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[The Americans] - Espionage means never having to say "I'm sorry I didn't kill you."
SammyF
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Greetings, Comrades!
Back before Anna Chapman managed to make a name for herself with luscious curves and lousy tradecraft, the Комитет государственной безопасности (that's KGB to you) set up quite the little intelligence network collecting information on capitalist pig dogs like you and me. While much of the day to day operations involved embassy employees doing the boring work of servicing various and sundry dead letter boxes, when a more personal touch is needed -- when, oh, let's say, you need to abduct a Soviet defector and bundle him off in a Buick for a one way trip back to the Motherland -- you have to turn to someone who isn't connected to an embassy, someone without a diplomatic passport, someone the FBI will never think to surveil. The Intelligence community refers to these officers as deep cover NOCs.
We simply call them...
I think I heard about this show. Why should I watch it? It sounded kind of stupid.
Every show on FX sounds stupid until you sit down and watch it, right? But here's the thing about an espionage thriller when it's well done: it takes the abstract, the philosophical and the geopolitical and makes it deeply personal and intimate. The greatest threat to your existence isn't sitting in a missile silo on the other side of the planet -- maybe it just moved in across the street. Maybe it's even climbing out of your bed, making itself a cup of coffee and driving your kids to school.
...Did you not find that compelling? Okay, how about this: in the first episode, Keri Russell kicks a dude's head through a wall.
Let's go to the dossiers!
...the Honey Trap...
Cover Identity: Elizabeth Jennings
Real Name: Keri Russell
Recruited into the KGB as a teen during the 1960s, "Elizabeth" is the surviving daughter of a WWII Red Army soldier and a bookkeeper for a local party committee. A true believer, she's a by-the-book intelligence officer who will put the mission ahead of all other considerations as a matter of principle. Of course, as any good intelligence officer will tell you, every principle has its limits.
...the Operative...
Cover Identity: Philip Jennings
Real Name: Matthew Rhys
A master of disguise and a consummate deep cover agent. How deep? This Commie knows how fucking line dance. "Philip" first met his wife the day they were assigned to each other. It's an awkward way to meet someone with whom you're going to spend the rest of your natural life until you're killed or thrown in a hole by a counterintelligence officer, but "Philip" and "Elizabeth" seem to have adjusted: they have two American-born children, Paige and Henry. But whereas "Elizabeth" remains a true believer, "Philip" has always suspected since his first taste of the capitalist way of life that this eternal clandestine struggle for the Communist state may not be all it's cracked up to be. He may even be looking for an excuse to turn himself in and find some type of legitimacy for him and his family as a defector or double agent.
...the Hunter...
Cover Identity: Special Agent Stanley Beeman, FBI
Real Name: Noah Emmrich
Stan Beeman is a recent addition to the FBI's counterintelligence task force in Washington, D.C. His last assignment was as a deep cover agent monitoring domestic white supremacy groups -- in other words, he's spent years of his life posing as a K.K.K. member to keep the government apprised of their activities. As such, he's still adjusting to a lifestyle where he doesn't need to see constant threats from those around him, but he's also the ideal addition to a team that's seeking to identify and neutralize a recently acknowledged network of deep cover NOCs.
And it just so happens that he's moved in across the street from them.
Will it be as good as Homeland? I dunno, maybe. So far it looks like it at least won't be quite so far-fetched as Homeland, and there's a lot of potential with these characters.
It's worth at least a little surveillance, right?
The Americans airs Wednesday Night at 10 Eastern on FX. You can also catch the full pilot on FX's website and Hulu.
Back before Anna Chapman managed to make a name for herself with luscious curves and lousy tradecraft, the Комитет государственной безопасности (that's KGB to you) set up quite the little intelligence network collecting information on capitalist pig dogs like you and me. While much of the day to day operations involved embassy employees doing the boring work of servicing various and sundry dead letter boxes, when a more personal touch is needed -- when, oh, let's say, you need to abduct a Soviet defector and bundle him off in a Buick for a one way trip back to the Motherland -- you have to turn to someone who isn't connected to an embassy, someone without a diplomatic passport, someone the FBI will never think to surveil. The Intelligence community refers to these officers as deep cover NOCs.
We simply call them...
I think I heard about this show. Why should I watch it? It sounded kind of stupid.
Every show on FX sounds stupid until you sit down and watch it, right? But here's the thing about an espionage thriller when it's well done: it takes the abstract, the philosophical and the geopolitical and makes it deeply personal and intimate. The greatest threat to your existence isn't sitting in a missile silo on the other side of the planet -- maybe it just moved in across the street. Maybe it's even climbing out of your bed, making itself a cup of coffee and driving your kids to school.
...Did you not find that compelling? Okay, how about this: in the first episode, Keri Russell kicks a dude's head through a wall.
Let's go to the dossiers!
...the Honey Trap...
Cover Identity: Elizabeth Jennings
Real Name: Keri Russell
Recruited into the KGB as a teen during the 1960s, "Elizabeth" is the surviving daughter of a WWII Red Army soldier and a bookkeeper for a local party committee. A true believer, she's a by-the-book intelligence officer who will put the mission ahead of all other considerations as a matter of principle. Of course, as any good intelligence officer will tell you, every principle has its limits.
...the Operative...
Cover Identity: Philip Jennings
Real Name: Matthew Rhys
A master of disguise and a consummate deep cover agent. How deep? This Commie knows how fucking line dance. "Philip" first met his wife the day they were assigned to each other. It's an awkward way to meet someone with whom you're going to spend the rest of your natural life until you're killed or thrown in a hole by a counterintelligence officer, but "Philip" and "Elizabeth" seem to have adjusted: they have two American-born children, Paige and Henry. But whereas "Elizabeth" remains a true believer, "Philip" has always suspected since his first taste of the capitalist way of life that this eternal clandestine struggle for the Communist state may not be all it's cracked up to be. He may even be looking for an excuse to turn himself in and find some type of legitimacy for him and his family as a defector or double agent.
...the Hunter...
Cover Identity: Special Agent Stanley Beeman, FBI
Real Name: Noah Emmrich
Stan Beeman is a recent addition to the FBI's counterintelligence task force in Washington, D.C. His last assignment was as a deep cover agent monitoring domestic white supremacy groups -- in other words, he's spent years of his life posing as a K.K.K. member to keep the government apprised of their activities. As such, he's still adjusting to a lifestyle where he doesn't need to see constant threats from those around him, but he's also the ideal addition to a team that's seeking to identify and neutralize a recently acknowledged network of deep cover NOCs.
And it just so happens that he's moved in across the street from them.
Will it be as good as Homeland? I dunno, maybe. So far it looks like it at least won't be quite so far-fetched as Homeland, and there's a lot of potential with these characters.
It's worth at least a little surveillance, right?
The Americans airs Wednesday Night at 10 Eastern on FX. You can also catch the full pilot on FX's website and Hulu.
SammyF on
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So shut up and watch an encore presentation so I can change the title to something about sticking a finger up your asshole and you'll know what that means.
How quaint.
Given the usual pilot:series quality ratio, this show is going to be good as fuck.
There are a lot of things about the pilot that I just flipping loved, but I particularly liked how they used the two fight scenes to define Keri Russell's character:
And then you get to the fight in the garage, and she turns out to be a total fucking bad ass. That head through the wall bit made Maggie Q's Nikita look like a chump.
I also love the framing of the last two shots as Beeman leaves the garage. The foreground shot of Philip was graphic novel-esque.
And the song from the abduction scene is going to be my new ringtone.
Which is one thing I'm really impressed by, is the costume and props for this series so far. Totally bought into the period setting. Also Keri Russell in mom jeans. Must watch.
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The garage at the end was awesome. I jumped a bit when the flashlight played over Philip's face (in the background) for like half a second.
And yeah, the whole opening was amazing, and the choice of song was spot-on.
There are a lot of really great period details that add a lot of authenticity to the setting. I was super eager to watch this show because, uh, this is actually kind of what the early 80s were like for my family. My mom taught graduate students at the time, and since she was the youngest PhD in the department, she was always asked to host visiting Soviet scientists when they came to the university for conferences. They always wanted to do two things: go to a shopping mall, and dump out everything in their stupid cardboard suitcase and refill it with those hideous waist cinching mom jeans Keri Russell was wearing.
Seeing air conditioners everywhere did blow their minds. The FBI really did break into garages without obtaining search warrants--they didn't need to visit a FISA judge until 24 hours later--and when they caught a NOC, the Soviet officer was frequently relieved to realize that if he played ball, he wouldn't have to go home.
There's plenty here that's far fetched or contrived, but there's a lot of authenticity where it counts.
Oh shit, I should probably put salient details like when it's on in the OP, huh.
1) It seemed a little southern-gothic-grotesque and over the top as a portrayal of the Soviet spy system. Did they really get to rape their recruits as a standard operating procedure 'perk' of the job? One of the things I had been looking forward to in this show was a more nuanced portrayal of the Cold War, since, of course, our protagonists are the 'bad guys' from the standard story. But no such luck. The Soviets are grim, cruel, and ruthless, and America is the land of bright shinies, patriotism, and working A/C--yawn.
2) Of course, it's very neat and tidy that the same guy who once raped Elizabeth would also happen to be the one who defects in her backyard. This was a fairly hokey contrivance.
3) Elizabeth is, as she vehemently screams, an officer of the KGB. And she is absolutely supposed to be a total badass. But when she's confronted with her former rapist, she completely falls apart--she can't handle her mission anymore and she's totally off her game. She immediately wants to kill the mission target when they aren't under any pressure. She offers to let her husband defect! Where are her nerves of steel? Where is the absolute, fervent devotion to the Soviet cause which is supposed to define her character? It rang false to me, and furthermore, false in a sort of icky way, where it plays into the idea that rape is the ultimate power that men have over women, that raped women are 'broken' and etc.
4) The 'sexual healing' after they disposed of the body grossed me out. It struck me as an instance of the trope wherein the male protagonist 'saves' a whore, or rape victim, or whatnot, and then she owes/repays him with tender gratitude-sex. This is a common storyline, and oh boy is it gross.
Hopefully, that Very Bad Thing fades into the background as the show goes on and I can just enjoy the spytastic 80's espionage.
As such, I have little problem with the idea that rape of female operatives in the USSR would have been a problem, particularly winding the clock back fifty years. And especially if somebody got it into their head that it might be a necessary part of their "training" to make it easier for them to use sex as necessary while on the job. So I didn't find (1) as objectionable as you did...also, I think they tried to add at least some nuance, by having Elizabeth speak from her POV about America, and Reagan, and the idea that if you actually believed in the USSR a guy like Reagan was scary as fuck. And that some people really did believe, it wasn't all just people beaten down and submitting to the regime out of fear.
For (2), I didn't get the impression that this was their first job. It's not crazy that their paths would cross again like that. And, uh, it's a TV show. If you can't accept some contrivance, read a history book instead.
(3) and (4) I'll give you, especially (4).
Your first point seems fair, and I should clarify that
On that point: it's also true, as you point out, that they included a little bit of the Soviet POV from both Elizabeth and the general she meets at the conclusion of the episode, and I did actually think that those scenes, when they arose, did a lot to help the show. The problem was just that those scenes were on the balance underrepresented and underdeveloped. Overall it seemed pretty disappointingly clear where the narrative sympathies lay.
See, I still find it completely plausible that it would be institutionalized to the extent that, for at least some period, it was considered a "perk of the job." And, as much as you might like nuance, that seems like it would be a predictable side-effect of a society and government in which dissent is heavily punished...mid-level and even low-level officials can suddenly wield quite a bit of power. Especially with much of the population still coming off the Stalinist era (her training was what, 62 or 64?). I saw no indication that such things were still happening in 1981.
As for narrative sympathies...well, sorry, at the end of the day we did win and the Soviet system on the whole was pretty fucking bad. We weren't (and aren't) perfect, and they weren't pure evil, but don't be surprised if the Soviet world (and particularly the world of Soviet espionage) is portrayed as being a bit grim. I mean, duh.
I have a feeling, too, that we'll move rapidly away from that Very Bad Experience and perhaps then perhaps you'll find less issue with it. I do agree it colored this episode very heavily.
Agree with all of this, but I did like that:
Also I thought all the make-up/costume/wig stuff they did throughout the episode was really good.
This tension they're establishing is going to manifest itself in the Jennings' marriage because each officer is predisposed towards one side of the coin or the other, and I think that's what's going to make this show worth coming back to week in and week out. How do two people who depend so much upon one another manage to make things work when all of this tension keeps trying to pull them apart?
Nice one Sammy.
The KGB was unmatched in their ruthlessness at Spycraft. One of their most popular tactics the Honeypot was having a female agent seduce a diplomat and take compromising pictures of the diplomat having sex with the agent. The KGB's main weakness was its corruption, with operatives using their position in society to enrich themselves and abuse people. It lead to several agents defecting out of disgust.
Everything in the pilot was dead on in that regard.
I am thinking back however, wasn't this around the time Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen where betraying the US? Reading up on wikipedia, Ames was watch Soviet Embassy personnel and Robert Hanssen was part of the FBI's counter inteligence in Washington DC in 1981. Both of them should be in working with the FBI agent! Be funny how they play that.
This is also the tail end of John Walker's career as a traitor, and while he lived down in Virginia Beach, his dead drops were all in Arlington due to a funny little fluke in the law that restricted a Soviet embassy staffer's diplomatic privileges to an area surrounding the Russian embassy with a radius of 25 miles.
Ames, Hansen and Walker were all embassy walk-ins who were handled by officers with diplomatic credentials. It would take a lot of fact jiggling to justify involving a NOC in their cases.
He had:
:v:
Definitely not enough for a FISA warrant but the FBI broke into my parent's garage to plant a listening device with even less.
The presence of the...
The KGB didn't really have "generals" the way the modern FSB or the US military has general officers, but it did have generals from the army who were high ranking officers in certain departments. Sneaking a veteran army commander into the mix just seems even worse.
Maybe they got it confused with general officers in the Border Troops, who were part of the Committee for State Security, but an entirely separate agency in effect, to the point where they even had their own uniforms. @SammyF summed it up well--I absolutely understand why he's there, but the actual how is kind of glaring. They could have just made him a senior agent or officer or something of the sort.
Still, while it bothered me, I thought it was a good pilot.
It looks good. I remember getting a chuckle from the scene in the 1960s when they're enamored with air conditioning--I grew up in the 1980s, and didn't have A/C either until quite some time later. It looks like they're getting permission to shoot certain scenes (not in the pilot though) in Russia proper, which is always impressive.
The thing was, mom was just a liberal academic, but dad was an executive at a defense firm so while they didn't have enough to get a warrant, I understand why they did it.
She called herself a "KGB officer", which would literally mean she received a commission. Which is certainly plausible. If you discount the Border Troops, there were probably far more unranked civilian employees in the KGB than commissioned officers.
They do the same thing in the NSB in Taiwan--you're an officer if you're an actual officer, otherwise you're an "employee" or something. Is it the same in the CIA? Or is there some generic term? I imagine that, in the FBI, you are in effect a federal officer, so that solves that.
Incidentally the guy who wrote this pilot is a former CIA officer.
Boy that's gotta make you feel pretty silly, to spend 30 years undercover and your nation ceases to exist
This is actually what I thought the show was gonna be about from the ad campaign (and was disappointed when it wasn't, because that sounds like a cool show).
I think it's worth remembering that sort of thing was half-way between a fluke and a fictional situation. In the grand sum of the intelligence game, as far as I've learned and been told, "30-years undercover" is an exceptionally rare situation. Indeed, the compelling situation of The Americans either 1) didn't really happen or 2) happened once, compared to a hundred cases of short term infiltration (say, a few months) and even more cases of bribery and blackmail. Everything I've read suggests the Soviet intelligence community--the KGB, the General Staff's intelligence bodies, the think tanks in the Academy of Sciences--benefited way more from dissatisfied Americans or people who just wanted money combined with high-tech eavesdropping (there's a reason why things like the Grand Seal bug are so infamous).
Which is not to say such infiltration didn't exist (and not discounting what we don't know). It did (though I'm almost certain said "sleepers" usually posed as recent immigrants from Poland, Hungary, West Germany or central Asia--not as born-and-raised American nationals), but it was kind of a blip compared to the huge dependency on actual Americans who were sending over information for whatever reason, intentionally or otherwise. There's a reason why (British) Kim Philby was the greatest KGB asset ever. I think the situation was similar for the Americans as well, and both sides relying on different technological toys to provide information that had to be screened back home for relevance. The plot of The Americans is just way more interesting than watching some guy run around the east coast, dropping bags of cash and sending out black-mail letters, cutting his hair like Tom Selleck.
There was probably no one really to feel silly about it. Or not many--In 1992, there were a quarter million men and women in the Soviet Border Troops (technically answerable to the KGB) who just learned that their bosses had changed--that's a problem.