A thread for The Americans on FX

Kind of glaze over during the Oleg scenes this season tbh. Feel like most of the reason behind that ridiculously long orgasm was just to give him something to do for a bit.

Presumably they're building up to Stan turning him?

Last episode was super bleak.

It's sadly comical that Gaad would basically rather kill himself than listen to a Russian talk.

Um. Was that a spoiler? That ep only just aired and I havent seen it yet :(

I guess? Sorry about that. There's never really been a spoiler embargo in this thread iirc, though. :(

hasn't aired on the west coast yet

Apologies to all!

I typically avoid threads updated on the day a show airs if I haven't seen the latest ep, but I guess not everyone follows that path.

I unconsciously click every bookmark like a lifeless madman tbh

I'm not nornally that fussy but a character death's a bigun! Ah well :)

Discussion of an episode is fair game as soon as it's aired. If you want to avoid spoilers, don't click on the thread until you've caught up.

The scene with Philip, Elizabeth and Paige in the kitchen (before Paige starts shouting about having to move) really reminded me of The Good Wife for some reason - Keri Russell had this disdainful expression that was very Juliana Margulies-esque. Also, when Philip asked her if they really could have killed Pastor Tim I laughed out loud.

my point was the ep airs later for us. it's all cool nm

The scene with Philip, Elizabeth and Paige in the kitchen

Yeah, Elizabeth was basically taunting her...whatcha want to say? you wanna take this outside? c'mon, tough girl!

the tennis ball tho

That Gaad scene really came out of nowhere and I wonder where it's going. I briefly wondered if it was Martha-related but I'm not sure they'd sent three dudes for that.

saad 4 gaad. he didn't kill himself though? that scene was definitely out of nowhere.

wonder if paige has a gameplan in taking the beeman son to church beyond a possible crush on him. they're lucky holly taylor turned out to be a great actress, some of her face work in that episode was as subtle and effective as anything the leads have done.

the young-hee answering machine message killed me :(

and it's like, this isn't anywhere near rock bottom (no staving it off, even with the last scene)

I'd misread JFs post as Gaad killing himself too, so I guess it was less spoiled than I thought lol.

That event seemed so cruelly pointless! But I guess thats real life.

I'll have to watch the scene again, but I thought Gaad, in his haste to escape the three Russians, ran into the glass door.

If he was put through it, well that's different.

He did, but not on purpose. Well not with the intent of dying, I wouldnt have thought.

I did wonder tho - why DID he run from them? He didnt want to give up anything he knew?

Yeah, it was just like "ooh, I'm going to run...where?...glass door!...well, that didn't work out so well."

I thought about it later, though, that he might be a little shy about confrontation with Russians because Elizabeth beat him bloody.

God, I'd forgot all about that.

They def didnt push him though - the "oh shit" was written all over their faces and then later on Arkady makes mention of a mission that failed badly.

(I wonder what it was, though. What did they want from Gaad? I guess that'll become clear later?)

idk that the scene where a guy tried to make a break from the three guys who broke into his apt needs a bunch more unpacking ? it seemed p natural to me
lex v otm re paige as an actor, too

i assumed they were going to try to turn the potentially disgruntled ex-fbi agent but who knows. doesn't seem like the most effective way of doing that. the goons "oh shit" faces rivalled elizabeth's "how can she think we killed pastor tim, we would never have left alice alive" moment for black comedy

he didn't kill himself though?

my partner reckoned he suicided by window, rather than get caught up in whatever those clumsy russians wanted, but I don't know.

Paige is *amazing. In every scene, the actress just seems to radiate the totality of her isolation, stress and misery.

yeah, there's no way he intentionally killed himself.

I sort of agreed with her because I'd already spoilered myself by unwittingly reading the first post about this ep above, but yeah I don't think so either.

This was a great week for the Kimmy subplot to reappear, especially given she's mentioned what her dad does. That puts her unwittingly on the Martha trail, and if Philip feels guilty about doing that to Martha, how bad is going to feel about putting someone basically the same age as his daughter on the same path?

yeah, there's no way he intentionally killed himself.

― ulysses,

Yep, he panicked and tried to run away, totally an accident.

A friend of mine is convinced that Martha is going to show up as their handler next season, haha.

Renewed for two more seasons, 5th season 13 episodes and 6th and final season 10 episodes. That is honestly great news and pretty crazy.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/fx-renews-americans-final-two-897312

I think it's too much. One more 13-episode season would have been fine IMO.

I knew that was in the talks (a 6th season), glad to see it's abbreviated. I trust these producers more than any others, though, so I think if there's going to be a S6 they probably see a need for it.

Been avoiding this thread because I am still one episode behind, but how do renewals work with things like this? Do the producers request X number of seasons? Does the network request x number of seasons? Can the network say more and the producers say no?

When they talked about this in the podcast, they said the 5th was already guaranteed and it sounded like FX wanted the 6th but wouldn't push for it unless the producers thought they could make it work. They must have reached a creatively satisfactory agreement, because Landgraf (FX head honcho) said the story was the most important factor.

I wonder if the series will end before or after the Berlin Wall.

Mostly people just get renewed season by season. I think the producers in the past said they thought 5 seasons would be perfect, but then they kept on stretching the story out, so they might need some more. The ratings haven't been good, but FX signaled long ago that they wanted it to end properly.

sixth season is standalone chronicle of martha's russian life, presented w/o subtitles, i have only seen outlines but it seems to have a kind of deadpan kaurismaki feel, also soundtrack is just trombone sounds

Unexpected button at the end there. Cool.

Also, had no idea that's how the Don thing was going to play out.

This show is great at manipulation.

Just aired? Awesome, it always sneaks up on me each week that its been on.

Only two eps left after this one. :'(

the dinner sequence was hella painful

In the best way.

They really could have exploited much more queasiness from that dinner situation, but you could also say it was mercifully short.

So the whole Young Hee setup thing was just so that the KGB could spend a few mins alone in Don's office. Seems to me they could have found a better way of getting the codes, esp since they didn't even find them from a quick sweep of the office anyway.

Also, v implausible that Don would leave two people in his office while he and Philip nipped to the bank, regardless of how ill Gabriel was looking.

tbf, it worked!

I didn't find that implausible at all, I think it's a fair bet that most people wouldn't have been able to bring themselves to go down the path of "Yes, ok, I just basically caused your daughter/sister to kill herself but still, rules are rules!". Especially when one of the people you're potentially offending is kinda rough looking and is acting like he's already struggling to keep a lid on it.

tbf, it worked!

We don't know if it did yet or not. They didn't find the codes in the office, but they're hopeful the codes are on the floppy discs on which they copied the contents of Don's computer.

Was racking my brains trying to think where I'd seen Gabriel's "wife" before. Turned out she was the woman who got stoned to death in The Leftovers.

And she played a redneck matriarch of a criminal family in Justified.