so interesting as working for the CIA but I guess my friends thought he was fascinating!
Love THE AMERICANS! The acting is superb and the plot lines intriguing. Yeah, I can see how you miss the clarity of the cold war, Kevin. I sometimes think the globalists are using Islam as a ready-made fascistic model for their new world order.
Kevin …so glad to see you back..was getting really worried but figured you were resting and gaining strength.
will definately have to watch this..I loved 24…
speaking of Ft. Marcy Park..there are 2 fascinating books out by Marinka Peschman.The Whistleblower:How the Clinton WH stayed in power to reemerge in the Obama WH and on the world stage..and the other book about Vince Foster.I could put either of them down…
got a chuckle out of your comment about being a FA for PanAm…being about the same as a supermodel in the day…I was accepted as a FA for PanAm in 1960…it was called..stewardess back then!!! and you had to retire by age 32..that was considered old…
I worked in sales for TWA at the time..but getting accepted by PA was a real coup…it was the gold standard ..damn deregulation…..I shall never forgive it…LOL!!!
I interviewed Marinka once on the radio. She’s a really nice person and is very knowledgeable. I think she’s awesome.
Thanks for the tip! I’m going to check it out on Hulu.
TheBronze,
Weirdly, only the first three episodes were on Hulu…and then they stopped having them. Amazon has all of them, though. If you click the picture at the very top of the article it will take you to Amazon’s page for all the episodes. I tried to see if they had them for free on F/X itself but they only have little video clips. I bet you could get them on iTunes too but I just don’t know how to use that site. Too complicated for me. Justin is all about the iTunes, but Amazon’s instant video is how I watch almost everything.
Grew up in Chicago (on the lake in the Newtown area, Palm Beach is home today) but was behind the Iron Curtain when Reagan was shot. I miss the Cold War at times also Keven, now that things are so fuzzy. Funny how the KGB (new name same face) still runs Russia. Remember Yuri Andropov was Gorbachev’s rabbi and Vladimir Putin is a poster child for the KGB, All that hard work placing sleepers was and is not going to be in vain. A good book to read is The First Directorate by former Chief of Counterintelligence, Major General of the KGB Oleg Kalugin. In his 1994 book he goes into detail about his 32 years of espionage against the West. It’s a good read and funny, it brought back a lot of memory’s. Having worked in TV production (with several household names) I can be a tough critic, especially when it comes to tales of the Cold War, but I will take your recommendation and look at the show.
The odds are just as good that your friend’s mom was working for the CIA, we also used the airlines as the Soviets did for all kinds of reasons. I say this because during my days working for Uncle Sam in Berlin (1978-1981) Pan Am was The Company’s (CIA) airline, spent many a night having drinks with the pilots. Lots of them having done work in the far east when Nam was raging. Of course West Berlin was a Company Town, just as East Berlin was the KGB’s playground. It was more cordial then you think, but a serous game none the less.
911 buried the audit of the DoD as well as Gary Condit’s and MSNBC’s Morning Ho Joe Scarborough’s extracurricular activities. The recent news about the murder is the Defense to seek new trial in Chandra Levy case, seems the ”original case hinged on a jailhouse informant”, yet now “unsealed documents show prosecutors learned a year ago about a problem with a witness”. Well somebody had to pay, notice it’s never the BeltWay few? Remember Morning Ho’s little problem named Lori Klausutis? She was his 28 year old congressional aide and was found dead July 22, 2001 at the congressman’s Fort Walton Beach Florida office. They called it “Blunt Force Trauma”.
Funny how the fastest rising star in the GOP would unexpectedly decided to resign from office six months after being re-elected. Morning Ho’s reason was so he could “spend more time with my sons”. Now maybe his resentment for the GOP, and slavish devotion to all things Progressive makes a little more sense. They own him, and he dances to their tune. The word was back in the summer of 2001 that Condit along with Scarborough where members of the Arlington Virginia BD&SM club know as the Black Rose. It was also said that Chandra Levy accompanied Condit to the club more then once. Reminds of the Rahm Emanuel, Barry Obama Mans Country connection.
Thanks for the recomendation of The First Directorate, will look for the book.
Was not aware of Condit/Scarborough connection to Black Rose, had not heard of the Black Rose.
I do remember the death of Scarborough’s aide about the time (shortly before or after?) Joe’s resignation. Just a brief mention in newspapers.
Oh, Joe was my Congressman at the time…
I have been so disappointed in him on his show on MSNBC with Mika.
Wonder what happened to him, thought he was just drinking the water….
Sorry, I keep forgetting what night it is on , but have found one on BBC America that I like. It’s called Ripper Street, takes place after the Jack the Ripper murders. Basically it’s a period piece about their police & investigators. I’ve always been interested in forensics & a good mystery.
Since our government gives our tax dollars to BBC America, I guess I should see what they do with our money.
I haven’t seen “The Americans” yet, but it’s on my radar … just too busy right now.
The plot line of “The Americans” reminds me of a novel I read many years ago by Nelson DeMille called “The Charm School”. Told from the perspective of undercover CIA agents in Russia, they discover the “Charm School” is a place where Soviets are taught to live as Americans. They learn to speak English without an accent, they learn American history, geography, science ~ all to eventually fit into American society where they will gain jobs in government and private industry and report back to the USSR. I loved that book, and it started me on a love affair with DeMille’s novels.
Glad you’re back.
Laura
I’ve been watching The Americans since it started. I was 13 years old when Reagan was shot – the same age my kids are now, (and the same age as the Jenning’s daughter on the show), and I remember it well. I loved how they assumed it was a coup by Al Haig.
I was a Soviet Studies minor in college, and studied the KGB pretty closely, but I am surprised at some of the twists they are taking, such as in last night’s episode with the agent with “the jitters”. They are showing the KGB agents to be so very cold and ruthless, which is surprising by Hollywood standards. I also love watching the evolving relationship between the husband and wife agents.
In high school, during Reagan’s first term, I spent most of that time living in Europe, where my father, a military officer, was an attache at the embassy in a NATO ally. I actually got to meet a KGB agent, supposedly he was a colonel in the military but a few years earlier he had been in country as the chauffeur for the ambassador.