theamericans | Question of the week #28

From:

I'm really excited to see what develops from this. I didn't get particularly attached to Nina early on in the season, but towards the end when she decided to admit what she'd done to Arkady and switch (back) sides, they got me interested!

Arkady said the ultimate goal would be to turn Stan, but I'm not sure if that's realistic. I liked that they had Nina say that flat out. Maybe they could swing it, but I kind of think they'll have to have her work him more like Philip is working Martha, maybe getting him to fear for her safety and give up more information that way or something.

I hope they could find a way to keep Nina around long term, but I am realistic that anyone in her position is in constant threat. Although, I guess so are Philip and Elizabeth.

From:

sistermagpie

I think it's going to be great watching Nina come into her own as a spy--but difficult. I mean, up until now she's been playing defense. She didn't mean to get trapped into being a double agent, and her decision to confess could have ended everything for her. Now for the first time she's being asked to manipulate her own source and try to turn him--she's going to be getting a crash course in the type of thing Philip, especially, does a lot, and that's probably going to bring up some conflicts for her as she does it.

But since Stan started off manipulating her too, it's not going to be like Clark and Martha. I think he'll be very sensitive, at least after a while, to signs that she's not being honest with him and their relationship could become rather dangerous for her. She's really starting off by going after a big fish here. She's not getting a chance to practice on low risk, easy guys. We know Stan's got some killer instincts about this sort of thing. Right now they're obscured by his romantic feelings and seeing Nina as somebody who needs protection, but I don't think that would last forever, particularly if he sees more evidence of the way "the couple" works.

From:

soupytwist

That whole last paragraph is totally the crux of things for me. Nina's really in the deep end here, and while she shows every sign of being able to swim, she's still completely out of her depth. (Hah, I may be a bit too pleased by my own metaphor.) She doesn't know what she's doing, and Stan's a professional! If she can keep him all bamboozled for a while that's one thing, but it can't last that long, and it would definitely not get her through any actual suspicion on Stan's part.

I think it's going to be very very scary for Nina. She's got so many competing threats to guard against, she's still young and she doesn't have any experience of this sort of thing, at least not the actual doing it. Philip and Elizabeth DO have the experience, but I don't know whether Nina would be able to ask for help. It would probably be dangerous, and there would almost certainly be internal reasons for not going there... I also don't feel like I understand the implications of Nina's new role, so I hope someone who knows more about the power stuctures and stuff talks about that!

From:

calystarose

I worry for Nina, her position is so precarious. But I really am enjoying her character arc. I hope that she becomes a very effective agent at undermining Stan and the FBI. She deserves a few wins.

From:

jae

Yeah, I'm totally with you on this. I don't want her to completely get the best of Stan because that would be all one-sided, but I hope she gets a few wins too.

-J

From:

quantumreality

Me too! In my headcanon, if the USSR kept surviving past 1991, she would become KGB head, and then Foreign Minister. :P

From:

jae

I don't know what will happen and I won't even try to speculate this soon before a season, but here are some things I hope will happen:

• I want to find out what her patronymic and last name are!

• Back during the first season,

quantumreality had this whole notion that Nina was going to eventually ascend to being Rezident. I thought that was a ridiculous idea at the time, but now I could actually see it. (Not as soon as the second season, though.)

• I'd like to understand more about what drives her as a spy. Where is she ideologically? What's her background? Even just little hints would be awesome!

• I hope her relationship with Stan will stay ambiguous, so that it's never entirely clear how much they actually each care about the other and who is besting whom.

• Like

calystarose, I'd love to see her win a few in terms of the spy game. She's actually done remarkably well for herself so far, but I'd like to see her turn her obvious intelligence and skill to her actual job.

-J

From:

sistermagpie

I want to find out what her patronymic and last name are!

I've started to feel so weird about this sort of thing. I feel like there's a handful of characters that I only know by this truncated version of their name. Like they might as well just be known as "Bob...just Bob."

From:

jae

It's actually understandable that we don't know Philip and Elizabeth's full real names--they're not names that they actually use--but it's truly bizarre after all this time with her that the only form of Nina's name that we know is her first name.

Then again, we've never seen her at home or anything, either--only at the office and in the field. It would be nice to get a glimpse at other sides of her this coming season.

-J

From:

sistermagpie

Right--and also with Claudia. There's a reason for it, but I'm still very *aware* of not knowing their real name, even if it's understandable I don't. But with Nina it's like...she's a major character and I want to know her name!

From:

jae

FYI! :D

-J

From:

apolla-savre.livejournal.com

As a Russian Studies student, it freaks me out not knowing their patronymics and surnames, so I am totally in favor of learning more of their names.

As for a guess about Nina's ideological background, she's probably registered as a party member (and by probably, I mean 99% sure that the only way she could be allowed to work in the US was by being a good standing communist party member.) But given the way she had her own little operation going, I'd say she's not that much of a believer.

From:

jae

Yeah, your read of Nina is close to mine. I agree that she would probably have to be a party member--but I also know that lots of people were party members without being true believers (based on my background reading and my own experience from that time period in another Eastern European country).

As a Russian Studies student, it freaks me out not knowing their patronymics and surnames

I can only imagine! As a writer of fanfiction, I can tell you that it's annoying as all hell for us, too, though. ;) There are all sorts of stories that can't be told about Nina until we know, you know? And she is awesome and deserves stories.

Joel Fields told us on Twitter today that we're getting her full name this season, though! I hope that means patronymic too.

-J

From:

katiac

Joel Fields told us on Twitter today that we're getting her full name this season, though! I hope that means patronymic too.

Really??? That's awesome! Did he say anything about getting Elizabeth or Philip's, by chance?

(Or Philip's back-story?) *blinks eyes hopefully*

From:

jae

Click on the "FYI" link above and you'll see for yourself all he told me. :)

-J

From:

katiac

Alas, no Philip. But certainly exciting about Nina!

From:

jae

You could ask him your questions and see what he says! :) I just figured that was a sufficiently non-spoilery spoiler that he would probably let it out if they were going to fill in the blanks on her name (and say nothing if they weren't), you know? It was also more likely than hearing Philip and Elizabeth's full names (because circumstances).

-J

From:

katiac

Okay, I will try to be braver next time... really, I will be okay with whatever they do, they're such good storytellers, but I am desperately curious about Philip and despite how excited I am about some of the Elizabeth stuff they'll be exploring, I want Philip explored just as deeply as they did her the first season...

From:

katiac

Okay, I summoned my inner Elizabeth and tweeted it. We'll see!

From:

jae

*applause*!

From:

katiac

And can I just squee like a fangirl ONE more time and say TWO WEEEEEEEKS!!!!!!!

From:

jae

YES! That's not even too long, really. It's seemed like so impossibly long in the future for so long that I'm going to just enjoy the anticipation for now. :)

-J

From:

apolla-savre.livejournal.com

Really?? That's awesome!!

I just hope it means patronymic and they don't throw out a "middle name". Having Nina call Vladimir "Vlad" was bad enough. I know Russian names are odd to Americans, but it still ruined my suspension of disbelief for those scenes.

From:

sistermagpie

Heh--hence the conversation that just got re-started in the episode thread of "Duty & Honor." It started because I went back and checked if, as I remembered, Philip called Irina "Irina" even when she was calling him Misha. Watching it again it's not only glaring that he does that, but he does it after they slept together. I don't know what that would feel like to a native Russian speaker, but we thought it almost had to be a mistake on the English-speaking writer's part.

I can't imagine that Nina wouldn't get a patronymic. They seem to have gotten that right so far with the characters where we know it, and the translator has them use the correct form of the name (in the flashbacks of Duty & Honor Philip and Irina use the same forms of each other's names). The new KGB agent who's coming next year was in the preview and he was called name + patronymic in the clip.

I can't figure out why any of the Russian speakers didn't just ask about/correct Vlad.

From:

katiac

I kind of interpreted the "Irina" thing (and I could be totally off-base, and also don't remember if I already said this, apologies if I did) as maybe that he was purposefully trying to keep his distance from her. Like even when Elizabeth and Philip discuss Moscow in private, they pronounce it the American way, so I'm not sure jumping back to their former nicknames in the usual Russian way wouldn't have seemed weird to him anyway.

And throughout the episode, it seemed the overall theme was that Irina was trying to play up their old intimacy, calling him Misha as just another way of doing that, where Philip didn't seem to be trying to connect with her in the same way at all. They weren't snuggling and reminiscing about old times. He wasn't reaching out to her. She tells him he's handsome as ever. He says, "Same to you." She brings up that he's married. He say, "You?" Even after Elizabeth's call when he hangs up, he stares at the ceiling. Irina rolls over and touches him, stares down at him like a lover. He's not reacting, not reaching to touch her or kiss her, just sort of there. They'd just had sex, sure. But like they show Philip in bed with Elizabeth spooning her, and after sex in the hotel in another ep, they're cuddling. They're not shown even as close in bed before Irina scoots over.

So to me (and I may be totally alone in this) that feels like just another variation on the same Philip theme of wanting to get close enough to get his needs met but not too close.

From:

sistermagpie

I assume that if the two forms were intentionally--and they probably were--the idea was to show Philip keeping his distance. But I feel like--and I'm not a Russian speaker so I don't want to sound like I really *know* what this would be like--I feel like in Russian he's doing more than that. Like it would be such an obviously cold thing to call somebody the full name when they're calling you the diminutive and they're you're ex you *just had sex last night!* that Irina should at the very least be reacting to it, and she's not. It's like she doesn't know it.

So I definitely got the same idea from it than you did, definitely. I'm just not sure it doesn't depend on having an English understanding of names. Like it's the equivalent of having a character call his boss "sweetheart" to show that he doesn't take her seriously, but not having her react to it because it's presented as kind of normal.

From:

katiac

Okay, I see what you're saying now. Yeah, you're right, that's weird that she wouldn't react to it, then, even from just a perspective of wanting to keep up with the con she was putting on.

Of course, they also put Philip's name as "Mischa" in the subtitles when that's not really the standard spelling, apparently, (and had the Reagan speech from 8 months later), so maybe whoever was double checking the episode missed a few things?

From:

sistermagpie

Yes, Jae's theory is just that the choice of which form to use is up to the translator and since this was in English they didn't run it by them. But I also like the other theory in the thread that Philip's being "Philip" here--he's American and therefore does not know short forms. If the Russian lady's name is Irina he'll just call her that.

From:

apolla-savre.livejournal.com

I agree - the usage of English probably makes it awkward to call her by a nickname. I also felt like Philip was really distant in this episode. He was hurt by what happened, untrusting of the KGB, and now they were reuniting him with an ex? I think he didn't trust Irina - which might add believability to his omission of saying he had sex with Irina. Maybe for him it was like when he had to sleep with targets - just part of the job, so it "didn't count" in his mind.

And your theory about the English usage makes a lot of sense for why Elizabeth pronounced "Arkady" and "Vladimir Kosygin" the way she did.

From:

katiac

Do you have a theory on Claudia's pronunciation of "Nadezhda"? ;)

I definitely agree with your thinking that Philip fixed it in his mind that it really didn't count. For one thing, he would've had to sleep with Irina regardless to complete the set-up against Bielawski, so sex had to happen either way, just like any other day on the job. So really the only thing that would've made it out of bounds relationship-wise was him getting inappropriately emotionally attached--it being making love, not just sex. So since at that point he'd already figured out Irina was conning him, he was screwed up in the head at the time, and there was no connection for them or anything else going forward, he could easily look at it like "nothing happened" from a certain point of view.

Or at least that's his side of it!

From:

apolla-savre.livejournal.com

Uh...not really. It could be the disuse of English or it could just be that that's the best the actress could do. Maybe she had a cold at the time?

Or she had just had her face punched in repeatedly, maybe there was some jaw pain that prevented her from pronouncing it correctly.

I named my Russian Blue/tabby mix cat Nadezhda (sort of after Elizabeth/but it's also my mom's favorite Russian girl's name) and we call her Nadya. My dad slaughter's it no matter how many times we try to correct him. He just can't say it. So that might be the reason for Claudia too.

I'm open to suggestions, really

From:

sistermagpie

Just to be clear--I just think it's weird because she's so clearly using the diminutive of his name. He could say "Ira" just as easily there if she can say Misha.

But it's a really good thing to explain it via Philip simply sticking to a more American language usage. I really like that, actually--it makes it make sense to me in ways it didn't before. Irina's being sloppier about her "no Russian" rule by not only calling him by his real name, but calling him a diminutive where Philip might be going along with her in using the real name but is sticking close enough to his American language default that he doesn't "know" the diminutive form.

Philip and Elizabeth, as we know, are the best at their jobs and they do that in part by not being sloppy about this sort of thing. Elizabeth doesn't want Grannie to use her real name. Philip's not going to go so far as to start using shortened names or probably also not name + patronymic. He knows Americans just use the most common form of the first name.

And yeah, I definitely think Elizabeth chooses to pronounce Russian names using English pronunciation too. I like to think that when she asks for Arkady she even pauses for a split second to decide how she's going to say it.

From:

quantumreality

Hmm. Wouldn't she have called him "Volodya" as a nickname?

From:

sistermagpie

I think that's the short form of Vlad, yes, from what I looked up, anyway. Volodya or Vova--I don't know if they're alternates or if one is different from the other.

From:

quantumreality

I still totally think she could become Rezident. She's clearly decided that if she's going to use her situation, it'll be to her best advantage and that means scoring a big win for Arkady. He'll move up, and who better to replace him than the agent who got his win for him?

Even the fact that she was running her little sideline in stereo equipment suggests that she had some kind of ambition even before landing in hot water with Stan, and now she's only even more driven and focussed in getting herself into a position where she never has to be coerced by anyone again.

From:

jae

Yaaaaay,

quantumreality is back! *clings*

I still don't see how it could happen this season, honestly. But if it does, I will fully expect you to point and laugh and say "I told you so," okay? :)

-J