A thread for The Americans on FX

S3 & S4 are probably the peak concentration of the show doing what it does best, so enjoy the ride.

Yeah I didn't love it till season 3.

Got to the big episode immediately after I posted last night (and didn't know it was coming so soon--also the first time I watched three episodes in a sitting). Handled perfectly; you really experience it through Paige's eyes. Her relationship with her parents now reminds me of Sally Draper's with her father on Mad Men. (Hopefully that's self-explanatory--don't want to say too much for anyone who has this on their to-watch list.)

I'm at a point early in Season 4 where about six different people could send the whole house of cards tumbling down. Which is great.

aren't you glad you stuck with it?

Definitely--just finished the episode that ends with Roxy Music's "End of the Line." Easily the best use of music so far for me.

Stan's last-time-I-see-you speech to Burov was great. In general, Noah Emmerich's performance gets better and better with every season and every episode--by Season 4, he's my favourite character.

He sure has mastered the eye twitch.

Clemenza, you are going to be up to speed fully when the last series begins right? Awesome to have you on board for the weekly chatter!

March 28!

(xpost) I will be, definitely; finished Season 4 tonight, have 5 ready to go.

One thing I'm wondering--do they ever use pop music over the end credits? I'm watching bootleg DVDs. The quality's great, but each episode stops before the end credits roll.

Frank Langella and Dylan Baker are excellent. Best visual joke so far: Paige and William sitting at opposite ends of the couch when their fathers walk in the room. William's Anton Chigurh haircut's a little off-putting...The three kids are really good.

(Matthew, not William--Stan's son.)

One last thought--I won't be on board when Season 6 runs. I'll watch it when contraband shows up at the flea market...

A heads up on S5... it is slow, it meanders, it is often very frustrating, but it's working towards what I imagine will be a satisfying S6.

I'll watch it when contraband shows up at the flea market...

Just get it off pirate bay!

My brother-in-law does that for me sometimes. I should, I know--no explanation, I'm just okay with waiting a little longer. Anyway, it occurs to me that I get FX in my cable package, so I think I'm okay.

Liked the first two episodes in Season 5 fine, although getting the sample from William (so to speak) took forever. I find Stan's going to bat for Burov touching, almost like something from a Howard Hawks film.

late this year no?

It's started in March the last two years, but not at the end of March.

s5 is a bit of a slog tbh, as an enthusiastic viewer of the first 4 I think I still haven't watched the last couple of episodes

The fact that S6 is going to be two or three years on has massive implications for Paige's character, no idea which way they're going to go on that.

S5 was the first season that let me down. Despite that, acting was as strong or stronger than ever even if the story went nowhere.

There were some broad ideas I liked a lot but they finally botched the tone and made it just a little *too* miserable, which s4 had already so beautifully dodged. I'm fairly certain s6 is gonna rule though

I enjoyed the "what is Martha up to, now?" scenes

I'm enjoying the gloom of season 5 (four episodes in)--maybe that was there right from the start and I just didn't connect with it till the third season. Seems very much in the tradition of Mad Men, The Sopranos, and Six Feet Under right now: all the male leads go through their Michael Corleone, I've-done-a-lot-of-bad-stuff phase, turn to psychiatrists, Esalen, EST, Quakerism, whatever's handy for solace. (Elizabeth going through that too, to a lesser extent.)

I think it's less the gloom and more to what end? Come back to us after the last episode and tell us it was satisfying.

Eighth episode of Season 5 was indeed deadly dull--first one in a while. Deirdre's interesting.

That last scene in episode 10--the subtle humour of her parents throwing together an impromptu Fotomat in the basement, followed by the abrupt shift into Pastor Tim's excerpts--was fantastic. Had to look up the song. So that's why Bauhaus was put on this Earth.

Agree that 5 kind of trails off towards the end. Too much time on Burov for relatively ordinary plot points (did he even show up in the finale?), and Philip and Elizabeth's quick about-face at the end was, again, predicated on something rather ordinary (which I didn't even totally understand at first--had to check a synopsis). I liked the final conversation between Stan and his girlfriend: when she suggests why he should stay you see something click in his expression, and I don't think you can definitively say whether it's because he realizes she's right or he has a flash on what Philip thinks.

Really looking forward to 6, especially (I hope) the great Philip/Stan reckoning.

Final episode confused me as well. It was just this huge build up to them leaving and then "omg, we have to stay!" And his son, what came of that? Nothing, right?

especially (I hope) the great Philip/Stan reckoning

This is maybe the thing I'm looking forward to most? I don't know. With this show, I feel like the writers could either go a satisfying or very unsatisfying direction.

Well, like Deadwood (for example) we know historically where it must end. So I assume it will end with Philip and/or Elizabeth disappearing, and then Philip and Stan meeting up for a beer after the fall of the wall sometime and being all, "huh, that sure was a thing, wasn't it?" The other way it can go is "The Shield," meaning a bad ending for everyone.

I admit the show has toed the line very carefully. We've seen entire families killed and lots of other tragic endings, there's no reason to think the show won't take things in that logical direction. But who knows? Most importantly I'm pretty sure they've had an ending in mind since the start and have working toward it.

And his son, what came of that? Nothing, right?

I wouldn't be surprised if that storyline recurs in S6.

I hope so! They just spent an awful amount of time on it for nothing to happen this season (same with the agricultural espionage). And next season is three years later, right?

Thinking about it later, I wonder if the writers experienced the same about-face as Philip and Elizabeth--that Season 6 initially had them returning--and then had to throw together a hasty rationale.

With the son, I assume that story will now move forward--he'll go his new school, and he may or may not be drawn into his parents' world. I found the scene where Philip changed his mind and started yelling at the son not very convincing.

No, I mean his other son!

You mean Tuan...no, you mean Mischa...They'll pick that up again, I'm sure. (A lot of time spent on that in Season 5 for very little return.)

Not sure if the irony of Elizabeth's last conversation with Tuan was intentional or not. You need a partner, presumably someone who's going to temper (comeing right after, as it does, the Pasha scheme) your ruthlessness. Elizabeth, if anything, is even more ruthless than her husband.

I have a theory that 5 is the perfect # of seasons for a modern serialized drama and that all who go past 5 end up having at least one "dip" season (or a significant amount of stuff that could have been safely excised spread across a couple of seasons) - I was hoping this would be the exception but alas

You could be onto something there. Similarly ones below 5 sometimes feel rushed - see the final season of Black Sails.

Leftovers (which I loved) felt a bit skimpy at 3 seasons as well.

Sounds plausible, although I haven't seen enough of them to compare. I thought Mad Men stayed pretty strong through seven; actually thought The Leftovers should have ended at two.

This made me laugh (from the Wikipedia summary of reaction to season 5):

...as the season progressed, it became criticized for turning "slow burn" into just "warm embers," morphing into a show about "people staring off into the distance, stirring tea, keeping their thoughts to themselves and worrying quite a lot about grain supply.

having just done a rewatch, I can imagine trimming MM down to 5 seasons without too much difficulty

Mad Men, Season 6, capsule summary: "People staring off into the distance, drinking scotch, keeping their thoughts to themselves, and worrying quite a lot about grain supply."

Did Breaking Bad have a down season? I can't remember, might have helped that it was ridiculous (in a good way) from the first episode on. The best shows (as always, like The Shield), even when they have a down season they don't lose the thread, and things set up in the first episodes continue to echo through the finale.

Hmm, I wonder if The Shield holds up years later? Just dove back into Deadwood for the first time in forever and it's still a blast, more or less.

I tried (re)watching Six Feet Under last year and realized I hated every single person on the show and gave up.

BB kept the momentum up throughout with 5 seasons, backing up the theory.

MM's sixth season was a bit rubbish.

Leftovers is an exception imo, it felt complete at 3 seasons - although there was certainly enough potential in the concept to sustain a few more.

we might want a separate thread for this tbh

I saw a play last night, and about a third of the way in, something about the lead reminded me of someone. So I look in the playbill ... and indeed, he was the guy who played Agent Gadd!

John Boy Walton!