D–

Are you tired of winning yet?

It is pretty silly to grade a president on his first 100 days in office. An administration can change course over four years and the end of any term usually doesn’t look like the beginning. But I think it’s still instructive to take a look at how the beginning has gone. As a candidate, Donald Trump sold himself as a president who would WIN and make the big deals to help America WIN. He seemed to be promising an immediate turnaround for the country so I think it’s fair to judge him on how he’s done so far.

So far, in my opinion, it’s not working out. President Trump had to sell himself as a dealmaker and winner because that is all he has: he has no political experience of any type, no policy knowledge whatsoever, and no idea how government works. It’s really striking that even with Republican control over the executive and legislative branches, so few of these deals have happened. So far, he’s governing like a senior citizen with a big mouth who gets all his information from cable news.

Trump needed some quick wins after the divisive election and he hasn’t gotten them. Take the failure of Obamacare repeal in the form of the AHCA (based on the bill’s reception, I assume the “H” stands for “Hindenburg”). It was a spectacular failure on every level. The bill would have kicked 24 million people off insurance, didn’t require insurance companies to cover basic services like maternity and mental health, was deeply unpopular, and was all to service a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans. It wasn’t the Democrats who sank the bill; it was the Republicans themselves. Instead of waiting and putting together a bill that could pass, Trump and Paul Ryan rushed it. This was probably because the president of the United States was unaware of how intricate the issue is, asking “Who knew healthcare could be so complicated?” (EVERYONE.) It was clear that even though they had seven years to come up with something to replace the Affordable Care Act, the Republicans did no work during that time, like kids who screwed around for months and only started their school project the night before, and their parents yelled, “When did you know this was due?!” Then the final product looks like ass. This was politics at its most craven, with Republicans proving all that yelling at Obamacare was about the yelling and not about finding an alternative. This was poorly planned and incompetently executed.

Which brings us to the poorly-planned bombings of Syria and Afghanistan. I have no idea what we should do in Syria as I’m just some guy who writes when he’s bored. But nobody in America wants a ground war in the Middle East again since we don’t want to open a Pandora’s Box that we can’t close. The strike just didn’t seem to do anything. A lot of Trump’s voters wanted him to stay out of the Middle East and I couldn’t blame them for being annoyed now. Ironically, Trump was so concerned about the fate of “beautiful children” who got gassed but won’t let any of those kids in the country as refugees.

Which brings us to the Muslim ban. Two courts have now struck this down and the only thing it did was to mobilize the opposition. It’s hilarious that the judges used Trump’s and his allies’ own blathering about banning Muslims to prove that yes, the ban targeted Muslims. He has only himself to blame. The executive order was another shoddy piece of workmanship that was rushed into production and somebody said, “read like it was drafted by Lionel Hutz.” Another court has granted an injunction against the executive order that would defund sanctuary cities. It would have given the executive branch the power to withhold funding from states, which would violate the separation of powers in the Constitution. This was another order written by the incompetent.  

Which brings us to the president’s work ethic. He’s taken like 19 golfing trips in three months, more than Obama did in eight years, while he hasn’t even nominated appointees for something like 500 federal offices. He discussed bombing Syria over a “beautiful piece of chocolate cake” with the Chinese president and discussed possibly classified materials with the prime minister of Japan a few months ago. After the inauguration, Trump doubled the fees for Mar-a-Lago to some insane amount. The implication is clear: He’s making money on millionaires who want to pay to see the president discussing something important with a world leader over a burnt steak slathered in ketchup. Talk about crooked. This is not even to mention Ivanka Trump, whose claim to fame is selling jewelry on QVC, getting a trademarks from China after the family met with the country’s president.

Which brings us to the nepotistic appointment of his son-in-law to handle the following issues: Promoting peace between Israel and the Palestinians, solving the opioid crisis, meeting with the generals in Iraq and reforming veterans’ care. Jared Kushner earned this responsibility by being a newspaper publisher so I’m sure with my years in publishing, I’m at least qualified to be an emissary to North Korea.

Which brings us to North Korea. Why the hell are we getting into needless tension with this country? Trump is just saying stupid things about a nuclear-powered country that wants war, ruled by an autocrat who has no regard for the well-being of his citizens. Then after a 10-minute conversation with the (admirably patient) Xi Jinping, the president of the United States concludes that North Korea is “not so easy.” A non-comatose adult who claims to have just realized that North Korea is tricky to deal with is not someone I want in charge in this potentially scary situation.

Which brings us to President Trump’s relationships with fellow heads of state. He acted like a total jackass with Angela Merkel, refusing to shake her hand. He hung up on the prime minister of Australia. He invited the president of China and his wife not to the White House but to glorified country club Mar-a-Lago (they had to stay somewhere else because there weren’t enough rooms available). He even accused the British of spying on him, needlessly pissing off our closest ally.

Which brings us to the wiretapp allegations. When President Trump said that during the campaign Obama tappped Trump Tower, he offered no evidence and pretty much got laughed out of town (along with Devin Nunes and his Keystone Kops investigation of the supposed leaks). It was a textbook example of getting bad press and making up a wiretapp story to say, “Look over there!” and distract everybody. It didn’t work, and it speaks very badly to the president’s worldview. Anytime he has to face information he doesn’t like, he—like a coddled snowflake who needs a safe space against criticism—calls it fake, offering no evidence other than “it’s fake because I said so.” The jobs report during the Obama administration was fake news because it didn’t flatter Trump but when the first jobs report under his administration showed similar information, then the report all of a sudden became true. This dismissiveness toward facts that we don’t like is something either the dimwitted or addled do.

Let’s see: Is there anything else? Oh, right—the Trump administration is under FBI investigation for possible collusion with Russia to influence the outcome of the election.

We’ll have to see during public testimony how much there is to the Russia story. But the fact that it was only 60 days before the Trump administration was under this very serious investigation, and that so many people are implicated in very shady dealings with a foreign power, at least knocks half a letter grade off the president’s score. This has the potential to be a serious undermining of democracy, and the term is just getting started. For the sake of our country, I hope there’s nothing there but I’m getting a sickening feeling about it.

I really didn’t want to go into this in such a negative manner. There are a few positive developments in these 100 days, like Trump backing down from shutting down the government over the magic wall at the Rio Grande, firing Michael Flynn, sidelining Steve Bannon, and realizing the value of NATO. But these seem like pretty low bars to clear. He got Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court (a victory for him but it remains to be seen if it will be a victory for some of the public down the line), but it still took Congress overturning the filibuster to do it. Maybe my views are so negative because this administration has simply gotten off to a negative start. I’m not seeing a whole lot of helping the middle class through more jobs like Trump promised and some of his actions, like removing the rule that investors have to have clients’ best interests in mind, are contrary to helping the little guy. It just seems like a whole lot of self-inflicted drama, flip-flopping on campaign positions, a million little breaches of protocol, and undignified Tweets.

What surprises me is that President Trump is not the scary autocrat like a lot of people feared. The real problem here is that this guy just doesn't know what he’s doing.

The Americans S5 E8: Immersion

In a quiet episode, the most riveting part of “Immersion” was Elizabeth’s admission to Paige that she had been raped at 18. Keri Russell played the scene impressively well, staying silent and tentative just a little past where it became uncomfortable. The camera lingered on an amazing close-up of her face, suggesting tears that did not, maybe could not, fall.

Elizabeth is obviously still affected on some level by the rape but still refused her daughter’s instinctive hug. For her, it’s a lesson to teach, that she got hurt but was no longer afraid. (Not revealed: “Your father killed the rapist on the very spot you’re standing.”) Russell was also great at the walking scene with Paige at the end, getting across the idea that it never really occurred to her what she would be if she were not a spy. The seduction of Paige is a slow burn but it needs to be. If she’s going to work for the USSR or turn against her parents, it realistically wouldn’t be a snap decision either way.

Claudia returns and she’s trying to be like Gabriel. They meet at a safe house and Claudia tries to be personable. But it doesn’t really work, partially because Elizabeth hates her and partially because as the handler says, “You don’t need anybody in your heads.” So they go another way. The loss of father figure Gabriel is another signal that the old beliefs and institutions are falling away.

I was intrigued that the Center actually let Claudia go home and see her family. The only other time that happened was Elizabeth visiting her dying mother and they still had to meet in West Germany and it was over the Center’s strenuous objections. Also, now I do want to know what Claudia was doing in the USSR decades ago.

Oleg gets his life rumpled through after seeking some files on his mother. It’s galling that this happens to a family so highly respected and well off that even the stairwell in their apartment building is gilded. The father is annoyed and the mother, a former prisoner, is scared, saying, “They find things even when there is nothing.” It turns out to be nothing but Oleg has to be disillusioned, since even in America, nobody every searched his house, but his own country will. It’s another institution failing another character.

Evgheniya is having an affair with a CIA guy who is going to Russia (I think that’s what’s happening). It struck me in this episode that she really looked like Nina, another woman doomed by an affair with an American, and that can’t be a coincidence. Her son Pasha is in trouble, with a plan by Tuan to get the boy isolated and miserable bound to turn pretty dark. Tuan is a shark but he also seems lonely, looking isolated himself as his fake parents go to work. Asking them to come around more often was probably as much for him as to keep up appearances.

It was really funny to see the parallel phone calls with Elizabeth and Philip and their Kansas assets, and it was especially funny to see affect-free Deirdre dump Philip, saying she wanted someone more aggressive. His head hasn’t been in the seduction game since Martha’s life ended up in shambles. But his spy instincts are still on the ball, with that story about being a married man hilariously piquing Deirdre’s interest.

Season five of The Americans seems to be taking awhile to get to the point. It’s probably all setup for the sixth and final season, and not that I’m not enjoying the emotional development and character stuff (my favorite part of the show) but I could use a little more action by the end of this season. I don’t need wall-to-wall car chases but just a little something would be good. Still, after five seasons, I trust the show to deliver a huge payoff at the end.

Goldfrapp Live

Goldfrapp played the TLA last night shrouded the entire time by a heavy artificial fog, tearing through a greatest hits survey of singles from seven albums. The fog was like Alison Goldfrapp’s sometimes-breathy voice, rubbing up against the kidney-shaking low end of the synthesizers.

Lights of different colors gave the fog some different shadings and moods. For the relatively serene openers “Utopia” and “Lovely Head,” the stage was lit in pastel to look like the sunrise breaking through the morning mist. On the latter song, the creepy whistle intro gave way to Alison singing into some kind of microphone (don’t know the technical term) that made her voice sound like a distorted electric guitar.

Bright white lights broke into the mist, looking like stabs of lightning through the clouds during the heavy sleaze of “Train” and great new single “Anymore.” These songs followed up with the weirdly cathartic new track “Ocean” started the show off on the best possible note, almost front-loading the setlist. There were plenty of selections from the new album, Silver Eye, and I was happy to see plenty of songs from Supernature, the new album’s twin in trashy, throbbing dance music.

The light through the fog switched to a murky green for mellower songs like “You Never Know,” almost looking like a light shining below the surface of a pool after dark. At times it turned rosy for romantic, warm songs like “Number 1.”

Most of the night, the light and fog had the effect of a smoky club, a perfect visual backdrop of Goldfrapp’s off-kilter club stomp. The show ended in the only way it could have, with the trashy, can’t-sit-still “Ooh La La,” the frenetic “Ride a White Horse” and the thunderous, overheated “Strict Machine.”   

It struck me that Alison’s voice is exactly the same live as on record. I also noticed that aside from a few extended intros and endings, they played the music pretty much exactly as on the albums. I could have used a little more embellishment, but it was a great, no-nonsense hour and a half of greatest hits.

The Americans S5 E7: The Committee on Human Rights

Goodbye, Gabriel, and goodbye, Frank Langella. Before he goes, he fills Paige in on some general details about who her parents are. “To us, they’re honestly heroes,” he says as Elizabeth smiles proudly. “They’ve saved a lot of lives. Your parents have sacrificed a lot for others.”

This does elide some of the less heroic details about the Jenningses’ work, like dropping a car on a guy or folding a woman’s corpse into a suitcase, but the omission is useful in bringing Paige around to the Soviet side. (Another useful omission: pretending they still believe the wheat crop is a nefarious American plot to starve the USSR.) I was looking for a little more from that conversation, like more insight into the past in Russia and how her parents were when they were young.

Sacrifice weighs heavily on the characters in this episode. Paige’s breakup with Matthew (a relationship I thought was kind of odd) may be her version of sacrifice. At first I read the scene as Paige wanting to back away from spying on the Beemans but maybe the opposite is true in that she wants to get deeper into her parents’ game but doesn’t want him to be damaged. The teenager is certainly more unmoored than normal, as the show shoots the scenes in the Jennings house from unfamiliar angles, to the point where I wasn’t sure Paige was sitting in her own living room at first.

I was amused that Elizabeth reacted with a tinge of jealousy in Mississippi when she found out that hippie was cheating on her. I don’t think she’s personally jealous exactly but it seemed like more of a professional “But I do the betraying” reaction.

It looks like Stan will keep his counterintelligence assignment, at least until the mission with Sofia runs its course. She appears to work for TASS, the Russian news agency. Stan’s heavily redacted description of his workday to Renee was funny. She didn’t get much out of the conversation but she’s apparently not a spy, as least as far as Gabriel knows.

“It adds up,” Gabriel says of his work in America. He did terrible things at the camps, sometimes to people who didn’t deserve them, and as he talks, the mask falls away. He didn’t so much do it for ideology but because he was scared, like a lot of other people. Almost in real time, his resolve and rationalization fall away.

Gabriel’s parting words to Philip: “You were right about Paige. She should be kept out of all this.” This is a stunning, cruel thing to say to Philip after all he’s gone through with his daughter, especially to upend Philip’s world and then walk out the door. Was all that for nothing? Will they all end up exhausted and haunted like Gabriel? After the door closed, Philip should have said, “THANX. This information might have come in handier TWO SEASONS AGO.”

It is sad that Gabriel is gone but the bright side is we get more of Claudia.

Remember

A parent dies and suddenly there is one fewer person to remember.

I lose another source to confirm how hard I cried when the nurse jabbed the needle into my thigh or how proudly everybody cried when I graduated from college. One fewer voice laughs now when we remember that crazy vacation. One fewer mind sharp enough to tell me who I was back before I knew.

We are at half power now and holding. But the day will come, as it must, when my mind, my memory, will be on its own, the sole witness to a past that recedes into the distance without any safeguards.

Presented Without Comment

The complete filmography of Michael Caine. 

A Hill in Korea

Panic in the Parlour

How to Murder a Rich Uncle

The Steel Bayonet

Blind Spot    

Carve Her Name with Pride

The Key

Passport to Shame

The Two-Headed Spy

A Woman of Mystery

Danger Within

The Bulldog Breed

Foxhole in Cairo

The Day the Earth Caught Fire

Solo for Sparrow

The Wrong Arm of the Law

Zulu

The Ipcress File

Alfie

Funeral in Berlin

Gambit

The Wrong Box

Billion Dollar Brain

Hurry Sundown

Woman Times Seven

Deadfall

The Magus

Battle of Britain

The Italian Job

Play Dirty

Simon, Simon

The Last Valley

Too Late the Hero

Get Carter

Kidnapped

Pulp

Sleuth

Zee and Co.

The Black Windmill

The Marseille Contract

The Man Who Would Be King

The Romantic Englishwoman

The Wilby Conspiracy

The Eagle Has Landed

Harry and Walter Go to New York

Peeper

A Bridge Too Far

California Suite

Silver Bears

The Swarm

Ashanti

Beyond the Poseidon Adventure

Dressed to Kill

The Island

Escape to Victory

The Hand

Deathtrap

Educating Rita

The Honorary Consul

The Jigsaw Man

Blame It on Rio

The Holcroft Covenant

Water

Half Moon Street

Hannah and Her Sisters

Mona Lisa

Sweet Liberty

The Whistle Blower

The Fourth Protocol

Jaws: The Revenge

Surrender

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

Without a Clue

Bullseye

Mr. Destiny

A Shock to the System

Blue Ice

The Muppet Christmas Carol

Noises Off

On Deadly Ground

Then There Were Giants

Bullet to Beijing

Blood and Wine

Midnight in Saint Petersburg

Curtain Call

Little Voice

Shadow Run

The Cider House Rules

The Debtors

Get Carter

Miss Congeniality

Quills

Shiner

Last Orders

Austin Powers in Goldmember

The Quiet American

The Actors

Quicksand

Secondhand Lions

The Statement

Around the Bend

Batman Begins

Bewitched

The Weather Man

Children of Men

The Prestige

Flawless

Sleuth

The Dark Knight

Is Anybody There?

Harry Brown

Inception

Cars 2

Gnomeo & Juliet

The Dark Knight Rises

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island

Mr. Morgan's Last Love

Now You See Me

Interstellar

Stonehearst Asylum

Kingsman: The Secret Service

The Last Witch Hunter

Youth

Now You See Me 2

Coup d'Etat

Going in Style                                        

The Americans S5 E6: Crossbreed

Is this the real beginning of Paige’s indoctrination? Being introduced to Gabriel was sort of jaw-dropping and means she’s in it deep now, having met someone from the Center. The whole end scene had the feel of “You are finally ready.”

Paige’s readiness to be brought into some aspect of the spy life also comes from her reading of Das Kapital, as she identifies with a lot of Karl Marx’s arguments (except on religion). Elizabeth points out the capitalist exploitation of the worker but does not seem to realize she’s been exploited her whole life for a cause that will, though she cannot know it, ultimately fail. And she’s the lucky one—look at William, who had no kind of life for himself and died for essentially no reason. Elizabeth isn’t even aware of the exploitation happening in her estranged home country, where Oleg plays along reluctantly, throwing the grocery profiteer in prison.

Why exactly is Gabriel leaving? Is he just tired, as he says? Is lying to Philip just too unbearable? Is his throwaway line to Philip and Elizabeth, that they’ve seen too much and done too much, a hint of something darker to come? Does he see the end of the USSR in sight? (There was a hint of this in his lines: “He was a nobody. We were all nobodies. It’s been over for a long time.”)

Gabriel seemed to have a profound experience at the Lincoln Memorial, a beautifully shot scene. It seemed like a twisted mirror of Jimmy Stewart-eqsue movies in which a disillusioned American goes to the memorial to let the sight of Lincoln reaffirm his belief. For a Soviet, maybe a visit to the memorial is something demoralizing that makes one abandon the cause.

Lying to Philip about his son and his father have taken their toll on Gabriel. Philip finds out that his father was not exactly a logger, as he’d always heard, but a guard at a logging camp. (The word “camp” is never anything good in this type of context.) It sinks in for Philip that his capacity for coldness and cruelty must be in his blood, and it makes him unravel a little bit more. There is also a parallel between him and Mischa, since Mischa’s father only knows Philip is a travel agent in America, which is about as technically true as Philip’s father being a logger. He reflects that his family used to have nothing, but “now we have everything. It feels strange sometimes.” I thought that line was haunting and I’m not sure why. As usual, Matthew Rhys knocks himself out with that performance.

As usual, Keri Russell does, too, balancing a range of subtle emotions. At first it seemed like she really needed to unburden herself while casing the psychiatrist’s office and telling him about the mugging, but her eye roll subverted that. It would have seemed too close to the EST storyline if she’d really needed some help, and we know Elizabeth doesn’t go for that kind of therapy (although she did seem to react positively to the tai chi).

Still, Elizabeth does need some sort of outlet for traumas like her abandonment of Young-Hee. I loved the mix of sorrow and anger when the Mary Kay saleswoman came to the door and reminded Elizabeth of her former friend. She stakes out Young-Hee and Don’s home but a year after the betrayal, another family has moved in. They could have patched things up and just moved, but they could also have divorced and sold the house. If Elizabeth was seeking some sort of confirmation that her actions didn’t permanently damage her friends’ marriage, and that the couple is doing OK, she’s not going to get it, and that must eat away at her.

I assume we’ll soon find out where certain vague plotlines are going, like Stan and Aderholt meeting that Russian woman in the park, Elizabeth stealing files from the psychiatrist, and Philip staking out a woman at work. Meanwhile, with Gabriel telling Paige about her real background, next week looks to be meaty as hell.

Winter Clothes

You had your starburst of popularity. Fifteen minutes, more or less, bursting from drawers. During 5 p.m. twilight, you were all I sought. The gray zip-up sweater. The voluminous snowman hoodie. The deep flannel of the pajama pants. You were the superstars everytime the wind whipped the gutters loose and snowplows whirred in the sleet.

Now look at you all. Sudden April balminess eases windows open. The breeze eases over me and I open drawers and you look like relics. Wool and fleece chafe my fingertips. I need diaphanous cotton or feather-light linen or something nylon with chlorine-proof lining. I am done with everything else.

Your time is over and now you’re just embarrassing yourselves.

Lowering the Bar for Icons

For months in the lead-up to the Oscars, I kept hearing about how the yellow dress Emma Stone wore in La La Land was “iconic.”

I looked at a photo of the dress and it sure was lovely, and quite yellow. But isn’t it a stretch to call something iconic when it’s only been around for a few months? The movie got a lot of critical acclaim but relatively few people saw it. I can see calling the ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz iconic, but that’s because generations of people know them on sight. That yellow dress just isn’t there yet. Check back in a few years and see who remembers.

We water down the word iconic when we attach it to any passing fancy. An icon should stand the test of time and be easily recognizable. Sometimes it seems like people use the word “iconic” when what they really mean is “I’m so into this right now.”

Some other questionable examples that I Googled:

“Actress to reprise her iconic role as Jackie Kennedy.” This isn’t Natalie Portman, who was nominated for an Oscar last year. This is Katie Holmes, who once played Kennedy in some bad TV movie that no network would touch and that eventually went to some channel like Reelz or TeeVee that nobody ever heard of. (There is apparently a sequel with a laughable-looking portrayal of Ted Kennedy by Matthew Perry.) Jackie Kennedy is an icon; Katie Holmes playing her in a movie nobody saw is not. Not at all. (The syntax of the headline seems to me like it’s calling the part iconic and not Kennedy.)

We deem lot of things “instantly iconic” but I think you can’t judge something as iconic unless it stands the test of time. Otherwise, you’ll look pretty stupid when nobody remembers these things. I saw this headline: “25 instantly iconic moments from the Scream Queens trailer.” Oh, right, that show from a few years ago that hardly anybody watched (we turned it off halfway through the first episode). Really, how many iconic moments can you get from any trailer? How long is it, two minutes? This wasn’t Star Wars. It was a really dumb TV show and the person who wrote this took a chance that people would remember the show and it really didn’t work out.

I assume a lot of people also thought the “Cash me ousside, how bow dah?” girl is iconic. You remember: She went on Dr. Phil or Dr. Oz or whatever piece of crap and she OH GOD I CAN’T EVEN FINISH THIS SENTENCE THE WHOLE INCIDENT IS JUST SO FUCKING STUPID

Your mileage may vary on what is iconic. I realize this is all in fun but if you read so many articles in that BuzzFeed style saying that various things are iconic, your eyes glaze over and nothing is iconic. I think we should reserve the icon label for something the majority of people could name on sight or hearing, not just something you see online six months later and say, “I vaguely remember that.” 

The Americans S5 E5: Lotus 1-2-3

Philip has always been the wavering soldier for the cause but now he seems closer than ever to breaking down completely. He’s already clearly disillusioned by his overall mission and now the Centre’s intelligence fails significantly: The Agricorp employees are not trying to destroy Soviet crops but developing the technology to feed everyone.

It hits Philip immediately that he killed the man in the lab for no reason, and in fact killed someone who could have helped the food crisis in his homeland. The lab worker is just the latest in a long line of innocents he’s killed: Gene the IT guy, the soldiers in the training camp, the busboy, the guy who walked into the computer lab at the wrong time, and God knows who else.

Elizabeth tries to comfort him, saying they didn’t know when they killed the guy in the lab, but they still killed him. They still killed a lot of people who weren’t actively trying to harm them, who were just cogs in a machine. I had been wondering why season five has been relatively free of murder. Maybe it’s because they want the one murder so far to stand out and really haunt Philip.

“This has been hard for me for a long time,” Philip tells Elizabeth. “You know that, right?” She knows and she has enough empathy now to follow him to the fake house to talk to him. It’s a turnaround from the end of season three when he was breaking down right in front of her and she shushed him to watch Reagan on TV. The Jennings marriage has never seemed stronger, but how sad and ironic that she had to go in disguise to console her husband. “It’s us, Elizabeth. It’s us,” Philip says after she offers to do the dirty work from now on. The Americans has a knack for ending episodes with seemingly simple but heavily weighted dialogue.  

Everything seems to be falling apart but Philip does have his love for Elizabeth to lean on. That phone call from her to the travel agency just to say she misses him was very sweet and given that most phone calls in that situation would discuss business on this show, it was almost startling to see her call just to say hi. (I loved her matching chevron earrings and dress as Brenda Neill.)

Over in the USSR, Oleg comes home to a buffet and food and potential wives that his parents have arranged. The staging of this, with people sitting on one side of the table, is common in sitcoms to accommodate the camera but in this case, it emphasized that these women were having some kind of creepy audition for his affection. It must be tearing Oleg apart to watch his comrades threaten the grocery store employee by implying they could send his son into deeper trouble in Afghanistan. That’s really, really low.

Anyway, Philip’s relationships with his kids seem to be strained. When he needs an escape, rather than play hockey with his real son, he plays football with his fake son. Paige is wondering if she’s just meant to be alone, way too young to feel that way. Henry is disgusted that his parents never realized he was so good at math. It’s a combination of people in the early ‘80s not realizing that computers require a lot of math skills and the Jenningses not knowing their own son. This is a great payoff for Henry being left to his own devices for several seasons. I loved how the parents’ lack of recognition paralleled the viewers’ lack of recognition at this kid who was suddenly all grown up. Nobody had been looking at him for years.

Then there is Mischa, the son Philip will probably never meet. I understand Gabriel’s reasoning for sending the kid away: If he went to Philip’s house, there would be no way to explain a Russian son without the pieces immediately and finally falling into place for Stan. Still, how heartbreaking that this kid will never meet his father and the father doesn’t even know it.

It’s episode five and the two big plotlines of the season, the grain threat and Mischa, are seemingly dead. What new horrors await?