Category Articles & Interviews

It feels strange to call an episode where so many things happen “slow,” especially on a show like The Americans, where slow is very much the point. But that’s how “Divestment” feels, mostly because it spends its time moving a number of this season’s plots forward just the slightest bit, without much in the way of that fraught tension the show is known for. Nonetheless, the moves made tonight are important ones—all things to add to the powder keg at the end of a very long fuse.

The episode picks up immediately after the end of “Walter Taffet,” with Elizabeth, Phillip, and Reuben taking Eugene Venter and his student accomplice Todd to an abandoned warehouse for interrogation. At first, they’re kind to Venter–Phillip offers him cash and a chance at a new life if he talks. Venter refuses. So he resorts to pain.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth goes to work on Todd—all he does is tell her that Venter had him monitoring campus anti-aparthied groups. She then takes him outside, and sits him in front of Venter. They’re going to make him watch Venter die. But Reuben stops Elizabeth, and refuses to take her gun when he expresses that he wants to do it himself.

“You already have your country,” he says. “You can’t understand.” Continue reading ‘Divestment’ TV Recaps

As we cross the halfway marker in this season of The Americans, the show puts a few of its storylines on hold to spend some time with a few plot threads it has left largely unattended thus far: namely, Martha, and the student that trainee Hans has been suspicious of. But mostly Martha.

The man who this week’s episode of The Americans is named after is barely in it. In fact, if you’re not listening closely (The Americans is not kind about this—it demands that you always listen closely) you might even miss his name entirely. But Walter Taffet’s presence tugs at the thread named Martha, and it could potentially put the Jennings one step closer to being caught.

The trouble starts with Agent Dennis Aderholt. Stan doesn’t like him—over beer and pizza with Phillip, Stan says it might be that he asks too many questions, like he’s trying to show off or something. So when he spots Aderholt in Gaad’s office the next day, he comes up with a bullshit excuse (grabbing a random paper that he says needs Gaad’s signature) to get inside and see what they’re talking about. However, the pen that Gaad uses is out of ink, and after a good shake the cap falls off—with a much heavier thud than a pen cap should have. Continue reading ‘Walter Taffet’ TV Recaps

It starts with a baptism.

Television shows, even good ones, often struggle when it comes to incorporating Christianity into their stories (hi there, Friday Night Lights season 2) because Christianity is deliberately constructed in a way that’s in direct contrast to the way we traditionally build narratives. The sources of tension and conflict are all very different and don’t always sync up. It’s also all too easy for individual characters to lose their unique voice once they take the plunge.

But using Christianity as yet another lens with which we can examine Phillip and Elizabeth, while still being wholly genuine about Paige’s investment in her faith? The Americans is having its cake and eating it, too. In the final moments of the cold open, which takes place during Paige’s baptism, the camera focuses on her parents, trying their best to look pleased. Phillip seems to be having the hardest time of it—which is ironic, given that faith is going to take him some interesting places in this hour.

In fact, the entire episode revolves around characters taking some sort of stand or another, making for one of the most cohesive episodes in the season. In a Moscow prison cell, Nina has made her decision to betray her cellmate, feigning vulnerability and opening up to her so she would admit to being an accomplice to her treasonous boyfriend. Stan decides to try and commit to honesty, admitting to Tori that he still considers Sandra his wife after a dinner at the Jennings home. Since this is in perfect alignment with the radical honesty of EST, Tori is appreciative, and the two sleep together. Continue reading ‘Born Again’ Tv Recaps

Tonight’s episode of The Americans gutted me. Not in the way I expected it to, though.

All the way through, I was bracing myself for what last week prepared us for: Phillip’s potential seduction of the teenaged Kimberly. I worried that for a number of reasons, namely that I wouldn’t be sure what to make of it—I can’t see very many scenarios where it isn’t a bridge too far—and because the idea of sitting through it made me squirm.

The Americans is a smarter show than that.

Phillip, as Jim, meets up with Kimmy early on at an outdoor rager full of other teenagers—it wasn’t what he expected, and when some jock friends of hers spot him, things immediately get uncomfortable. Jim/Phillip tells her that her age is an issue, that they can’t be seen in public like this. So she tells him they can meet in private. Her folks were going to be out of the house soon. She’d see him then.

The next time we see Phillip with a female, it’s with his daughter, Paige. They are—much to Elizabeth’s chagrin—shopping for a dress she can wear to her baptism. Phillip exhibits spectacularly bad taste for a bit before settling on a very expensive dress that Paige frets over him splurging on. He tells her not to worry about it, and she loves it. Continue reading ‘Salang Pass’ TV Recaps

Despite making a strong impression with its use of Fleetwood Mac’s “Tusk,” music has never really taken a prominent role so far in The Americans’ three-season run—so when music is featured at all, you can’t help but notice. Music is a big deal in “Dimebag,” at first lingering around the edges, then creeping its way directly into the plot, before finally dropping in to bring home the episode’s themes in a sickening final moment.

However, this episode isn’t just about music. It’s about a bunch of other things. Like weed.

“Dimebag” opens, appropriately, with Elizabeth incognito in a park, watching Kimberly—CIA Afghan Group leader Isaac Breland’s daughter—buy a dimebag of pot from a dealer. The Jennings, with no other way in to the Afghan Group left, have decided to make her an asset. This, of course, makes Phillip uncomfortable—they have to seduce and exploit a teenage girl. That’s a line they’ve never crossed before.

The Jennings aren’t the only ones crossing lines this week, either—in a Moscow prison, Nina is told that her new roommate Evi was caught leaving intelligence for a spy boyfriend. If Nina can get her to talk, then the government will make an effort to pass a more lenient sentence on her. Of course, this requires Nina to be more cordial than she has been since Evi’s arrival. She takes on the task in earnest, slowly opening up to Evi throughout the episode, coldly manipulating her into becoming close.

Meanwhile, Paige is blurring the line between Church and State in her home—when her parents ask what she wants for her birthday, she tells them that she’d love to have her Pastor Jim and his wife over for dinner. This, of course, sets Phillip and Elizabeth on edge—privately, they wonder to each other if she did it just to get to them—but they’re all smiles in front of Paige. Continue reading ‘Dimebag’ TV Recaps

The spy life is hitting home for the Jennings in a huge way this season on The Americans, as embedded Russian/KGB agents Elizabeth (Keri Russell) and Philip (Matthew Rhys) debate what to do now that their leaders want their teenage daughter Paige (Holly Taylor) brought into the fold.

I sat down with Keri Russell to discuss this huge turn of events on the show and the struggle between Elizabeth, who wants to tell Paige, and Philip, who is incredibly against it, and how it develops.

We also chatted about the newly-introduced Gabriel (Frank Langella), the rare times she and co-star Matthew Rhys get to work with their fellow castmates and a certain recent scene involving a body and a suitcase…

I should note I spoke to Russell right before I saw last week’s episode, in which Elizabeth barely avoids capture and has to go through a very painful bit of tooth-related procedure, or I would have brought that up too! Continue reading The Americans: Keri Russell on the Battle Over Paige’s Fate

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