I don’t know if anyone is gonna stick with me on this because my first post on the first episode is gonna be ridiculous. I wouldn’t say I’m shredding this show but it’s pretty close to it and I’m not very far. Some of it is summarizing, so I may re-write my notes to avoid that, but the first post I make will be excessively long based on how the first 15 minutes has gone. I’ll try to find a shorter style somewhere in there but man this show has problems that irritate me. And I want them to irritate you, too lol.
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FYI, I despise Andy Greenwald. You should not be posting articles talking about season 4 being great, it had three seasons before that and they were not great. Maybe season 4 was when they added like 20 consultants and producers.
Lol I replied to a ghost post.
I was curious enough to rewatch episode 1. Shaky cam is my only serious gripe. Keri Russel is unreasonably hot, I imagine a critique one could make is that she’s overly sexualized. The action (basically karate) scenes are a bit old fashioned, certainly not prestige TV level. Surprisingly they established all the major plot lines in just the first episode. Fun show though, I’ll probably get around to a full rewatch at some point.
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as someone who watched reviewed and ranked over 100 episodes of magnum pi in one week, take my advice and abandon this thread idea immediately. i loved magnum pi. i had horrible covid i felt i was going to die so i chose to spend my last days with magnum. and the joy i got from overdosing on 80s hawaiian camp literally saved my life. if this might be your last week alive, don’t spend it thinking negative thoughts, tell us about the BEST show. or idk, anything else. i can’t imagine this is going to be any fun for you
Sometimes it can be fun. But it isn’t yet. If I can figure out a way to make this tidy, it will be. I haven’t found it yet. I’m planning on doing this mostly in dialysis so it will be time that needs to be killed anyway. This one’s not working that way.
Season 4 has an 8.4 average on IMDb and 99% on Rotten Tomatoes
That was the first season it was nominated for an Emmy. The previous 3 seasons were only for acting.
I’ve been trying to watch it for years just because the last season seems wild based on this. Got stuck on season 2 and never got over it.
I had numerous problems with this show when it aired that I felt undermined the potential of it constantly. I only found the show boring in the final two seasons
So I was quite surprised by this
It was because the show was 13 episodes every season except the last one (that one was 10 probably because it had no ratings by the end). Even the last one I seem to remember had about 4 or 5 episodes that were filler. They would usually start the season off relatively strong. Bore you to tears with vamping for 4-6 episodes in those seasons, and then be sort of okay by the last 3 episodes. The show just had too many episodes and I think if they’d had 10 episode seasons which became the norm in cable later, it would have been a better show.
Wen 1.1 Write-Up?
Just finished it myself.
I’m doing a real time stream of consciousness which is playing out too much like a summary right now. I don’t know how long it will take me to clean this up but it might not be until tomorrow. I may post the stream of consciousness and then clean it up, but I doubt it. I’ve got about 12 minutes left and have written a book so far.
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I put this show down as truly great
The best TV shows are constantly asking - what would this character do in this actual situation - and allowing that to drive the show.
The scene where Martha finds out she’s been working for the Russians and Matthew Rhys is revealing this huge betrayal to someone he actually likes is a GOAT scene for me.
They could have done it so many other ways, but this was incredibly human.
The final scene where the FBI guy lets him go is the same.
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What you find great, I find patently unbelievable. My wife watched the first episode and hated the way it was presented and refused to watch it. I asked if she wanted to see the last episode and she just laughed at how stupid the outcome was.
I didn’t like the first episode. That was the opposite. It was all set up. They hadn’t asked or answered what would these people actually do here question yet.
Honestly, I can think of a few people in my life who I would let go in that exact same situation. Friendship is wild.
I guess I have a different feeling about that because Stan is 100% a traitor and got a lot of people killed. Why? Because he’s an idiot.
Do you feel like doing the rewatch?
I havent watched TV in months. Lol. I have two jobs and a baby.
Just watch in lieu of posting
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Part 1 of 2
All right, I started out writing a nice and proper post for the first episode of The Americans, but it was boring me and I decided to go back and read my stream of consciousness rant. I was far more entertained and that’s going to be what goes here. If it has a bad reception, I’m not gonna continue on with the show because doing it in this style is a lot of work. If it’s received well enough, then I’ll make them in a similar vein. On to the show, which I’ll put in a summary because this is gonna be long af. Thanks for reading if you do. I hope it’s at least a little entertaining. This will be best to read after you’ve watched the show, but if your name is Randy you might want to read it while watching to get the full impact of what I’m saying. This thing is so long, I have to put it into two posts, but it won’t clog your feed because I’m going to hide it.
There’s one additional thing I want to show as an example of how this show undermines itself with poor plot logic. It doesn’t matter for the beginning of the show, but the undermining could easily have been cut and wasn’t. It basically makes the opening op impossible without a connection for how they would have found out the location of where the defector was staying. The show constantly does stuff like this and this was the biggest example of it in this episode. I’m starting out with this example in the summary, which might be a bit repetitive but with more detail, even though it’s basically a non-sequitir with the rest of the post.
The Americans Season 1 Episode 1: Pilot (Aired Wednesday January 30, 2013)
Summary
First off, here’s a great example of undermining plot that involves a bunch of stuff you may not know yet. The opening surveillance operation is ostensibly based on Philip’s running of Martha to learn the location of Timoshev. However, Martha’s boss says he doesn’t know where the guy is because no one tells him anything. Elizabeth’s op has nothing to do with his location as far as we know, so there’s no way to understand how they got the information about where Timoshev was staying to be able to kidnap him. This is bad plot logic they get away with because the undermining is put in so late in the episode. We don’t care who these unknowns are or how they’re doing what they’re doing until you think about it later. This is a constant problem with The Americans.
The Americans Season 1 Episode 1 ‘Pilot’ (Aired January 30, 2013):
We open in a bar with a woman wearing an obvious wig and a young uptight looking guy. It’s subtle but if you look at the left side of the frame, you’ll see the woman’s reflection. This is the classic film language of saying she’s two-faced if you didn’t know anything about the show. The music is also appearing to punctuate this, but I hate the song so can’t be bothered to listen to the subtext in it.
The first problem I have is this on the nose dialogue at around :37. The woman says, ‘Seriously, the President?’. The guy says, ‘At this level, there aren’t that many people he can trust.’ This guy is probably going to talk his ass into something bad, because the woman is wearing a wig and he’s too stupid to see that she’s way out of his league. She asks him, ‘How do I know you’re not making all this up?’. Genius boy has an answer for that and flashes her his DOJ badge. She practically fellates his photo with her finger, so he probably knows this kind of information turns her on. Idiot. He even says, ‘The things I’m telling you, you don’t joke around about. It could be dangerous.’ Bruh, you ain’t even supposed to be talking about them. She replies to this statement with, ‘Dangerous, mmm.’ Like you don’t even know the half of it idiot American.
We cut to them in bed and this guy is still trying to get his boner from how close he is to the president. I’m just gonna say he’s Stephen Miller, because it almost feels based on him. On and on with this incessant on the nose dialogue. ‘They have no idea what’s going on out there. The sheer number of people working to destroy our way of life.’ Apparently quite a few like him, patriotic Americans who can’t keep their mouths shut to save their lives. He then asks her if she knows why he’s dedicated his life to stopping them. She says ‘why?’ and gets to business down below. She clearly does not want to hear that kind of money shot.
I have to say the transitions in this show are weird. Very few shows ever fade to black for scenes, but that’s often the exit of scenes and the entrance into many flashbacks. I don’t mind them, per se, especially for the flashbacks but this is pretty non-standard storytelling.
After the act is over, she gets in her car wipes her mouth like, ‘Reagan, gross’, and quickly removes her wig to get into her normal style. This begins the famous Tusk montage that is parts good and bad. You know I’ll get into both. The biggest problem with this Pilot and many Pilots is that there’s way too much exposition and way too much on the nose dialogue to foreshadow certain events.
There really wasn’t much purpose to the car scene other than to let the stupid people in the audience know she was wearing a wig I guess, and to show some inner conflict about what she just did that we have no idea what it is if we came into this show completely blindly.
It’s now three days later and two men appear to be on a surveillance operation. One is kind of middle-aged and the other is young. We get more of that problematic on the nose dialogue. The young guy is nervous and says, ‘It’s just they used to tell stories about this guy, you know? He killed a lot of people.’ The older guy says, ‘You know how guys like him kill people? They plan it for weeks, and they always come up from behind. Fighting face to face that’s a different story.’ In other words, what they’ve probably done and essentially plan to do. They’re probably technically on the same side. I think this is an example of how the older guy lies his ass off to make anything work. I expect him to become a liar if he’s not one already. Can you guess what happens to the young guy?
Now this is a huge problem, just end that shit right there. You have enough, you are set, it is set up. But nope, they gotta say he once got into a fight at a bar and beat all the Olympic Judo team. The older guy, who’s maybe now a little bit more nervous says, ‘what year?’ and insinuates Judo in the years talked about means nothing. Come on. This is flab. Get rid of it.
The next scene shows the woman from the night before knocking on a door. The person opens the door with a chain she sticks a wad of 20s or 100s (3 maybe) through the guy’s chain without saying anything. She asks if she can look out his window for a second. He takes the money and lets her in. Why would she possibly expect anyone to answer in whatever neighborhood this is? I hate this. I hate even more that they didn’t just cut right after he grabbed the money. Shut the door. Next scene. Instead, it’s shut the door, open the door, let her in, look to see if anyone saw that, close the door. Bad doggie!
The two guys make idle small talk. The older one likes hockey like a good Russian and the younger one likes football like a good American. They get the signal that the woman from last night is in place. They’ve obviously created some kind of signal situation to tell where the mark is, but the mark gets spooked right before reaching the corner. He sees a light on where I guess he’s not expecting one. We also see that the place they’re staking out is a ‘Rooms for Rent’ place. This is a bad neighborhood and makes it even less likely the dude would have opened the door for the woman. The mark drops his briefcase and runs, allowing for the music to play in full. Just like today, ‘Immigration we just want to talk!’ are not the comforting words the mark wants to hear. While the Russian runs, he screams for help. No one comes because, you guessed it, no one helps in this neighborhood.
The faster young kid is warned to not get too close, showing the older man’s lie in action. Young people never listen. He is stabbed going around the corner and now he’s a paperweight in this operation. After the older one passes the camera in the scene, there’s a nonsensical extra 3 or 4 seconds just looking down the alley. I guess the next shot wasn’t going to be in time with the music or something. Despite looking twice as slow as the mark, the older man catches up to him very quickly.
If you know anything about the CIA in shows like this, assassins don’t just fight people. If they think they can’t get the upper hand after a few blows, they run. When the mark realizes he’s about to get caught, he just turns around and gets ready to go. He thinks he is that good. Up next is quite a good fight scene for this type of show. They spent time and money choreographing it and it looks good. This is a good moment for the show. And then we get the topper from the mark, which is ‘I know you’re not supposed to kill me.’ in a thick Russian accent to which the older man says, ‘I don’t think you understand how unpopular you are. I could deliver you in a hundred pieces. They’d give me a separate medal for each one.’ The Russian has clearly turned on the Russians, but we have no idea why this American dude is doing this yet.
In another place where you just gotta really leave your head at the door the woman drives up with blood on the outside of the car. The young man is sitting inside it in the right back seat, and the older man walks out with the mark. The mark is yelling he’s not police and a woman is looking out her window in full view of everyone (too bad crime shows didn’t exist in 1980 for her to know how bad of an idea this usually would be). Why didn’t she take the car directly to the older man? No one will ever know. I guess they were desperate to have this thing have witnesses. They kick the mark one more time and shove him into the right side of the back seat. No idea if the young guy helped make room for him in his injured state. The woman gets in the back left seat of the car, which I guess means she’s in the left seat, the wounded young guy is in the middle seat, and the mark is in the right seat. It’s impossible to tell what kind of restraints the mark is in, but this doesn’t seem safe at all. He could probably just pop the door open and jump out, but maybe Russians in fear for their lives are incredibly stupid. It’s hard to say.
The older man pulls the car off into an alley and switches the license plates. Both of them, because economy of storytelling is not something this show does. There is some bizarre camera work in this section that’s completely out of tone with the show so far. That’s another big problem for me. They try to intercut this with the woman trying to help the young guy stay alive, but I still have no idea where anyone is geographically in the back seat or why the Russian isn’t trying to do more to escape. He’s an assassin who knows he’s about to be in for some bad shit.
We cut to them driving away and the woman is still completely focused on the young man. We find out the young guy is probably going to bleed out (all over the carpet clearly) but they’re due for a rendezvous that conflicts with getting the guy to a hospital. The older guy and woman fight about what to do, the older guy wanting to drop him off, if they miss the meeting whatever. The woman says the mission is the only thing that matters, showing she’s probably heartless because she’s willing to let one of her team members die to save the mission. The mark, who is somehow now lying down on the left side of the back seat I think, says ‘I can help you. I can make you rich’. The woman kicks him saying ‘shut up’. How does he have room to be in this car with all that’s going on? This is very confusing.
The older man gets to the hospital with the younger man and very roughly takes him out of the car and walks him toward the hospital, telling him instructions. He says, ‘you were trained to surmount any obstacle.’ The young guy walks toward the hospital, most likely thinking ‘not being stabbed to death’.
They try to get to their meeting but they’re already obviously late. The mark again tries to plead with them, and the woman kicks him again saying to shut up. This makes it appear that he’s on the floorboard, but I don’t even know how that’s possible. The end joke to the scene as they see the boat going away is the older man saying, ‘Why is everyone so punctual in this business?’. Hahaha. The woman did not share his sense of humor and kicked the back door shut in complete rage.
We made it through the first scene, f***. I did not want to write that much. But it needed to be said. This should let you know where my thoughts are when I watch a show. I wasn’t watching it this closely on my first watch, but when I do a note pass, your stuff will need to be tight, or it will look like this (though much more constructively).
After a brief name only main title, we cut to the FBI Counterintelligence division and boy does this division live up to its name. It has so many bad things happen in it, you’d think they were intentionally trying to find the dumbest people imaginable to be in it. While we’re not given names yet, I’m going to name them. The cocksure person who’s leading around the other guy is Chris Amador. The tall blond guy is Stan Beeman. Stan comes from bank robbery, and Chris constantly needles him about what a joke that is. Chris says this is the place to be. Yeah, the place to be if you want to become a traitor. Stan says the one good thing about bank robbers is at least they speak English. He mentions how it’s tricky to learn Russian. Chris thinks that’s gross and asks about his language propensity. Stan touts his attraction to his French teacher in high school and how he got a B+. So, no. Easy mark for a honeypot though. Surely there’s no chance of that happening. Chris finds a far more interesting conversation piece after this piece of info…coffee.
On the screen in the room they enter is the aptly titled, ’TOP SECRET KGB ACTIVITIES IN U.S.A. THE CURRENT THREAT’, in overhead projector slides of course, because that’s how all top secret files should be handled. But at least we now know this show is going to be about Russians. The boss says Timoshev is missing, and Chris makes the ill-advised joke of maybe he had too much vodka. This is an example of what a try hard loser this guy is. The boss isn’t the least bit amused. If you’re a smart viewer, you can probably guess that Timoshev is the guy that was kidnapped in the first scene. If you’re not, I guess you’re gonna have to wait to learn that. We’re informed that guy hasn’t been 20 seconds late to anything. We find out that despite being the apparent head of FBICI (FBI Counterintelligence), he has no idea where this guy stays and he’s quite mad about it. We’re then given a bold piece of foreshadowing that Timoshev only deals with the director and the A.G. What does the A.G. run? Connect a dot yet?
Chris then proceeds to insult his boss to the new guy calling him a Mormon. He says since Reagan got in, they start the meetings at 7am. Chris is apparently not a morning guy. This is another loser rung for him. He trashes his boss in front of the new guy. Stan realizes he’s talking about Reagan as the Mormon, corrects him, and Chris says fundamentalist, whatever. This suggests he does not like Reagan. So, he must be a Democrat. Stan suggests he likes Reagan. Chris makes the joke, ‘The goal is the same…to wear down the enemy by waking up earlier than them.’ Oh ho ho, what a comedian. Get another job.
To be continued…
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Part 2 of 2
The Americans Season 1 Episode 1: Pilot (Aired Wednesday January 30, 2013)
Summary
Continued from Part 1…
They cleverly established our era in that previous part of the scene. It’s clearly 1981. Reagan is in office and things have already changed. We don’t have a weather report yet to tell what season it is, but it doesn’t appear to be winter. Then they blew it by going all exposition in the rest of this scene with a simple, ‘Who’s Timoshev?’ from Stan. What we do find out is that Chris is disbelieving of the program of spies that no one knows who or where they are. They’ve found no evidence of it. Chris’s belief is that because of the huge resettlement packages defectors get they just say anything and he doesn’t believe any of it. He needs to find another job before he gets killed doing something stupid. Here’s some more of that on the nose dialogue ‘Super-secret spies living next door. They look like us, they speak better English than we do.’ Just you wait for what happens next.
We cut to the car trunk being opened with Timoshev in it gagged like he’s auditioning for Pulp Fiction since that movie hasn’t been made yet. Timoshev talks about his package and how he can help them too. There is no suggestion of how they’re handling his bathroom duties. But maybe that’s Timsoshev’s training to surmount any obstacle. The older man has heard enough to be interested and is told to go to the FBI. At which point he is no longer interested. That scene was mostly fine.
Now we cut to the worst parts of every episode, the family scenes where we still haven’t been told these characters’ names. The son brings up the hockey game that I’m not gonna research and the woman is wearing a tight shirt and Guess jeans way before Guess jeans were popular (they were launched in the year this show takes place). Proving they were the kind of Americans everyone hated at that time rubbing their money in everyone’s faces. The man walks in saying that the car won’t start because he won’t put the key in it, so everyone’s gotta take the Metro. @bigoldnit did people really call it this? The woman says she’s not going into work, and we find out they’re in some kind of travel industry. The man tries to talk about the payment of the guy, and the woman says that Henry (the son first named in the family) was looking for his skateboard. She asks if it was in the garage. He says no, but this does not preclude Henry from looking in the garage later if he still hasn’t found it. This is bad writing even though Henry never goes in the garage. I don’t know about you, but I barely spend any time in my garage. These people spend a lot of time in their garage, and it will eventually make their kids suspicious but not yet while they’re so young and apparently dumb.
As the kids are leaving, suggesting the older daughter is the caretaker of the younger son, the man asks Henry ‘what, no coffee for you?’. This may have been an ad lib, I don’t know but if it wasn’t, the next line is atrocious. The kid just says, ‘no thanks’ to the joke. An A+ line would have been ‘not today’. As we’ll find out later, every joke flies over Henry’s head.
After the kids leave, there’s an argument about the next strategy. These two people clearly don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things, such as saying each other’s names. Actually, they do see eye to eye on that, because neither have said them. The man continues to be blown away by the idea of 3 million dollars. The woman is unimpressed saying, ‘he can buy himself a diamond-plated coffin’. It’s a great line, but nonsense because he’s not going to be able to buy a coffin after he’s dead…come on.
Now we get into another operation of some sort. We are way out of tone with the camera again and I don’t know why. It’s almost like two different shows were shot. I guess the real point of this scene is to show the man has skills of observation even though there is a further point to it. It’s apparently to establish competency in addition to the real point of it…a dead drop. The problem is we’ve already established he’s competent. I don’t know why you need to establish it again. This is mostly wasted screen time.
Back at the house it’s time for some more clumsy exposition that leads into backstory of why maybe this guy is a bit more personal for the woman than has been let on. Like all James Bond villains, and both have been guilty so far, they like to talk to the mark. That’s not a good idea. For the woman, it brings PTSD. For the man, it shows how vulnerable he really is to persuasion.
There’s another weird transition here where the woman stares at herself in the back window of the car for an extended period of time, and then it cuts to black with a title to go into a flashback with no year stated. We’re now officially being shown she’s Russian in some kind of program where she’s learning hand to hand combat skills. Timoshev shows up, who is apparently high ranking in this program, and says he’ll show her how it’s done in the field. He proceeds to beat the crap out of her and rape her. Field work seems like something a-holes do. This scene is effective for what it’s trying to do. The scene in the garage ends with ‘Remember me, Captain?’ Him obviously realizing the state he’s in and her shutting the trunk ending act 1. When you’re looking for pitch in a Pilot, you look for what really works and try to emulate that. This whole scene, while short, was very strong and got a lot of good non-exposition exposition across. It’s convenient obviously, but it still works.
A Camaro rolls up in the driveway. As American as apple pie. We get another bad family scene where Henry is reading an Archie comic book (not sure if this means the 11-year-old is dumb) and we’re given the name Paige for the daughter. She’s 13 and writing about Russians cheating on arms control. She must be super smart. The woman makes fun of Paige’s teacher for having a harelip and Paige pushes back saying, ‘Mom, that’s his handicap’. A real Democrat, I guess. The woman finds the Archie comic book much more interesting, which is about how I feel about the comic book vs. this scene. Thankfully, we’re interrupted by the man coming home to not have to hear the plot of the comic book. We learn that Henry’s science class launched a rocket. The man again jokes with Henry, and the joke goes completely over his head, just like the coffee joke. We find out a space commander will be talking at his class tomorrow, because they go to great schools or something. This bores the man and he wants Henry to see his bitchin’ Camaro.
We finally get to the meat of the scene. The dead drop was done but there was no response. The woman sarcastically says, ‘Maybe he can move in with us permanently. I can fix up the spare bedroom for him.’ The man does not laugh and says he’ll know more at a meeting later as she walks away. Henry yells, ‘Holy shit’ upon seeing the Camaro and he’s admonished for his language. Paige responds that she was grounded for a month for using that word. It seems like different expectations have been set up for her vs. Henry.
They then cut to a bonding scene eating ice cream that is 1000% cringe. This could have been cut but I guess they wanted to drop a bunch of exposition around it. Each kid plays the game, but when it comes to the woman, she is not having it. This shows another rift between them. Paige wants to play checkers at home after this, but the man says he’s just dropping them off to meet with a client. Paige immediately asks why he’s meeting a client so late, and the man deftly lies his way through it. He slightly appears to question his deftness with his facial expressions. This scene really does end up being basically unnecessary.
The man puts on a disguise including an atrocious obvious wig in a bathroom and we head into what I consider to be a very problematic scene. Not necessarily because of its contents but because we’re dropped into the middle of his running of this woman. What Internal Affairs guy is going to be interviewing the secretary of the head of FBICI in her home at night about secure matters? This proves again the stupidity of what they want you to believe could happen and/or the stupidity of the character. This FBICI really has problems. This scene needed more set up to tell us how he started to run her. This is unacceptable and lazy writing and is indicative of the type of stuff I hate about this show that comes up too often.
The woman in the scene is identified as Martha and the man is identified as Clark. We know that’s an assumed name and as far as I know, still no one has mentioned his or his wife’s name by this point in the show. In the scene, Martha gives away literally all intelligence they have about Timoshev without any specific details lol. He said he’s looking for leaks, and she be it. When he asks her a question about seeing inside the secure vault, she says they don’t let me go in there and you know that. He apologizes. It’s clear suspicion, but we will come to find out Martha is blinded by lust and misses every red flag imaginable. He proves himself to be a capable liar about his motives again. I did not like this scene, because this relationship is not properly developed for how he gained her trust and she should have no trust of him.
We then cut to a scene where there’s a safe inside the circuit breaker of the garage. He better hope he doesn’t trip the wrong one and cause his kids to come out wondering why he turned the power off, but he must know what he’s doing. Inside is the disguise his wife wore to the operation at the beginning of the show and a tape recorder. He gets to hear every single bit of their sex scene and the actions she performed on the guy such as ‘sticking a finger up his ass’. He is disappointed. When she basically criticizes the guy’s performance on tape, the man gets a smile on his face (safe word?) suggesting that she likes him better after all. Loose lips Larry talks about a KGB defector he’s bringing in for $100k and the man stops the tape.
The man meets with his wife and says all the info he has. They argue about killing Timoshev. He talks about the mission, and she says, ‘now you care about the mission?’ This is the first time the man tries to convince his wife to defect. She thinks he’s joking. It’s dropped.
And now it’s time for a scene that must be dropped at the script stage. The man takes Paige to the mall, and she’s wearing rebellious kid type clothes that are too revealing. A clear pedophile wanders by talking to his underage ‘girlfriend’ and the man overhears it. He’s angry about it. When Paige is checking out, the pedophile invites her to come along with him and his girlfriend in as sleazy a way possible. Her dad steps in and tells him to cool it. The scene ends with Paige creeped out and the man seeming like a chump, even though we know he’s not. The man really has a problem with underage relationships until, well, later in the series in the worst storyline this show ever had. The problem with this scene is there’s a ‘satisfying’ callback to it late in the episode that makes no sense whatsoever. What he does in that scene is likely the easiest way for him to be exposed in this episode.
We cut back to the family home, and brownies are coming out of the oven. The woman picks up a very sharp knife and holds it for a while. She’s probably thinking of all the places she’d like to stick it in Timoshev. She enters the garage with the knife.
Right after, the man pulls up. There must have been a time jump because the woman is back in the house before they even enter. The man sees her holding the knife and sees there’s no blood on it. She didn’t do anything rash. She tells him the brownies are for their new neighbors she met. The man starts kissing her neck and she tells him two times to stop. The third time she spins around wielding the knife. He blocks it and eventually says, ‘You’re my wife’. She says, ‘Is that right?’. One of them sees this as a personal relationship. The other sees it as a professional one. This is another rift fine for what it’s trying to accomplish.
Finally, we meet the new neighbors and hopefully one of them will say the ‘protagonists’ names. The man introduces himself as Phil Jennings when THAT Stan comes into the room. How amazing is it that the new neighbor is employed by the FBICI? What a stroke of luck, well, if Stan isn’t an idiot. Phil introduces his wife as Elizabeth. Finally, we know their names. Maybe they were said at some point in the episode before this, but I don’t think so. Their introduction comes at 32:40 seconds basically. We also can clearly see Stan’s wife is way out of his league. This will be a running story for Stan. Stan tries to throw a joke at ol’ Henry but again Henry misses it. Poor lad. Stan’s son Matthew appears to have taken an interest in Paige, and she seems to reciprocate. Matthew is too old for her dam. Stan drops the mic when he tells Phil he’s an FBI agent. Stan is so dumb he gives up that he’s in counterintelligence. This is GREAT intelligence for Phil and Elizabeth. Thanks, Stan!
We then get the on the nose jokes about exactly what’s going on right now in this show. I hate that kind of stuff. We end with the two men agreeing that Russians certainly are the worst. Elizabeth has to put on a big smile, because she obviously thinks they are the best.
We meet Phil and Elizabeth in the garage again, and she says it’s probably a coincidence. You know, the thing this show loves so much. Phil is worried they’re on to them. If he were thinking, he’d realize how stupid it would be for Stan to just out and out tell him who he is and what he does. I’m the police and I’m here to arrest you, which is basically what he did. That’s valuable intelligence. But, again, Stan is an idiot, and you will come to learn that throughout this series. She comes up with the solution to kill Timoshev no matter what. Phil tries to talk her out of it saying if they’re onto them, that’s life in prison blah blah blah. Phil again brings up defecting, and it does not go over well. He is really messing up here. He tries to make the convincing case that America is not so bad. And she is mad. When she asks him what he’d say to their kids, he said the truth. And she slaps him. WE DO NOT TELL THE TRUTH IN THIS FAMILY! She says they swore to never tell them, and they would not be part of this. Hoo boy, do I have news for you! They continue advocating for each’s position and amazingly the kids don’t ask where they are. Phil has an answer for all of Elizabeth’s stuff, because he’s an accomplished liar. She just scoffs and leaves. He has a remarkable amount of trust she won’t spill the beans as such a believer and seeing how close he is to becoming a traitor.
We then go jogging with Phil and land in a flashback in Moscow in 1962 where Phil is longing over a photo he throws in the trash. We watch the couple meet. The Colonel said you should never talk about your Russian lives out of safety. And that’s the flashback. Fine for what it is, I guess.
Phil then fakes being a cop calling into the hospital and finds out the young guy from the first op died in the hospital.
Now here’s the best suspense scene in the show. As Phil arrives at home, Stan says he needs to borrow some jumper cables. Oh crap, they’re in the trunk. Can he get them out without Stan discovering Timoshev? He hopes Stan won’t follow him into the garage, but he ultimately does. Stan immediately remarks on the car asking about the make model and year. You know, the highly sought after car that his division is investigating. Phil is now legit worried. But Stan is an idiot and just likes cars, not connecting any dots at all yet. Stan walks to the trunk and Phil gets the cables just before he arrives. That was a close call. If only Stan had a nose for piss and shit, he’d probably know someone was in the trunk and has been there for days. But he only has a nose for women out of his league.
In the next scene, we’re back at FBICI for more stupid crap. They’re having basically a top secret meeting by a vending machine in a hallway. When someone tries to get a snack, they shoo him off like hey this is top secret man. This is just unbelievable sorry. We meet John Boy and he will eventually be the boss of this unit. He’s named as the boss’s deputy detailed at Langley with CIA Counterintelligence with particular subject knowledge on Timoshev. He is familiar with Chris Amador who appears to look up to him.
John Boy asks Stan if he thinks Timoshev is still alive. Chris takes umbrage at this saying that ‘he’s been here 10 minutes’. John Boy says he has a particular set of skills. This is where we learn Stan worked three years undercover in a white supremacist organization busting a whole bunch of people. Because of this, we should now think Stan is competent and not an idiot. You will have to decide in the last scene of the episode which side you fall on. Chris finds this undercover work exciting. A real guy. Chris insults Stan by saying, ‘I thought you were here for your good looks’. He’s now jealous of his new protege. This is classic loser behavior when finding out he’s no longer the guy in favor. Stan then completely breaks down the chain of events into what happened when saying what he’d do in this situation. Stan is a genius idiot. And we get the introduction of Stan’s twitch face in this scene. He basically says you’ll probably never find them.
He wouldn’t find them if they were right under his ample nose, which they are.
Chris asks if Stan was burning crosses and saying Heil Hitler and Stan says it was a bit deeper than that. I guess that means he was also doing some casual lynching, but we’re left to guess what he means. Chris gets to play our surrogate and does not get an answer either.
In the next scene, Henry comes across like a true American wanting a racing stripe on the Oldsmobile sedan. Phil says Elizabeth would never go for it because she doesn’t like new things. It’s time to meet the spaceman, and I’m bored out of my mind. The scene starts with a long rendition of the national anthem, proving I’ve never known all the words to it. Phil appears to be caught up in the rabid patriotism in the room. At least we didn’t have to hear the spaceman talk.
In the next scene, Phil makes his big plan. He takes all the restraints off Timoshev and says he wants to make a deal. He does not get this out before Timoshev bites his neck in a visible place. While he’s undoing his restraints, Elizabeth comes into the garage. This leads to a large confrontation. He wants to turn Timoshev into Stan. We have the same conversation we’ve had several times already in this show. Elizabeth goes to kill Timoshev and shows she’s a much better fighter this time around. She literally puts Timoshev’s head through a wall, but that’s not enough to kill him. He apologizes to her and this is shocking to Phil. After a long stare, Elizabeth tells Phil to do what he wants with him all the way up to taking him to the Americans. Phil picks Timoshev up, chokes him, and breaks his neck. This is a bonding moment. Effective, but would have been better if we hadn’t had so many scenes going over this same info.
We then do an In the Air Tonight montage, because this show is basically just Miami Vice at this point. The scene is about disposing the body. Apparently, nothing turns Elizabeth on more than a little killing and acid disposal of a body. They have sex in the car. An hour ago, they were bitter enemies and now they’re banging it out. Russians, I guess.
The next scene is them trying to cover up their wounds from the night. One of Phil’s can’t be covered but he’ll have a lie for it.
For family table talk, Elizabeth tells Henry just getting into space is an accomplishment, that you don’t need to land on the moon. I’m telling you she would LOVE For All Mankind.
Phil leaves to take Henry to play hockey at 7:30 in the morning and Stan says he’s been grinding it out on this job since 5am in a time before computers or remote work so I have no idea what that means. Stan immediately notices the band-aids on Phil’s neck and asks about them. Phil has a lie immediately ready, and Stan the cop doesn’t press. Stan makes the joke to Henry that he needs to get his dad an electric razor for Christmas. Henry answers, ‘okay’, the joke again firmly flying over his head. The scene leaves us with the impression that Stan’s spidey senses are perked up.
We see Elizabeth cleaning up all the presumably piss and shit Timoshev left in the trunk and anything else, I guess. I’m not sure how they got the blood out of the back seat carpet, but they’re Russians in 1981, so they’re probably inventive. Paige briefly interrupts asking to go to the drugstore. The house will be left unattended.
The next scene is between Stan and his wife with him saying that he likes Phil but thinks something is off about him. See, Stan is not an idiot. His wife starts talking about how she investigates too, and the jokes land with oh you think I’m paranoid. Okay, you’re right. I’ll turn that off. Bad Stan bad!
We then move into the payoff of the pedophile mall scene. He’s making a couple of hot dogs on the grill in his backyard when Phil shows up in disguise and teaches him quite the lesson. Phil steals one of the guy’s hamburgers as he walks out of the scene. This scene like the other one should not exist. This was also an example of very bad fight choreography. Plus, Phil stuck a fork in him but he still may not be done.
Elizabeth goes to the KGB safe house and the Colonel who brought her into the program is now a general. He asks what happened to Timoshev and she says they killed him. He later asks about Phil, saying she’d been giving a lot of reports on him. He asks if ‘we’ can trust him. She says yes, because one kill will make the world right for her. Phil is on the edge and will be on the edge for most of the rest of the show. The general basically makes it clear he’s about to fall out a window, and that she will be on her own. That the mission will get a lot darker now.
We go back to the FBICI and see Martha is the assistant to the boss as they walk down the hall together. The boss says the young guy was either in the program or he’s a drifter. They have it all figured out but haven’t put anything together. Then in walks the Deputy Attorney General. Who is at his side? If you guessed Loose Lips Larry that’s a bingo. How convenient is that? The DAG says Reagan has signed an executive order to neutralize all the ‘Americans’, and that it’s time to go to war. He says we will prevail. Narrator:
The next scene is Phil and Elizabeth presumably doing shots of Vodka in bed. Elizabeth breaks the rule of talking about the Russian life before becoming an ‘American’. The couple has officially bonded, but in a pretty weird way.
We’re taken into a flashback where Phil and Elizabeth first arrive in America. He wants to get some because she’s his wife, but she says she’s not ready. She is very excited about a hotel air conditioner. The flashback ends with them facing away from each other sitting on the bed. They are not together at this point. There’s really no point to the scene.
The money scene in the show is the final scene. Stan is going to be the biggest idiot he can be. Maybe he was in the Army before joining the FBI. All of your suspension of disbelief must go out the window to stomach this scene, but it still has a good payoff. Stan is suspicious after the meeting at FBICI. So, he decides to go pick the lock of Phil and Elizabeth’s garage and then inspects and picks the lock of the trunk of the car. He thinks he’s super invisible doing this because reasons. Eventually the camera pans to Phil standing in a corner with a gun at the ready to kill Stan, if necessary. Stan doesn’t find anything, shakes his head like he’s being paranoid, and leaves. It’s probably the last time he’s suspicious of Phil for a long time. But I don’t remember anymore. The Phil part of the scene makes it worth it, but it’s unacceptable that Stan never lets anyone in on what he thinks he might know and would do something so incredibly stupid without any backup. I get why, but I don’t like it.
I encourage discussion if interested.