A thread for The Americans on FX

he said on a podcast interview that ratings were under 300,000 for most terriers episodes after the first couple, and also conceded that his marketing staff did a terrible job with it

i do love that show though. also loved the bridge but that had a rough first season before getting great in the 2nd and by then the ratings were completely fucked

the americans has an unassailable rep among critics and even with slowed down ratings in its actual timeslot prob gets a lot of on-demand viewings as backup

i took the wig coming off as "here's the deal and are u gonna ryde or die?"
like martha's been going along with this as best she can without looking it in the eye, dude clearly sincerely loves her and is equally willing to kill her if he absolutely has to which is scary as fuck
i've said it before but the actress playing martha is amazing; one of the real highlights of TELEVISION RIGHT NOW is watching her equivocate so that she can keep her dream
i really really hope they don't kill her

I could see him having to kill her as being what finally tips him over to defecting

Shit, my cable dropped out during the scene with Stan and Agent Gaad and the dvr quit recording at the same time. I have to wait until tomorrow and rewatch on demand because there's no way I'm going to pick it back up tonight having missed about 15 minutes in the middle. COMCAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAST!

yipes at this cliffhanger

deceased now, show killed me

so weird to have no Kimmy or Martha in the finale, and so much time alone with Philip. super moody and upsetting. shot of the ep = Paige praying for her grandmother.

i feel like the showrunners are looking at this series less in terms of season by season and more in terms of as a whole. i have no other answer why there's no culmination to the martha storyline that doesn't involve her presence in the episode, especially after the last episode's gut punch of an ending..

and yeah, they moonwalked away from the Kimmy storyline when they had reached a point where the only plausible story development left was for philip to fuck her or cut her loose and i'm not sure i wanted to see either of those outcomes.

yeah this was definitely a finale made by people who had assurances they'd be back

learning from interviews that the wig scene was originally at the top of ep 13 makes a lot of sense.

Of the three season enders so far, this one was definitely the most low-key, but ultimately the one with the highest stakes. I love that the writers don't urge you to be saying "OMG PAIGE NO" and instead are just laying it out there for you to say "Yeah, I kind of don't blame her" because she's 15 and her parents aren't who everyone thinks they are and she's the only one who knows. That must be melting her brains.

it's a mugs game to prognosticate BUT i would lay money we get a scene of pastor tim wanting to talk to the parents along the lines of "i'm afraid paige is a very troubled girl... she told me she thinks you are russians; is everything okay around the house" - lengthy awkward moment - parents get to spring the "no one is trustworthy" bomb on paige and that might push her away from the ministry and into secret russian spy bidness or maybe into beaman, who knows

I got the sense that Philip and Sandra might get really close next season which may end up causing friction between Philip and Stan (if Stan were to find out).

Oh hell I had not even considered that she might go to Stan.

I was not expecting the Philip/Sandra scenes (nor Philip's earnest interest in...anything, really), but anything that gives Susan Misner something to do is a plus.

I love that Stan is basically Vic Mackey now - "Don't worry about what these bureaucrats think; you just get out there and do what needs to be done."

yea stan's intersection with middle reagan era military/justice department/CIA types who results tied to ideas of ideological supremacy (these being the architects of iran contra) does not bode well for his sleeping problems :/

*who highly value

Gah, waiting a year for this to resume hurts more than most.

only this show would, instead of wrapping up its gazillion subplots in its finale, ignore most of them and introduce a completely unexpected new one. what is philip doing with sandra! is he at those meetings 4 real or is he targeting sandra (and why, if so)...

and of course still drop that bombshell cliffhanger too. PAIGE. i love how this show constantly returns to asking its characters where they draw the line: paige isn't particularly patriotic, which i guess they gambled on, but they hadn't realised that lying was a no-go area for her...

they've used that technique in the final scene before, cutting between different tableaux of characters while relevant words come out of a tv, it's tremendously effective. sucks you right in and makes you tense.

also lol @ their daring, last week's cliffhanger was such a POW moment as well and they have the confidence to just spend one line furthering it

i have no other answer why there's no culmination to the martha storyline that doesn't involve her presence in the episode, especially after the last episode's gut punch of an ending..

I kind of love that they did this - what an unexpected, low key but very haunting finale. Up there with the best episodes they've done.

this show... this show...

HOW long till s04???

January or February 2016.

We finished season one and started season two. It's great, we're really into it, but halfway through S2E1 my wife asked "don't their kids wonder why they don't have any grandparents, cousins or uncles and aunts or anything?" No need to spoil it for me, but I am curious if they ever address this.

Yes, they do

also, i don't think a lack of an extended family around you is that unusual in the first place - if there's any implausibility in the family set-up it's the parents' own unpredictable comings and goings and absences

That too! But at least as far as I've seen so far at least one kid is suspicious if that.

Anyway, we don't have a single relative anywhere near where we live, but my kids (younger than the TV kids) are acutely aware of our extended family, many of whom they see only once every few years. So interested to see how they handle it. Maybe they're all played by Margo, a la Eddie Murphy. This is your Fat Suit grandma, in from Nebraska.

Hey y'all, get bent is on board now. (note: you should not read this thread, because it's top to bottom spoilers)

Still waiting for VG to cave and start watching.

yessss

haven't read this thread yet but holy shit i just watched the episode where they pack annalise into the suicase wtf wtf wtf

I was white-knuckling my sofa for as long as that scene played out.

You haven't gotten to the "home dentistry" episode, then. Ha ha. Just you wait.

It's next in the running order iirc. Honestly, I didn't think that was as bad as the suitcase.

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2015/08/05/an-ex-russian-spy-on-the-accuracy-of-the-americans/

“The Americans,” the popular FX series that depicts the lives of Soviet spies working undercover in the U.S. during the Cold War, “looks pretty much like reality,” according to a member of the Russian spy ring nabbed in the U.S. in 2010.

finished s3 now. this show improved so much..!

The home dentistry scene was one of the few times I have actually had to hide my face in my hands and be unable to deal, and I'm not partic squeamish, nor afraid of dentists.

Suitcase bit didnt bother me much, maybe I am a psycho, lol.

"“The result looks pretty much like reality, but of course without the murders and the wigs,”

Aw but thats the best part!

Of COURSE dude's not gonna cop to the murders and wigs

Yeah! Can't give away all the secrets!

Whhhhyyyy did I wait so long to start watching this show? So good!

I still think there's way too much "I don't know if we can do this anymore/I'm doing this, with or without you!" stuff, but man, Season 3 has been really great so far. Am I right that by and large no one talks about this the way they talked about, oh, "Breaking Bad" or "Mad Men" or something? Because from the acting to the direction to the music, this is A+ TV, with some challenging moral ambiguities being explored. Pretty inspired scenario all around.

It isn't really discussed the same way as Breaking Bad or Mad Men, no, if you by that mean discusses as one of the greatest shows ever. Several reasons for that, I think, including there simply being way too many shows on at this moment, and Americans being the poster boy for being lost in the shuffle. Low ratings, no emmys, not as smart and fancy as Fargo or True Detective. It's under the radar.

Another reason is, that it is build up unlike most other shows at the moment. The plot is really all over the place, with a thousand missions happening at once, and especially in season three, it's all about the cumulative stress of that, rather than any big thing happening in particular. The dread is that something horrible can happen at any time, and most bad things didn't happen in premiere or finale, but somewhere inbetween. It's deliberately off-putting, and I think some reviewers got surprised by that.

But that is also why I think season 3 is the best season yet, and an all-time great.

But that is also why I think season 3 is the best season yet, and an all-time great.

― Frederik B

I'd agree with this - it doesn't really do anything that differently than the first two, but there's a kind of accumulated weight of dread at this point which makes it exponentially compelling. Stuff that could be seen as just silly in 1 and 2 (the wigs etc) now seems blackly absurdist.

Everything about The Americans drives my feelings inward, as opposed to Mad Men where I felt compelled to discuss very outward feelings about the show.

I still think it's the best drama on tv, but I only want to talk about it with other people sometimes.

This is all v otm, it's not at all surprising it hasn't caught on w/ a wider audience but it's still too bad. It's one that people will discover more after it's over/on the way out, a la The Wire, I think.

Stuff that could be seen as just silly in 1 and 2 (the wigs etc) now seems blackly absurdist.

v otm

Yeah, the dread is on the money. It helps that the no way out feeling pretty much starts with season 1, and the rest of the series has been about the characters fatalistically making the most out of a bad situation, knowing at any moment it could get worse and that, when it does get better, it's still pretty bad. Like The Shield or Breaking Bad, good news in this series arrives with the realization that it will be fleeting and only serves to postpone the inevitable. I honestly have no idea whatsoever how they might end this down the line. It could go in all sorts of directions, from full on nihilism to semi-happy ending.