FX Debuts TV Show About Communist Couple Pretending to Be All-American Family
The show was created by Joe Weisberg, the brother of liberal journalist and editor-in-chief of the Slate group Jacob Weisberg. Its producers evidently want American audiences to root for the Soviet agents to win! Executive producer Joel Fields actually told The Hollywood Reporter that “it might be a little different to believe and get used to, but we want you to root for the KGB. They’re trying to get the Soviets to win the Cold War.” As the trade paper commented, believe it or not,
the creative team behind the high-profile launch expressed a confidence that more than enough time has passed for American audiences to not hold a grudge.
It is hard to believe, given the script and the reactions one has as the show develops, to think that any viewer would actually be rooting for the Soviets. Even if a young audience knows nothing about Communism and the Cold War, what each episode to date reveals is the horrendous immorality of the Soviet agents. The couple, who dote upon their own children and always worry what would happen to them if they are caught by the FBI — remember that their children have no idea who their parents really are, and were born in the U.S. and raised as regular American kids — are willing to poison a maid’s son and let him die if need be to get a bug into the secretary of Defense’s home. They have no scruples at all. They eventually murder the defecting KGB agent in cold blood, after having locked him in their car trunk for a few days.
Indeed, the tension between the KGB husband and wife is that the husband thinks at times that they too should defect, get witness-protection identities, and live normal lives with new names so they no longer have to engage in horrendous acts for the Soviet spy agency. Phillip Jennings loves what America has to offer, from cowboy boots to modern technology, while Elizabeth is a loyal Communist who does not want to betray Moscow, “our country,” as she refers to Russia. She also does not want her children to grow up in the American consumer culture. At a secret meeting with her KGB control, she even considers ratting on her husband because of his doubts, and pledges to her boss that she will do whatever is necessary for Moscow Center. At one point, Phillip tells Elizabeth that if they defect, perhaps their children would be alright and would “grow up to be socialists.” Elizabeth does not buy this for one moment, and obviously hopes for the eventual triumph of world Communism. As Alyssa Rosenberg writes in Slate, the 13-year-old Paige
can’t possibly understand that her mother is terrified by the prospect that the daughter she hoped would grow up to be something other than a “regular American” is abandoning not just childhood, but Elizabeth’s own socialist values, lured by patent-leather blue sandals and bright red bras.
Creator Weisberg revealed his own bias when he told the trade journal that “these were really competing value systems. And there’s no question that repressive socialism failed, but unbridled consumption hasn’t exactly led to great satisfaction.” Note the term “repressive” socialism; the usage by Weisberg implies that the non-repressive type would be different and lead to better results. Tell that to the writers and producers of HBO’s monster hit The Sopranos. Today’s Wall Street Journal runs a story about how Robin Green and Mitchell Burgess have spent millions renovating their 2 million dollar Greenwich Village brownstone three times, so they could get it perfect. Evidently, they had great satisfaction and are very happy accomplishing what money allowed them to do. I hope Weisberg will get equal satisfaction from the proceeds from The Americans, without socialism prohibiting him from doing so.
It’s not a bad show. I’m surprised at their hope to “root for the KGB”. Like all bad guys in stories, we see them as people, with hopes and dreams not unlike the good guys. Only they poison black kids and blackmail their mother to commit treason.
It was interesting with the defector, a senior KGB officer. Who had raped Keri Russell’s character in training, as he explains, a perk given to officers, the use of cadets. They do tone down the murder when she stops herself from killing him, her husband kills the defector instead of surrendering to the FBI for her because of the earlier abuse.
It will be interesting if they introduce KGB/soviet influences that are not frozen in the 1960s, when this couple came to the US. As any expat, they are clueless about what the USSR is really like in 1981 as they cling to their general to maintain their link.
Maybe it’s my old age, knowing of the USSR in real time, but I don’t see the show being all the complementary to socialism, repressive or not. But then I always thought the KGB agents were luckier than CIA agents. They got to come to the West and enjoy all the fruits of capitalism even as they worked to destroy it, whereas any CIA agent in the Soviet Bloc had to live a life of deprivation, assuming they didn’t work their way fairly high up into the Communist Party.
“It’s not a bad show. I’m surprised at their hope to “root for the KGB”. ”
Really? Look at the cable series Dexter and how many people find the lead character likable. Some actually describe him as “the likable serial killer”.
I expect the producers’ logic was something along the lines of “If you can like a serial killer, why not a Soviet spy?”
Your attempt at comedy, satire or irony in your sub-head is pathetic, pandering and un-funny.
Why do you choose to describe the maid as African-American, as opposed to “God-fearing,” “single-mother,” or “portly?” What is the race of all the other characters you mention?
I believe the parents “ferry” their kids to school, but maybe an author of 14 books knows newer usages for “ferreting.”
Obviously you are envious of the money made in television by Green and Burgess and potentially Weisberg, since the Hudson Institute and pjmedia don’t pay residuals, rerun money and worldwide usage.
I’m glad you like the show.
Yes, that would explain why Roger Simon writes for PJ. It’s all about the money for you, isn’t it?
As for the reference to Obama, you may have — arguably — a point depending on your inclinations, but as an indirect inference it is spot on. I am amazed that, when discussing the show (and I like it, for several reasons) how many younger people — victims of public education — haven’t a clue about the Cold War.
Sounds as if they’re trying for a KGB version of “The Sopranos”, where we were set up to root for the title character even as he killed his enemies and sometimes his friends. While there is something to Mafia Chic — see John Gotti in the 1980s — it will be hard for Weisberg & Co. to make viewers sympathetic about The Cause, unless they want to start making life back in the Soviet Union sound as comical as its most fervent supporters tried to claim it is in the early days of the USSR.
A bit dates. How about they bring it up to date with a show about a nice jihad family next door?
Well, “The Simpsons” did have an episode featuring a Muslim family living next door. They made sure to portray them as very nice people. And those explosives Homer stumbled on in the man’s garage? Homer, obviously an Islamophobe, simply jumped to conclusions. The man, we learn later, was just a demolitions engineer. Doh!
And why did they not subject the Muslims to the same spoofing they do the Christians, the Jews, and the Hindus? Fear. The folks behind the program admitted as much in a feature article in Moment Magazine some years ago.
They might be communist but they are stupid. Are they cowards? definitely. They know what happens if they insult Muslims or Islam.
The wife is a conservative patriot and the husband is a more liberal
sceptic growing enamoured with a foreign culture.
Perspective is indeed relative.
The show subtly raises interesting meditations about belief, principles,
and loyalty.
I rather liked it.
Even though the husband may voice thoughtcrime, he still gets the job
very much done. As ruthless and pragmatic as the wife, when necessary.
And every bit as cruel, violent, dogmatic and Communist. Communism is a way of dying, not of living. It takes a weak mind not to realize that it is a system of feudalism for the common man and one of royalty and privilege for the high level party member. Hardly a system to emulate here, as our television propagandists so fondly wish.
OMG, Communists! Seriously, are we trying to revive the 1950s Cold War menace of communists? We have Muslims and Mexicans to get hysterical about these days, get with the program. For goodness sakes, stop being afraid.
I guess the communists at the upper echelons of our government don’t bother you that much.
The Communist party of America is very much involved with the porous nature of our Mexican border and the jihadist Muslims. They are brothers in arms -a means to an end. The end, if you have not figured it out, is the end of America. China, Russia and the 57 Muslim states are working hard for our destruction right now and propaganda is just one tool in their arsenal. Don’t be so easily misled.
The Communist party of America is very much involved with the porous nature of our Mexican border and the jihadist movement.They are brothers in arms -a means to an end. The end, if you have not figured it out, is the end of America. China, Russia and the 57 Islamic states are working hard for our destruction right now and propaganda is just one tool in their arsenal. Don’t be so easily lulled into complacency.
The poster makes it look like the guys is trying to shoot his wife in the head.
“hard to believe that the producers want the audience to root for the KGB agents”.
No, not when 51% of the voters re-elected Obama.
That’s as far as I got. I have the time to read the whole thing, but not the stomach.
So Communists are the main characters, and we’re supposed to root for them? Nice try. Richard III and Macbeth were protagonists, too.
SCHOOL SUXS: The American Way
Don’t let the title fool you. This video is actually about how government-run schooling contributed to the rise of socialism, imperialism and eventually fascism in Germany between the 1890s and 1940s.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okPnDZ1Txlo&playnext=1&list=PL9325A6657749C526&feature=results_main
Two episodes in, I’m quite enjoying it. I think you miss something Ron, when you describe the murder of the defector as being “in cold blood.” Phillip, the husband, couldn’t understand why his “wife” was being so cold to him, even threatening (pulling a knife in the kitchen). When he does finally realize why this man upsets Elizabeth so, he kills him as a husband defending or avenging his wife. You can see the change it brings about in their relationship: not just the sex in the car after disposing of the body, but at the end, where she tells him her real name and background, something they had been forbidden to reveal to each other.
I never watched the Sopranos, but I can see the point about the contrast between the vile things they have to do on their missions and the care they show for their children, Phillip’s attraction to American life, &c. It makes for great personal conflict, the microcosm within the macrocosm of the Soviet-American Cold War.
It’s a shame if the creator really is a relativist and wants to show the two sides as not that different from each other. That would probably entail spoiling the Noah Emmerich’s character. (I was a bit concerned when he mildly roughed up the guy in the electronics shop.) What I’d like to see, if the series survives, is for Phillip and Elizabeth to come to realize the true nature of the wretched system they serve, perhaps eventually defecting, as Phillip suggests. They’re the classic “good people required to do bad things,” but justifying it as necessary for a good cause. (They’re good because it’s clear they have consciences, even if they set them aside, something that’s becoming harder for Phillip.) The realization that the awful things they’ve done have been the service of something itself awful would make for great drama.
Two episodes in, they have me hooked enough to keep tuning in, unlike the other highly-hyped January show, The Following.
It beats Alligator killing or Catfish grabbing.
I remember watching reruns of “I Let Three Lives” when I was in college. Anyone remember that show? “This is the story—the fantastically true story—of Herbert A. Philbrick, who for 9 frightening years did lead 3 lives; average citizen, communist, and counterspy for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” Hokey show, but you had no doubt as to who the “good guys” were.
I remember watching a series of “24″ a while back, in which a family of Islamic terrorists were portrayed with sympathy. Yes, some of them were wrongheaded, don’t you know—but they were passionate, too. And inevitably, there was some sympathy for the enemy thus humanized.
We now have a population more historically ignorant than ever before. For many of them, the Cold War and the evil of the Soviet Union are the stuff of distant memory at best, or more likely of legend. And we now have a show that depicts Soviet agents as the central characters? That is appalling. Even if the parents are shown to be utter monsters, there will inevitably be sympathy for them merely because they are the central characters.
Who gives a damn about the inner conflicts of enemy agents? Why are we being invited to sympathize with them? What the hell ever happened to depicting our own people in a sympathetic light?
Nelson DeMille wrote a book several years ago title “Charm School”. It was about an American town the Russians had built that had everything any town here would have,schools,stores, churches,etc. Every one spoke English and could tell you anything you wanted to know about Hollywood,football,baseball. When they were ready, they were smuggled into the states to wait until they were needed. I’ve often wondered about several of our most outspoken progressives..
There is room along side the reflecting pool in Washington DC for Obama to erect a monument to Stalin.
I watched part of the first show. It was more than I could take
Hmmmm. Doesn’t sound believable. I think these deep-cover “illegals” turn out to be a waste of money and effort in real-life. It depends. The Cuban sleepers worked their way up in intelligence circles as translators but the russkies led “ordinary” lives and never accomplished much of anything. I still think Anna Chapman took her country for ride at its expense, living the glamorous life while doing business on the FSB’s dime. I know that one of the couples was so bad at acting American they had the whole neighborhood gossiping behind their backs. I don’t know how many of those odd jobs any of them actually did, i.e. renting cars and apartments, message drops, driving agents around, surveillance, planting bugs, etc., but I don’t think it amounted to much.
I think you’re on to something here. There’s all the difference in the world between working at a real job — really being concerned with doing it well and staying employed — and on the other hand pretending to work a job — a job you don’t have to do very well or worry about losing because you’re really being supported by the Russian government.
I think it unlikely that the KGB and its successors would be indifferent to the performance of its illegals. They spent a lot of money to train them and surely must have had some expectations of them. I can’t picture them just sitting idly by if their agents were as inactive as described. (I’m talking about the real-life sleeper agents that were caught in 2010, not the ones depicted on The Americans.)
I think it’s more likely that they did considerably more damage than the current administration is letting on. I suspect they’ve downplayed the damage so that no one would realize how much damage they’d done since some of that would surely reflect badly on the current administration.
Perhaps they only rounded up the tip of the iceberg and other sleepers are still at work, high in the administration. Maybe right at the top if some people are correct in their suspicions.
I’ll always think of 1987′s “Little Nikita” as the final word on that genre. River Phoenix was so dreamy as the teenage son who finds out his parents are spis.
Or the Kevin Cosnter flick Now Way Out.
Although I’m such a big anti-communist that I probably would have satiated my desire for a roasted potato by asking Julius Rosenberg to hold a spud for me as they put him in the electric chair, I don’t seem to find this type of show that interesting. I guess it’s too much of an action/violence type of production whereas real espionage is rarely like that. Movies like “Tinker, Taylor, Soldier Spy” or “Game, Set, Match” are much more realistic and give a better idea of what real espionage during the Cold War was all about. Another great example was a play that came out in 1983 called “Pack of Lies,” which was based on a true story about a couple living in England and their next door neighbors really were Soviet agents. It was a shattering story of betrayal and very well done. So I guess I’m more into realism, rather than those “shoot-em-up” action pics that are popular today.
Absolutely love TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY – seven viewings and counting – flawless acting up and down – the way they used the french pop sensation of the 60′s to overdub Mark Strongs ‘dutiful’ assassination of the traitor Colin Firth -and the quick cut collage of scenes ending with Oldman’s Smiley back in the head chair – brilliant filmmaking. Each viewing a new subtlty emerges. Can’t get enough of this movie.
Which makes it a bit unfair to compare with what FX is trying here. I got to say even though I am going to watch I don’t have much hope that it is going to get any better nor draw much of an audience for long. And it’s isn’t because the acting isn’t good or they have shorted the show budget wise or anything.
I just don’t think it’s going to attract much interest. No matter how much progressives loath it, history is history. Reagan said it best; ‘we win they lose.’ The beauty was in the doing.
Little historical tidbits like millions dying world wide are a much bigger ‘creative’ hurddle than say an award winning gay playwrite getting into a twitter tissy fit with a congressman over that congressmans states actual stance regarding Lincoln’s political handling of emancipation in the midst of civil war.
Not that anyone should get surprised that the Bullies in Hollywood rarely miss an oppertunity to know or see the difference.
Basically this show is FX Channels desperate attempt to become relevant when AMC channel has been slaughtering it (and most others) concerning original creative drama.
Unsurprisingly in it’s desperation to do so it went with a particularly hollywood left-centric narrative – Sleeper Soviets VS Evil FBI during a particularly dark time (for the left) in America – ….
…When Reagan not only was ressurecting American style Capitalism here as well as abroad…but was literally seducing the Soviet Empire to implode via an arms race thereby topping off fifty plus years of successive administrations devoted to just such an end after winning the good war.
Again, stick with a big screen offering that not only gets the period right – but also the ending.
I agree about “Tinker …” — superb and enormous attention to detail for those who know to look for it. I was hooked right from the beginning with the green ink.
I would compare it in some ways to “Hunt for Red October”. The detail and some of the seemingly throw-away comments are stunning (except for the sonar displays — no way for the audience to relate if they had the real garlic paper). The vast majority of the audience didn’t know what they were looking at, just paid attention to the drama, but if you are one of the few, then you’d be convinced that this was a production of ONI in conjunction with the Red Banner Northern Fleet.
Both films are based on actual events. For that matter, so is “The Americans”.
*Spoiler Alert*
The book the Amerikans which this show is based off could get its wish of the KGB spies being the heros. Also getting to destroy the image of Reagan too by defeating him. In the books an EMP destroyed America’s infrastructure. The Soviets swooped in to help. They annihilated American society from the inside. (Sound familiar).
They taught American children to live for the service and the Party. They showed American society as weak and easily manipulated to abandoned the ideals of well everything about the United States. These writers can create their fantasy of a defeated America and a victorious communist revolution.
*Spoiler Alert End*
While the books the Amerikans were set in the late seventies it can be adapted to fit the desires of the shows producers. A way to make their utopian dreams a reality. It is the first step of creating the dream, indoctrination.
So exactly how long should it take this couple to figure out that everything they’d been told about this country was false? It would be sort of hard not to notice that the “oppressed workers” were driving around in cars, living in their own houses, and sending their kids off to college.
Viktor Belenko was a MiG-25 pilot who defected in the mid-70s, fed up with repression. We debriefed him for a few months and then turned him loose for a while because he wanted to tour America and see it first-hand.
He had a fascination for supermarkets: at first, he thought that the one he was shown was a prop, like a Potemkin village, until he later realized it was all true. At one point he bought a can some sort of meat product and cooked it up as a sort of fricassee, and loved it. One of his handlers later told him it was cat food. Belenko said it was better than any canned meat product in the Soviet Union.
He absolutely loves America.
As someone whose grandparents were imprisoned in Stalinist Siberia and whose parents experienced in full the wonders of Romanian socialism, didn’t watch the first installments (I believe FX aired 2 episodes so far), but judging from the replies, it looks interesting (in a way) so maybe I’ll bring myself and watch if my stomach can handle it.
Hmm… I watched the second episode. If Weisberg’s goal is to have the viewers sympathize with the KGB agents, I think the show’s writers are subtly undercutting that goal. I found the protaganists interesting in a way but unsympathetic; I had far more emphaty with the woman whom they blackmailed. We’ll see where it goes.
Also, a lot of the cultural references don’t ring true to me. The show is supposed to be set in the ’80s, but there’s a lot of sixties in it.
I didn’t see myself being to sympathetic either. While they were doting parents and loyal to a fault to their country, they are also sociopaths doing evil things.
So far we’ve seen small scenes that reveal a lot about the socialist system these two come from. In flashbacks, the husband had to tear up a picture of his apparent sweetheart as he was taken in to meet his wife. The wife was raped by a training officer and learns, all those years later, it wasn’t personal, just that the state gave the officers free access to the cadets as a perk.
I really can’t see this show not having to deal with them increasingly questioning their beliefs, especially as the situation becomes more desperate as Reagan’s pressure has affect on the USSR.
There ARE some scenes set in the 60s, like when the couple are first recruited and when they first land in America. (One of the clips in the stories shows them getting out of a cab in Virginia and marvelling over the air conditioner in the motel room.) There are titles at the start of those scenes indicating the year. Perhaps you missed them?
The show’s basic theme almost has to end up being how the parents are betraying the kids on the most profound level by lying to them about who they are and what they do for a living. Certainly that’s where it seems to be heading after watching the first two episodes. Even the Soprano children had a basic idea of what was really going on even though they spent a lot of effort trying to ignore it.
This craziness put me in mind of the British miniseries Sleepers, from the early ’90s. Nigel Havers and Warren Clarke played KGB sleeper agents in London who suddenly get activation orders … but in the meantime they’ve come to love their British lives, so they go on the run. Well played and very funny in the best BBC comedy tradition. Pity that no one else seems to remember it.
As for watching Keri Russell’s attempt to ruin her career, well, life is too busy for yet another TV show anyway. Doesn’t everyone have more gratifying and useful things to do than waste another hour every week? Heck, 4 shows a week is about all I can manage at present, and those slots are filled.
I remember. I would have replied that this plot was funnier as “Sleepers” (not the Woody Allen movie) twenty years ago. There is also a serious drama about this situation called “Pack of Lies” wherein Teri Garr (yes, that Teri Garr) is the Soviet spy.
Throw enough product on the screen, and maybe something will stick. Who would have predicted that a show about nothing, Seinfeld, would be on air for a decade?
Communists as the good guys? These producers need to meet some true believers:
Back in the mid-80′s, I picked up 2 relatives of my spouse from an airport in Florida. They were both Cuban and were only in town for a couple days to attend a funeral.
The mother was a party official and a true believer from the Revolution(Americans are fat, lazy, decadent, stupid, blah blah). The daughter, a teenager, also spouted that nonsense, but didn’t sound as sincere.
On the drive home, the daughter commented that they hadn’t had anything to eat or drink since getting to the airport that morning, and could she get some water. I offered to stop, but the mother insisted that we keep driving. Finally I had enough of their bickering and stopped at a convenience store. I had the daughter come in with me to get a bottle of water, while the mother harped loudly from the car.
When the daughter walked into the store, she almost fainted. There was air conditioning, food products stacked on all shelves, and a wall of refrigerated display, with water, soda, milk, etc. She asked if this store was somehow reserved for government officials, and I told her that the store was open to everyone. If she didn’t believe me, I offered to drive in any direction and show her another store.
We only got a bottle of water, then got back into the car. The mother and daughter stared at each other, and we completed the trip in complete silence. After the funeral, the mother insisted that a different relative drive them back to the airport for their return trip.
The daughter managed to get on a flight to the US a couple years later, and never went back. She and her family live in New Jersey.
The mother still lives in Cuba, and still believes wholeheartedly in the Revolution. Just like the producers of this bilge.
I think this would make a good movie.
But it’s gotta have Andy Garcia in it…Mebbe Gloria Estefan in it too (I hear she can act).
I visited my cousin in Soviet Russia during the early Gorbachev years, we had in our luggage various gifts (jeans, t-shirts, candies, even bags of potato chips-but not too much such stuff because it was usually confiscated at the customs).
When we reached their Moscow apartment and enter the door, his son said: ‘it smells like pineapple’. I almost forgot I had a pineapple can in my travel suitcase but the little one was able to smell it.
Today and then, when I see people in the West gushing about socialism and its various stripes, I feel like breaking their neck. Those socialist-chic or champagne socialists have never visited those countries to experience how real life was, and yet they talk about it with insufferable arrogance.
Walking the streets of Moscow or Bucharest during those days, you could actually see the Darkness everywhere especially on people’s faces. Large stores with big windows and yet nothing inside, large numbers of people walking showing clear signs of clinical depression. And it felt like cold; not weather-cold but some terrifying chill creeping to your spine.
And we were always hushing while speaking, even inside the house, because you never knew who’s listening.
I’d like to see those bastards who glorify this, put back in a time machine and be forced to live there: power outages, spending 5-6 hours in line to buy a bread or having hot water once a week for only a few hours.
You’ve got to click on over to YouTube.com and enter “INXS, never tear us apart” One of the two Prague-filmed videos from their 1987 “Kick” album.
I’ve raved about this before. There wasn’t an ounce of political content in the lyrics or the footage, just lead singer Michael Hutchence and the band wandering the drab, wintry streets, parks and cemeteries of the crumbling capital as he sings the ballad whilst the shabby-genteel local population seems to sleepwalk past them. The gray, chilly, atmosphere of sheer totalitarian ennui could have been bottled and sold.
The wonderful movie “Amadeus” was filmed in Prague during the Cold War. Of course, there were people from the StB working with the crew to make sure they stayed in line. At one point on set in the theater where Mozart had been, just after filming a scene on July 4th, almost the entire crew broke out in the Star-Spangled Banner, in English. It quickly became obvious who the StB agents were because they were dumbstruck, frantic that they had lost control but unable to stop it. Milos Forman said that the Czechs knew our national anthem better than the Americans — it was beautiful.
Years ago, I worked with a woman of Hungarian descent. She told me about a visit from a Hungarian relative. The thing that most astounded the visitor was the supermarket, overflowing with a huge variety of good food. She too wondered if this supermarket was reserved for top party officials and was stunned to find that it was open to everyone.
Given the premise of the show, maybe it should have been called “The Clintons” or “The Obamas.”
Hollywood’s version of a patriotic American TV show, total crap as usual.
Tail gunner Joe was right, the entertainment and film industry was and still is populated by communist and fools.
I enjoy the show, brings back memories of the 80′s and being a security officer briefing my people on “there really are spies out there” … except…
If you are going to run a show longer than 1 hour YOU OUGHT TO FREAKIN’ TELL SOMEBODY ABOUT IT! Especially with the idiot people at both the local newspaper and local cable outfit doing the usual incompetent job of showing the TV listings. I recorded the first two episodes only to have them cut off before the end, even though I set the DVD recorder to run a minute past the end of the hour.
So how long is the show? I set the recorder to run to 10 min after the hour in hopes of finally catching the end of one.
I share your frustration with those who publish TV listings and fail to correctly state the running times of programs.
For what it’s worth, the first episode ran one hour and eight minutes after the commercials were edited out. I’m not sure how long it ran with the commercials. The second episode ran 47 minutes after the commercials were edited out. I read that unlike the old broadcast networks, FX often lets a show run long. For example, five of the thirteen Sons of Anarchy episodes this past year ran long. You may want to watch out when recording future episodes of FX series like The Americans. Cable networks like FX operate under somewhat different rules than broadcast networks like ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox.
Mr. Weisberg’s antidote to consumer culture is non-repressive socialism, which I believe is a figment of his imagination. Proof of this is Western Europe where they fight to maintain 5 week vacations in the face of economic collapse. The social welfare state makes people incredibly materialistic.
My antidote is christianity which teaches us that our savior was born in a manger.
The best part of the second episode was seeing the look of fear and horror on the top communists’ faces when they heard that Reagan was serious about developing anti-missile defense systems. They knew their economy and its associated military-weapon’s complex was, after decades of communism, too ramshackle to counter this sort of weapon system. That’s the sort of thing Reagan was counting on and suggests that to a certain extent he didn’t really care how many spies the Soviet’s had in place.
Also, as someone who has watched his share of spy movies, if the maid had in fact confessed to what was going on, wouldn’t the defense big-wig (her employer) just have asked her to carry on as planned — allowing her to get the antidote for her son from the Soviet spies — and used the planted bug to feed disinformation to the Soviets? Even if the Soviets caught on to the disinformation after a while, they couldn’t really blame the maid because there was every chance of the bug being detected during a routine sweep, which the maid couldn’t be expected to prevent, and after detection being used to feed disinformation.
Yes, DASE sweeps were common before such meetings. The shows are based on true incidents, but they have to be Hollywood-ized to be understandable to the audience of today.