A thread for The Americans on FX

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!

I'm trying to look back over the last two seasons and see how they didn't waste Nina's character. There were little details that were important, but for the most part they just shoved her off to the side. Not that her death wasn't an emotional suckerpunch (it very much was!), but I could imagine ten better ways I'd like to have seen them develop her story starting just before the point they sent her back to Russia. The partnership of Oleg and Stan doesn't seem worth it.

I'm willing to wait and see what will still come of it, and to see how it plays on rewatch. They've earned that much.

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

i think her partial confession was a cry for help, she knows the agents will investigate her admitted affair because it's a potential for blackmail etc (duh). she''s in over her head and knows it.

I can't believe Stan didn't take the opportunity to plant a bug in Martha's apartment.

Bad news travels fast.

Not a lot of pivotal moments this week, but the way they're building mad tension is to be commended!

it's that thing this show does, builds the tension and pressure til it's almost unbearable and then there's no explosion, just something that leaves you silently reeling and absolutely no relief to the tension at all

re: the pay-off of nina's story - yeah i think oleg will be steered on to a different course by it, a possibly game-changing one, but even if he isn't, the worth of extending her story came from doing justice to her as a character, even if unconnected to the rest of the story

Hans is getting a lot better at this surveillance business, but it is a long apprenticeship. I enjoyed watching him getting grilled in a completely ego free manner by a true pro.

A very Napoleon Dynamite-ish disguise on Hans this week, I thought. And the reveal that they basically checked that "priest" out from the Center's props department was hilarious.

http://www.vox.com/2016/4/14/11411564/how-tv-gets-made-americans-fx-production

anyone else think it was significant that elizabeth said she'd been with a friend, as opposed to the usual "at work", after she saw young-hee? we've seen a lot of philip's emotional connections to his marks but not elizabeth's, until...now? show's giving us no clue as to what she's working young-hee for

I think Young-Hee will prove be an asset of some kind, so the genuine friendship that has developed will make it incredibly tense and emotionally wrenching for Elizabeth to work her, well imo of course.

The likelihood is that she - or perhaps her husband - has access to the high security nerve gas doodads that William doesn't have access to.

Anyone else feel like a load of S3 plotlines have been somewhat abruptly jettisoned? All the Afghan stuff, the thing with Kimberley, are those missions basically over for them now and never to be spoken of again?

Paige doesn't appear to have any interest in boys at all but surely there's some narrative potential in a relationship between her and the dorky Beeman kid?

Yeah, a lot of stuff from last season just vanished, or at least was abruptly written out of the show as the mission evolved.

Not a lot of pivotal moments this week, but the way they're building mad tension is to be commended!

Except for using "Under Pressure" to underscore that they are under pressure. For a show usually so adept at music queues, that was so on the nose it was silly.

The on-the-noseness was funny! The Americans has a p self-aware sense of humour

I'm really not sure that was supposed to be funny.

i am going to venture that this has been a notably weaker season than last.

I'm not sure it's weaker so much as maybe necessary, getting a bunch of ducks in a row for a rousing finish. At least I hope, because yeah, there's been next to nothing this season that has advanced what we already know, from the psychology of the characters to the state of various suspicions/assignments/investigations. Under pressure? What else is new?

I take it back, something big just might have happened this episode: I think Philip/Clark is increasingly showing maybe real feelings of some sort of Martha, or at least an increased sense of responsibility. He gives her the top secret phone line, which is a major trust thing, and when he tells her he loves her, over the pay phone, they cut to Elizabeth shooting an ice glare, the implication being she read his lips and is ... jealous? Anyway, that's what I got out of it.

I think Clark and Martha's relationship has always clearly been real!

Sure, but really real, now. Increasingly. I'm not sure they've done a good job explaining why/how, though, other than Philip/Clark is driven by guilt.

i have a big crush on martha in any case

Under Pressure on the nose but also brilliant and effective.

I think the Kimberley thing wasn't supposed to be an ongoing plotline so much as a vignette that tells us something about Philip's morals and their mutability with regard to his job. We may never see her again, but we can see the impact of her plotline in Philip's continued dissatisfaction with the Center.

Alison Wright also plays the wife of Clarence Thomas in HBO's Confirmation. I thought it was pretty shit tbh and seemed like classic typecasting.

I think the Kimberley thing wasn't supposed to be an ongoing plotline so much as a vignette that tells us something about Philip's morals and their mutability with regard to his job.

Also shedding light on his relationship and attitude to his daughter. Shame because it was a great storyline that just seemed to disappear. Then again it isn't exactly realistic for even the Centre to expect Philip to maintain two wives and an underage girlfriend.

Wondering where the Stan sexual jealousy thing is going. I've been assuming for some time that the smoking gun will be Elizabeth's gunshot scar, and had thought it was going to happen at some chummy family holiday, but now maybe not, especially if Elizabeth takes it upon herself to work him as a source.

thought philip's apology to stan was one of his best bits of acting, showed us how much their friendship is predicated on hierarchy and stan underestimating him

if this show has an endgame of philip and elizabeth getting exposed, i have a feeling it's not setting stan up to be the hero here

Stan is way more likely to be a victim than a hero. Even if he stays alive his career would surely be over, and that's assuming they don't find some way to make him complicit (wittingly or otherwise).

Stan the Hank of Breaking Bad. But more complicated. He and Oleg are totally going to bust them and then they will go on the run. Maybe final episode will make them decide between "safety" of crumbling USSR, "freedom" of America and maybe something more desperate and dire. Hope they stick it like "The Shield."

Man, if this show sticks it like The Shield, it will be one of the best ever.

I'm expecting a Departed-style blow-it-all-up finale. Philip shoots Elizabeth, Stan shoots Philip, Oleg shoots Stan, Paige slits Oleg's throat and runs away in Philip's sports car with Henry.

Can't imagine the show not ending 40 years in the future or "now" or whenever, not least because we know how/when the USSR ends but setting the final episode today would be like a big exhale after so many seasons of being period appropriate.

That would be an interesting twist, except I wouldn't want to see them try to age Paige into the future with makeup or cgi or cast a new actor to play her as an adult just for the finale—unless it's a REALLY GOOD finale concept.

At this point, the show could go any number of directions and I like it too much to come up with hypotheticals. Doing so has ruined other shows in the past (the ones that didn't ruin themselves, anyway...I'm looking at you, Lost).

See, I like it enough that I like the hypotheticals, because while I have less faith in this show than I do in, say, Better Call Saul, I know they've got an awesome sense of story and quality control, so whatever they end up will likely be solid, or at least better than any of my ideas.

post-show hypotheticals are better when they're fun for the fans rather than definite canon though imo

like assuming oleg survives it's more fun to imagine he becomes an oligarch than for them to tell us

Shit's about to hit the fan.

Can't imagine the show not ending 40 years in the future or "now" or whenever, not least because we know how

No way are they going to do this.

martha and clark at the denny's on their way to the botanical gardens

feels kinda sloppy that they would just let martha walk away like that. i kept expecting a kgb assassin to show up and dispatch her.

I've always thought Gabriel was kind of worthless, but that scene really put a point on it.

martha is going to die next week isn't she

yeah. and maybe it'll be the thing that pushes philip into full on rebellion against the kgb.

I don't blame Martha for not trusting Gabriel and for not buying his benevolent old gent act or his omelette. In her position you are bound to assume they are going to bump you off rather than give you the Philby treatment. It will be sad if she is killed but she can't be captured by the FBI and it doesn't seem credible that she would fancy a one-way extraction to Moscow even if she did trust them.

that episode was so intense it felt like we were only halfway through when it ended.

Tenner says Martha is captured by the FBI rather than killed. For all Martha's closeness to Philip/Clark she doesn't actually know shit, she can't give them anything. And Philip knows that and will do everything he can to stop it.

They know about Clark but whether any connection will be made to Philip himself I doubt.

What's the disease inside the dead chicken for?

The sex scenes over the last couple of episodes certainly seemed to be implying that Philip is having a lot more sex with Martha than Elizabeth and I wonder if that's going to play into it in some way. If Martha does die then having Elizabeth kill her would be one hell of a plot bomb.

She can ID phil, liz (wig disguise not withstanding) and Gabriel and his address. That is quite a lot of information actually (all the comings and goings at Gabriels house + neighbourhood witnesses etc) and could be enough to bring down the whole operation. Well imo of course. I suppose this is in the pre CCTV era etc idk.

I thought that was a safe house rather than Gabriel's? If they put her up in Gabriel's actual house they deserve everything they get.

Still, if they kill Martha they lose Phillip either immediately or later down the line. Dunno if they're prepared to take that risk.

Ah I forgot it was a safe house, it won't be very safe any more!