The Americans S3 E1: EST Men

Sure, why not. I have done recaps for episodes of Breaking Bad and Mad Men and since The Americans is in the rarified air of those shows, I’ll be recapping it. I hope the six other people in America who actually watch The Americans will enjoy these slightly delayed recaps. It’s the best show that nobody is watching and I will recommend it to anyone. The characters are fascinating, the action is intriguing and there are a lot of meaty themes as the show draws parallels between spy work, marriage and parenthood.

We begin in November 1982 with the death of Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev. As always, the season premier drops us straight into an action sequence, with Elizabeth getting information from a disgruntled CIA agent. The deal goes bad and she ends up in a brutal street fight with Gaad and another FBI agent. She gets her head slammed into the hood of a car and Gaad gets pistol whipped. All that before the opening credits.  

I felt alternately angry and sad for that CIA agent. She’s understandably bitter that the agency didn’t notice her fieldwork but betraying her country and putting lives at risk was not the way to handle it. She does the right thing in the end but at the very least has ruined her career. I like how the writers give attention to some of the smaller pawns in the game, like this CIA agent, the guy they left for dead at the Contra training camp or Caspar Weinberger’s maid. They appear briefly but are real characters and I can feel for them.

Bookending that action sequence was Philip laying the groundwork to blackmail Yousaf, who has just strangled Annelise. It was a brutal scene to watch and Yousaf probably has to take the deal Philip offers him because her death will not be without consequences.

Martha seems to be enjoying herself, getting gun lessons at the shooting range and having screaming, stand-up Kama Sutra orgasms with Clark. She is one of the characters with the potential to bring down the entire KGB illegals program. I am terrified to see her reaction when/if she finds out Clark’s secret. Martha will either have the meltdown of a lifetime or go on a shooting spree, or both.

Stan is not enjoying himself at EST. He still doesn’t seem to understand what went wrong in his marriage but he shouldn’t need a self-help group to tell him: His marriage failed because he was physically and emotionally unavailable and Sandra sensed he was having an affair. Of course, Sandra is having none of his BS. I am glad they didn’t write her out as I’m still waiting for another flip-out scene like her glorious fight with Stan in the first season (plus, she has the most amazing hair on TV).

“EST Men” is introducing a lot of little threads to pick at in season three. There is the possible exposure of Elizabeth’s identity to Gaad, the quagmire of Afghanistan, Philip/Clark’s time bomb of a marriage, the fate of Nina (please do not write her out), Elizabeth’s mother’s illness and the relationship between the Jennings and their new/old handler.

But the most tantalizing thread of The Americans is how Elizabeth and Philip deal with the recruitment of Paige as a second-generation illegal. As expected, Elizabeth favors it and has been getting closer to her daughter by going to church with her. Philip is skeptical and wants Paige to stay clear of the spy life. The scene with the handler did imply that the Jenningses are at the very least getting Paige ready to tell her who they are.

This is such a potent story idea and I am fascinated by where it will go. Parents would want to mold their children and maybe have them follow in their footsteps, but how do you do that when those footsteps include subterfuge and murder? How do parents reconcile the desire to give Paige a good life if that life is inimical to their belief system? There are weighty questions and this show and they bring The Americans to another level.

Are Marvel superheroes religious?

Portraying religion must be tricky in the Marvel Universe. Since so many citizens have seen the existence of advanced science, magic and gods, would people be more or less likely to follow mainstream religions? Mention of a superhero’s faith doesn’t come up all that commonly in comics but there are a few superheroes that practice particular faiths.

To start, heroes like Thor and Hercules are part of the Norse and Greek pantheons respectively and thus basically worship their families. There are not a lot of regular Marvel citizens who appear to follow either of those religions. There was once a story in Thor that dealt with the death of the last Viking follower, which is a problem for the Asgardians, who feed off the worship of their followers. The people of the Marvel Universe are very skeptical of not only superheroes and especially divine superheroes. Most believe Thor and Hercules are not gods but just powerful people who are a bit wacky and egotistical and style themselves as gods.

Marvel sometimes tapdances around the divinity of the Norse and Greek gods, maybe so as not to offend religious readers. Even beings like Odin have acknowledged there is a power greater than the Asgardians and the comics sometimes portray these beings, They Who Sit Above in Shadow, who rule the Norse pantheon. There is also a theory that the Asgardians have no divine connection but are shape-shifting aliens who took on the shape of gods because the ancient Scandinavians believed they were.

Some in Africa worshiped Storm as a goddess since they could not explain her ability to control the weather. Ororo let it go to her head when she was young but now does not believe she is a goddess. She has consistently expressed spiritual beliefs, vaguely shown as respect for Mother Earth and invoking a “Bright Lady,” but I don’t know if that’s part of an African religion or just an expression.

There are a few acknowledged Christians and Catholics in comics. Nightcrawler is a devout Catholic who was studying to be a priest for awhile. The New Mutants Sunspot and Karma are Catholic, as is the Mexican-American Firebird, who believes her power to have a divine origin. I think Daredevil is also Catholic, as his mother left the family to become a nun. Wolfsbane, another New Mutant, was raised as a fundamentalist in Scotland by a reverend who told her that her powers marked her as evil.

There are several Jewish superheroes in Marvel. Kitty Pryde has consistently worn a Star of David necklace since her first appearance. That came in handy when Dracula tried to strangle Kitty and the religious power of her Star of David repelled him (at least in Marvel, you can only repel vampires with religious iconography that you actually follow, so only a Christian can hold up a cross and get any results). Ben Grimm, the Thing, is Jewish but the comics did not reveal this for at least 30 years after his first appearance.

Of course, there is Magneto, who has survived the Holocaust. He had no personal history for a long time after his first appearance and Chris Claremont gradually worked the Holocaust into his backstory until he and Kitty bonded after attending a Holocaust memorial. It was not until recent years that they confirmed Magneto as Jewish; for a long time, he was ambiguously noted as Roma. I guess this means Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch are also at least part Jewish (their mother is long dead and I don’t know her origin).

The only Muslim superhero I know is the new Ms. Marvel, a Pakistani-American teenager.  

I don’t know if there are any atheists in the Marvel Universe. Plenty of superheroes have never really declared spiritual beliefs but I don’t know of anyone who has blatantly said, “I am an atheist.”

There is one Satanist, Daimon Hellstrom, known as the Son of Satan. He is actually the son of Satan. Well, Marvel walked this back and said his father is just a demon, a stand-in for the Devil like Mephisto. But in the original Defenders story in the early ‘80s, his father was just plain ol’ Satan.

Who knows what Doctor Strange believes in. The guy has spoken to Eternity, the embodiment of the universe, so the Abrahamic religions might seem a little boring to him.

The Only Sufficient Penalty for the Patriots for Deflategate

Execute them.

Take all the Patriot’s players, coaches, executives and low level staff and just execute them. Have a show trial in the Hague first to toy with these people and then have them put to death on live international television. Hanging might be the most photogenic way of going. Roger Goodell can work the gallows.

Think this is too harsh? Think again. After reading about this for several days, sportswriters across the nation have taught me that it is IMPOSSIBLE to be TOO HYSTERICAL or TOO SHRILL, particularly when pretty much everyone calling for BLOOD AND FIRE has acknowledged that the Patriots’ deflated footballs had no effect on their 38-point beatdown of the Colts.

Think sports are just fun contests of skills that can bring people together with shared memories and civic pride? NO. They’re an endless morality play.

Obviously, with Belichick, Brady, Gronk and the rest of the team dead, New England will not be able to play in the Super Bowl. Indianapolis will get the runner-up crown and scepter, which is a long tradition in football when the winner cannot fulfill her duties. Since the Colts have been so scarred by Deflategate, let’s just skip the formality and give them the victory and the Lombardi Trophy now. JUSTICE.

I feel bad for parents. How do you talk to your kids about this?

The sanctions for the Patriots should not stop here. The NFL should strip them of their previous Super Bowl wins during the Belichick-Brady era. Let’s go further and strip the team of all its victories in that time period, since extrapolating one instance of cheating into 15 constant years of it is not at all as overblown as … as …

There’s a simile that would be appropriate here. I just can’t think of it.

Anyway, we need to completely disband the team, raze Gillette Stadium and sow the earth with lye so nothing can ever be built there again. Fine the team’s surviving family members $100,000 each to start a fund to PROTECT THE CHILDREN. Football’s INTEGRITY is at stake like NEVER before in memory and we MUST ooopnjxasbnixbnas

Sorry about that. I’ve been foaming at the mouth with outrage and some of it got on my keyboard. Anyway, start building the gallows.

Sweating

You know what’s the worst at this cold and snowy time of winter? How hot it is in my bed beneath my thick duvet.

I was used to having a thinner bedspread, so I would wear flannel pajamas to bed in the winter to stay warm. The system worked and I was able to sleep. Then we got our king-size bed two years ago and fancy new bedding with it.

It was really a challenge to adjust to our new down-filled duvet. I had to take off the blanket I used to have and was forced to sleep only beneath the duvet and a sheet. I soon learned that the pajamas were too hot because I would wake up covered in sweat while the sleet rattled the windowpanes. I had to start sleeping in a bare minimum of clothing, as if it were a balmy summer night. I couldn’t sleep, even with the heat turned down.

Now, in the latest indignity, I have to partially close the heat vents to get some relief from the sauna of our expensive bedding. I could just program the heat to drop a little lower at night but our custom thermostat is just too difficult for me to figure out. I seem to be sleeping a little better and no longer feel like I’m lying on a beach in Tahiti. But, you know, it’s rough to walk around the chilly bedroom half-dressed and climb beneath the covers, waiting for the warmth to surround me as the wind howls around the house.

Man, why does everything bad happen to me?

Who knew Kitty Pryde had such a potty mouth?

Fun fact: Kitty Pryde is, to my knowledge, the only comics character to use the N-word in three separate stories in the ‘80s. Granted, she was trying to make a point about prejudice and not just calling someone a racist term, but who knew the precocious teen mutant had such a potty mouth?

The first incident was in X-Men Graphic Novel #5, “God Loves, Man Kills.” Someone called Kitty a “mutie-lover,” invoking a mutant slur. Her African-American dance teacher Stevie Hunter told her not to get too upset about it. “What if he’d called me an N-lover?” Kitty asked. “Would you be so damn tolerant then?” Poor Stevie. She was just trying to comfort Kitty and got a racial slur in her face.

The second story was X-Men #196. Kitty encountered some fellow students at Columbia University who were not fans of mutants (and were in fact trying to kill Professor Xavier). A black student asked her if she was a mutie and she said, “I don’t know. Are you an N-word?” Following this ham-handed discussion of prejudice, the guy and his friends chloroformed Kitty and she had to be rescued by Rachel Summers and Magneto. Despite the tone deafness of that part of the script, this was actually a great story about revenge and redemption.

For the third and final time, Shadowcat was speaking at a memorial for a bullied mutant who had killed himself in New Mutants #45. Kitty invoked a list of slurs and insults, including the N-word, concluding that all the words we use to describe people are just labels.

Chris Claremont wrote all these stories. The inclusion of the N-word is so jarring today that I’m wondering if it was more acceptable in the ‘80s. Why was I reading something so harsh at age 11 or 12? “God Loves, Man Kills” appeared only in specialty comic shops, so kids couldn’t just find it on a spinner rack as it had mature content. But the other two stories had the approval of the Comics Code Authority and I probably bought them at 7-Eleven. It just seems a little too mature.

In another light, it seems immature. In these stories, Kitty was probably 15 or 16 and was probably making a point that a teenager would make. The problem is that using such a charged epithet overwhelms any point she’s trying to make about prejudice.

At War

I must summon the courage to sit still amid all the storms banging around just outside my skin. There is no shame, perhaps, in the idle anonymity of a weeknight on the couch toggling between books I write and books I did not. I must learn to stay here, sadly undistracted, and wait for the future to amortize. This is all busy work. 

I must accept that the split level with a pool may vanish while income still swells but another will appear. I must accept that they are peacefully ashes and it was nothing I did. I must hope that he is coming to us.

For too long I have been at war. Even the bathroom tiles seem to capture more territory with every battle. Every virtual exchange with a virtual stranger assaults me long after they forget. And I just wish for some peace, for an end to fighting beneath my skin, for a resolution and the right to move on.

$2.61

There was $2.61 left on the Wawa gift card I got for Christmas. I got gas and had a little bit left on it. I put it in the glove compartment, intending to use the balance later.

On my way out of the parking lot, I saw a guy with a cardboard sign. "Homeless. No job. No car. Six-year-old girl in my care." I briefly thought of giving the gift card to him. Maybe he could have bought a sandwich with it. By the time the thought formed, I found myself pulling out of the lot, on my way to spending a Target gift card on clothes I needed but could live without.

That $2.61, really nothing to me, could have made a dent in someone else's hunger. But where do you draw the line? Paying a little over the minimum on my credit card is a drop in the bucket but giving that much cash to somebody truly unfortunate could make a huge difference. How wide can you open your heart before it becomes irresponsible?

A few days later, I used that $2.61 to top off my gas tank, buying less than a gallon. The gauge barely nudged.

Where has Rick Jones been?

I haven’t seen any sign of him in the Marvel movies. For someone with undeniable connections to the origins of several heroes, Rick Jones has been curiously absent so far.

If not for Rick Jones, there would not be a Hulk. Teenager Jones was hanging out at a gamma bomb test site, just playing his guitar and chilling. Bruce Banner noticed the kid was there, rushed to the test site and pushed him out of the way. Banner of course caught the worst of the gamma blast and became the Hulk. (In fairness, Jones may actually have been in the Incredible Hulk movie but it was so bad, and the origin story was so glossed over, that I may be forgetting it.) Jones felt responsible for the creation of the Hulk and thereafter became the jade giant’s longtime ally.

There probably also wouldn’t be an Avengers team without him. Rick Jones was the one who sent a radio distress call — fortuitously intercepted by Thor, Iron Man, Ant-Man and the Wasp —when Loki was attacking the Hulk. The superheroes may have come together on their own eventually but Jones facilitated their first meeting. The Avengers made him an honorary member and he developed a rapport with Captain America and for a time wore the costume of the then-deceased Bucky.

Rick also had a long history with the original Captain Marvel. For some time, he was for some reason obligated to share a body with Mar-Vell. While Captain Marvel was trapped in the Negative Zone, Jones would take his place on Earth. When Marvel was needed for superheroics, Jones would take his place in the Negative Zone.

Rick Jones later subjected himself to gamma rays but instead of developing super strength, he got cancer, later cured by the Beyonder. He also was involved with Rom the Spaceknight (a character now expunged from continuity due to licensing issues at Marvel), who fought the evil Dire Wraith aliens.

While associated with Mar-Vell, Rick got drawn into the Kree-Skrull War. The Kree’s Supreme Intelligence released Jones’ dormant but formidable Destiny Force, which Jones used to create facsimiles of deceased heroes from Marvel Universe’s Golden Age, who helped the Avengers end the war. In more recent years, Jones was part of the history-spanning Avengers Forever series, using the Destiny Force to recruit a group of Avengers from different points in the team’s history to battle the time lord Immortus. He was in a wheelchair in that series so I don’t know what happened there.

Apparently Rick now has some kind of super-strength and has the code name A-Bomb. I liked him better as a non-powered human with potential powers that he can only rarely tap into. I like that message that ordinary people can sometimes do extraordinary things like Rick did.

Rick Jones probably does not fit with the movies’ origins for the Avengers as radioing superheroes for help is a little too ‘60s. But he’s been Marvel’s longest-running supporting character and has witnessed so much history over 50 years that it would be a shame if the movies didn’t use him in some capacity.

Jarvis

Our Jarvis is gone. Steve and I had to put him to sleep last night. He was our little buddy for almost nine years so our hearts are broken.

He developed some kind of acute blood clot that made its way to his hind legs. I think the veterinarian called it a saddle thrombus. It was brutally sudden. I had worked from home and he was fine all day, sleeping next to his sister and then coming up to my office at lunchtime to say hi and get a petting. Then I found him down the basement crying. The vet said this kind of thing happens very suddenly so there was nothing we missed that would have indicated anything was wrong.

I think, I hope, we did the right thing, as hard as it was. Jarvis was in pain and couldn't walk. The vet said that his condition is one of the rare cases in which she recommends euthanasia, since there’s nothing much they can do. The end was peaceful and we held him and petted him.

I knew this would happen someday and he was getting older but I was hoping for a few more years with him. Still, maybe the suddenness was a blessing. He was in pain but not for more than a few hours. He was himself right up til the end.

As the vet said, Jarvis had nine amazing years and one bad night. We are very sad right now but that thought will be a comfort to us.

Jarvis came to us after Christie and Rich fostered him and we will always be grateful to them for leading us to him. He was a sweetheart from the start. I never understood how his previous (anonymous) owners could have given up such a wonderful cat. It was their loss.

We gave him a good life and loved him as best we could. Jarvis wanted a lot of attention and boy, did he get it. He was spoiled endlessly. He was always excited to see us and hated when we went on vacation. He was always on one of our laps purring. He treated me like a piece of furniture and I loved every minute of it. He was an easy cat to love and gave as much affection as he got.

Cerys seems OK. I think she knows something’s wrong because she saw him leave in the carrier. Who knows what she understands so far.

This morning was hard, not seeing him bound up the basement steps when we opened the door. Tonight will be hard when I sit down to read and he doesn't jump on my lap. We had it down to a ritual. Jarvis would look up at me with those expressive green eyes, jump up and start head-butting me. Then he’d flop on his back and expect a tummy rub. I am grateful now that last Saturday was a rainy day and we stayed home and he got hours of tummy rubs from me.

We gave him a good life but he also did so much for us. We were lucky to have each other. Jarvis was a gift to us and I always knew that. And I am so profoundly thankful that we had him in our lives. Rest easy, little guy.

Expired Hope

A new year brings a miasma of hope but also a tickle of regret. I feel optimistic for what I may accomplish in 2015 but also rue what I never had the chance to do in 2014.

Nowhere is this truer than in my envelope of now-expired coupons. Every week I clip these from the paper in a quest to save cents and dollars at the supermarket. Last Thursday, as midnight struck, I permanently lost the chance to take advantage of these savings. At the crack of dawn on New Year’s Day, as I rooted through the expired coupons, I glanced at a world of savings that might have been, had I only been more vigilant.

There are not one but two coupons for $3 off a pack of Gillette Mach 3 razor blades, now lost to history. I could have had those razors stockpiled beneath the sink. Granted, I use them at a steady rate but you never know when my beard might start coming in at an accelerated Sasquatch rate and I would need more. Now I risk running out. Shaving cream was also $1 off but now all those savings are lost like tears in the rain.

I could have taken advantage of the enormous nutritional power of pomegranate seeds, with several coupon for Pom products. Alas, until they reissue the coupons, I will be stuck paying full price for pomegranates like a sucker.

Oh, the surfaces I could have Swiffed with coupons for Swiffers and the Swiffer Wet Jet totaling in excess of $5. I could have bought two Tides for $3 off and Downy for 20 cents off. I should have noted the “expires 12/31/14” at the top and not just whistled a carefree tune in the mistaken belief that my discount on cleaning products would never die.

Think of all the bulk food I could have bought. Weeping, I see obsolete coupons for 40 cents off two jars of Ragu and 50 cents off (really $1 since Acme doubles it) a 16.5-ounce jar of mayo. Now how am I going to host that dinner party I’d planned with two lasagnas and 17 egg salad sandwiches?

Tragically, I can only bake at full price, with coupons for Karo corn syrup and all manner of yeast and baking powder gone like the dodo that 2014 has become. Now people will have to choke down my cakes and pies knowing that my subpar confectionary ability cost full price.

Oh, what I could have saved; what I could have stockpiled! We will never know how much richer I could have been had I just paid more attention. My resolution for 2015 writes itself.