A thread for The Americans on FX

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.

That was a respectable premiere episode. I was especially enamored with Martha in the pre-credits scene.

But yoooooooooooo...the preview teaser for the rest of this season is BANANAS!

Typically quiet opener - loved the closing shot and Philip's incredible weariness, though.

Anyone where/when this is on UK TV?

The violence in the scene with young Phillip beating the kid to death was very... impactful. You really felt every blow.

The Nina storyline is really boring at the moment, she used to be the best character hands-down but it feels like her role in the show is being artificially prolonged at this stage.

It does feel that way, but I figure it will pay off somehow (and probably soon—they wouldn't just have her shadowing that engineer guy for another complete season would they?).

I am way more invested in what happens with Martha right now than I am about anything else. Although if I were a Russian spy I'd be worried about an FBI agent thinking I was banging his wife.

We just found out in the premiere that Nina is married, so maybe her husband will prove to be a significant character.

i'm almost exactly 2 years behind

i did lol at the discovery that the leads are now a RL couple

We just found out in the premiere that Nina is married,

Oh thank god I thought I was going mad at that bit... I was like "wait, what husband.. whatd I miss!?"

Finally caught up with the first two episodes of this season. Good to have it back, but I worry it's on the verge of collapse. Or maybe that's what makes it great? I haven't seen any teasers for things to come. Right now it's pretty melodramatic, and almost every character seems deeply depressed or at least seriously messed up.

Didn't like the bus sequence of episode 2, though, which was fine as far as suspense goes, but seemed contrived and deeply dumb, even for a show whose death count remains ridiculous.

More than ever has a constant feeling that something really really awful is about to happen. But when something awful DOES happen (the bus guy getting strangled), it somehow does nothing to relieve that tension. This is maybe the murkiest TV show ever.

On a sillier note, I had a dream that the most recent season had ended with the shock twist of Russia actually winning the Cold War, and that this time it had changed into a kind of alternate reality thing with Phillip and Elizabeth set up as officials in the new American Communist regime! Was a bit disappointed when I woke up.

Something's got to happen, hasn't it? Did I read somewhere they've planned it for five seasons? I just don't feel they can keep up the pretence much longer, if they still have the taste for it. I wonder if something will happen to their daughter (I hope not, as she is a great actor)? I wonder if the show will end with one hunting down the other?

And this show is great, but also gruelling.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

(no spoiler, but you'll probably agree with me when you see)

Holy shit! that was a major jolt and like the character, I didn't see it coming at all.

Well, of all the bad things that could have happened to any number of characters in any number of episodes but particularly this one, I suppose this was the least surprising. The character had been a dead end for several episodes now, and there was no real way out of their situation. I like the actor and the character a lot, actually, but I'd been commenting to my wife that the show didn't quite know what to do with them.

Great show, but seriously dark stuff. Like, emotionally dark, and in a really bleak, methodical sort of way.

I loved the way Martha told a partial truth (she thought so anyway) to Agent whatshisname. Boldness is a good look for her.

Just occurred to me that the big surprise if this ep sets Russian what's his name up with an excuse to turn against his country and team up with Stan. Iirc Oleg does not know of the Jennings by name or face ...

Yeah that immediately occurred to me as well. If Oleg turns, and Stan is investigating Martha AND convinced that Philip is boffing his ex-wife, then it's surely only a matter of time before he stumbles across something. Then again he is inept, so...

Stan's not inept! He's the most twitchy and paranoid guy in the cast! He's always on guard for spies.

i can't believe they did this to her. heartbroken.

not to be a dick, but long overdue in my opinion! that storyline was going nowhere and was consistently the least engaging of the C plots. i think they'll be able to use her death make some forward moves with oleg and stan's relationship and their loyalties to goose the plot in new ways.

she was my tv spy girlfriend, shutup

condolences and dasvidaniya comrade

Right until the last second I was in denial and thought she was going to make it. Obviously in retrospect she had to go and it wouldn't have been realistic for the KGB not liquidate a traitor, but still, wtf man!

so did oleg's father not follow through with his promise, or did he have no power over it? and if he didn't follow through with it, to what end? will oleg find out (assuredly)? will oleg stay in the USSR? wtf is going to happen????

I'm interested to see them try to turn Pastor Tim.

^all those possibilities FAR better than "what will she do in prison THIS week?!?!?!"

I'm sad to see her go but there was no way they wouldn't have executed her

Does this mean we won't get more from the recaptured dissident Jewish scientist? Because he's a dead-end right now, too.

Hope his season does not end with Paige killing Pastor Tim. Five seasons announced, right? So I'm going to guess this season ends with them on the run, one way or another. Better - they go on the run because Paige kills Pastor Tim!

The same actor who plays Pastor Tim also plays an aggressive, dick-swinging trader on Billions. When I recognized him it kinda blew my mind.

Literally nothing we have seen of Paige suggests that she'd be capable of killing someone, or even covering for a murder. She might be required to do the latter anyway, and the Centre might think she could do the former, but what do we know.

If they really want to find a relatively inconspicuous way to get rid of Pastor Tim then the pissy sarcastic guy with the fridge full of diseases might be a better route.

Great interview w. the creators on this week's ep.

I'd be curious to know how the Nina suff plays on rewatch, knowing how it ends. The whole time I think it's natural to watch those scenes and think "how's she coming back?" rather than about what's going on in her head.

Literally nothing we have seen of Paige suggests that she'd be capable of killing someone

It's definitely a silly hypothetical argument, I agree, but just an episode or two ago we saw Philip beat a kid to death with a rock when he was younger than Paige, and we already had a subplot involving the Paige-age child of that other illegal family killing his entire family. So the groundwork is there, it's not without precedent. Also, Paige has been in full-on freak out panic mode for a while now.

Anyway, yeah, it would be pretty unlikely, but the weak link of this show has always been the ridiculously high body count, all the murder and killing the least plausible aspect of the whole scenario. I want to say Nina is one of the rare times a death wasn't some conspicuous disaster (dead man on bus!) or setup (though why they did it the way they did it is a mystery to me, couldn't they have at least gone outside?).

Wow, just read that interview, so yeah, I guess that answers that! Still, just go outside to execute someone, you lazy Soviets.

It was planned in a very specific way so the person who was going to be killed doesn’t know they were going to be killed, and it was done that way for humanitarian reasons — they didn’t want the person to suffer, to be spending all this time in a cell pondering their own pending execution.

i mean obvs challops there: not telling people they're about to die is problematic in a zillion ways as regards appeals and due process but i know which way i'd rather have it happen

Back in NKVD days for some executions they used to have a hidden shooter behind a wall who would put a bullet through the back of the victim's neck while they thought they were being weighed.

woooooow when they said "shortly" they REALLY MEANT shortly, huh

about as wrenching a character death as it's possible for someone whose arc had clearly come to its doomed end and who was totally out of plot mileage. and it was her final rebellious bit of agency that finally sealed her fate. and there i was thinking nothing would top the quarantine scenes for the emotional wringer.

I loved the way Martha told a partial truth (she thought so anyway) to Agent whatshisname. Boldness is a good look for her.

partial truths being, of course, philip and elizabeth's MO! i love how these situations force the characters to change. paige is already lying to fbi agents...

can't wait to see P and E try to work pastor tim, easily the best route fwd from a dramatic standpoint. william is an a+ character to have introduced!