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“We get to be in a position of telling new stories rather than circling around to old ones,” says the FX drama’s showrunner Joel Fields.
[Warning: This story contains spoilers from the season four finale of The Americans.]

On the heels of a two-season renewal, The Americans wrapped another critically lauded season Wednesday night.

The FX drama’s fourth installment continued to prove that parenting can be just as difficult as espionage work by exploring how the lives of undercover Russian agents Philip (Matthew Rhys) and Elizabeth (Keri Russell) become increasingly complicated by the decisions of their daughter, Paige (Holly Taylor).

“One of the moments I loved [in the finale] is when you have these parents that are staring at each other, one out of the window and one from down below,” said executive producer Joel Fields, who runs the spy drama with creator Joe Weisberg, of the episode’s final scene.

The Hollywood Reporter spoke with Fields ahead of the show’s final season-four outing to discuss the decision to end the drama after two more seasons, why the show said goodbye to three beloved characters this year and what’s next for the showrunning duo. Continue reading ‘The Americans’ Boss on Season 4 Finale, Killing Characters and the End

The season finale for The Americans starts with a stakeout of William’s apartment. The feds are on to him, and he has already stolen a vial of the Lassa virus, with plans to deliver it to Philip in a meet-up at a D.C. park.

Stan Beeman and his sidekick Aderholt are right behind him, along with a surveillance chopper and countless fellow agents on the ground. He’s surrounded. And Philip is walking into a trap.

From there we cut to Paige, reading a Spanish textbook in her bedroom. Elizabeth comes in and crawls into bed with her. Paige asks, “If we’re in danger … If things can happen … Maybe I need to learn how to defend myself.”

She’s thinking about the assailant she watched her mother kill in a dark parking lot.

“I can teach you a few things,” Elizabeth says.
Continue reading The Americans finale recap: ‘Persona Non Grata’

Philip is playing the video game Defender, but that doesn’t last long. Henry takes over the game as Elizabeth and Paige enter the house, clearly in a state of distress.

Paige just watched her mother kill a would-be attacker in a parking lot, and now the girl is grappling with just how deadly her parents may be in their secret roles as Soviet spies.

“Don’t we have to call the police?” Paige asks.

“We can’t draw any attention to ourselves,” her mother answers.

“Did you have to do that?” her daughter replies.

“Yeah. I did.”

Paige is overwhelmed. “I feel sick,” she says. Continue reading The Americans recap: ‘A Roy Rogers in Franconia’

Ding-dong! It’s Pastor Tim at the front door.

“I don’t feel right about what happened … that you felt frightened for your safety because of something that happened to me,” he tells Mr. and Mrs. Jennings.

They tell him it’s okay, but the Pastor, having just survived being lost in Ethiopia while serving as a missionary there, says they’re being generous. He apologizes for his wife threatening to expose their spy background, and says he finally understands what it feels like to fear for your well-being.

The Jennings family invites him and Alice to dinner. What better way to make amends than to break bread?

The title of this episode is “Dinner for Seven,” so we can count on at least one more surprise guest at that meal.

At Gabriel’s, Elizabeth’s handler presents her with a special treat from the old country: pierogi. He also has bad news: The center turned down her request to stop manipulating Don and Young Hee to gain Level Four access to the bio-weapons facility. “It has to move forward,” Gabriel tells her.

So Elizabeth fulfills her duty. After drugging Don and tricking him into thinking he slept with her, she goes to the house when he’s alone and tells him she’s pregnant. He is shocked, horrified, and tells her she shouldn’t have the baby. He offers to pay for an abortion, but Elizabeth, a.k.a. “Patty,” scoffs at the suggestion.
Continue reading The Americans recap: ‘Dinner For Seven’

I knew right away there was going to be trouble when they had Richard Thomas say, “Previously, on The Americans…”

That felt like a nod, a tribute. A goodbye.

The episode begins at Young Hee’s house, where Don is pretty glum at a family dinner with Elizabeth. Last week, she drugged him and tricked him into thinking they’d had sex — part of a plan to manipulate him to gain access to the higher levels of the bio-weapons facility where William also works.

We don’t see exactly how this is going to yield results, but it feels like Don’s agony is just beginning.

At home, Philip and Paige are cooking, and she asks about his childhood in Russia. He says it was a tough life. “That’s the way you had to be. After the war, people didn’t have much. It wasn’t about what you liked; it was about hard work and protecting your family,” he says.

He tells her about working at a cooperative where they made rakes. His boss tried to cheat him once. “My mom went over there,” Philip says. “And then he paid me all of it.” Continue reading The Americans recap: ‘Munchkins’

The FX series is the best drama on television — not one of the best, the best — and the Golden Globes have given the Emmys a golden opportunity.
The Television Academy is about to have its hour of redemption.

I say this while admitting that my knee-jerk reaction is to follow that sentence with “although it may not be aware of that yet.” However, last year the Emmy voters took a huge step forward in both self-awareness and action, so I’m choosing to believe that the Television Academy is keenly aware of the position it now finds itself in at long last.

When nominations are announced in July, it is, positively, the moment when the Television Academy can snatch back its importance, reputation and relevance.

There are two things needed for the Emmys to matter again, and one of them is already in the books: The Golden Globes had to implode.

Or, if you prefer, the Golden Globes had to revert back to being the Golden Globes -— ridiculous, scattershot, influence-free and pointless (other than being a fine and fun party that can be entertaining when you point a camera at it).

After a number of years where the Golden Globes actively tried to out-influence the Emmys and calculatedly attacked the weakness of the Emmy voters (rubber-stamping the past, refusing to honor many channels or series and the actors in those series and steadfastly refusing to see what was both new and excellent in the rapidly expanding industry), the Globes flat-out gave up in 2016. Continue reading Critic’s Notebook: How the Television Academy Can Save Itself By Nominating ‘The Americans’

We say goodbye to Martha without saying anything at all.

In a mesmerizing silent opening, this episode of The Americans walks us through the departure (for now) of a character who has become the beating heart of this show: Martha Hanson, the FBI secretary who became an unwitting pawn in the cat-and-mouse, counter-espionage game between the Soviet Union and the United States.

Now, her role is clear — both to herself and her supervisors at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It is time to run.

A clock ticks. Faces are washed. She reads the peanut butter jar label with interest during a quiet, furtive breakfast. Then she and her “husband” Clark/Philip/Mischa drive to a woodland airstrip before dawn, and she is flown off to…somewhere. Nowhere. Continue reading The Americans recap: ‘The Magic of David Copperfield V: The Statue of Liberty Disappears’