 I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech. Steve Gutman joins me today and I'm going to review the Americans. So, Steve, in terms of your walk away feeling from this movie, where did the plot start? Where did it end? And how did you feel you learned something? Well, it's actually a TV series that goes for like 13 episodes that they ran for like five years of a series of incidents. And it really starts in Russia, where there's two individuals who are signing up for the secret, rather KGB, and they're told they're going to be acting as a married couple and going to America, hence the name of the series. It seems to be based upon an actual Russian adventure that they had tried. They actually did have some people in the United States for an extended period, living as a married couple. But of course, they never got into the various events that occurred during this series. Yeah. Okay. How did you feel about it in terms of a new experience, learning from this movie, things that maybe you didn't recognize before, things that changed your view of Russia, of the US, of life beyond the Beltway, so to speak. Well, the actual events between the couple are a large part of what's really happening, where the husband is really seems to be adapting to the experience of being in America. She is much more of a nationalist and much more willing to simply follow whatever the orders are, no matter how extreme or how violent they get. In terms of the stereotype of Russia, it really reinforces a lot of what's even happening today with Ukraine, where people get into certain missions and they just keep going, regardless of the consequences, and regardless of the fact that they're putting themselves in extreme danger in the course of doing it. Did you know this before, or is this something that was kind of educational in this series? Well, it's educational, but to some degree, I think it fit what was the stereotype of what was the Russian society. What's actually kind of interesting is the interplay between actual events. One of the episodes takes place when Reagan was shot, and I'm trying to figure out who actually was the shooter. Was it even one of their own people that did it? Who was taking control? The perspective on what was going on with Al Haig, who put himself in an authority to confuse the Russians, as well as confusing America. I actually brought back some memories in terms of when these events were really occurring, but a number of these episodes really have an actual factual event that occurred during the 1980s, and then putting a different spin on it by interplaying the experience of this couple trying to advance whatever is the Russian cause, and it ends up for really being very engrossing. You really do get involved with it. When I first started watching it, I just sat down and next next around four o'clock in the afternoon. It was close to 10 p.m. when I turned it off, because each episode just got me more and more involved with the characters. There are lots of episodes. Gee whiz, it goes on and on, doesn't it? And yet they draw you in. I looked at a retrospective analysis of the series, and they went through each season and told you the high points of the season. It's on YouTube. It's very interesting. I tell you the truth, I couldn't remember all the things that they were demonstrating in this retrospective. I must have missed some of it. It moves very fast. It's a kind of movie, kind of series, where you have to catch everything. You have to stop it and go back with your remote and look at the last few minutes to see what happened and what was said. The plot was pretty intricate, and you needed to follow it all the time, and it changed. I had the same experience. I couldn't put it down. Even then, I missed certain parts of it. There were moments of violence and assassination, lethal scenes that really were unforgettable. There were also family scenes that were unforgettable. That was kind of interesting of the fact that they ended up having two kids, and the kids were born in America, so they were actually American citizens, and they had no concept at all in terms of what their parents were doing. They had that kind of interplay of the school and them having just normal teenage experiences while the parents are out there creating mayhem at various points. I think that was part of the reason why it does kind of suck you in. My wife, normally anything that's got some violence to it won't watch it, but she happened to sit down and she ended up sitting there for about three hours there with me, beginning just totally engrossed, but not having seen the very first couple of episodes, she did have a little bit of a problem keeping track of the characters. I think that's probably one of the minus of the show, is it does become a little complicated in terms of who's on first, so to speak. Yeah, the viewer in that retrospective made a comment along those lines, said you had to take notes. You had to make a chart of a schematic on the wall, like a Dostoevsky novel, Russian fellow as I recall. Brack on who's doing what to whom. Were you sympathetic? Did you like this family who were planted KGB agents busy virtually every day in executing the orders of the, what do they call it, the control? Did you like them? Were they a family that you could relate to? I think they are. I think they came across as very normal. One of the interesting parts of this was that after they moved into this particular neighborhood, they ended up having a neighbor move in, who turns out to be an FBI agent, who at a couple of points had some success, was wondering a little bit about them, but never was, at least in the first few episodes, didn't have a clue in terms of them being spies. Yeah. What did you think of the controller? There was the center that was in Moscow, and then there was this woman who looked like a, you know, a dowdy grandmother type who, in fact, was capable of murder, like all of them. What did you think of her? She was, on the one hand, lovable. On the other hand, you know, she was complete fake. And as I said, capable of murder. What kind of reaction did you have to her? Well, it was actually a similar reaction as they had to the wife. The females, in a lot of ways, were much more vicious than the males. They basically were much more, if the order is out there, it's got to be done. And if it concludes a murder, it will so be it. The husband, at least at various points, seemed to have questions, doubts, and wondering what really was the appropriate action. So that, particularly interplay, it was also very interesting how much, in terms of sex, they used that as a way to become secondary agents for both sides using the sex angle. There's some pretty sexy scenes in this series. Yeah, I suppose it's true. I mean, we learned about spycraft. We learned how sex works and when violence is appropriate and how violence is done so that nobody can tell who did it or how it was done. We learned about the technology of the 80s and how faithful, this is like the Fableman's movie that we reviewed last time, how faithful the movie is through the detail of the time. Absolutely. And for that matter, the technology of the time. It was extraordinary how the technological devices, the listening devices they use, and the murder weapons, if you will, were set in that period. And they're so different than they are today. And as you said, there were so many interweavings of actual events that after a while, it had a credibility. It's almost like, as you said, this would be a family that actually lived in those times that followed what Ronald Reagan was doing and followed what the American government was doing in the Cold War with Russia. It was all set in the Cold War. And you were reminded of that with these PV shots, news commentators and the like. But what I found interesting was, I didn't know that spies were operating like this in the country. I asked around, I saw some articles after, and I realized that there were spies like this. And it wasn't just one or two. It was many. Yeah. Basically, the concept was really drawn from reality. I don't think we ever, I don't think I don't know if America ever really knew for sure how many artificial families the Russians had landed. But they broke it open in the early 1980s. It was when the individuals that they did capture were arrested. But yeah, I mean, you're watching, and all of a sudden, they're talking about Casper Weinberg, and they're in his library room, and they're setting up a microphone to hear. And then they're starting to talk about actual events that actually took place. And so to intertwine that with the fictionalized events was really remarkable. But the coldness of the Russians, I mean, the one place where in order to get the mic set up in the Weinberg room, they actually poisoned the maid's son. And they basically were prepared to let him die if she wasn't willing to put the mic in. And that kind of ruthlessness is not something that you normally see. No, and that was not a bluff. In the context of the series, they really meant it. And the characters were serious assassins. And you found yourself waiting for the next assassination because you knew it was coming and waiting for the next compromise using compromise information or using sex or developing phony relations. There was this woman, Martha, who was the secretary to the, I guess, the special agent in charge of this FBI office. This plays a big role in the series. And our friend, the husband, and by the way, they were not married at the inception. They were not married at the inception of the series. They got married during the series. They had a moment of romance. And they got married later on. But he actually married her in the series. He married the secretary to the special agent in charge, although he didn't live with her. And she was kind of an old maid kind of woman. And he had her in the palm of his hand. And he was, you know, surveilling the special agent in charge. So he knew everything that the FBI was doing. It was extraordinary. By the way, if you didn't know, the two actors who played the husband and her wife, the woman is Kerry Russell. And the husband, his name in the program was Philip Jennings. The actor's name is Matthew Reese, R-H-Y-S. They got married. The actors got married. Oh. So the actors in the series were married because they hadn't been married when they came to the United States. But then the actors themselves got married. And they are a couple now with a couple of small children right now today. That's amazing. That's amazing. Yeah. So, you know, it was interesting to look at and see the way the Russians are operating and how they had brainwashed the husband and wife. And I think it's worth spending a moment on the dynamic. You know, you always look for the port parole that is, you know, the actor that carries the message. And in this case, it's quite a heavy message because it's six seasons. While she, what was her name? Elizabeth Jennings. You know, it was pretty brutal. She was involved in many brutal murders and sexual exploits. She got more dedicated to the Russian cause. And she became the one who recruited their teenage daughter, which took a pretty hard view of things. But he, Phillip Jennings, he changed. Yeah, he was enjoying America. Yeah. Yeah, you really got a sense of it. I mean, she definitely won the oddities of this particular series. I mean, she had much more random sexual encounters than he did. The ones that he had were very visual, but they were with a relatively small number of individuals. Hers were half-sex, so I can cat-capture you maybe while you're weak and then beat you up to get some information. You know, it's a little different twist. He got tired of it. He began to, he awoke, you know, somewhere in the middle of the series. And he decided that what the Russians were telling them, instructing them to do, making them tell their kids, you know, that the MO of their lives wasn't really true. The Russians were telling them, you're doing this for the motherland, for peace, and, you know, world order, and all the right things for the people in Russia. And if you have any patriotism to Russia, you will, you know, see yourself as a soldier, you know, as somebody who advances the interests of the motherland. But he began to question that because he was watching the news and he was comparing the news against the missions they were giving him. And he somewhere in the middle, he decided he can't do this anymore. He can't do the sexual exploits and he can't do the assassinations. And the whole thing was becoming uncomfortable for him. But, you know, this is very interesting and I'd like to know your thought about it, that he overrode that ultimately because he did, he did establish a romantic connection with his wife, who is much tougher than he was and who actually got more patriotic to Russia as he got less patriotic. But they had become a real couple, a really romantic kind of image, you know, romance in the context of assassins. Yeah, really are. Of course, this is also a time, though, when Russia itself is as a communist state is starting to deteriorate. Kroporowiczak is doing the reforms and though those reforms really doomed the whole concept that Russia was operating under. You can see it with hindsight. I mean, at the time, you know, it looked like it was an intern, it was going to make for an interesting country. But it certainly backfired. And now you've got a very different, you still have a very different society. And some of the same tendencies still seem to be there. And there's still the assassinations going on with, you know, some of the incidents with the oligarchs today. You can incorporate some of those storylines directly into the storyline of the Americans. So I felt that I had never heard of this before. I had never imagined it. I had trouble rapping my, you know, my appreciation of the fiction around it. And it was much more complicated because of the FBI agent, who was, you know, it was a triumvirate here. We had the husband, Elizabeth Jennings, we had the, I'm sorry, Philip Jennings and the wife, Elizabeth Jennings. And then we had the fellow across the street, Stan Beaman. And by the way, the, I mean, look at the name of the actor is Noah Emerich. And he was terrific. Yeah, he really changed, you know, during the course of the series. You know, he initially came across as a very much a goody guy guy. And then he turned into somebody that could get very violent very quickly. And it was, it was really surprising when, when, when he suddenly assassinated the Russian one, one particular Russian operator. Yeah, likewise, it was very surprising that he was compromised by a character called Nina. Nina Sergevna. I was played by Annette Mahondru. I think that's an Indian name. I'm not sure. She was really beautiful. I mean, as a person, she was a knockout the whole time. And it was sad to see how she was, because she was playing both ends, she was a double agent, compromised. And they, they, they ultimately, the Russians assassinated her in cold blood in some prison in the Gulag, which was too bad because it was the end of her role. Lots of characters in this, in this series disappeared. Oh yeah. Some of them disappeared and then came back again. The majority of the time when the flashback occurred, they, they did put a little label. So you kind of knew that it wasn't right in the same time sequence, but they didn't always do that. And, you know, it, it, it really made you concentrate when you're, when you're watching this, but that's probably why you kind of get, get hooked. And as it happened to me, you know, I'm, I ended up sitting there for a good five hours while watching the, the various episodes and not, and not getting bored at all. No, I never got bored. I had to watch the next one and I would go later than you. I'd be after midnight watching it. So let's talk about some of the scenes that you remember from it. There are, you know, at least half a dozen scenes that were absolutely mind blowing. Can you think of any that, that, that you carry around with you? James from the, some of the scenes that were remarkable. Well, they, the party cause they called me so much by surprise was the FBI agent, where suddenly, you know, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's interrogating the guy. He gives him a hamburger to eat or I don't know if it was a hamburger, but it was something to eat. And then he ends up walking behind him and suddenly assassinating him. I mean, that, that just was, was not, was not, not expected at all. There was a connection because the young man that he assassinated was actually in some kind of relationship with Nina. And he, what was his name, Stan Beeman, was in a relationship with Nina. And this very interesting character, I don't have it on my screen, but Oleg, who was a Russian diplomat, hyphen KGB agent, he had a relationship with Nina. They were all competing for the Nina woman. And that has to enter into his decision to assassinate the young man. Right. Right. No, no, she, she was a really a strong, strong character. And it, it was part, well, but I was going to say in terms of, of, of, of Philip, I got a small thing that kind of bothered me. You know, when he, when he had the other relationship with, with the lady who was the secretary to the FBI chief, you know, he had on a hairpiece, how he managed to have the hairpiece on and end up spending the night sleeping over there. And the hairpiece always stays there. You know, sometimes you get focused on, on weird, weird little things. That one's just kind of, I mean, how, how real is that? How, how good can a hairpiece be? I had the same reaction. The two of them, the husband and the wife, they were always in disguise. And the disguises were very persuasive. It was usually a wig of some kind or different pair of glasses or different jewelry. And you could only recognize them until you realize this is in disguise. And then they got into bed with somebody and I had the same reaction. How could they spend the night together in delective, delective flagranti and not realize that the person just a few inches away from them was wearing this big wig? How is that possible? Yeah, yeah. That, as I said, it just, the more I watched it, that particular idea just kept, kept reappearing. Yeah. But I'm remembering this, they were sent on a mission. I think it was, yeah. She, she was sent on a mission to investigate a Russian woman who had murdered a lot of Russian soldiers, Russian soldiers who were held prisoner by the Nazis at the end of World War Two. And she, she participated in a mass murder of Russian soldiers. She herself was Russian. And they had information about her, the KGB, and they wanted to assassinate her. So remember the scene in their home. So she, so it's first it's the, the, it's Elizabeth Jennings has found her, has identified her as the woman. And then Philip Jennings shows up to sort of back up Elizabeth Jennings. And they both have guns. And with silences, of course. And then the husband of this Russian woman was playing an American, you know, she had, she had become an American comes and, and they, they beg for their lives. And because they know that, you know, this is going to have a bad ending. And the two Jennings, husband and wife are listening to this. But they are hard like nails. They have their orders. And they wind up killing both of them simultaneously. That was a very hard scene. That was like the assassination of the, the young Russian embassy worker. I was shocked by that. I thought they would, I thought they would find some sympathy for these two people, but they didn't. You know, of course, there was a whole lot of Russians that were not wanting to go back to Russia, because in, in World War II, who were, were being held by the Nazis, because they were very concerned that they would automatically go be sent to Siberia if they were lucky, if they weren't just out and out, killed when, when, when they came home. So I mean, it took some real life incidents that really were occurring in Russia and, and converted it into the storyline. Yeah. One of the fundamental points in the storyline was, you know, if you fail, if you fail to, you know, execute the missions that, that we, the controller, the sent, the center quote, the center is Moscow, give you to do, you know, you can't be KGB anymore. You have to go back to Russia. Or if the FBI gets too close to you and you are revealed and, you know, under, under threat of being arrested and prosecuted as spies, we will extricate you and, and send you back to Russia. And that was, you know, that was the bottom line. That was the end game that, that both the husband and wife always carried around with them. And when they made the young daughter, the, see her age was a name, age gennings, played by Holly Hunter, when they, when they turned her into a Russian agent also as a teenager, that was, you know, the plan. The young son never, that was Henry, played by Kedric Solani. He never knew about any of this. He was too young. So my point though is that that was, that was the solution, the ultimate solution, that they would find a way back to Russia and, and they would be either welcomed or possibly sent to the Gulag for their efforts as KGB. And at the end of the movie, there's this extraordinary combination of scenes. One is where the FBI guy realizes what's going on. He realizes his neighbors are KGB and he catches them, the three of them, that is husband, wife and daughter in a garage. That was really incredible as a scene because he, he now, as an FBI agent, it was duty bound to arrest them and haul them in for, you know, espionage. But if you remember the scene, it was extraordinary. They convinced him not to do that. Do you remember how that went? Actually, I hadn't gotten to the episode five, the fifth of the series. I, so no, I haven't. Let me tell you at least part of it as I remember. They're in the garage, he says, get on the floor, put handcuffs on you, and they don't get on the floor. And now this is, you know, it put notice, this is really well written. It's really well written, the words, the psychology and well directed, well acted. And Philip says to him, we were just doing our job. You have your job. We have our job. And that's what we were doing. And all of a sudden you see Stan Beam and the FBI agent, he softens. And they go through this conversation where every step of the way Philip has some remark that begins to soften or further softens Stan Beaman. It was really good writing. And for example, he says, you know, we were best friends. And Stan Beaman has to say, I didn't have any other friends. And they both, you know, agreed that neither of them had any other friends. Stan Beaman was divorced. And of course, the woman that he was dating was also KGB. I don't know if you noticed that. The woman, the blonde woman that had come on to Stan Beaman was living in his house with him, was another agent living with the FBI. Anyway, thank you. Yeah, in an earlier episode, Philip is having beers with them. And when he's initially having marital problems, he doesn't go home, he actually joins Philip for a beer as an alternative. So, you know, the Philip character is, I think in a lot of ways, the most complex and the most interesting of all of them. But the writing, yeah, you're right. The writing throughout the whole series is high grade. So there's one other thing that happens that is memorable forever and ever. So now they've been, Stan Beaman has let them go. He's let them escape. And they go to their plan B, that is, let's get to Russia here where we arguably would be safe and appreciated for all our efforts over, you know, what, 25 years of being spies in the Beltway. And so the first thing is they drive. They get on a train. Now they're on a train. The train is approaching the Canadian border. The three of them are sitting in separate seats in separate parts of the train. They all have phony passports. And they convince the Border Patrol, which I didn't know this, but the Border Patrol gets on the train before the train crosses the border to inspect everyone, our American Border Patrol. And the Philip and Elizabeth succeed in getting by the inspection. So they're good. They're going to be able to cross the border into Canada. And the train picks up speed, you know, it's, it stopped for that. And then it picks up speed. And they look out the window of the train. And there's the daughter on the platform. So my God, what happened? She didn't get by the inspection. The Border Patrol arrested her. No, there's no Border Patrol around with her. She's just standing on the platform as the train is leaving the station. And, you know, apparently she decided that she could make it. She was smart enough and old enough to get along at the age of whatever it was, 17 or 18 years old and make a life for herself in the United States. She didn't want to go to Russia. This is a really interesting moment. So they go to Canada. They get a plane out of Canada to Europe. They rent a car in Europe. I mean, you and anybody else could do this. They rent a car in Europe and they simply drive east. And they drive east all the way to the Russian border. And at the border, they are let into Russia. They are met with another character who reappears, who helped them get to Moscow. And now they're driving. It's a long way from the border to Moscow. And they arrive at the top of a hill overlooking the city of Moscow. This is their big return. And one of them turns to the other and says, gee, we've been thinking about the necessity of doing this for a long time. I wonder how it's going to go for us. And the other one, I guess it was him who said, well, we'll have to see because we're really not sure what this place is like anymore. And that's where the movie series ends because they could easily be having the end for a bad time. And it definitely was a different Russia by that point in reality too. And they had no level of confidence that the Russia they left, the Russia that controlled them all those years, would be the same Russia anymore. And they neither of them at that point were sure they really wanted to be there. But there they were. And that was the next part of their life. They really had to sympathize with them at that moment. Yeah. No, there was just a whole series, I think, of episodes and throughout the series that are very realistic in terms of human reactions to what's going on. And with the spy element being superimposed over it, it just makes for a fascinating storyline. But I think anybody that does see it does need to realize they're throughout this whole series though. I mean, the violence really is there from the start to the finish. You know, I can't think of another series that held me this way. And the reviews I've seen are consistent with that. I looked at the reviews of that retrospective that I mentioned to you, which was well over an hour of just, you know, critical review of this series. And I could not get to the end of the comments on that. It just went on and on. A lot of people have a lot of comments about it. So you and I are not alone, Steven, in our appreciation of the complexity and the magnetism of this whole affair. Because it makes you think about, you know, spy craft. It makes you think about the Beltway. It makes you think about the United States government, the FBI. It makes you think about Russia and then the changes that have happened in both governments since the 1980s. It makes you think about the fact that if you're a spy, it doesn't matter if you're Russia or American, there's some of the same tactics that are going to be used. Yes. I mean, both sides were we're doing things that not exactly would pass a medical test. No. And all of a sudden you have a maybe your perception of the American side of it and the Russian side of it and changed. And you realize we live in a world both then and now, where this kind of thing happens. And I've talked to people after I watched this and people have reminded me there have been news articles about about Russian phony families that our spies that are KGB or whatever the successor to KGB is these days living in this country and from time to time they are found out and prosecuted or they run. So the game hasn't changed. And I guess we had that last year here in Hawaii, that couple that was arrested. And I haven't heard anything after the initial round. But were these really Russians or were they Americans? I mean, the whole identity issue was front and center. And as far as I know, there's still a trial pending in that federal case. But there's certainly been silence in the media. Yeah, well, maybe for a reason. Yeah, although you don't like to see the media cover anything up, that may be a national national security issue around it. So what comes to me is that whoever wrote this up, and I don't have the name of the people who wrote it, or produced it or directed it. But they had to do a lot of research, because it brings true to the history, it rings true to so many things we now know are true about the Cold War, the ongoing Cold War. Right, right. Yeah. So on a scale of 10, Steve, where would you put this? Let me add that in the retrospect that I mentioned, a really long review, there were also points of criticism. And some of the comments were critical, although some of the other comments criticized the people who criticized the program, because they felt that it was great from the beginning to the end. How did you feel about it? What would you give it on a scale of 1 to 10? Probably an eight. Eight? Even though it kept you up late? Yeah, it kept me going. But there's a lot of little stuff that you really wonder, in terms of the reality, how could a couple really keep pulling these jobs off for that long a period of time? As far as we know, those real Russians, couples that were left that were here, most of them never did anything. They simply were there in case they were needed. The few that did do something, I mean, there weren't very many incidents as far as, at least in terms of what's reported. It does have that Hollywood flavor to it, in terms of reality. But the basic theme, it's certainly worth people watching it. Oh yeah, so much to learn from. There was also one other character I wanted to mention, Frank, I want to say, Langrida. He's an old character actor. We've seen him many times in many movies, and he played the role of one of the controllers, and he was terrific. I mean, I thought all the acting was good. Oh, the acting was first grade all the way through. You talked about the actor who was Elizabeth's almost quasi-father. Yes. Yeah, I was really surprised that they actually killed him off, because that was a fascinating character. I would give it a 10, Steve. I don't mean to diminish your eight. I would give it a 10, because I learned from it, and because it provoked my thinking, it changed my way of looking at things. The other test is, did I stay up late? And yes, I did. I couldn't put it down. I felt that this was really a tremendous job in terms of the factual orientation, the writing, the acting, the directing, and the detail. The detail about recreating the 80s. They did a very good job. I'm afraid we won't see too many more like this, although to me, it's always interesting to have a series that lives in another time, a series that teaches you things you didn't know about that at the time. Not unlike the Fablemen's, I suppose. Well, that depends on the acting too. Last night, there was a new ABC series called Will Trent, and the opening episode was very interesting in terms of the characters and where they go with it, but it definitely has some real potential to watch further. Yeah, this was very enjoyable. It was very enjoyable to talk to you about it. I'm so glad you looked at it, and I look forward to our next movie review on Guttman's Garage, and we'll have to decide an appropriate movie to look at. Absolutely. I think we'll manage. We'll manage. We'll watch the movies anyway. Right. Right. Thank you, Steve. Steve Guttman. Thank you very much, Steve. Guttman's Garage. Aloha. Come. Mahalo.