Season 3 end on March 8, 2015. Ronald Reagan gave his famous evil empire speech on that date (and if you want to cheat that is the name of the Season 3 finale). They got a regular IBM PC XT, so I’m guessing they are still in 1983 cause the AT was introduced in 1984, and we haven’t seen any talk of the 1984 campaign
I’m going to watch tonights episode right now.
How could you tell it was an IBM PC XT? I thought all we saw was a small flash of a box!
Sniff, the XT, that was my first PC. Turbocharge for a whole 10 Mhz of speed. Dual floppy 5.25"s, twin joysticks, Loderunner here we come!
BTW taking the opportunity to recommend Deutschland 83 (8 episodes) - It’s entirely in German. Quite good!
I’ve heard of that, I think. Is it on Netflix or something? Because I don’t get the Sundance Channel (God forbid Comcast let us swap out the ESPN channels–which I’ve only ever watched at World Cup time–for IFC or Sundance).
Back to The Americans: what was the kid playing on the computer? I didn’t get a good look.
Thanks for the Deutschland 83 recommendation, looks good.
Gorf. BTW, that keyboard really didn’t look like an IBM PC’s. The keys were brown on a cyan casing and fat. I’m not sure if it’s a C64, Apple IIe, or lesser known casualties.
It’s hard to see but there’s 4 rows of keys. 41:54 mark
I expect one of you guys can confirm/deny the joystick thought!
Looks to me like a Vic 20.
Three remarks: that profile in the screencap indeed fits the pictured Vic 20 keyboard to a tee; Gorf was basically a Space Invaders clone, by the looks of it; and that child actor must be thinking, “OMG, THIS is what my parents’ generation had to put up with? No wonder grownups are so lame!” ;-)
BTW, was the VIC 20 thus named because it only had 20K of RAM? I think that that’s why the Commodore 64 got its moniker.
Is this the final season? Things are really snowballing for our favorite komrades, and it appears that multiple levees are finally going to break.
Yes, on the VIC 20 and Commodore 64 being named after their memory, although the VIC 20 had 20k of ROM, not RAM (it had only 5k of RAM). The C-64 kept that same ROM and upped the RAM to 64k. As for Gorf, it was actually a MAJOR improvement on Space Invaders, and had a variety of stages. It was a great arcade game in its day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bhu0LI5XOlg
You guys are right, that isn’t an IBM PC, but I’m pretty sure the computer that showed when they announced they had bought a computer was an IBM PC XT, it had a single floppy and hard drive light. So maybe it was a different prop.
Strong recommendation for the Slate’s Americans podcast. Last week they had a guest commentating the episode who actually was a former deep cover KGB operative living in America with a family and everything. No joke!
OMG, those ice cold mother-effers!
Given the structure of the season that caught me completely off guard.
Interesting, I heard Nina you’ve been transfered, and thought the worse. Although I must say soon was exceedingly quick. I did spend a some time in the Soviet Union in the lates 80s and early 90s and the Russian could be quite efficient in some areas.
Anybody else fear the worse in the relation between Stan and Henry?
As soon as they started walking her down the corridor I thought, yup, she’s done for. Especially after the nice dream she was having.
Strollen, I had no idea you’d spent time in the Soviet Union. How did you come to live there?
And what do you mean “fear the worst” as far as Stan and Henry? That Stan is some child molester (which I don’t see at all) or that Stan is going to use Henry to figure out what the deal is with his parents (whom, as you’ll remember, he originally suspected)?
Jesus holy Christ.
There isn’t even a drain on that floor. Someone has to mop that up.
They hardly gave the one guy reading the sentence enough time to get out of the way, sheesh. He probably has brains on his suit.
On the podcast the showrunners said in their research they found that the Russians wouldn’t tell the person to be executed until the last possible minute, in their minds, as a way to minimize suffering.
The reason I was surprised is that they had created whole sets and a cast of minor characters that only existed for Nina and didn’t interact with any of the rest of the show. Lot of work just to suddenly end it!
