A thread for The Americans on FX

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.

I've rewatched Sopranos a couple of times. The parts that originally seemed to drag no longer do imo

I have no idea how the final Seinfeld episode holds up.

It's abysmal and does no justice to the great series as a whole whatsoever. It's the worst episode of the season!

Having just finished rewatching Friday Night Lights (start the poll a.s.a.p., so to avoid this one being hijacked), it probably would get lost because its ending was so modest--great, but not at all a big flourish. You'd have to decide whether ending means last episode or last scene.

That's another example of a show, like Community, that's done no favors by behind the scenes stuff. Scheduling mishaps, changing networks, near cancellations, etc. Speaking of which, I always liked the Freaks & Geeks finale. As I remember it, Feig and Apatow made sure they had it all figured out, if not filmed, in anticipation of a premature cancellation.

they didn’t know for sure if it was going to be the series finale but the last episode of Hannibal was about as perfect an ending as you could get for that show. That and The Americans would prob be my picks.

Looking forward to see how Better Call Saul ends.

i would nominate I May Destroy You, which absolutely stuck the landing.
Also The Dress-Up Gang.

Freaks and Geeks ending is great--caught me by surprise, even though it probably shouldn't have.

I think I need to check this out. I was never really a fan of Keri Russell and didn't know much about Matthew Rhys, but I'm really liking him in Perry Mason.

Russell is great in it, but Rhys is incredible.

Nothing against Russell, just Felicity was never my thing.

I never did start S2. Maybe someday.

The Shield finale might be my all-time favorite, but the last few seasons had some slow moments IIRC. Been a while since watching it. The Americans finale is certainly up there too, and I find it remarkable that a finale can feel so conclusive yet also fairly open-ended!

Seinfeld finale was legit one of the worst episodes of the whole series, and the penultimate episode ("Puerto Rican Day") is also one of the worst. I'm not as down on the wacky final season as many, there are some classic episodes earlier in the season

Oh man dont judge the Americans on what she was like in Felicity lol.

I haven't watched Felicity since it aired but I remember thinking she acted well in it? Regardless, she's amazing in the Americans

I liked Keri Russell in a small film called Waitress.

I won't say I loved the Seinfeld finale, but I thought it was perfectly in sync with certain things that were (at least at the time) audacious about the show. The dead-end circularity of "Haven't we had this conversation before? (they had--in the first episode, I think) as the camera pulls back on the four of them in the jail cell was great.

getting into The Americans by way of Perry Mason is like getting into the Beatles by way of Wings.

It happens, though!

Any conversations going on about Perry Mason? I don’t really like it but I keep watching

There's a thread about it. I like it, it feels sort of like a throwback to multiple earlier eras of HBO, all the way back to the Powers Boothe as Philip Marlowe days

There's a thread on it, not a ton of talk going on, it's relatively quiet thus far.

The exciting and sometimes disgusting origin story of Perry Mason starring Matthew Rhys

Rewatching. I think my first favourite moment is the end of Episode 11: "This isn't going to go well for you, old lady."