A thread for The Americans on FX

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!

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.

This show is really good at conjuring characters who have literally No Way Out. Martha is doomed, a million ways really. Was genuinely surprised that she survived the episode, which felt like it lasted ten minutes.

Also we seem to spend every episode imagining how the show will end, what will trigger the endgame, what will happen to Philip and Elizabeth. We have a million different scenarios, and I still don't think we have a clue.

It will be sad if she is killed but she can't be captured by the FBI

Don't see why not, they can track her down or she can just turn herself in.

What's the disease inside the dead chicken for?

Think that was just another sample of nerve gas.

Way more likely Martha gets nabbed by the feds than dies, if only because:

a) I just don't think they want to kill two lead female characters this season with what would be such similar dynamics (Nina's death making Oleg spin out / Martha's death making Philip spin out)

b) Just on a statistical level the death rate in that FBI office would start to seem farcical

There's also way more dramatic potential in vengeful Martha deciding to take Clarke down (or even going all out to protect him) than there was in Nina sitting around in a lab in Russia.

Martha, Martha, Martha. No, she's doomed. My guess is Clark tracks down Martha and tries to help her, and then when his back is turned Elizabeth kills her. Whether or not Philip sees it, discovers it or just suspects is another matter.

Fuckin Russians!

I suspect Oleg suspects his cohort at the Rezidentura of not being on the up and up re: Martha, but we'll see.

But for serious, if next week is her last episode, I may throw my shoe at the tv.

She seems a bit shady about this spare pilot she conveniently had on stand-by for Martha's extraction, have they decided that Martha is a liability and are planning to make her disappear? If they told Phil she was in Moscow he would be none the wiser.

My wife posited that it was all just coded/confusing misdirection, and that the entire time they were just getting a plane to get the dead rat to Russia. Because I can't believe Martha is going to Russia. My first thought until this week was that Elizabeth would kill her, but now I suspect it's likely Philip/Clark will put her out of her misery. But God knows he's carrying so much weight already. Character is withering like a president in office.

I was really hoping Martha could find a way out. Maybe she will?

Getting a rat in a jar onto a plane is surely slightly easier than transporting a woman who is WANTED BY THE FBI.

i still haven't seen the one from last night but just caught up on everything else and jesus christ im running out of fucking superlatives for this show

at the same time it's grown so excruciating that i haven't been able to do week-to-week watching. and it can only possibly get more so from here on in. utter brilliance, though.

The ending of this latest episode was weirdly muted and sombre. That scene where Paige gets home from the mini golf, walks up the stairs, and recites what happened to them with the dead eyed monotone.

I'm wondering what the reason was to suddenly skip 7 months?

My guess is that this was the original endpoint they had in mind for s3 but they shook things up just to catch people off guard.

It worked! Fantastic episode.

Oh it also occurs to be its because they'd been given a break. I forgot about that.

The pre-credits sequence with Martha was so heavy.

I love how they twisted it to make the viewer and Gabriel both realize it was Elizabeth's stress and state of mind that necessitated them taking a break. When she blew up all over Paige, I've never hated watching a person on this show more.

God yeah that was so fucking cruel. The difference in personality and approach between her and Phillip grows starker by the day. She's a straight up For the Motehrland automaton, basically. Just when you think she's struggling with feelings, she goes and does something like the AA chick (Lisa?).

Speaking of that scene, I didnt quite catch how she suddenly ended up paying her a visit. Maybe I missed something.

Next weeks ep is titled "The Day After", am hoping thats a nice side ref to the cold war/nuke threat/mood of the time/movie.

Speaking of that scene, I didnt quite catch how she suddenly ended up paying her a visit. Maybe I missed something

She said something at the safe house while visiting Gabriel (when they told Gabriel about Philip going to est) about getting a call from Lisa. That murder seemed so angry, like "HOW DARE YOU FUCKING JEOPARDIZE MY MISSION?!?!!" instead of "Dammit, now I have to kill you because I'm a cold blooded spy."

Matthew Rhys directed this week's episode, btw. He knows these characters inside out. It would probably be too much to ask of him to direct all the time, being one of the show's leads, but he super nailed it.

Fairly convinced now that this show will end with one of them killing the other one.

Yeah I noted he was director, and it was a well paced ep! Lots of meaningful glares and tension. Er, and yelling and killing.

The complete rancidity of Philip and Elizabeth's relationship, which was very apparent in season one and has been buried under unity of purpose ever since, really came out again in this one.

Maybe the seven month skip was drawing a line on the Martha section and setting us up for the Paige section. This nice, normal teenage girl pretty much trapped by her parents for... how long exactly?

The Martha scene was brutal. At least we as viewers know she can maybe come back in seven years or so (what DID happen to people in that situation?) but the assumed finality of it made if nearly unwatchable.

What were the ongoing operations that Gabriel alluded to near the end? The Korean one, plus there was certainly the suggestion that Philip was still working Kimberley but there was another one I've forgotten as well.

"She's a straight up For the Motehrland automaton, basically. Just when you think she's struggling with feelings, she goes and does something like the AA chick (Lisa?)"

Yeah but that scene wasn't cold calculation, it was her cracking under the pressure and Gabriel knew that. TBH I think that scene might have had more impact if they hadn't completely ignored that storyline for the previous seven episodes, it took me a while to work out what that operation was even about.

For the last couple of episodes the implication has been that Philip would have gone with Martha if it hadn't been for his children, so I'm interested to see how his relationship with Paige evolves from now on.

maybe come back in seven years or so

Not without a pardon for treason.

Even if Philip eventually turns?

That is probably a good pointer of where next season is going.

I like the way Liz has been extra harsh on Paige and put all the responsibility of blabbing to the god botherers on her, be fucked if I am going to waste my time watching a tv series about a happy, functional family.

love the copperfield thing -- i remember what a big "television event" that was for me growing up

What a great episode. That wasn't the end of the season was it? Just felt that way?

Did anyone post this great recap?

http://www.vulture.com/2016/05/americans-season-four-the-best-its-ever-been.html#

The scenes with Gabriel and Claudia talking about Philip and Elizabeth, it made me wonder if Philip's morality is evolution or a recruitment failure on the center's part. That is to say, is he a robot short circuiting, or did they accidentally develop the wrong agent? Gabriel and Claudia are all "what's the big deal?" Is it because they've forgotten? Compartmentalized? Or just trained cold psychopaths? And is Elizabeth a trained cold psychopath or is she potentially subject to the same evolution as Philip, which is what Gabriel sees starting and wants to stop from happening? Gabriel is always talking about the war, but the show is also constantly invoking the war in Afghanistan, which does not exactly instill feelings of patriotism and support in the Russian characters, from what the show has depicted. As Claudia points out, the world has changed, it's less black and white, maybe, and it's harder for their agents to navigate in that world. That's the implicit theme of the show, too, and the genius of its domestic setting. All the different strains of right/wrong, of sacrifice and selfishness, of loyalty to country and loyalty to blood, and how stressful it must be to separate them.

That wasn't the end of the season was it? Just felt that way?

Five to go.

"[Our music supervisor] sent us an email eight months or a year ago saying David Bowie’s a really big fan of the show. So you can definitely use one of his songs. That would be awesome. We were ‘Oh! This is so great! We’re finally going to use it.’ And then two days later we got the news he had passed away. And, sadly, it turned into a tribute." — Joel Fields, discussing the use of Under Pressure for The Americans

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/07/discovered-our-parents-were-russian-spies-tim-alex-foley?CMP=share_btn_tw

But the FBI had not made a mistake, and the truth was so outlandish, it defied comprehension. Not only were their parents indeed Russian spies, they were Russians. The man and woman the boys knew as Mom and Dad really were their parents, but their names were not Donald Heathfield and Tracey Foley. Those were Canadians who had died long ago, as children; their identities had been stolen and adopted by the boys’ parents.

Their real names were Andrei Bezrukov and Elena Vavilova. They were both born in the Soviet Union, had undergone training in the KGB and been dispatched abroad as part of a Soviet programme of deep-cover secret agents, known in Russia as the “illegals”. After a slow-burning career building up an ordinary North American background, the pair were now active agents for the SVR, the foreign spy agency of modern Russia and a successor to the KGB. They, along with eight other agents, had been betrayed by a Russian spy who had defected to the Americans.

Interesting to imagine an alternate version of this series set in the mid-to-late 90s.

I had to work today, so it gave me time to listen to almost every episode of Slate's Americans podcast with the showrunners. (afaict, it's only been in existence for seasons 3 and 4)

Some episodes don't stick to actually discussing the corresponding series episode with which they're tied, but many of them do and it's especially good when they have actors in to speak (Rhys talks about the episode he directed this week).

It suits the narrative of things like that Vulture article to say that the show is now "the best it's ever been." In fact, as those of us who've been with it from the start have been saying all along, it's always been this good.

I've watched it from the beginning and I think it's got better. The first season was clumsy in parts.