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The third episode of The Americans’ third season built toward one of the most excruciatingly brutal scenes in the show’s history: Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell) and her husband Philip (Matthew Rhys) in a laundry room, extracting Elizabeth’s damaged tooth without anesthesia. Titled “Open House,” and scripted by Stuart Zicherman, the hour was directed by Thomas Schlamme, a veteran of TV drama and comedy and a regular on The Americans. He spoke to Vulture about the specific challenges of shooting a scene of such intensity.

So are you ever going to go back to the dentist again?
[Laughs] I’ve never liked to go to the dentist to begin with!

When I got Stuart Zicherman’s script, I thought this could be the dentistry scene in Marathon Man, or we could ask, “What is the story, what’s really going on?” You know: Okay, we know this is a gunfight, but are we just gonna shoot a gunfight, or are we going to ask what the gunfight’s about?

Once I read the script quite a few times, I thought about it, and I just thought, you know, I shot a scene last year where they performed a 69 on each other, and I didn’t find it as near as intimate as what I thought this scene really was about. So, I was like, “Oh, great, this is The Americans’ version, this episode, of their sex scene.” Continue reading The Story Behind The Americans’ Excruciating, Beautifully Shot Tooth-Pulling Scene

When I visited the set of “The Americans” in early December, attempts to interview Keri Russell kept being delayed, both by the complicated process of filming parts of four different episodes in a single day, and by Russell’s desire to prep for a physically and emotionally grueling scene (which appeared in tonight’s episode, as I reviewed here) involving the worsening condition of Elizabeth’s injured tooth.

Fortunately, once Russell, Matthew Rhys and director Tommy Schlamme finished shooting the scene, she had a few minutes to talk, and a lighter spirit thanks to a plate of cookies that was being passed around the stage. (There’s a good 90 seconds of my interview recording that’s just her trying to talk me into splitting a cookie with her, including her saying what is now my life motto: “Everyone deserves cookies.”)

Does it feel strange eating a cookie right after on-screen dental work?

Keri Russell: Eating a cookie never feels strange. I don’t care what I’m doing beforehand. I am a big believer in food in general.

So in the range of things you’ve been asked to do, this is a physical part. Where would you say that stacked up?

Keri Russell: Somewhere in between being strapped to Tom Cruise like a backpack and jumping out of a burning building, and doing a threesome with strangers in Staten Island on a Tuesday at 9:00 a.m. Continue reading ‘The Americans’ star Keri Russell: ‘This whole season’s a little hard for me’

Tonight’s episode centers on the Jennings’ pursuit of their latest lead on the CIA’s Afghan Group: His name is Ted Paaswell. He’s the right hand man to the division’s head, Isaac Brelund, and has two things that make him vulnerable: he’s having a hard time selling his house quickly enough, and he’s undergoing a divorce.

Meanwhile, tensions in the Jennings home continue to escalate. When discussing a gift for Paige, it becomes apparent that Phillip is upset with Elizabeth for discussing Paige with Gabriel alone. They go to sleep that night with their backs turned to one another.

The next day, they attend Paaswell’s Open House in order to bug his possessions, and then begin their surveillance of him, tailing his car and listening in as he picks up his teen babysitter… who is uncomfortably flirty.

Unfortunately, they’re being tailed, and after several hours they’re unable to shake them as more and more FBI cars join in on the chase.

I think a lot about Drive when I watch episodes of The Americans like tonight’s. If you’ve never watched that film’s opening sequence, in which Ryan Gosling’s Driver executes a getaway, go watch it now. It’s a brilliant bit of tense visual storytelling that also completely dodges every conventional method of ratcheting up tension. Similarly, The Americans manages to construct incredibly tense scenes that are deceptively plain. There are no quick cuts, no music, no daring or unconventional cinematography. It is refreshingly simple in its suspense: Here are the characters, and here is the web closing around them.

The elaborate maneuvers that the Jennings have to pull off in order to get away aren’t daring or jaw-dropping, they’re calculated and deliberate. Phillip tucks and rolls his way out of the moving car when a parked car obstructs the pursuer’s view, and places a coded call to the Centre for backup before making his way home. At the agreed-upon rendezvous point, another agent tosses a radio into Elizabeth’s car, where she receives directions to an intersection where yet another agent stages a hit-and-run, providing enough distraction for her to ditch her car and make it into a getaway vehicle.

Back at the Jennings home, the couple embrace after such a close call—but then Elizabeth’s jaw injury becomes a problem. She’s been nursing it since the premiere, but never got it checked out, knowing full well that the FBI would be investigating any instance of a woman of her physical description seeing a dentist for an injury like hers. So Phillip takes her down to the basement to handle it himself. Continue reading ‘Open House’ TV Recaps