A thread for The Americans on FX

Just looked up how many episodes are left: three.

Episode 8: "The Summit" (seems self-explanatory)
Episode 9: "Jennings, Elizabeth"(uncovered? killed?)
Episode 19: "START"(= Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty...seems like a positive ending, but who knows--maybe used highly ironically)

the treaty talks are the whole reason Elizabeth has this high stakes mission, though! history kind of shows her entire venture is doomed

Right--for Elizabeth, any thaw in the Cold War is bad. I guess I meant more in a general sense...for Philip, for Stan, for Paige (even if she might think otherwise--it'll save her her mother's life), for the U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.! (I've always hoped the show wouldn't devolve into American jingoism, and it hasn't, unless you took Stan's impromptu Thanksgiving speech as coming from the show's creators.)

I'm trying to predict an ending where I haven't a clue.

unless you took Stan's impromptu Thanksgiving speech as coming from the show's creators.

I didn't take it that way at all. It was there to kind of reaffirm Stan's commitment to his job.

I'm hoping for a Basterds-style shakeup and Elizabeth takes Reagan out in a blaze of glory.

that’s ultimately the play, they played a little loose and more violent with history but the show respects the large arc of politics

While I'm sad there are only two episodes left after tonight, I'm extremely happy that every bit of it is endgame now. No more side stories or missions. All bubbling tension, all the time.

Elizabeth is on board ;_;

Didn't think tonight was anything special. It was nice that Elizabeth let the kid go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Am6Nh46WpUI

I'm glad someone excerpted this for youtube. If not *the* best, it's one of the best uses of music intercut into a tv narrative I've ever seen.

Been avoiding (and still in practice avoiding) this thread because we've just started the season, but boy are the first two episodes strong. A+ music cues, too, right down to Mel McDaniel's "Louisiana Saturday Night," which is awesome, because I'd just been introduced to his "Baby's Got Her Blue Jeans On," which is also A+ (country-cheese division). And this show at this point seems designed for Peter Gabriel and Talking Heads as much as it was perfect for "Tusk" in the first episode.

I liked all the Stan stuff tonight--wanted the whole episode to focus on him. Next week looks great. I've got to say, though: does Paige's latest about-face jibe with past year? Not for me.

Renee's going to turn out to be the greatest MacGuffin ever, no more complicated than Kramer wanting to be a banker on Seinfeld. She's just someone who always wanted to work for the FBI.

Paige has always hated being lied to. She's asked her mother about this several times and every time Elizabeth has lied to her. Also, she's what... 20 or 21 now? Everything she's learned has still been fable in practicality. Now she's seen some shit (blood and brain matter all over Elizabeth's face), scared to death in her apartment by her dad, so I think she's looking for a way out and this is it.

I'm glad the Elizabeth/Claudia scene was as subtle as it was. Any other show would've dramatized it more than that.

Which is why I found her true-believer conversion a stretch--she suddenly seemed to stop questioning whether she was being lied to--until you guys convinced me it made sense. I can go with one or the other, but not both. I just feel like they've let that character drift away.

Bringing Pastor Tim back made sense. I'd forgotten that he and his wife know everything.

As The Americans comes to a close, I'm also almost finished season 4 of Breaking Bad. The parallel between Stan closing in on Elizabeth/Philip and Hank doing the same with Walter/Gustav is perfect.

I am prepared for dark endings for a lot of these characters but if Oleg ends up in prison that seems pretty cruel.

When Phillip called Elizabeth and said everything was "topsy turvy at work" was that like a safeword phrase given her immediate "fuck, get the go bag and leave" reaction?

I cant see how this is all gonna tie up in one more ep!

yeah Paige's credulity feels like a badly written adolescent/young adult character tbh.

dude playing stan on fire in this episode w/that little half-smile of unspoken thoughts when he's listening to other people talk

Yeah I found the Paige scene a little uncharacteristically OTT. In general I do feel this season's felt a little rushed, and I have whiplash from the pacing gap from s5, but I'm confident the finale will stick the landing

xxxp topsy-turvy = time to go.

Are they ditching their kids?

Did you see the "next week on..." segment pre-closing credits?

Didn’t realize that Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys are dating, and have been since 2013

They have a babby too

The finale needs to be about 3 hours, surely?

Just an hour like all the rest, unfortunately. I agree this season feels rushed.

I'm kinda hoping next week's episode is an interview with middle-aged Paige and Henry talking about how one day their parents just disappeared and no one ever saw them again.

I don't think it feels rushed necessarily. I don't know if I could have survived more of the slow drop tension of s05.

Oh shit there's only one left?

This season has been tight as hell but in retrospect there's a hell of a lot of wasted time and spinning wheels in S5. Hard to see what the point of, say, Philip's son was.

Yeah I was fully expecting Philip's son to come back this season but I guess not. All the stuff last season about the Morozovs, Tuan and grain now feels like a giant misstep.

I guess they'd argue a lot of that was meant to be character/worldbuilding? The grain guy showed how cold/murdery they were for eg. I agree on Phillips son tho - why bring all that up and then drop it again?

But then again, thats real life - things come and go at seeming random. Sometimes, we *dont* get closure. Maybe thats what the writers are aiming for.

an interview with middle-aged Paige and Henry talking about how one day their parents just disappeared and no one ever saw them again.

Haha I'd be ok with this, thats inspired. I hope we dont have a cliched shoot-out/key person dead/tense standoff at an airport swapping spies with the Reds scene. I'd hate that.

(I just watched such a scene in the film "Red Sparrow", which btw what a shitty film that was).

Philip and Elizabeth passing as anything in this show is more plausible than Jennifer Lawrence as a ballerina

Hahahaha otm. I was cringing at those dance scenes.

I agree on Phillips son tho - why bring all that up and then drop it again?

I agree in the sense that it was weird he got so much screentime, plus that suspenseful build when he was first introduced, but yeah I do like the idea that this is just an aspect of Philip's life that he never gets to connect with, and it's sort of haunting.

Having finally gotten to the point where I've watched most of the most acclaimed TV shows of the past decade, you can do the same with all of them near the finish line: look back at certain subplots and detours and wonder what the point was. The writers try certain things, some fall by the wayside, and they simply never go back.

To me, the big one here is still Renee. If that's left as is, that'll be a real head-scratcher. She'll be...a woman he met at the gym.

I guess we're all wedding ourselves to the old Chekov's gun way of thinking, and maybe they just arent doing that here!

All the stuff last season about the Morozovs, Tuan and grain now feels like a giant misstep.

Nah. That grain mission was when they learned that their handlers would lie to them and paint the US govt as villainous in ways that they weren't, no?

And Phillip's son... Well, that's just another index of the bleakness of life under the iron curtain, isn't it?

Renee is totally a cylon, the final episode will be a back-door pilot, mark my words...

i'm excited for the finale, but i'm also thinking it's gonna disappoint a lot of people who are looking for tidy resolution of every plotline. I've gathered that Fields and Weisberg are more interested in character than plot and that they have a different idea of what constitutes a major story beat than much of their audience. Take this exchange quote from the creators (from Sepinwall's S5 post-mortem interview):

It’s a year with a lot of anti-climaxes. Mischa comes to America, but Gabriel heads him off at the pass before he gets to see his father. Philip and Elizabeth are going to go home, and at the last second they can’t. We don’t know yet what’s going to happen with Oleg. Stan’s girlfriend is maybe a spy, but we have no confirmation yet. It feels like in other seasons you have maybe tried to pay a little more off within the context of that season than you have this year. Would you agree with that or not?

Weisberg: I think those two examples, we might see differently. To us, yes, you could say, “Well, Mischa came to see Philip but then he didn’t and he went back,” when really, in so many ways, that was about triggering the Gabriel relationship with Philip, and it ultimately led to Gabriel’s decision that he couldn’t stay in a relationship with Philip and Elizabeth any more because he didn’t want to be a liar. And them maybe going home, really that was about triggering the marriage stuff, which to us led to a scene like we’ve never seen before between Philip and Elizabeth where, as they come to a decision as to how to go home together, Elizabeth realizes she can’t because of who she is as an individual. But she gets that he’s his own person going through his own pain and his own struggles, and she tries to get him a way to continue on in the marriage so his individual needs can be supported as well. So, to us there were just different kinds of climaxes, perhaps more emotional, and because of that maybe they felt a bit more muted in terms of their plot dynamics, but to us they were character climaxes of a sort.

Fields: I think that the Mischa story is a very good example. We found that to be immensely satisfying, and that doesn’t mean anybody else should — everybody gets to have their own reaction to the story. But to answer your question about a different approach to the season, I think we felt very free to tell the story exactly how we wanted to and not have to adhere to any traditional storytelling structure. This isn’t how climaxes usually work, and it allowed us to go more in the direction that we veered more toward in every season, which is trying to go one direction of truth and reality and what we think would actually unfold, and worry less about what the more conventional idea of what is going to feel climactic or satisfying. And if one of the results of that is people feel it’s less satisfying, then I think we just have to accept that.

http://media.agonybooth.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/01073250/the-americans-s5-e8-elizabeth-philip-stan.png

That reads a lot like post-hoc rationalisation to me.

FWIW I think the likelihood of the Centre getting to one or both of them before the FBI does is pretty high, maybe Renee will play into that or maybe she's a total red herring.

Stoked for (but also nervous about) the finale.

Paige on the platform was the only great moment for me. The long-awaited Elizabeth-Philip-Stan showdown was...okay. It was very literal, with Philip doing lots of explaining. After that, not a lot. The two sketches could have been used earlier in the season and to much greater effect. I'm just coming off "Windy" and "Crystal Blue Persuasion" in Breaking Bad, so it's hard to convey the magnitude of piddliness that Dire Straits and U2 represent.

It's one episode. It doesn't much alter how much I enjoyed the series once it clicked in for me.

Yeah, I thought the music cues for this were pretty lazy (the same Dire Straits song was already used to better effect in the most pivotal sequence of The West Wing's run), but I'm actually pleased with the episode as a whole. Some closure provided, but only the right amount.

RENEEEEEEEEE!

The feeling I'm left with is that everyone was tired. Oleg, Stan, Arkady, Oleg's father, Paige, Philip and Elizabeth...everyone. They're just exhausted. I think that came through the screen and script extremely well.

The greatest thing about this show all along is that it left questions I don't require answers to.

What are you supposed to think about Renee? That Stan's just going to live with the possibility that Philip is right? Actually think it's pretty funny that they leave that dangling.

Exactly. That's Stan's penance for letting them go.

Ooh, a friend pointed out that when they were calling Henry from the payphone and Paige declined to talk to him, she'd already made up her mind she wasn't going to Russia.

When Paige mentioned Stan's son, I'd forgotten all about him--don't think he's been seen since Season 3 or thereabouts.