Taco Tuesday With Kirstjen Nielsen

Kirstjen Nielsen sits down at MXDC Cocina Mexicana, a few blocks from the White House in Washington, DC. It has been a trying few days and she just wants to relax and have a nice dinner. Yesterday, she had to face that nasty press corps, which had questions with that unpleasantness at the Mexican border. Something about kids in cages.

Who could blame her for wanting to treat herself? “Besides, it’s Taco Tuesday,” she told nobody in particular when she left her office at the Department of Homeland Security.

“Buenos días,” the waitress asks, with a smile that does not reach her eyes. “What can I get you to drink?”

“Water,” the secretary says without looking up from her menu. “AGUA,” she clarifies in a loud voice.

The phone rings and it’s Steven Miller. “Good news. We got the approval to open that fourth detention center for the toddlers.”

“That’s just the news I needed after a few tough days. Finally, our policy is advancing,” she tells him. “Hey, I’m thinking of calling it the Korematsu Center. What do you think?”

“Anything that triggers the libs,” Miller says in a deadpan voice and hangs up.

A woman walks over to Nielsen’s table, an angry expression on her face. “Shame,” she spits.

“What?”

“Shame on you. If these kids in internment camps can’t enjoy their dinners in peace, neither should you.”

“Ma’am, they are not internment camps. They are detention centers for …”

A Secret Service officer cuts off Nielsen. “Step away, ma’am. Step away now,” he says to the protestor.

The protestor leaves. The waitress returns. Nielsen orders two—DOS—chicken tacos with no sour cream—NO SOURO CREAMO.

Nielsen loses herself in thought. The protestor reminds her of that stressful press conference yesterday. That reporter interrupted her by playing the recording of those kids crying at the detention center—WOMP WOMP. The nerve of some people. Then those reporters rudely questioned as if it were the government’s policy to separate families, just because a few highly-placed administration officials implied as such.

What more did those kids want? The government generously feeds, clothes and shelters them. Sure, some of the kids were crying. But that’s what kids do: they cry. Nielsen remembers crying when she was away at summer camp, but she still went because her parents told her to.

Nielsen’s phone buzzes: a text from President Trump. “Tremendous job at the press conference yesterday. We need to keep these alien children from infesting our country.”

She smiles. “Thank you so much, sir.” This makes all his yelling at her at that meeting a few months ago worthwhile.

“By the way,” Trump adds. “Sessions has a message for you: Romans 13. I assume you know what that means. WIN!”

Before the tacos can even arrive, she hears a disturbance in the restaurant. The patrons move closer to her. They’re screaming “Shame!” and “Liar!” and “End family separation!” and these other awful things. They’re really making a ruckus.

Kirstjen Nielsen is just trying to enjoy a meal. Some people are so rude. It almost hurts her feelings.

Then she stiffens. Nielsen pulls a small device out of her bag. She plus it into her side and the AryanBot app begins its work, charging her with the confidence and sang froid she needs to get through the day. She feels better now.

“We have to go, ma’am,” says the Secret Service agent. “Those protestors are coming closer. It’s not safe.”

She sighs. “And I really was looking forward to that taco.”

Kirstjen Nielsen leaves the Mexican restaurant, trying to ignore the tumult around her. It’s been a rough day but tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow, after all, belongs to her.

Dear Whoever Makes Oreos,

Stop experimenting. Just stop. You have been perfect for like 100 years and these weird fads you get on sometimes are sickening.

Just for the hell of it, we recently tried Oreos that had some kind of cherry cola flavoring. They had some kind of pop-rock effect where they exploded in your mouth. They were naaaaaasty. They were so nasty, our son took one bite and spit the cookie in the trash.

Think about that: you made a child spit an unfinished Oreo in the trash. When has that ever happened?

I should have been mad at him, because spitting food in the trash is not something anyone should do. But you know what? It didn’t bother me, because I knew why he did that. I took one bite of your abominable cookie and didn’t finish it. I didn’t spit it in the trash, since I have (a little) more control than my still-developing 9-year-old, but still—I couldn’t finish an Oreo. I’m not encouraging trash-spitting but once in awhile, you have to allow kids to bend the rules a little.

Just leave Oreos at chocolate. You also make these “blonde” Oreos or whatever, made with vanilla. I’m sure they’re fine for those degenerates who prefer vanilla to chocolate, but they’re just not Oreos. It’s like when someone on the Food Network makes a martini with tequila or something—it’s not a martini. It’s something else.

Oreos are just chocolate cookie with delicious hydrogenated oil filling. That’s it. Don’t go too much further afield than double-stuff. Mint might be OK. Apparently, you also make lemon Oreos and while I am a sucker for anything lemon, they just aren’t Oreos. Certainly your weapon-grade cherry filling doesn’t cut it.

I don’t eat Oreos often but they’re perfect as is. I guess this is what happens when you make a perfect product: You get bored after a few decades and experiment unwisely. Just. Leave them. Alone.

Thank you for your time. I’ll be perusing the Hydrox aisle.

RSVP Regrets Only

The scene is President Trump’s bedroom in the White House. The president sprawls on his bed in a bathrobe, opening RSVPs from the Eagles Super Bowl team to visit the White House. Sean Hannity sits nearby.

Trump (sighing): Another no.

Hannity: What box did this guy check off?

Trump: “Because you called us SOBs.” Man, that’s like the 12^th one. These ungrateful sons of bitches.

Hannity: Seriously.

Trump: It seems like all of them are responding the same way.

Hannity: Not quite, Mr. President. A few have checked off the box that says “Because you said we shouldn’t be in this country.”

Trump: You know, I didn’t take all that penicillin during the Vietnam War just for these guys to …

An aide interrupts.

Aide: Excuse me, sir, but there’s a briefing on the economic consequences of the steel tariffs.

Trump: What? Send me a pie chart. This is more important. What was I saying?

Hannity: The Eagles.

Trump: Right. (Yells offstage) Mel? Hey, Mel?

No answer.

Hannity: Sir, we may just have to cancel the Eagles’ visit.

Trump (sighing): But, if we cancel it, do I win or do I lose? That’s what we have to keep our eye on here.

Hannity: You win. You always win.   

Trump pokes his head out into the hallway outside. Kellyanne Conway, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Mike Pence are blowing up midnight-green balloons.

Trump: Sorry, folks. Party’s off.

They groan and trudge away.

CURTAIN

The Americans S6 E10: START

The ending of The Americans felt right. This show has always focused as much, if not more, on the emotional violence in marriages and families, not just violence in the spy trade. The show was true to itself to the end, with its tragedy coming not in a hail of bullets, but in the family being torn apart. The Jennings family makes it out alive but they are not whole.

Henry probably got the saddest ending of all. It may have been the correct decision to leave him in America, since he has the strongest connection to his country and the most going for him, but he loses his parents and sister. Stan will take care of him but he also has to explain the incomprehensible: his family were Russian spies. If it dawns on him, he’ll have to live with the fact that his conversation with Stan, about how his parents were never home, was one factor that tipped off the FBI.

Scratch that: Paige may have the saddest ending. She takes control of her life and leaves her parents behind on the train to stay in America, but what future does she have? Her parents are gone and the infrastructure that would have given her a cover identity is gone, too. Stan doesn’t tell anybody about the garage confrontation and the authorities may or may not buy her excuse that she knew nothing about her parents’ double lives. So Paige goes to the safe house, waiting for orders from a mentor who is long gone. What a perfect final image: drinking a shot of vodka alone.

I think about the final words of season two, after the Jennings parents find out the Centre wants them to recruit Paige. “It would destroy her,” Philip says. Elizabeth asks, “To be like us?” Those words were unsettling then and they’re unsettling now.

Elizabeth and Philip stay together but are without the children, one they recruited and one they tried to protect. Even for those trained to be emotionless, this is a source of deep pain, written all over their faces. They had to watch as their daughter stayed behind and couldn’t do anything about it. I liked the touch of Phillip going to Elizabeth’s side on the train, risking blowing their cover so they could be together as a source of comfort. After everything, their marriage survives, but the irony is their real wedding last season may have been their undoing, as it led Father Andrei to tip off Aderholt.

Mischa and Nadezhda are finally back in the embrace of Mother Russia but they’re strangers to the country. Their return builds on themes the show was working on all along: They wear the disguises of Americans but have now truly become American, and may not recognize the country they haven’t seen in 20 years. “We’ll get used to it,” Elizabeth says in Russian. But we know what’s coming in the Cold War. The Berlin Wall will fall, countries will leave the Eastern Bloc and the USSR will in a few years cease to exist. McDonalds (nice touch having them stop there) will soon be in Moscow, as Elizabeth dreaded. They do succeed in taking the coded message about the attempted Gorbachev coup back home, but this undermines most of their previous work, and they take nothing with them from their decades in America, not even their children.

I liked the final shot of the two of them by the road in Russia. In the distance, the cityscape looked like it was missing something, like looking on Washington, DC, in the distance without the Capitol or Washington Monument.

What might life have been like if they’d stayed in the Soviet Union? Elizabeth thinks she might have worked in a factory, and maybe she’d have met Philip on the bus. Elizabeth’s dream shows another path: smoking in bed with Gregory and saying, “I didn’t want a kid anyway.”

After everything collapses and Stan finally knows—really knows—that his friends of years are spies, he lets them leave unharmed. “You made my life a joke,” the FBI agent says, knowing his reputation will be in question since he lived across the street from spies for years. Philip says he’s done with the spy life and tells Stan, “You were my only friend in my whole shitty life.” He’s working Stan so he can get out alive, but we know it’s true. The two really were friends, and the pain in that garage is palpable. Worse, letting the Jennings family off betrays Stan’s decades or work for his country. Then again, maybe Stan sees a kindred soul in Philip, who in choosing Russia over the KGB, served his country. That scene was cathartic and electric.

Philip tips off Stan that his wife may be a spy. Philip may have meant this as a kindness but it’s really cruelty. Now the FBI agent has to live with another potential betrayal. Is Renee a spy? After two seasons, we don’t give a definitive answer, but that’s beside the point. The point is that Stan will always have doubts. The way he hesitated before Renee pulled him in for a hug means he believes Philip about his wife, which will eventually eat away at their marriage. It’s another tragic ending, and the writers stuck the landing with it.

Stan rhetorically asks the Jennings family if they know how many people Soviet agents have killed in the last year. Let’s add up the human toll of the murdered or messed up people in the six years of this show:

Nina, becoming a pawn first of the Americans and then of the Soviets, executed in a gulag. Martha, conned into marrying a spy and betraying her country, exiled to the USSR. Oleg, one of the few characters who did concrete good, spending life in prison. Amador, brutally murdered by Philip and Elizabeth in a safe house. Annelise, strangled and folded into a suitcase like laundry. Young-Hee and Don, their marriage destroyed by Elizabeth for no usable information. William, giving his life to his country to end up with liquified insides from a deadly pathogen. Betty, forced in the machine shop to overdose on heart medication and die slowly. Lisa, her throat slit by a bottle of booze after trying to extort Elizabeth. The guy in the driveway, whom Elizabeth dropped a car on. Gene, the FBI’s IT guy, hanged by Philip to cover up the Mail Robot bugging. Marilyn, beheaded posthumously in a parking garage. Gregory, walking into a hail of police bullets. Natalie, who helped the Nazis execute the Soviets as a teenager, watching her husband die before being shot in her own dining room. Vlad, shot by Stan, who mistook him for murdering his partner. Leanne and Emmet, spies murdered by their spy son, himself later killed. A soldier at the military base, killed by Philip. Sofia and Gennadi, murdered by Elizabeth, their bodies left to discovery by their child. Pasha, pushed to the brink of suicide. The lab technician in Kansas, killed by Philip to gain nothing. Gaad, bleeding out on his retirement vacation. Tatiana, shot in the back in broad daylight. A CIA official, poisoned by Claudia as he lay paralyzed on the floor. The deliveryman outside the military base, left to freeze to death, tied to a tree. Kate, hanged in her own home by Larrick. A security guard, strangled by Elizabeth in a hotel room. Two FBI agents, killed while trying to capture Harvest. Anton, abducted back to the Russia he had finally escaped from. The South African, burning to death with a tire around him. Kimmy, emotionally manipulated for years. Lucia, the vengeful Salvadoran spy strangled by Larrick. Fred, shot after trying to glean the secrets of the Stealth program. Harvest, swallowing a cyanide pill, praising his mother and cursing his father. A man in a swimming pool, his heart stopped by Elizabeth. A bus boy, shot by Philip when he got in the way.

That’s just off the top of my head and we’ll never even know how many lives were shattered in the three years between seasons five and six. It was all for an ideological battle that turned out not to matter. What a stupid waste.

The Americans was a show about both a clash of countries and all the little clashes that happen in families and marriages. Its brilliance is that it viewed one through the prism of the other. This finale and this season have been brilliant, showing what happens when ideologies break down and neither side knows how to live anymore.

The Americans will go down in the hall of fame of TV drama. It’s one of my very favorite shows of all time, just stunning on every level. For every horrible murder or corpse disposal that set your teeth on edge, there were quieter moments of violence that sent a shiver up your spine and haunted you. If there is justice at the Emmys this year, it will get a long-overdue Best Drama award, and there will be awards for the flabbergasting performances by Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys.

I really will miss this show. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to binge-watch the whole thing again.  

The Americans S6 E9: Jennings, Elizabeth

At the end, the Jennings family will have nothing left but one another. Philip barely escapes the FBI, sends a code red message to Elizabeth, and she grabs her go bag and prepares to exfiltrate her family.

Elizabeth has done the right thing, refusing to kill Nesterenko. She’s spurred on by the memory of the weirdest car/horse accident ever, where she refused to help a dying man so as not to blow the mission as a young girl, but her handler reminds her of the greater good, and not to leave a comrade behind. But now she really does have nothing. “What’s left for you? Your house? Philip? Your American kids?” Claudia calmly taunts her. This sounds like a pretty good life to an actual American, but with the way Elizabeth wavers, she is devastated. The one thing Elizabeth didn’t want was to become an American.

Now that the jig is up, she also may not have a native Russia to return to. Claudia warns her the Centre will collapse once the party finds out about the botched coup against Gorbachev. Elizabeth has killed a comrade and that will leave her outside the protection of the USSR. Her broad-daylight assassination of a disguised Tatiana was badass. We had to rewind to watch it again. Bad. Ass.   

At home, during yet another confrontation over that kitchen island, Elizabeth also loses the trust of her daughter. Paige confronts her mother about sleeping with Jackson, who says she ruined his life. Paige’s eyes are open to the nature of her mom’s work, at least sexually (she hasn’t yet learned about the really gruesome things Elizabeth has done, like drop a car on a guy).

In a thrilling moment, Paige calls out her mother’s hypocrisy about using sex for work: “Does dad know he married a whore?” Our jaws dropped at home.

In a sense, it was an earned moment for Paige after being subjected to so many lectures from mom. (There was some sexism in the whore charge, since she doesn’t consider that Philip slept around as much as Elizabeth did.) But now she’s gone and done it: Elizabeth’s Bulging Forehead Vein of Doom comes out. “What was sex” in the grand scheme of serving their country. “Nobody cared, including your father.”

Elizabeth feels betrayed by Claudia’s lies, saying, “If you knew me, you’d know never to lie to me.” (The last time Claudia lied, Elizabeth bashed her face in and waterboarded her.) At home, she lies to her daughter, and Paige tells her, “If you lie to me now, after everything, I will never forgive you.”

Oleg trades on his long almost-friendship with Stan to try to get him to send a coded message back to Moscow. The two sit in a windowless cell, which Oleg is prepared to spend the rest of his life in. Poor Oleg, one of the few who has tried to do the right thing in this show and answer to a morality higher than country. When the FBI nabbed him on the street, he accepted his fate in such a resigned way. He’ll probably never see his family again, another character who has lost everything.

Stan knows his neighbors are spies, even though he doesn’t have any evidence yet. A search of “Jennings, Elizabeth” on the computer turns up nothing. (Or is it suspicious that there’s no information on her, like she sprung up out of nowhere?) Pastor Tim won’t rat out the Jennings family, presumably since he wants to protect Paige. Stan sounds crazy to Adherholt when he airs his suspicions.

But a few catty Russian Orthodox priests put the FBI on the trail of Philip, who evades capture in a thrilling moment. The jig is up, and the family has no ideology left, nothing left but one another.

I’m not ready for The Americans to end.

The Real Tide Pod Challenge

Tide makes those liquid detergent pods that look like candy wrapped up in bright colors. This has caused some hand-wringing over the last few years since kids could mistake the pods for candy, eat them and die.

Procter and Gamble has taken a few steps in recent years toward making this product safer so parents won’t need to call poison control. These steps include making the packaging bitter so kids won’t bite into them, making the packaging opaque, child safety warnings and all other kids of safeguards. I don’t know whether or not it’s working but for any parents who are nervous that their kids will eat a Tide pod, I have a foolproof solution:

Don’t buy them.

The easiest way for your child not to be poisoned by Tide pods is not to buy Tide pods. I realize the actual easiest way would be for Procter and Gamble to stop making them, but since stopping the march of capitalism isn’t going to happen, take matters into your hands and stop buying them.

You don’t have to buy Tide pods. There are other forms of Tide that will not tempt kids to consume them. Like, nobody will take a swig out of the big bottle expecting a sweet treat, and nobody will eat the powder. There are also other brands of detergent that don’t look like Easter treats.

I buy regular liquid Tide in a smaller size because larger sizes won’t fit upright in the cabinet in our laundry room. But if there were a documented risk that our 9-year-old would drink the small size bottle, I think I’d probably use my head and buy something else.

What, do you have some special washer that only works with Tide pods and you’re still nervous about the kids getting into your stash of surfactants? No? Then stop buying it, moron, and you won’t have to worry about any of this. Now I just saved a bunch of societal hand-wringing about the easiest way to prevent something that is easily preventable. It appears the real Tide pod challenge, now that there is a well-known risk of poisoning, is using your head.

The Americans S6 E8: The Summit

After six seasons of being a Sovietbot, Elizabeth Jennings begins to crack. She is betrayed at home and at work. First Philip admits that he spied on her on behalf of Oleg and the USSR moderates. The couple has been through betrayals before but this is the worst because it undermines not only a marriage but undermines Elizabeth’s life’s work. He tells her he wants her to think for herself, not just doing what the Center tells her, and be a human being. She balks but this plants a seed, and it plays across Keri Russell’s face for the entire hour.

Then Claudia admits that Elizabeth’s motherland has been lying to her. The Centre wants to kill and then frame Nesterenko, a moderate Soviet influence, so the hardliners can depose Gorbachev. Elizabeth knows this man is not a traitor and refuses to kill him, unwilling to set in motion something that, in the show, would have changed world history.

The old Elizabeth would have killed Jackson, her young informant at the State Department, after he discovers the bug she planted. Instead, she hesitates and lets him live in an act of mercy. (There was a mini-theme in this show about the person you don’t notice who notices more than you think. Jackson seems like a patsy but finds the bug. Stavos has known for years that something was going on in the back room of the travel agency, but never called the police.)

In a brutal act of mercy, Elizabeth euthanizes Erica. It’s a dark, sick joke that the artist chokes on her paint brush, throwing up bile like green paint, but there is some kindness in the way the disguised nurse kisses the sick woman on the forehead. It’s also a sacrifice since it ends Elizabeth’s chance at bugging Erica’s husband.

What does Elizabeth see in the painting she inherits? It’s a woman in pain and doubt (and she reminds me of Oleg’s mother). I think she sees that Erica is gone but will pass on something that will last forever. What will Elizabeth pass on? We know her work will be for nothing in a few years. She hesitates, but in the end burns the painting, taking no chances (what a gorgeous image of smoke drifting over the smoky face).

It's a very Americans-type irony that Elizabeth would rebel against the Soviet Union just a little too late, after Stan is finally onto her. After last week’s hushed suspicion, they pulled back a little this week, but there was time for Stan to pull on an old thread—Gregory—visiting one of the man’s friends at a Roy Rogers. I’m assuming this was the mysterious Roy Rogers in Franconia from a few seasons back? The man tells her Gregory’s girlfriend had hair like a Vidal Sassoon ad and smoked like a chimney.

With two episodes left, there are a few threads left dangling. One, Stan is very close to finally understanding who his neighbors are. Two, Elizabeth is going to meet with Oleg and place herself in danger. Three, Philip is going to meet with Father Andrei and place himself in danger. Four, is Renee actually a spy or illegal or what? She’s finally landed that desk job at the FBI. I’m still not sure how this will all end.