Debate the Quality of the FX TV show The Americans

Sundry Chitchat
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In another thread, I said this:

The responses were these, so far. I don’t want to clog up that horrible thread with this discussion but would be glad to go further if anyone wants to discuss it.

I’m atting you all because I’m not sure if you’ll be notified otherwise due to how I copied the quotes. @■■■■■■■ @Marksman @Danspartan @All-InFlynn

I’ll make the general first response to you with your ever evolving political views target. Go deep into your soul and see who you were as a person when the show started in 2013 and what you believed. My guess is your political views then were nowhere near as formed as they are now. You’ve said as much on this forum.

To get into the idea of what I’m talking about, this is not saying any of you are like a Fox News watcher at all if you loved the show. This is saying whatever place Fox News presses to turn off the rational thought button applies to those who really, and I mean really love this show.

From a creative standpoint, the show has great production values, great actors, great music, and on the surface it looks like what it’s supposed to be depicting. The show is an absolute disaster on the writing front that constantly undermined its characters with the writing (I’ll give an example of this if the topic continues to generate interest), created massively unbelievable plot turns for the characters, had an overwhelming amount of stupid characters, and consistently made the most level 1 or wrong decision for a character’s motivation or behavior. That’s not even getting into side plot storylines like Stan’s propensity to dating way out of his league, Est, and Philip’s long season arc of creepily courting an underage girl as part of an operation.

How some of these storylines made it past the script stage I have no idea. It was basically a mediocre soap drama in an ‘interesting’ universe with consistently great performances and an occasional extremely good episode. That nowhere near outweighs that it often spent 10 to 11 episodes of a 13 episode season vamping and going nowhere with the plot. It was a show about Russian spies posing as Americans, second guessing it, then going all in, with an FBI agent living across the street who’s friends with them chasing them, with the added dimension of trying to take it across multiple generations of family who have no idea what they are. I don’t know how you eff up that premise, but man did they.

Even the Emmys who are perpetually baited by this type of show didn’t fall for it. It only got its drama nominations due to the category being exceptionally weak in the years it was. FX and its fans were delusional about its Emmy chances when it started (I got in many arguments with people who were sure it would get all the Emmys in its early seasons, even though I thought Keri Russell was spectacular in the early seasons of that show) but it finally got there based on attrition.

Based on how you’ve described your political views over the years, you were the show’s target audience. The creator might have even been running an op writing the show since he never got to run a Cold War op.

I could be wrong, but I think you liked the Cold War elements of the show (like me). If you’re looking for a better show, try Berlin Station. It got canceled after its 3rd season but it’s an outstanding example of how to do a spy show right.

This may be hard to believe but the most susceptible audience member to this show is anyone who thinks Reagan Republicans were okay (I’m not saying you feel or felt this way). I’ve had lots of discussion with people about this show and the ones who are die hard almost always fit a particular profile. Again, I’m not saying anything resembling that someone is a Fox News watcher. I’m saying whatever that show was doing was pressing the same brain center that Fox News does. For the people who love it, it is nearly impossible to convince them of its flaws despite it having so many.

The creators of the show tried very hard to make you hate them but everything they did did not push the audience away from engaging in their characters’ experience. The only thing they didn’t do was have Philip torture a puppy. The vast majority of the show was them saying THESE ARE BAD GUYS!!!

Various people watched the show various reasons. I liked the way it looked, I liked the feel, I loved a lot of the performances, I’m a fan of that genre, and I was plot committed. I would not recommend that show to really anyone and the finale was one of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen on television. But those who love the show LOVED that finale.

Flame on.

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meh, I’m fine with this take.

The performances were good in spots, particularly: Rhys, Russell, Ronin (Oleg), Mahendru (Nina), the woman who played Claudia, Alison Wright (Martha), Frank Langella ldo, Dylan Baker did a good job as William, there were others. The writing was indeed weak at times considering what they had to work with, it could have and should have been better really. It’s not the worst show I’ve ever seen though, like its final season made more sense than Game of Thrones or Lost for examples.

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“Mediocre” is a strange word to use in that context. I actually tuned out during the last season, I’m not even sure why, really. The whole thing about them trying to recruit Paige seemed really dumb to me.

But the early seasons were outstanding, some of the best acting you’ll ever see on TV and a very formidable candidate for best overall musical aesthetic. Some montages in that show will stay with me forever.

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The first episode starts in a bar with Harden My Heart playing while Kerry Russell is in a wig talking to a guy who is a Stephen Miller doppelgänger about how well he knows the president.

Of course that is just a ball tickler because the eight minute gritty, semi botched kidnapping backed up by TUSK, was all anyone ever needed.

Game, Set, Match Comrade.

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And I mean I can’t find it on youtube but who could forget the Juice Newton “Queen of Hearts” bit from I think the first episode? A+++ stuff, a beautiful and humourful piece of characterisation meshing perfectly with what we’re being told to expect.

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Yeah the 80s music is good throughout, how could it not be?

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Overrated.

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The show was admittedly better in the first couple of seasons. But even after that the Russian handlers (margo martingale and frank longella (sp??) did a great job. Noah Emmerich And Alison Wright A+. And naughty Felicity. C’mon

Storylines admittedly weak- Kimmy and the crop deal. But Elizabeth sitting there while the old lady commits suicide by OD vs getting shot, the other spy family son wiping out his family, cmon.

And don’t you dare say anything bad about mailbot.

Would a tight 3-4 seasons of 8 episodes have been better? Probably. But it started before or around the beginning before streaming became standard and was operating more on the old series standard timelines which leads to bloat and some ridiculous resets.

My main complaint is that Pastor Tim did not die. I so wanted Paige to fulfill her destiny and take him out.

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There were some outstanding performances in it (Nina/Oleg much better than later Oleg), and if they hadn’t whiffed so hard on Stan that could have been a great character. At his big character turn (you know what I mean) if they had explored that aspect of his character instead of his idiotic aspects he probably would have been nominated for some Emmys. But Est and getting attractive women was more important to the writers for him.

Probably my favorite performance in the show was the guy Nina was running in the lab (the actor is an absolute chameleon). Margo Martindale (Claudia) is a running joke by me about how she kept getting nominated for Emmys while talking about stuff like pancakes. I can tell you the one scene she had in season 1 (or 2 whatever her first nomination was) that got her the nomination. It was so spectacular. Nothing else she did in that show deserved a nom, but the Academy would nominate her reading a phone book.

Fun fact, despite Langella constantly trying to upstage Margo by doing a great job, he never got an Emmy nom. He also didn’t get an Emmy nom for his spectacular performance in Kidding. He must have really pissed some people off.

The kid who played Paige was a disaster and I have no idea how they messed up that Henry was set up in the first season to be the psychopathic follow up to Philip. It’s just missed opportunity after missed opportunity with the show.

The character undermining is best described with the character Amador if you remember him. I’ll describe more if there is interest.

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It’s liking the looks but not the personality. That’s pretty much the definition of mediocre for TV or movies in my book.

And I just firmly disagree on the early seasons. I thought it was the most overrated show on TV until Homeland took over that title and then Mr. Robot took it over after that. The Americans is definitely the best of those three shows based on the episodes I saw, but no full season of that show rises to outstanding because of the myriad of problems the writing had (I do not dispute there were great individual episodes of the show but they were very few and far between).

What I remember about season one was being excited when an episode would make it to the 50 minute mark without falling apart, but it always did by the end. I think the first Adam Arkin episode was the one where it almost clicked for me.

As a comparison for a similarly messy show, I submit Halt and Catch Fire. Season 1 was an absolute rudderless dumpster fire with an incredible amount of potential. One director came in and gave it a rudder and you could see what it would become. It didn’t start getting good until season 2 though it had flashes of brilliance in season 1.

The Americans was kind of like HACF in season 1 but they never fixed the issues and just kept adding characters and stories to cover up the flaws…like Homeland. In different hands with the same people in it and attached to it, The Americans would have been a great show. I think Graham Yost was the only thing that held The Americans together in the beginning but even he has his limits. But man, FX loved that show. I’m still glad I watched it because I had proper exposure to the range of Rhys which I hope will mean something to me in the future even if a long shot.

I thought The Bridge was a far better show, but it actually humanized immigrants and had basically the same ratings as The Americans so it had to be canceled.

I’m not in a place where I can watch your clips right now but the montages were generally one of the few things they got right most of the time. I’m tilted by seeing Paige in a thumbnail, which reminds me of the terrible church storyline as another that had no place in the show.

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I’m starting to suspect this Americans show that I have not watched is not about Americans at all.

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This a perfect encapsulation of the show. One good or a couple of good scenes surrounded by piles of bulls***.

Never forget we both grew up in roughly the same place at roughly the same time with vastly different experiences. Our views on the show pretty much demonstrate that in a weird way.

I mean I wasn’t a fan of the type of music in the show, but it was consistently used in an excellent fashion. Same goes for Mr. Robot. I think Stranger Things does that era better than anyone else.

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I’m not quite sure I agree the show was better in the early seasons. I think the early seasons had more ‘good’ episodes. I think the later seasons had the most individual ‘great’ episodes in them. I think they should have ended it after season 4 (not talking about story). I thought it was ending after season 5, so I was hot throughout while they wasted hours and hours of screen time on stuff I couldn’t care less about. 6 at least got to a point even if it was absurdly stupid and undermined the entire show. I think that was a short season too.

Remind me of the crop deal?

The OD storyline was absolutely the best episode of that season, but the plot to get us to that one great scene was patently absurd (the only bad thing I’d ever say about mailbot).

I just don’t think they were capable of telling a tight story. Each season of The Americans could have been a good 2 hour movie. It’s endlessly bloated and vamping to an infuriating degree.

Another character opportunity missed is that he should have been working for the Russians. It was all set up but once again they were too stupid to get it there.

If you like the genre at all, seriously, Berlin Station get on it.

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It’s about ‘Americans’. I’m not quite sure where you’d fall at on the spectrum of liking it. I think there are quite a few storylines in it would like (as I did).

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It was good enough so I wasn’t hate-watching at the end.

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That’s probably a fairly accurate assessment of how I watched it toward the end. But man that finale was really infuriating. If ever a show needed to be slapped with the Hays Code to be better this was it.

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Agree with nun on this one.

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Show is great. Rhys is amazing

Y’all are crazy.

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None of these are mutually exclusive.

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The Americans is pretty firmly in the second tier of best TV of the past 2 decades. Behind The Wire, Sopranos, Mad Men and Breaking Bad. On the tier with similar problematic shows like GoT, The Leftovers, Battlestar Galactica, etc.

The production design, sets, cars, wigs, music, acting, etc. are all really impressive for a show on FX. Some of the plot lines are ultimately fruitless and unexciting. I imagine that’s not dissimilar to the way espionage actually plays out. I rewatched it during quarantine and it’s still one of my all time favorites. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

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