A thread for The Americans on FX

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

more people would be talking about/watching this if the past seasons were on netflix; it's sequestered into some exclusive deal with Amazon though.

xp oh, I'd missed that!

Man, what a crazy but weirdly subtle and eerie way to end a season. So much we don't know. We don't exactly what Paige told Tim, or how he took it. We don't know if Martha is still alive. Phillip may be heading for a breakdown, but we don't know what sort, or how it will bear out; he definitely seems to be sick of murdering innocent people and being ordered to sleep with underage kids. And most striking to me, we learn (for the first time?) that it was the son who murdered his entire spy family last season, after they tried to turn him. So many ways this can turn. Paige spying on her family for the gov (irony). Phillip going rogue. Stan unleashed dedicating himself obsessively to the pursuit of the illegals.

I love this show and can't wait until the next season starts (or becomes available on Amazon, 'cause I don't get FX).

yeah, i think the best thing about s3's ending, which seemed like it would have to draw a number of plotlines to a close, is how it left more questions than answers. literally cannot wait to see how it pans out.

How many more seasons is it pegged in for? Its just the pace at which things started to get over complex/fall apart picked up so much I cant see it going more than one more season without complete implosion.

I think at least two more?

iirc they've talked about wanting five, but I don't think they've gotten more than a one season renewal for now, and the numbers are really low. But FX supports the show fully, and is aware that they need to allow the creators to really finish the show when they agree to stop it, otherwise it would destroy all the goodwill they get out of it, which is really the only thing they are getting out of it... So if we don't hear that next season will be last one soon, then expect one more.

I could imagine it playing out like gold standard The Shield, which is to the say the story (as such) concluding and then several episodes basically spent on the run or tying loose ends. But then, the timeline of the show has always been pretty unclear. Sometimes it feels like each episode is really only one day, and certainly S3 seemed to be winter every episode. So depending on how micro they go they can stretch it or slow it as much as they want. Ignoring of course that the story right now is basically a powderkeg with the fuse sparking toward it at fast clip.

I've been really wanting them to do a Mad Men and run it right up to the fall of the Berlin Wall, but it seems pretty implausible that Philip and Elizabeth can carry on like this for that long. They could at least make it as far as 85 and the ascension of Gorbachev.

And was I right that it's only at the end of S3 that we learn that other kid killed his whole Russian family? It's only sort of mentioned in passing in that diner scene, so I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be a bombshell or not.

No that was revealed at the end of S2.

Huh. I remember him going all rogue, but I don't remember that at all! I guess it's been a while.

would like next season's last ep ending music to be "You Dropped a Bomb On Me"

do we know when the next season starts?

no date announced but 2 of the 3 seasons have premiered in the last week of january, so thats my guess

said it upthread somewhere but I am stoked at the possibility of inclusion of Able Archer 83 into the storyline, could see some interesting plot developments there

Just a little over 2 months until S4 (starts in March this time, though the exact date hasn't been announced).

good

Yeah looking forward to how this is gonna pan out now that Paige has blabbed.

This ad art is great

http://i.imgur.com/m8vfbem.jpg

A lot to parse in this brief 30 seconds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ld1dDuUVqZo

eeee cant wait.

Is that Philip that Stan is shoving against the wall?

Oh man I'm thinking about watching a few of the old episodes just to warm up.

Trailer not available in my country :(

Hi TV networks, this is why we pirate all your shows btw!

on the show and Christianity

(spoilers)

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/february-web-only/christians-soviets-and-bible.html

Shit! I just saw an interview with Alison Wright (Martha) and I had NO IDEA she's English IRL.

back on Wednesday!

xpost This show has the best American accents ever.

I knew she was English but I didn't knaaa she was a Mackem.

This feels like the only series left where I have very high expectations, i am mostly whelmed or going through the motions with everything else on tv.

I definitely feel like I've been spinning wheels waiting for this (and Better Call Saul). Helpfully, my wife and I have just started finding Broad City insufferable again, which happens about halfway through each short, short season, so Americans arrives just in time. Heard good things about Fargo, fwiw.

i make allowances for other shows because the things they do well hit my personal spots and outweigh things they do less well (that i care about less), but this frequently amazes me in being even more amazing than i expect

Heard good things about Fargo, fwiw.

It's fitfully fun and entertaining, but don't expect anything anywhere near Americans-level.

I have to disagree heartily there! Fargo is quite on the level with Americans, though obv a diff feel.