A thread for The Americans on FX

nth'd. show snowballs from s2 onwards.

It's definitely in the mode of "The Shield," where actions taken early compound.

I miss Nina

About to watch this!

Excellent.

My buddy said, "You're a Reagan fetishist, you'll love it."

As with most great shows, it takes a bit to get going but once you're about halfway into season 2, you should be hooked. Second to last season lags, everything else is top notch.

lol, i see i said the exact same thing three months ago.

That's about when I was hooked too. I was a little lost the first season.

I haven't started s2 yet, but I guess I'll get there someday.

Was considering this when ticking off as-yet-unwatched prestige shows to devour during lockdown. Settled on Rectify for the moment but maybe we'll do Russkie spies next.

I was a little lost the first season.

You have to not mind sometimes being a little lost with this show.

This show became our nightly watch for the past two months - phenomenal show. The acting and writing across the board is so strong, and they got lucky with Holly Taylor becoming a great actor so quickly. Even Keidrich Sellati had some very good moments in the last season. I pretty much agree with what has been said regarding the different seasons - S5 a bit slow but still good, the other seasons excellent - but I wanted to talk about the music! This isn't really a criticism but choices on this show often baffled me. A few upbeat pop songs that clashed with the tone of the show, a few that were almost too on-the-nose ("We Do What We're Told"), four different Peter Gabriel songs that I counted, and then big dumb ol U2 in the finale. Sometimes they went back to the 70s as well. It often stuck out and probably that was the point? There were some moments like Bauhaus' "Slice of Life" that were absolutely perfect, but I felt they were the exception

a few that were almost too on-the-nose ("We Do What We're Told")

Weird, because I thought that was maybe the most perfect marriage of music and narrative ever. Perhaps I'm a simp.

The music didn't do a lot for me either--the Bauhaus scene was great, and normally they're a punchline for me; there were a few other moments--but there was so much else that was good, I didn't really care and stopped waiting for that to change early on.

JF, the fact that it IS the perfect song is what baffled me! I find the music supervisors on a show rarely use songs where the lyrics so obviously address the show's content. So in that respect, it's a bold choice of song. "With or Without You" was similarly bold, and a song that a lot of people probably have their own associations with already

I definitely wouldn't say the music didn't do much for me. If anything, I paid much more attention to it than I usually do

Brilliant use of "Tusk" in the first scene of the first episode is what instantly hooked me on this show. Still have to watch the final season but it's not officially available anymore in my neck of the woods, unfortunately

I like most of the needle drops a lot. I loved the use of Yaz for instance

also the opening/intro theme fucking slaps

I loved the use of Yaz for instance

This is confusing for Brits because this to us is Yaz:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjD3EVC1-zU

and then big dumb ol U2 in the finale.

It might be big n dumb but their first choice for that scene was American Pie

some other potential choices for this scene 👀 https://t.co/QyX9SFbLEF https://t.co/V6Gz15V9KS pic.twitter.com/WKhnRKp3tM

— best of the americans (@bestofamericans) July 18, 2020

I seem to be in a very small club that thinks "With Or Without You" works pretty damn well for the enormity of that moment

"Us and Them" would have been cool tho

It sounds like y'all are saying, "Keep watching after Season One." I gave up after watching seven consecutive episodes of their dull marital drama. The real stuff would've been to show a couple who don't love each other at all treating the espionage like Henry James or Conrad as writtne by Le Carre.

Not a fan, but I'll admit it works well for that scene (which makes me want to get going on a rewatch--for one thing, I don't remember the particulars that lead up to that great moment). I prefer "American Pie" x 1000, but I'm not sure it would.

i would've been plenty happy with american pie there.

By Madonna.

I gave up after watching seven consecutive episodes of their dull marital drama

Many/most woudld isagree, but if this really irks you so much but there are aspects you do like, I would advocate for skipping ahead to s2, which (quite successfully!) takes the form of a murder mystery.

You've got to stick with it.

Finished the first season. Truthfully, it's been a bit of a slog--took me a month, with lots of breaks. I liked Amador, but he's gone. I realize that liking characters here is beside the point, but that does figure in for me...I started the second season yesterday, but at some point soon I'll need to connect with it to keep going.
― clemenza, Saturday, November 4, 2017 10:00 AM (two years ago)

it improves on the second season and then gets better exponentially going forward until the most recent season
― Chocolate-covered gummy bears? Not ruling those lil' guys out. (ulysses), Saturday, November 4, 2017 10:41 AM (two years ago)

Good counsel.

Thanks, all.

Man, "Mothers of the Disappeared" would have been the perfect deep U2 cut.

Again, I didn't mean to say their song choices were bad, just unexpected. "With or Without You" worked pretty well, but 9 times out of 10, I'd expect a show to do a deeper cut like yeah "Mothers of the Disappeared." (I actually do love U2)

The more I think about it, they did do several big song choices mixed in with more obscure ones, so I shouldn't have been so surprised. But I'm very happy they didn't go with "American Pie", I don't think that one can be redeemed for me

There's a marked improvement in S2, it's clearly built as a whole season. But I also liked S1 and I didn't feel it was difficult to get through at all

What I liked about the relationships between characters in this show is that when damage was done, that damage stuck. There were not, iirc, a lot of mended bridges and forgiveness, just increasingly heavy emotional burdens to bear.

What irked me was that they chopped it up. As per the tweet linked above, where you can see the train scene - massive spoiler alert obv if you haven't seen it yet - they chopped up "With or Without You" to make it fit. They should've either edited it differently, so the song could play naturally like it's etched into our collective mind, instead of mixing up the chorus/bridge like that.

Other than that, I thought "With or Without You" was a bold move that worked well, as with so many musical choices in the series. Even though I would've preferred "Mothers of the Disappeared" as well.

What irked me was that they chopped it up. As per the tweet linked above, where you can see the train scene - massive spoiler alert obv if you haven't seen it yet - they chopped up "With or Without You" to make it fit. They should've either edited it differently, so the song could play naturally like it's etched into our collective mind, instead of mixing up the chorus/bridge like that.

I guess there are timing issues, etc, which dictate stuff like this, but yeah, I hate when songs are re-edited to fit the visuals, and not vice versa. It snaps me out of a scene.

Also that scene in the Tweet above is the biggest spoiler ever, Alfred do not watch it, but OMG seeing it again I am in tears right now, such an amazing ending to a show, so devastating.

Utterly devastating and soul destroying, in the best possible way. They could not have ended it any better; I can't think of a series' ending this good tbh.

the overall reaction to it seemed a bit lukewarm to me, which was a surprise. I guess people were expecting a BBad-style bloodbath and hadn't been paying attn to the show they were watching

That last bit is extremely otm imo, I'm so glad they stuck to their style and didn't force some big bang into it. This was way more moving, too.

You've got to be fair to Breaking Bad, at least if you're talking about the ending--there was no bloodbath. Walt was surrounded, but he just dropped dead on his own. (One brief shot of his hand releasing something and residual blood from the cancer.) In conjunction with "Baby Blue," the more moving, for me, of two great endings.

I was thinking of the broader endgame which absolutely was a bloodbath

but tbh I never thought of the post "Ozymandias" episodes as any better than just ok

fuck we oughta do a best 10s series ending poll huh

Yes! Best 00s perhaps? (let the Sopranos debate relive lol)

or both! people love a chance to bitch about lost and bsg

A click-poll would be good. You get enough options that I'm sure you could corral all the famous ones with room to spare.

Having to choose only one would be a drag, though--there isn't much that separates my favourites.

that's the fun of it imo

I don't know enough series, about what to in- and exclude, but would like to see this happening.

I'll have to do some research to make sure there's decent non-American representation, as well.

We've talked about it on this thread and others, but The Americans, The Shield, Justified, even Breaking Bad (maybe to a lesser extent) ... the shows that stick the ending spoil us. The key I think are shows that don't overstay their welcomes. It's a lot easier to forgive a couple of bad episodes or even an uneven season if the rest of the show is ace. It's tougher for shows that meander or have a couple of seasons of meh before pulling it together again; that's the problem I had with The Sopranos, though like all of the aforementioned I only watched it once. I'd be curious to see how The Wire holds up. There's a weird example of a show that's pretty much all killer *until* the final season, and that season iirc still ultimately managed to pull it all together. Deadwood is another odd one, in that it's *all* killer, but still manages to kind of peter out due to circumstances beyond its control. And yet it *still* concludes well, iirc, even without the belated movie-length coda.

Sitcoms and comedies are trickier, too. I thought the last episode of Veep was a fitting finale. I thought The (UK) Office Christmas special was good. I have no idea how the final Seinfeld episode holds up. That might be an example (like Buffy?) of a show that scrambled to pull itself together at the last minute and managed acceptable conclusions to otherwise exemplary shows that were nonetheless running out of steam a little.