Category The Americans

“Paige, your father and I … We …”

“We were born in a … different country.”

And just like that, one of the biggest pressure valves on The Americans bursts open. After a season of Philip trying to protect their daughter, Paige, from being drawn into the control of the KGB and Elizabeth trying to gradually introduce her to the idea, the girl has called them out on their mysterious behavior at the behest of Pastor Tim and learned the truth about what her mother and father.

Now she knows. And, to quote another pop culture touchstone from the 1980s, knowing is half the battle. Except whatever fight Paige is being pulled into is probably just beginning.

After last week’s heart-crushing episode opened a moral chasm for Keri Russell’s Elizabeth, tonight’s installment of The Americans, titled simply “Stingers,” was mostly setting the chessboard for the end of the season and clearing way for this showdown between Holly Taylor’s Paige and her secretive mother and father to play out unencumbered.

The episode begins at the travel agency, which always makes me wonder: Do Philip and Elizabeth actually have to do this job on top of everything else? I’m sure the Soviet Union underwrites their business in some way, and they also have employees who must do something. Can you imagine what happens when Barb really does forget to file the agency sales report with the ATC? I digress… Continue reading ‘Stingers’ TV Recaps

Well, there you have it—the cat is out of the bag in the Jennings family, and neither Philip nor Elizabeth could have anticipated that this is how Paige would finally find out that her parents are Russian spies.

After Pastor Tim encouraged Paige to confront her parents about their secrets, the invigorated teen finally cornered Philip and Elizabeth and demanded the answers she’s been desperately seeking. Paige ended her parents’ “Who’s going to tell her first?” tennis match by throwing a curve ball into the court that caught them both off guard, causing Philip and Elizabeth to finally reveal their true nature to their daughter…although just barely, as they could scarcely even manage to get words out.

How did Paige handle it? Well, the jury is still out, which is why EW quickly called up The Americans executive producers Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg to ask them all of our burning questions about what could possibly be the series’ defining moment…so far. Continue reading The Americans bosses on Paige’s reaction, her future, and the show’s endgame

USA! USA!

FX has renewed The Americans for a fourth season. The Cold War thriller will get another 13 episodes next year, EW has learned.

FX is enthusiastic about the show’s critical acclaim, noting The Americans currently has the top spot on critic aggregation site Metacritic, with a 92 out of 100 average (including EW’s review). “Remarkably, this season of The Americans has achieved even greater acclaim than that of its first two seasons,” said Nick Grad, programming president at FX. “The series has cemented it status with critics as television’s best current drama and arguably the best show on TV, and we couldn’t agree more.”

Ratings are another matter. The show has continued to struggle to find a big audience. Last week’s episode had only about 1 million viewers and a 0.3 rating among adults 18-49 in the overnight returns, ranking below repeats on other basic cable networks of King of the Hill and Full House. Yet FX points out that after you add in repeats, DVR playback and video on demand, the show improves to 4.2 million weekly viewers.

Source: http://www.ew.com/

Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys, the lead actors on FX’s slow-burning spy series The Americans are gorgeous, sexy individuals with undeniable chemistry. I know it, you know it, and the FX marketing team certainly knows it. But in this most recent season, FX has turned down the sex on their leading lady, Russell’s Elizabeth Jennings, and it all paid off in last night’s devastating episode.

Especially in its first season, The Americans leaned in somewhat to certain gender stereotypes of the spy genre, with Elizabeth far more likely than her partner, Philip, to put her body into service for Mother Russia. (Comedian Amy Schumer recently said that watching the first season of The Americans inspired her to create her popular “Operation Enduring Mouth” sketch.)

In Season 2, when comely satellite assets like Aimee Carrero’s Lucia (R.I.P.) and Gillian Alexy’s Annelise (R.I.P.) stepped in to shoulder the sexual burden in their spy games, Elizabeth’s body was often on display for a different person. Elizabeth used sexuality as an olive branch as she and Philip transformed their marriage of convenience into a true and loving relationship. Continue reading How The Americans Subverted Worn-Out Sexist Spy Tropes to Bring Us Its Most Disturbing Episode Yet

“You think doing this to me will make the world a better place?”
“I’m sorry. But it will.”

“That’s what evil people tell themselves … when they do … evil things.”

These are the dying words of a stranger, but they have wounded Elizabeth Jennings like no bullet, knife, or punch has yet. Tonight’s episode of The Americans, “Do Mail Robots Dream of Electric Sheep?” steals its title from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the Philip K. Dick novel that inspired Blade Runner—another story that questioned what it means to be both human… and inhuman.

The old woman who utters these words (played by a charming and riveting Lois Smith) punctures a hole in Elizabeth’s otherwise impenetrable devotion to her grim life’s work for the KGB. Until now, Elizabeth has seen herself as a spy, a saboteur, a soldier—but overall an agent of equality. In this moment, forcing an innocent elderly woman to commit suicide for the crime of catching up on warehouse paperwork when she and Philip break in to bug the FBI’s mail robot, opens her eyes to a different reality: Maybe she’s just a murderer, a thug, an oppressor. Maybe she is the enemy.

We’ll get into the mother-issues that allow this particular victim to strike such a nerve with Kerry Russell’s usually stoic character, but let’s dive into how the episode starts: With Elizabeth breaking some unfortunate news to Hans, her young South African KGB recruit. She says that he may have been spotted by Todd, the pro-apartheid college student and would-be bomber she spared in the previous episode. After the fiery death of his terrorist handler, Todd confessed everything Elizabeth, Philip, and their South African revolutionary Reuben Ncgobo wanted to know.

Given what Elizabeth has to do to poor, heartsick Betty, the purely innocent bystander, later in this episode, the mercy she showed to potential mass-murderer Todd seems out of place, no? When she tells Hans that his, um, KGB internship is being scrapped because this Todd guy caught a glimpse of him… something else rang false, at least for me. I actually went back to the previous week’s episode to see if this really happened, if Todd really did see Hans, and sure enough, yes, he did. But, but—remember that Todd spent a lot of time not only looking at her, Philip, and Reuben, but talking with them and begging them for mercy. Surely those are some faces he’ll never forget. The kid he saw briefly at a distance, scurrying away—so what? How is that a threat?

Still, she tells him: “Hans, it’s over. Us. This.”

I’m no mail robot, but … this does not compute. Especially for a woman who is eager to draw her own daughter into this life. It’s never stated explicitly, but my theory is: This is a test.

The next scene has Matthew Rhys’ Philip delivering Elizabeth a one-two hit of more troubling news:

1. The FBI found the bug they embedded in the desk pen of Special Agent Frank Gaad (Richard Thomas.)

2. Gaad’s secretary, and Philip’s “other” wife, Martha Hanson (Alison Wright) knows he’s not the internal affairs investigator he claimed to be.

“The person they brought in to investigate isn’t me,” he explains.

But there’s a silver lining: Martha hasn’t ratted him out, and he doesn’t think she will. Elizabeth is incredulous. “How can you know?”

I loved Rhys’s hesitation here, and thought he was going to say: “Because she’s my wife.” I think that’s what the character was actually thinking, although what he tells Elizabeth, his “real” wife, was somewhat softer.

“Because I trust her.” Continue reading ‘Do Mail Robots Dream of Electric Sheep?’ TV Recaps