After watching "The Americans" for a while do you ...

I read an interview with a man whose parents were a part of the Illegals Program. He and his brother were both born in Canada to parents who they thought were Canadian citizens. They were shocked when the whole scheme fell apart. Not only did they find out their parents were agents from the Soviet Union, but they were yanked out of school and deported back to the USSR along with their parents.

Their parents returned as celebrated as heroes, however, the boys didn't know the language so struggled in school. They knew nothing of the culture, pop or otherwise, and their point of view of Russian society and history was through a distinctively Western lens. They had no friends. While their parents integrated back into Russian society, the boys tried to sue Canada to be allowed to return as citizens. I know that their request was rejected and they appealed. I don't know if the rejection was ever reversed.

It's a fascinating story.

But yeah, the parents weren't involved with anything violent like Phillip and Elizabeth, it was more about securing information and passing it back to their Soviet handlers.

Well, because you say it's depressing and you aren't sure you can continue because of all the horrible things these people do and have done..and the way that government uses these people to lie, manipulate and murder by lying and manipulating.

You are 2 seasons back and I'm trying not to say too much..But for me people doing bad things are not, if these characters are portrayed realistically or well written, existing as stagnate and in a vacuum. To me it is anything but depressing to see people evolve for the better and question their priorities and the mantra that seemed so inclusive to them at the beginning and to change in spite of what they've been taught to believe.

Everyone sees things differently..Maybe you find it depressing that the negative in people and government exists at all. Or maybe the fact that this can not end well for everyone involved is depressing to you or that the things some of them did in the past is irreversible and can never be overcome and you can never relate to any of them. I don't know.

But I find the fact that most of them question the powers they have served under to be a positive thing no matter what happens. And something worth watching to the end.
I find myself pulling for Oleg, Stan..and even Phillip and his children. Elizabeth, not so much.

The fact that it can't end well for all is probably a given that I accept. You can't live that life and have unicorns and rainbows.

> From what I have been told [...] money is the biggest incentive

I've heard that the big four are money, ideology, coersion, and ego; which conveniently can be summed up with the acronym "MICE." John Walker and Christopher Boyce being prime examples of the first two.

Coersion apparently isn't that difficult. Befriend the target then ask for a tiny, "harmless" extra-legal favor -- and it's suprising how many will fall for it and believe it really is harmless. Then get a slightly bigger "favor" from him, then a bigger one, and soon the target is in way over his head and you own him.

Ego? I lived in DC for about a decade, and I gotta say it's got more than its share of people who are emotionally stuck in high school; maybe more than Hollywood. People who get off on having ridden in the same elevator with some Senator. And if the person's morbidly insecure, needing to self-aggrandize? I knew one such type who worked for NSA and never leaked any classified data, never broke the law. But being NSA was an ego thing with him, so he'd drop little innocent tidbits about things to make himself look big ... and from his blather my friends and I figured out about the hanky-panky with phone calls long before anyone had heard of Snowden. I'd think that type could be turned, just give him the admiration he thinks is his rightful due.

> it is kind of funny. Imagine that Phil could get this woman to marry him and she never knew he wore a wig, or if he wore on she never mentioned it.

The Martha story arc was funny for me, because it was so lacking in credibility. She's not only slept with P a hundred times, but is in love with him -- hey, forget the wig and glasses! I remember my first real love. You could have wrapped her in a burqa and I would have immediately known it was her by the way she walked, moved her hands, etc. Sooner or later Martha would be coincidentally in some Wendy's at the same time as P&E and pick up on who he was; DC isn't all that big, ya know ...

> their training is trauma-based (at least with the women). It conditions them to dissociate so they can use sex as a tool to get information. Elizabeth was sexually traumatized by a ranking officer while she was in training.

I really got the impression that wasn't an "official" part of the training; but rather was an off-the-record perk some officers treated themselves to.

> There was definitely something going on with Philip too. I don't remember exactly, but I seem to recall an episode where Philip had flashbacks to when he was a kid living on the street.

Yeah, I remember that. At about age eleven, he killed (in self-defense) some pervert by clubbing him in the head with a rock, IIRC. The whole thing became an issue when Philip began confronting some of his inner demons at EST. But the show made it clear that in the years during and just after WWII, life in the USSR sucked at about 1500 PSI. I suppose, maybe, that the KGB picked up on some psychological trauma P had and decided that would be useful for his training ... but I think that's about as far as that connection can be taken, and I don't see anything that supports that idea, other than just our speculation.

Don't get me wrong. I'm sure their training was rough, and often brutal. The KGB wouldn't want people who would get frazzled under a little pressure, or who might break down after protracted stress, or who might crumple under questioning if captured. Better to weed out weaklings. And they'd consider the possibility that rape might be used as a torture tactic against their agents. So I'm not entirely discounting what you say.

> And then the episode where Elizabeth wanted Philip to do with her what he did with Martha.

That was just weird. He should have said to her, "you want me to make some lame excuse immediately after, run to the bathroom, and throw up?"