I don’t/didn’t watch FX’s “The Americans” — or any “prestige TV” for that matter — but I happened to find the contrast in these points funny. (If, that is, the phrasing wasn’t supposed to be a tell.)
I tried to make the Russian dialogue free of such anachronisms. Beautifully and strangely, the creators of “The Americans” indulged and even encouraged this quest for quality in a near-vacuum: only a tiny fraction of viewers could understand Russian at all, and a disappearingly small portion of this fraction would notice the Soviet-era purity of the Russian-language dialogue.
From Twitter:
@fauxbeatpoet
You guys missed Renee’s biggest “tell” of all — she told everyone she was a graduate of “the University of Indiana.” No IU grad would ever call it that. It’s proper name is “Indiana University.” My Big Ten-grad wife heard that and immediately said, “She’s a spy!”— Bart Hubbuch (@BartHubbuch) June 4, 2018