Mikhail is Mischa,
Mikhail to Mischa is like William to Bill

oh yeah definitely blew my mind!
now, one more time - imagine you speak only "da" and "nyet" in Russian and you are at Sheremetyevo and you have to go find your KGB father who abandoned you in America 25 years ago - and you have to go to Gorky Park in Leningrad.
your move

Can you just for a second put yourself in his shoes - a guy with very limited English finding himself for the first time in a foreign country where everything is different. Do you realize how different CCCP of 1984 was?
Figure out a bus schedule? and where would he know to look for one?
it's not like he can google it.
Th…

and Peace Corps, and wine talk, and cooking some ethnic dinner - and it's all in Kansas in 1984! just wow!
my second ex-husband was ex-Peace Corps, so that outfit had its share of twisted, lol, but not Mr. Ben look-alike :) no, not him :)

you are so right!! But we all have our set "food" ways that for some people are hard to deviate from.
as a side food story, when we moved to the US, my daughter was 8. We were on a road trip, and she was complaining she was hungry. So we stopped and got a large pizza pie, piping hot, smelling all kinds of delicious… oh…

lol well that explains it :) I am American too (now) but -
wouldn't you say that our average fellow Americans would not ever give anything like that a try?
disagree about pickled tomatoes, but college cafeteria ones probably weren't the best example.
With proper seasoning and herbs, and NOT too much vinegar, they are…

It IS THE term for it. It is called SHUBA.

Yessssssssssss!!!!!! that shit is awesome! FYI "shuba" is Russian word for "fur coat" so yes it is!
are you American? I mean no American (I mean born and bred here) I know would go near it, so how did you ever dare to put it in your mouth? Just curious.
About the name - it is actually called "seledka pod shuboj"…

Yevgeniya?

What town? Alexandria ? some other? how would he know how to even look?

and how would he know how to do that? and how does he pay for it?

the whole thing is preposterous. and where is he staying in NYC? and how does he have money for food? and how is he getting by?
This whole thing is absurd, I am just rolling with it, it is totally unrealistic.
Someone whose English is elementary, never been to the US, how does he even know how to make a phone call?

that was some fake borshch. Just google images for the real thing!

Maybe it was all there, but hardly shown. All focus was on the line-up of datable women? I am disappointed. I just saw a blob in the middle (olivie? I thought it was shuba, oh well)
And no color, all subdued tones. That's the problem. It was a drab, colorless spread.
And - you consider sour cream a dish? Seriously?
Dis…

I have commented precisely that before. Two words: Walter Duranty, 1930's trump-like admirer of Russian bloody dictator.
Does history repeat itself? mmm

This reminds me - was THAT that "mouth-watering" authentic Russian dinner that guy Fisher was bragging about? I was so disappointed (unless it is still upcoming in the future episodes).
There was literally nothing shown, except for that blob in the middle that I guess could have been "shuba" salad???
And what's her…

ahaha I had no idea what Lotus 123 was! Just learned reading these comments and checking it out on Wikipedia!
Even while watching the show, I sort of assumed that it was some software her company was using, that's all.
Speaking of culture gap!

Yes I see your point hypothetically. As a spy for a crooked evil empire, she might have thought that "they" might be so duplicitous.
IMO though it seems unlikely.
But oh my, what irony! Liz and Phil were so twisted in knots after learning that the US might be planning to sabotage their wheat supply and cause hunger and…

why would they work on super-crops to save people from hunger in third-world countries AND on creating super-bugs to starve people in third-world countries? doesn't seem realistic

would be nice in theory, but - 1984? Did you guys even have "burner" phones then? Let alone to have them to be able to dial into the Soviet whatever grid they had at the time? i dont think technology existed