Category The Americans

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