The Americans on FX

Clark and Martha: See my prediction above.

Philip and Elizabeth: Touching moment that moves toward reconciliation, but getting from apartment to house in one crowded ep is an awful lot to ask.
Stan and Nina: I think we saw the peak of that plotline for this season already, with Nina offering to turn double-agent to an Arkady who almost has to accept. Nina turning the tables on Stan seems like more of a Season 2 plotline.
Paige and Matthew: As I predicted earlier in the thread, Paige escalates the sexual ante to try to keep up with Boobs McGuitarplayer
USSR and USA: No idea.

 

Humans are funny creatures. Martha can be reasonably smart and not suspect Clark because subconsciously she doesn't want know. I could see a situation where Phillip eventually comes clean to working for the Soviets, but convinces her his feeling are real and uses that to turn Martha.

 

Something about Stars Wars testing or missiles in Europe.

 

The Poland situation really escalated around that time. Martial law was imposed in December 1981.

 

we're still in the Brezhnev era yes? We still have Andropov and Chernenko to go before Gorbachev enters the picture.

 

Yes. Brezhnev didn't die til late '82. The Andropov era could make for some interesting storylines, seeing as how he was the former KGB director before becoming Communist Party general secretary.

 

Don't blink, or you'll miss the Andropov and Chernenko eras.

Able Archer 83 (closest we ever got to fucking up and having a nuclear war, thanks to the usual array of paranoia and miscommunication) appened during Andropov's time in November 1983.

 

Chernenko's greatest contribution was the Two Tribes video by Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

 

So did the downing the Korean Air Lines flight 007. That was in September '83.

 

Nina is fantastic.

What an amazing roll of the dice by her to come clean. She is Teflon now since the Stan is under her thumb. Great decision to come out at that moment.

 

The Martha storyline makes me uncomfortable, and I'm not sure if it's because it's approaching the credibility line or that the actors are playing it so well that I genuinely feel for Martha.

Maybe it's both, but I couldn't wait for the wedding scene to be over last week, and I'm kind of looking forward to (presumably) her meeting an unspeakable end.

 

The greatest catalyst to the Able Archer war scare occurred more than two years earlier. In a May 1981 closed-session meeting of senior KGB officers and Soviet leaders, General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev and KGB chairman Yuri Andropov bluntly announced that the United States was preparing a secret nuclear attack on the USSR. To combat this threat, Andropov announced, the KGB and GRU would begin Operation RYAN. RYAN (РЯН) was a Russian acronym for "Nuclear Missile Attack" (Ракетное Ядерное Нападение); Operation RYAN was the largest, most comprehensive peacetime intelligence-gathering operation in Soviet history. Agents abroad were charged with monitoring the figures who would decide to launch a nuclear attack, the service and technical personnel who would implement the attack, and the facilities from which the attack would originate. In all probability, the goal of Operation RYAN was to discover the first intent of a nuclear attack and then preempt it.[10][11]

The impetus for the implementation of Operation RYAN is still largely unknown. However, the Nazi sneak attack and subsequent invasion on the Soviet Union in 1941 has remained a vital lesson for the Soviet armed forces ever since.[citation needed] Oleg Gordievsky, the highest-ranking KGB official ever to defect, suspected that it was born of the increased "Soviet Paranoia" coupled with "Reaganite Rhetoric". Gordievsky conjectured that Brezhnev and Andropov, who "were very, very old-fashioned and easily influenced ... by Communist dogmas", truly believed that an antagonistic Ronald Reagan would push the nuclear button and relegate the Soviet Union to the literal "ash heap of history".[12][13][14] Central Intelligence Agency historian Benjamin B. Fischer lists several concrete occurrences that likely led to the birth of RYAN. The first of these was the use of psychological operations (PSYOP) that began soon after President Reagan took office.

thanks wiki