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– Events Arriving at Jimmy Kimmel – May 29 2018
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Keri arriving at Jimmy Kimmel Live (May 29)
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The Americans exit interview: Keri Russell, Matthew Rhys bid farewell to their Cold War spy drama
“Hi. I was hoping to make it home for dinner but things are very topsy-turvy at the office.”
In the penultimate episode of FX’s The Americans, Philip Jennings (Matthew Rhys) delivers that coded message to a stricken Elizabeth (Keri Russell) as she sits inside their Falls Church single-family home, where they’ve lived as Americans for years, raising their children, running operations, and living across the street from an FBI agent turned best friend. She understands exactly what it means: Their cover is blown, they’re going on the run, and the identities they’ve spent their lives building have begun to fall apart.
But as a classic 1986 single would recommend: Don’t dream it’s over. With one episode left of the critically acclaimed Cold War spy drama to go, EW asked stars (and real-life partners) Russell and Rhys to look back on the brutal, beautiful series, those long nights shooting the show in the cold, and what they’ll miss from their six seasons of spy-craft.
Spoiler alert: It’s not the wigs.
Continue reading The Americans exit interview: Keri Russell, Matthew Rhys bid farewell to their Cold War spy drama
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The Americans stars reflect on the series’ end and the new demonization of Russians
When “The Americans” was first being developed as an FX series, there was one potential hitch in telling a story about a suburban couple in the 1980s who actually were embedded KGB agents: Post-Cold War Russians didn’t scare us anymore.
“People were wondering whether Russians were a credible enemy in a work of fiction when we started,” says creator Joe Weisberg, a former CIA agent who has worked side-by-side with executive producer Joel Fields on the show, which wraps up next week after six seasons with a surprising finale.
Oh, how things have changed since 2013, when “Americans” first premiered, turning into a bona-fide critical hit for FX thanks in part to its strong cast (Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys), 1980s retro looks (and disguises), sophisticated writing and flawed, complex characters — whose main goal was to undermine U.S. interests. Continue reading The Americans stars reflect on the series’ end and the new demonization of Russians
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The Americans 6×10 – Start Promo Series Finale
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The Americans recap: With one episode left, the Jennings family is near exposure
Who is Elizabeth Jennings? Who is she really?
That’s something the character has been trying to keep hidden from the world since the beginning of The Americans, but she may finally be figuring out the answer for herself.
The penultimate installment is called “Jennings, Elizabeth” because that’s what Stan types into the Automated Case Support database at the FBI as the episode begins.
Nothing. He finds nothing. No past or current investigations involving her.
He also finds nothing about Jennings, Philip. Or their business, Dupont Circle Travel.
With only one more episode left in the series, there are bound to be consequences now that bring a sense of finality to a show that is bound to finally expose the Jennings family for who they really are. But what’s surprising is how this episode allowed some of the major figures — especially Elizabeth — to fundamentally change who they are. Continue reading The Americans recap: With one episode left, the Jennings family is near exposure
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6×09 – Jennings, Elizabeth Screen Captures
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Do you believe Elizabeth’s big decision on The Americans?
With one episode left to go in the series, we know one thing for sure about The Americans. As Soviet agent Elizabeth Jennings, Keri Russell is giving a performance for the ages.
This final season has been one long endurance test for the character and the actress, an endless stream of spy ops, wigs swapped, assets fatally shot or fatally seduced. Elizabeth hasn’t lost her knack for shapeshifting. Her interaction with Senate intern Jackson (Austin Abrams) was a master class in personality espionage, steadily undressing the poor boy via Manic Pixie Cinephilia (ah, yes, Rififi!) and the dangling promise of a glamorous new life in the private sector. It’s almost Westworldly, the way she digs herself into narratives for these lonely souls, working overtime as Host and Programmer and gun-toting QA.
But her exhaustion is palpable. She’s a soldier near the end of a very long war, juggling battles on many fronts. Some of the best moments on TV recently have been Elizabeth quietly smoking cigarettes. She can look tough, tired, confident, confused, desperate, savvy, murderous, kind, sometimes all at once.
Wednesday’s penultimate episode is titled “Jennings, Elizabeth,” and it’s both a showcase for Russell’s ice-and-fire energy and a pivotal turning point for Elizabeth.
(WARNING: Spoilers ahead. Read at your own risk!)
Continue reading Do you believe Elizabeth’s big decision on The Americans?
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6×09 – Jennings, Elizabeth – Episode Stills
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– Episode Stills 6×09 – Jennings, Elizabeth
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Is The Americans a Good Show, or a Great One? The Next 2 Weeks Will Settle the Question
I’m anxious about The Americans. It’s impossible not to be. There are only two episodes of this slow-burning 1980s-set espionage drama left, and it’s possible that a finale has never mattered more. That’s because for all of its critical accolades, The Americans, in its sixth season, remains niche entertainment. Why? It has a prickly, sometimes glacial pace, a drab normcore palette (brown on brown on brown), and the complex cloak-and-dagger plotting serves mostly to map the emotional trip wires of marriage and family. Don’t get me wrong: This is a remarkable drama with landmark performances from Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys. The way showrunners Joseph Weisberg and Joel Fields have deepened the stakes around Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, deep-cover Soviet agents in suburban Washington, D.C., season after season, has made loyalists of many of us. But is The Americans great? Seventy-three episodes in, I’m not sure—and can’t shake the feeling that the show still has something to prove.
This is not the way high-profile finales typically work. The last episodes of Breaking Bad had us by the throat because that show had long ago become blue-chip entertainment. Ditto Friday Night Lights. Ditto The Sopranos. Ditto Mad Men—which never put up impressive ratings but achieved consensus status nonetheless.
The Americans is in a similar boat: unimpressive ratings but consensus status. Or almost. If it’s not all the way there, that’s because the show has never rewarded enthusiasm. Many of the episodes—particularly these past two seasons—have taken perverse pleasure in withholding, in silence and misdirection. The Americans can be subtle to the point of stasis, and it can be shockingly violent.
No more so than in these past weeks. I have watched with something close to horror as Russell’s Elizabeth has become an automaton, a mix of humanity and sociopathic menace. Her killing spree this season is astonishing—as is her two-seasons-long cultivation of her daughter, Paige, as a Soviet spy. She’s guaranteeing Paige a life of violence and tragedy—and yet she remains an incandescent heroine: steely, hyper-confident, glamorous.
Meanwhile, Philip is a black hole of ambivalence. The tragedy of watching him try to extract himself from his Soviet minders, connect with his oblivious son, and try to find his moral core is the most affecting part of the show. Rhys has an incredible variety of hangdog expressions. He’s an encyclopedia of misery and stymied hope.
What happens to these two matters. I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling both a need for them to be okay and a need for them to pay for what they’ve done. There’s a reason an Americans death pool is circulating on the Internet. I don’t see how both of them can survive, or escape justice (and Elizabeth is wearing that cyanide pill around her neck). Certainly, the Jennings as a family cannot remain remotely intact.
So we need a tragic ending. It’s what the show has been building to. But will The Americans deliver one? Will it actually punish the characters we’ve come to love? If it pulls its punches and manufactures some quasi-happy resolution for Elizabeth and Philip on May 30—a retirement dacha in the Urals, perhaps—I fear the show will be forgotten, discarded, a curiosity that had its moments but never amounted to anything. But if something awful happens, if the sky-high stakes pay off, this show will be legend.
Source: https://www.vogue.com
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