A thread for The Americans on FX

this show... this show...

HOW long till s04???

January or February 2016.

We finished season one and started season two. It's great, we're really into it, but halfway through S2E1 my wife asked "don't their kids wonder why they don't have any grandparents, cousins or uncles and aunts or anything?" No need to spoil it for me, but I am curious if they ever address this.

Yes, they do

also, i don't think a lack of an extended family around you is that unusual in the first place - if there's any implausibility in the family set-up it's the parents' own unpredictable comings and goings and absences

That too! But at least as far as I've seen so far at least one kid is suspicious if that.

Anyway, we don't have a single relative anywhere near where we live, but my kids (younger than the TV kids) are acutely aware of our extended family, many of whom they see only once every few years. So interested to see how they handle it. Maybe they're all played by Margo, a la Eddie Murphy. This is your Fat Suit grandma, in from Nebraska.

Hey y'all, get bent is on board now. (note: you should not read this thread, because it's top to bottom spoilers)

Still waiting for VG to cave and start watching.

yessss

haven't read this thread yet but holy shit i just watched the episode where they pack annalise into the suicase wtf wtf wtf

I was white-knuckling my sofa for as long as that scene played out.

You haven't gotten to the "home dentistry" episode, then. Ha ha. Just you wait.

It's next in the running order iirc. Honestly, I didn't think that was as bad as the suitcase.

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2015/08/05/an-ex-russian-spy-on-the-accuracy-of-the-americans/

“The Americans,” the popular FX series that depicts the lives of Soviet spies working undercover in the U.S. during the Cold War, “looks pretty much like reality,” according to a member of the Russian spy ring nabbed in the U.S. in 2010.

finished s3 now. this show improved so much..!

The home dentistry scene was one of the few times I have actually had to hide my face in my hands and be unable to deal, and I'm not partic squeamish, nor afraid of dentists.

Suitcase bit didnt bother me much, maybe I am a psycho, lol.

"“The result looks pretty much like reality, but of course without the murders and the wigs,”

Aw but thats the best part!

Of COURSE dude's not gonna cop to the murders and wigs

Yeah! Can't give away all the secrets!

Whhhhyyyy did I wait so long to start watching this show? So good!

I still think there's way too much "I don't know if we can do this anymore/I'm doing this, with or without you!" stuff, but man, Season 3 has been really great so far. Am I right that by and large no one talks about this the way they talked about, oh, "Breaking Bad" or "Mad Men" or something? Because from the acting to the direction to the music, this is A+ TV, with some challenging moral ambiguities being explored. Pretty inspired scenario all around.

It isn't really discussed the same way as Breaking Bad or Mad Men, no, if you by that mean discusses as one of the greatest shows ever. Several reasons for that, I think, including there simply being way too many shows on at this moment, and Americans being the poster boy for being lost in the shuffle. Low ratings, no emmys, not as smart and fancy as Fargo or True Detective. It's under the radar.

Another reason is, that it is build up unlike most other shows at the moment. The plot is really all over the place, with a thousand missions happening at once, and especially in season three, it's all about the cumulative stress of that, rather than any big thing happening in particular. The dread is that something horrible can happen at any time, and most bad things didn't happen in premiere or finale, but somewhere inbetween. It's deliberately off-putting, and I think some reviewers got surprised by that.

But that is also why I think season 3 is the best season yet, and an all-time great.

But that is also why I think season 3 is the best season yet, and an all-time great.

― Frederik B

I'd agree with this - it doesn't really do anything that differently than the first two, but there's a kind of accumulated weight of dread at this point which makes it exponentially compelling. Stuff that could be seen as just silly in 1 and 2 (the wigs etc) now seems blackly absurdist.

Everything about The Americans drives my feelings inward, as opposed to Mad Men where I felt compelled to discuss very outward feelings about the show.

I still think it's the best drama on tv, but I only want to talk about it with other people sometimes.

This is all v otm, it's not at all surprising it hasn't caught on w/ a wider audience but it's still too bad. It's one that people will discover more after it's over/on the way out, a la The Wire, I think.

Stuff that could be seen as just silly in 1 and 2 (the wigs etc) now seems blackly absurdist.

v otm

Yeah, the dread is on the money. It helps that the no way out feeling pretty much starts with season 1, and the rest of the series has been about the characters fatalistically making the most out of a bad situation, knowing at any moment it could get worse and that, when it does get better, it's still pretty bad. Like The Shield or Breaking Bad, good news in this series arrives with the realization that it will be fleeting and only serves to postpone the inevitable. I honestly have no idea whatsoever how they might end this down the line. It could go in all sorts of directions, from full on nihilism to semi-happy ending.

Just caught up with the end of S3 now.

I had a thought this morning: I've come away from the show squarely thinking of the parents as good guys, and Pastor Tim a kind of creepy interloper bad guy. When Paige calls him up, I thought "ugh nooooo", but then wondered - the usual hollywood storyline would be for the devout christian family man to come to the rescue from the damn commies. ... but the show doesnt feel at all like it'll play that angle. In fact I fucking hope it doesnt.

Pastor Tim would be dead before he even gets in the door.

I still think Tim is a spy as well.

OMG that angle never occured to me, holy shit.

Ooh yeah!

That would be a brilliant long con on the part of the Centre.

Considering the way Paige came into contact with Tim (basically by randomly meeting a teenager on a bus), it seems unlikely that this was something the Centre planned

one of the great things about this show is that even though i knew something would happen along the lines of Paige Finding Out and have done since S1E1, i still have no idea what, exactly, will happen. this show allows its characters' responses to be so nuanced where other shows would go for one-dimensional emotional tugs.

Low ratings, no emmys, not as smart and fancy as Fargo or True Detective

lol this show is a million zillion billion times as smart as true detective. even when TD was good its philosophical depth wasn't really...real

Still not done with S3, but I find the push and pull of (essentially) bad people struggling (plausibly) to be good parents and (sometimes) good partners super compelling. And I've said it before, but Matthew Rhys has the best fake American accent I've ever heard.

one of the great things about this show is that even though i knew something would happen along the lines of Paige Finding Out and have done since S1E1, i still have no idea what, exactly, will happen. this show allows its characters' responses to be so nuanced where other shows would go for one-dimensional emotional tugs.

otm x100. i especially like how they allowed characters that would certainly end up as one-dimensional in other shows like paige and martha to develop fully. e.g. compare the paige storyline in this show to what they did with walt jr in breaking bad (or rather, what they didn't do). it's kind of crazy to me that in this show of all shows, with the wigs and others dumb 80s spy stuff, that they ended up with a set of characters so real & relatable.

i totally forgot that when watching the scene where paige meets the other teenager on the bus, i assumed that it was the start of an operation by the centre to recruit her

They do a really good job not falling back on the "is she a double agent"/"whose side are they on!?" gimmicks. Sides and motives are pretty well delineated. It's how they navigate their goals that makes it such a fascinating watch. It's got a remarkably subtle touch for being so heavy, almost as if it (gasp) respects its audience.

I just watched the episode where he has to hang with the 15-year old, the one that ends with the flashbacks to his I guess sex training. Man, that's dark.

I think Tim being a spy is much less interesting than Tim being an actual pastor who now has to decide what to do with what Paige told him. Also, Philip and Elizabeth having to figure out what to do about Tim. And also the Centre, which I would assume would realize that eliminating Tim would seriously hinder their chances of eventually recruiting Paige.

With this and the situation with Martha, they've set up some really interesting problems for season 4. I have no idea how they are going to resolve this, I assume they aren't going to go through the easy route of simply killing Tim and Martha.

I dunno, if there's a flaw to this show it's imo how many people do end up killed! Innocents, bystanders, people in the way ... that truck driver, the dude working on (under) his car ... you'd think deep cover agents at this level would try to lay off the killing a little.

i totally forgot that when watching the scene where paige meets the other teenager on the bus, i assumed that it was the start of an operation by the centre to recruit her

Me too. Either that or she was gonna get kidnapped by a creepy cult and Philip and Elizabeth would be raiding the compound, guns blazing.

as rhys and russell are an IRL couple, most of their scenes feature two people who are in a relationship pretending to be two people who are in a relationship pretending to be two different people in a relationship pretending that they are two different people in a relationship.
― We hugged with no names exchanged (forksclovetofu), Thursday, April 3, 2014

Low ratings, no emmys, not as smart and fancy as Fargo or True Detective

lol this show is a million zillion billion times as smart as true detective. even when TD was good its philosophical depth wasn't really...real

― lex pretend, 8. september 2015 17:44 (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Brainfart, 'smart' in Danish means 'trendy' or 'cool' or something. No, True Detective was never smart.

With Tim, it might not be a double-con or something. He is participating in the anti-nuclear movement, and stuff like that, a lot of these people were working with the KGB.

oh yeah TD is def more trendy than this

i also thought the girl on the bus was a KGB agent (and am actually somewhat surprised she hasn't returned, given that she seemed to develop a real bond with paige and is presumably still in the church?!) but i think if tim was connected to the soviets they'd have played that hand by now - though the fact that his liberal, ready-to-protest-angainst-the-government church is actually aligned with elizabeth and philip's beliefs on many issues could be interesting!

(ie i don't think tim's kneejerk reaction will be to turn them in)

as rhys and russell are an IRL couple, most of their scenes feature two people who are in a relationship pretending to be two people who are in a relationship pretending to be two different people in a relationship pretending that they are two different people in a relationship.
― We hugged with no names exchanged (forksclovetofu), Thursday, April 3, 2014

in terms of the degree of difficulty of the acting on this show, i often marvel at how flawlessly the leads pull this off
― Meta Forksclove-Liebeskind (forksclovetofu), Tuesday, September 8, 2015 5:47 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haaa almost orphan black-level acting acrobatics

Yeah I figured the girl on the bus would have been an agent, but then, no one knew she'd snuck off to get on the bus to visit the aunt. Unless we're meant to believe Paige/the family are watched All The Time by the centre (and some other occasions have borne that out, eg Phillip getting waved off by Hans when he was gong to Marthas and Stan was there).

(ie i don't think tim's kneejerk reaction will be to turn them in)

Agreed on this.

(and some other occasions have borne that out, eg Phillip getting waved off by Hans when he was gong to Marthas and Stan was there)

Elizabeth specifically mentions that they should get Hans to check on Martha before Philip goes to see her, so this isn't the centre's doing