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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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Have You Ever Seen Changeling? It’s actually worth your valuable time (and really inspirational too).
The movie Changeling is not the 70s horror flick with George C. Scott and the ghost boy in the wheelchair (that would be The Changeling…and it scared the bejeebus out of me as a little kid…because apparently the addition of an extra three letters equals pure terror).
In 2008, Angelina Jolie starred in Changeling and I purposefully avoided seeing it in theaters because I’ve long believed Angelina Jolie is a cuckoo-bird. She wore a vial of her brother’s blood around her neck for a while, apparently dated him around the time she won her Oscar, and then stole Brad Pitt from Rachel from Friends. Being gay, I’ve never understood her sex appeal…but instead thought she was trash for participating in adultery. While I typically enjoy movies set in the 1920s and am fascinated by stories based on real-events, I just couldn’t get beyond my dislike for the actress to see this movie when it was new…and in years since I honestly never encountered it on DVD or on Netflix or even thought of it again.
But, while I was sick this last month I watched a lot of movies on Amazon Instant Video and somehow accidentally ordered Changeling when I probably wanted The Changeling…and so felt obliged to let the movie play, regardless of Angelin’a presence.
I’m truly glad that I did because not only was Angelina very good in the role (and gorgeous, too, incidentally…looking spot-on perfect as a woman in the 1920s without a vial of her brother’s blood in sight) but the story itself introduced me to two new American heroes in the form of Christine Collins and the Reverend Gustav Briegleb.
Collins (portrayed by Jolie in the film) was a mother whose young son went missing around 1927 in Los Angeles while she was away at work. The Los Angeles Police Department was the most corrupt in the world at the time and decided it wanted some good publicity…so they shipped in a runaway boy they found in Illinois and tried to pass him off as Collins’ son Walter. When Collins insisted that this stranger was not her son, the police ultimately decided to lock her up in a mental ward to shut her up so they wouldn’t have any more bad press over the fiasco. It’s so sad to admit it, but this is the sort of thing I can honestly see happening here in Chicago with Rahm Emanuel as Mayor and Democrats running the Justice Department nationwide.
Briegleb was a man with a radio show at the time who realized what happened to Collins and vowed to broadcast every day on the subject until everyone in listening range was riled up against the police for their abuse of power. He did just that…and ultimately forced Collins’ release. Watching the movie, he seemed to be the Andrew Breitbart of his day…which made me doubly sad because neither he nor Andrew are around anymore.
After Briegleb rescued her, Collins went after the police, sued the primary guy responsible for what happened to her, and kept suing him again and again through the years trying to force him to pay her the judgement she was awarded (which would have been about $400,000 adjusted for inflation). Someone with this sort of tenacity is amazing here in 2013…let alone in 1927 in Los Angeles…when no doubt most of her peers were terrified of being killed by those crooked cops in a “traffic accident” or “robbery” or something.
The movie could have been a gruesome, scary, serial killer story…but instead it was a very inspirational tale of a woman who just would not be broken and one who never gave up on finding her son. Christine Collins was absolutely amazing. I really hope that if I ever had a kid I’d fight for him or her as much as Collins waged all-out-war for hers.
I enjoyed the movie so much that I spent a few days researching what happened to everyone after the story told in the film ended. True to form, Christine Collins spent the rest of her life looking for her son. She lived until 1964 and apparently had to use aliases and change her name here and there because people affiliated with the crooked cops kept bothering her…even decades later. But, still she kept up her battle against the bad guys. And she never gave up hope that her son was still out there somewhere. Gustav Briegleb kept calling out the crooked police until the day that he died…and together with Collins he so embarrassed the City of Los Angeles that new laws had to be passed to prevent the police from ever again having the ability to just throw someone in a mental ward when they wanted to silence the person.
2013 is really starting out to be a bleak year and though the Ministry of Truth that is our national media won’t admit the obvious, we really are in an economic Depression. Things will get much, much worse in the days ahead as all of the many taxes prescribed by Obamacare drive companies out of business or force massive layoffs. Simultaneously, never in our lifetimes have we had so many people in government who believe they can do whatever they want to people and that they are answerable to no one. It all feels very reminiscent to Los Angeles in the late-1920s when Collins and Breigleb fought back.
I think a lot of you out there are going to be fighting back in your own ways in the years ahead. I hope you never go through anything like what happened to Collins…but in whatever challenges you do face I do hope you never give up, never surrender, and that you always speak truth to power. People today are scared of our government and the power it wields…and some are even afraid of being “disappeared” somewhere because they oppose what the Left is doing to the country (and what it will do in the next four years).
What I liked most about the movie Changeling is that it illustrates there is indeed an alternative to being too afraid to take on the “big guys” or the all-powerful government. I’m sure Collins was scared…and Angelina depicted her as being unsure what to do at times…but she would not let those monsters break her.
And in the end it was actually she who embarrassed and broke them.
What a great movie this ended up being…so good that I ended up doing something I almost never do and I bought the DVD so that I can watch it again one day when Justin’s home too.
It really is worth your valuable time the next night you want to put something on your video screen.
Tune in Tonight at 10:30pm …What’s next?
Why is the media pretending Ann Coulter’s new book Mugged doesn’t exist? — Listen LIVE at 1030pm CST
What: The HillBuzz & Mrs. Fox Show
When: 1030pm CST, 10/10/2012
How to listen: CLICK HERE for the live stream and then click HERE for the archive version later
Tonight Megan Fox and I will be talking about Ann Coulter’s new book, Mugged, and why the corrupt media is embargoing all talk about it.
What are they scared of?
What don’t they want you to know about?
Tune in at 1030pm CST to find out!
Interviewing John Groom and Ann Coulter tonight: listen LIVE 6pm CST on “Through the Mirror” Wednesday 10/10/2012
[Click above to checkout Mugged on Amazon!]
Tonight I’m on with Larry Sinclair interviewing Ann Coulter about her new book Mugged.
She’ll be on at 6pm, so please chime in below in comments with any questions you’d like me to ask her if I get the chance. Click HERE to listen to Ann Coulter on the show at 6pm CST!
The book is fantastic — her best one yet — because it really clobbers the Left for consistently using black people as pawns and inventing false charges of racism to push through their political agenda.
White people’s intense, irrational fear of being called “racists” has allowed the Left to get away with a great deal…particularly in the last four years. Ann argues it’s time to stop being afraid of the Jesse Jacksons, Al Sharptons, and other race-baiters of the world and I agree with her.
This is going to be a fun show for me because I’ve always admired Ann’s courage and her fearless ability to take on the Left every day of her life. Anyone who can send lefties into apoplectic fits at the mere mention of her name must be doing something right in my opinion.
TUNE in at 6pm CST tonight to listen to Ann Coulter on “Through the Mirror” – I’m guest-hosting again for Larry Sinclair but he’s actually going to appear to talk to Ann Coulter as well so it is guaranteed to be an interesting and memorable time on the radio. Ann Coulter, Larry Sinclair, and me — oh my!
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[ Click above to checkout $1.4 Billion Man on Amazon]
Earlier in the program, starting at 5pm CST, I’m going to interview John F. Groom about his new book $1.4 Billion Man. That’s the staggering sum spent on the Obama family to maintain their level of luxury in the White House!
You’re not going to want to miss that, because Groom is the guy who has painstakingly poured through records and obtained FOIA documents to determine where tax money is spent to support a lavish lifestyle for the Obamas; he looks at spending under other presidents too, but it’s particularly important between now and the election to make sure the public knows exactly how high on the hog the Obamas have been living on YOUR dime.
It’s a great two hours of radio tonight that starts with John F. Groom at 5pm and continues with Ann Coulter at 6pm.
Please tune in and listen…and also submit any questions you want asked below!
SCANDAL: Obama administration’s form letters with rubber stamp signatures to families of fallen soldiers — listen LIVE at 1030pm CST
What: The HillBuzz & Mrs. Fox Show
When: 1030pm CST on 10/9/2012
How to Listen: Click HERE for a live stream and click HERE later for the show archive
On a very special episode of the HillBuzz & Mrs. Fox show an irate Megan Fox talks about the dishonor Barack Obama heaps on the families of fallen men and women in uniform.
Form letters.
Rubber stamp signatures.
Phoning it in.
It’s a disgrace. Few people in the corrupt media are talking about it. You should be outraged.
Tune in for more at 1030pm CST tonight or listen to the show in archives later!
Marinka Peschmann and Stella Paul on tonight’s show: LISTEN live from 6pm CST!
What: Guest hosting “Through the Mirror” tonight 10/9/2012
When: 6pm CST tonight
How to listen: Click HERE for a livestream
I’m guest-hosting “Through the Mirror” this week and tonight’s guests will be two terrific authors.
Tune in to listen to us discuss their recent books.
Marinka Peschamann is the author of, “The Whistleblower”.
Stella Paul has just published, “What I Miss About America”.
Check them out on Amazon!
CLICK HERE to tune into the show at 6pm CST!
Rebel Evolution Movie: Film by Anna Zetchus Smith needs your help creating buzz
Please help create buzz for a great project by independent filmmaker Anna Zetchus Smith called “Rebel Evolution”, a new movie that takes a look at activists on both the conservative and leftist sides of the aisle.
The people featured in the film are: Brandon Darby, Joe England, Ted Hayes, Kevin DuJan, Bill Ayers, and AlfonZo Rachel.
I’m pretty sure that’s the only time my name has been on a poster next to Bill Ayers’, which is amusing to me. No doubt he’s as delighted as I am.
Anna released an early copy of the film to YouTube but I don’t know how long it will be available, so watch it HERE if you like.
Checkout the film’s website at: RebelEvolution.org
And please “Like” the project on Facebook too: www.facebook.com/RebelEvolution
It’s a very interesting film and Anna’s work is always top notch, so please help spread word about this movie to all your friends and contacts.
I really think you’ll enjoy it, as I had a good experience with Anna filming my part in it.
What Kind of Drugs is Barack Obama Doing? Listen LIVE on Radio at 6pm CST tonight!
What: Through the Mirror with Larry Sinclair
When: Thursday 10/4/2012 from 6pm – 7pm CST
How to Listen: Click HERE to listen live!
Tonight we’ll be talking about Barack Obama’s drug use…both before he went to Washington to join the US Senate, during his brief time as a Senator, and then in the White House.
What sort of drugs has he been on?
How much of last night’s debate disaster can be explained by drug abuse?
Where does Obama get his drugs and why does the Secret Service allow him to keep taking them?
Chime in below with any questions you’d like answered.
Tune in at 6pm CST tonight to listen to all the scoop!
How YOU can support our troops from home — Listen LIVE at 6pm CST tonight!
What: Through the Mirror with Larry Sinclair
When: 6pm – 7pm CST tonight, Tuesday 10/2/2012
How to listen: Click HERE to listen live
Tonight I’m guest-hosting for Larry Sinclair on his radio show while he’s working on a special project. My guest tonight is actually very special to me because she’s a personal hero of mine: Carolyn Blashek from Operation Gratitude. Click HERE for the OpGrat official site.
Honest to goodness, there have only been a few people in life that I got to meet that I walked away from the encounter in awe, knowing I’d really met a truly unique and American-original in this world. Carolyn is one of them. She is an angel on this Earth, while working with a servant’s heart and immense reservoirs of humility, charity, and kindness. Everything the nuns taught me someone should be when he or she grows up is exactly how Carolyn turned out…and then some!
What she’s managed to accomplish with Operation Gratitude is just amazing and though she’s too modest to ever say this herself, her efforts in sending care packages to men and women oversees have saved countless lives in strategically ingenious ways that even advanced body armor and all the weapons in the world couldn’t do. The troops who receive her care packages through Operation Gratitude give the candy and stuffed animals she sends over to war zones to the children who run around the villages…and kids tell the soldiers everything they need to stay alive in exchange for the sweets and toys. Villagers tell their children how to stay safe but won’t tell the American troops…but the kids give up all the terrorists’ secrets because they want the treats Carolyn sends to the soldiers. It is the most brilliant defensive act protecting our troops that I think anyone has ever conceived…and it was done by a suburban mom in California originally operating out of her own living room.
I put Carolyn Blashek up there with Abigail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, and Betsy Ross as American women whose genius, heart, and determination in times of war save the day repeatedly.
Great Merciful Zeus. Can you imagine it? A couple chocolate bars and some old Beanie Babies put into a box and send to Afghanistan changes a soldier’s combat destiny because this little bit of love and confection ends up unlocking the secret to keeping troops alive in areas riddled with land mines and snipers’ nests.
I just love that I got to meet Carolyn in person. AND I got a picture of Justin and me with her that I have framed on the wall by my desk. It’s right next to the one of Governor Sarah Palin and me because it’s that special.
It is my deepest dream that something I conceive ends up doing even a fraction of the good that Carolyn Blashek has done with her life so far.
