TV Show - "The Americans"

As a passinate follower of (Turkish and English speaking) TV shows, I have been watching several episodes each day lately. I am not sure it is the most productive thing to do at this time of the year but no judgement(!). I watched two seasons of the TV show "The Americans" during the weekend. The Show is set in the 1980s in US, spefically in Washigton. As you would presume, it is about 1980s politics. It has a very interesting plot and it has consistency. When I binch watch 2 seasons of a tv Show within 2 days, I start to see where the story starts to become meaningless, where it goes off. There is always this point, where you say, "ohhh come on, that's stupid", not because of the themes of the Show, but the script starts not making sense, and you start sensing where writers are pushing themselves to be original. That breaking point has not yet arrived in this Show.
The story revolves around two KGB spies in US performing their real job (as spies) while they also pursue their life as an ordinary American married couple with two teenage kids, and with an ordinary job as owners of a travel agency. They are sent to US as spies when they are in the beginning of their 20s from USSR. Their mission is to act as an ordinary American couple, form a real family (so have kids) in order to blend well to the American society and not to be spotted. Even though they have an arranged marriage initially, and they do become a couple for the love of the Mother Land (Russia), and not out of love for each other but, it would be wrong to call them as "posing" as a family, since they develop feelings for each other by time, they have kids (who think they are real Americans, and who do not know the real occupation of their parents). Audience become informed about the spying system of Russia, with the tools they use to message, the handlers, the disguise, cruelty of using people, the humanity. They are all together. I guess the show is currently in its fifth season because it is thrilling for American audience to watch the supposed enemy throughout the cold war as body and flesh, as people with real feelings. The story becomes more addictive as we see how their kids are also tried to be brought into the spies network regardless of opposition of their parents.
In addition to learning about the tension during the cold war, we also see the suburbian American life, middle class values the breaking up of the nuclear US family (the rise in the divorce rates in US), the disillusion of people with their jobs, with economy, with the system, and also audience become acquinted about current technologies such as internet in its development phases in 1980s, when they refer to it as Arpanet or when they refer to invisible planes (the planes which are not visible to radar).
It is also one of the long running shows on TV as it again displays the antagonistic concepts that TV audience loves about, eg. SSCR vs USA, peace vs war, good vs evil.

My research is on issues related to surveillance studies and this show is pre90s. It is a World where computer networks are still developing, still becoming integrated. It is a World where targeted surveillance in the rule of the game. The show depicts the usage of these Technologies in each episode. The small cassette recorders hidden under/in objects. We do not see the GPS signals on a map, but there are machines that beeps when the signal becomes stronger. Microphones hidden in objects that can be listened only by getting close to it. So proximity becomes an important issue. The two parties need to be close to be each other in order to be under surveillance. It posits quite a bit of contrast to what is being done in our digital age, where distance does not matter, it is not the selected information but, all information that is being collected. It is very interesting to think that these people change costume and then suddenly become different characters, they do not become noticed on the streets or in the buildings in the hotels. No CCTVs anywhere, or plate recognition software, facial recognition. Different era, different rules.

I like US tv shows because they seem like there is lots of effort and work put to them. I am not a historian, so I would not notice even if there would be historical inconsistencies within the story, but in order to shot a "period drama" (as they call it), the writers and the production team has to know both US and Russian history, the conflict between the two countries, events of the time, they also have to have consultation from retired officers from agencies in terms of how intelligence activities function. Thus, it is lots of work and lots of money. It has to be noted here that one of the Executive Producers / Writer's of the show - Joe Weisberg - has worked in the CIA's Directorate of Operations for a short time in the beginning of 90s and he also studied Soviet History in College.

The Americans is aired on FX Network.
http://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/the-americans
The Season 5 trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrLxlyN8AYQ
Matthew Ryhs (the main actor) is a Welch actor, and I have not realized his Welch actor till I watched the Youtube videos. Watch him on Ellen Show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ9UVIC0oos . Wowwww he is great at changing his accent!

I have been watching current TV series set in 1980s in the last couple of weeks, and I have realized how internet made computers a common part of our life. We all became experts. Most of these characters refer to technology as something foreign, it is something left to the experts. And now we are all doing what experts were supposed to do. We are doing specialized work.

80'lerde geçen dizileri izlerken karakterler hep teknolojiyi (bilgisayarlarla ilgili olan bir çok konuda) uzmanların işi olarak yansıtıyor, genel konuşma "ben bu konudan ne anlarım" şeklinde oluyor. Evlerde bilgisayarın, internetin olmadığı bir çağdan bahsediyoruz. Teknoloji dediğimizde aklımıza televizyon, müzik seti, walkman, kahve makinesi, devasa araba telefonları geliyor. Daha ileri teknoloji olan her şey uzmanların işi bir bilene soralım olarak algılanıyor. Hatta 90'ların ortasında kendi deneyimlerimden hatırlıyorum, bilgisayardan anlayan bir arkadaşın olması her zaman iyiydi, çünkü evet bilgisayardan anlamamıza rağmen, problem yaşadığında soracağın birine ihtiyaç duyardık. Bundan iki tane çıkarım yapıyorum, ilk olarak, bilgisayar gibi 1969'da aya astronot göndermek için kullanılandan daha gelişmiş bir teknolojinin parmaklarımızın ucunda olması, evimizde bu teknolojinin olması hepimizi teknolojiden anlamak durumunda bıraktı, hepimiz bir noktaya kadar teknoloji konusunda uzman olmaya başladık. Artık ben teknolojiden anlamam deyip geçemiyoruz, bir noktaya kadar anlamamız lazım. Artık belli alanlar sadece bir grubun değil, herkesin bilgi dağarcığı içine girdi. Uzmanların sadece anlayabileceği bilgiler, herkesin biraz da olsa bilmesi, anlaması gereken bilgiler oldu. Yani hepimiz biraz da olsa uzman olduk bu konuda. Bilgisayarlar sadece genius'ların ilgi alanında olan ilgi alanından çıktılar, topluma yayıldılar. Eskiden bilgisayardan anlayana ozel insan gibi bakılırken, şimdi anlamayana cahil bakılıyor, geri kalmış diye değerlendiriliyor. Toplumsal bir kırılma gerçekleşti. Teknolojiyle ilgili discourse specialized knowledge'dan common knowledge kategorisine kaydı.
Ikinci olarak ise, uzmanlığımızı pekiştiren en önemli kaynak tarayıcılar vasıtasıyla problemlerimize çözümler bulabilmemiz oldu. Bizimle aynı bilgisayar sıkıntısını yaşayan insanların sorularından faydalanabiliyoruz. Bir tek bana olmuyor ya bu sıkıntı, başkaları da sormuşlardır, yazmışlardır, bakmışlardır, başkalarının yazdıklarından yararlanıyoruz. Böylece bilgisayarımızdaki sıkıntıları artık kendimiz de bir noktaya kadar çözebiliyoruz (tabii burada bu çözümlerin kullanıcı tarafından gerçekten problemi ve çözümü anlamadan uygulandığını söylemek gerek, sonuçta uzman bilgisi, bu konuları detaylı bilenlerin bilgisine hep ihtiyaç var.)