I’m a little too young to know about 1981 specifically, but I’ve always called it the Metro, so I’d assume that’s what they were calling it then. More generally, I haven’t watched the show since it aired, but I remember thinking at the time that it actually seemed to “feel” more like DC (even though a lot was filmed in Brooklyn) than some other shows that were supposed to be based in DC)
I’m happy for you
Or sorry that happened
At least I learned in episode 1 that it’s unlikely I’ll continue this lol
Like I’m interested in this thread idea. But dude. That was way too long.
Well duh
That would have been elite but it was still funny he even responded.
True.
Did notice more hackneyed dialogue like this on the rewatch myself.
True
Out of character too for how he was developed as an elite spy.
i was worried this thread might make my tng ranking thread appear stalled (it’s not!) but if you’re gonna quit at the pilot that’s probably fine. this shit ain’t easy. it’s only for elite-level posters like myself and no others
Lol
That’s prettay good. Maybe I should actually read that whole thing.
It’s way too long but I don’t think it’s boring
The Americans Season 1 Episode 2: The Clock (Aired Wednesday February 6, 2013)
For this one, I did a real time watch and note take, which means I’m stopping every time something bugs me. That may lead to later hilarious outcomes as I don’t know what’s coming anymore. This post is still long but isn’t nearly as long as the one for the Pilot. I’m trying to be somewhat looser with my criticism, but the first one needed to be done the way it was.
Because of the directing by Adam Arkin, this episode is much better and more evenly paced than episode 1, in my opinion. It is still not good enough to me for what they have to work with. And that’s because the writing is piss poor in a lot of areas. The more you sit down and think about anything that happens, the worse the writing becomes. If you just casually watch the show, you might even think this was a very good episode. I wouldn’t fault you for that. I never graded Episode 1 and I’d give it a B. It was a relatively decent Pilot, but had way too much in it, way too much exposition in it, and way too many unbelievable things happening in it. This happens in a lot of Pilots so it doesn’t heavily drag it down for me. For production value, it was right near the top for that era and there were some great performances in it. No way I’d elevate it to an A, but it was enough to keep watching at the time.
For episode 2, I’d give a B+. If this had about 10 differences in it (significant ones), it would be an A. It only rises to B+ because Arkin took some extremely poorly written scenes from a logic standpoint, and made you not really think about that. I didn’t remember Arkin directing an episode so early of this show, but it was probably a good thing they brought him in after the Pilot to try to right the ship.
I’ll see about episode 3 next week. I could still kill this project at any time. These notes will still be long, but nothing like the Pilot. I’m focusing on problems more than plot, so there won’t be a scene-by-scene summary this time. I’ll still put it in a summary to not clog the thread up. My main comment about episode 2 after the watch is that I liked the overall plot but hated a lot of the details. In other words, story was generally fine, but the actual writing was not.
Summary
Flaws
The show starts off with a fast oral sex foreplay scene of something with Phil and a woman. No context. Then immediately jumps to the next scene where I can’t tell if the woman from the previous scene was an asset or a trainee. We’re reminded by Elizabeth it’s about to get riskier when Phil says the woman isn’t cut out for it. I can only guess what happens to the woman’s character.
2:15-At a cocktail party, people are just talking apparently top secret type stuff like pundits on TV. How the Russians didn’t win the Cold War based on this type of stuff I have no idea.
2:57-The woman enters a study and within moments it’s clear she’s a terrible asset. She wears a video camera in her cleavage and she’s not subtle with what she’s doing. I didn’t realize video cameras with storable memory that were so small existed like that in 1981. She’s immediately busted when some serious looking folks tell her the area is off limits.
4:01-In the first wtf moment, Phil knocks on what looks like an apartment door or a hotel door, and it opens to the outside. wtf. I expect to see Daniel Sackheim’s name as director. Will I be right? I will not be right. This is directed by Adam Arkin and I’m disappointed in him for this.
The woman somehow just immediately gets away with her traitorous act with very little questioning because the men couldn’t stop ‘staring at my tits’. Though she really got away with it because her husband’s the undersecretary of defense. Phil says she’s incredible (two meanings of that word) and she’s ready to unwrap him as a stiff piece of meat. She’s gleeful and talkative about her treasonous acts and points her boob video camera right at Phil. I’m gonna guess she’ll be dead by the end of this scene.
The woman calls Phil Scott and basically says she’s been with a lot of dudes but the way he makes her feel makes her think he’s the one. She says, ‘I love you’. He says it back. Then she says she wants him inside her so bad because the writer is an immature child instead of just cutting to the next scene. Odds of her death are now skyrocketing to 90%.
We hit the first-time playing main title and the visuals are great but there is no bass in the music. Russian music has a great broad spectrum in the writing, so I always hated the theme song, like it was intended as an undermining of Russia.
The woman managed to live another day as we meet Phil and Elizabeth in a darkroom. The grand plan is removing a clock to put a surveillance device in it. They expect it can be gone a day without anyone noticing. You’d think there would be bug sweeping and no top secret stuff discussed or looked at in a home office that we’ve already been told is ‘off limits’, but you saw the first scene where they were talking about that kind of stuff at a cocktail party. This is D-level writing and gets the episode off to a horrible start for me.
Elizabeth then sees a photo of the asset, and they argue about him not telling her she looked like that. Elizabeth is clearly upset that she has to bang ugly nerds and he gets to bang a hot woman. What happened to her being all business? So lame.
Joe Weisberg is again the writer explaining all the childish cringey sexual dialogue.
6:56-Adam Arkin is an excellent director and made a terrible scene in a stereo store work. Before this scene, we found the intrepid Stan and Chris in a surveillance op tracking a woman who is in and out of the store too quickly. I know the woman is Nina from previous watches, but we’re not told how or why they’re tracking her. This is as unacceptable as Martha’s drop in to being ran. The two key assets on both sides are just dropped in. This is a terrible set up. We do also learn their previous boss has been shitcanned into a promotion.
The offending scene in the stereo store is that they’re supposed to stay on the woman. Stan the genius idiot is suspicious and wants to find out info in the store. They go in with their badges and there’s no cooperation. They find some caviar and begin teasing the guy. Why does this scene piss me off? Because Stan and Chris just blew the entire operation and this guy should be telling his handlers the FBI is looking at him and the woman if he’s working with the Russians, since as an audience member you’d think this would be FBICI trying to figure out what Russians are doing. Based on the quality of the writing in this show I’m pretty sure that didn’t happen.
I LIKED THIS 8:25-The first scene at the Soviet Embassy was strong with a lot of good subtext.
WHY IS THIS HERE? 11:35-Here we go with the family shit again. Double standards show up learning Henry got to eat pie before dinner once and wanting it again only to be shot down. Elizabeth is pissed that Paige is wearing a red bra she got at the mall with Phil, I guess. ‘It’s just a bra mom, I’m 13’. To which Elizabeth responds, ‘Exactly’. She is so pious when off the clock. Paige says things are different than when she grew up that people are freer. Elizabeth hits her with the we’ll see about that that she’s trying to change. I have serious questions about Weisberg’s proclivities at this point. This scene has no reason for existing.
12:12-A woman in Anacostia DC gets a knock on her door. The woman looks through the peephole and opens the door to skeezily disguised Phil and Elizabeth who barge into her apartment to talk about her son who was stabbed by an umbrella device by Elizabeth earlier in the show. Why the hell do people open their door for random strangers? Especially in bad neighborhoods? I don’t do it today and I certainly didn’t do it then. It makes you think Weisberg grew up in Mayberry because this is not how real people behave. I’m amazed he didn’t get murdered growing up in Chicago. Must have been one of those John Hughes neighborhoods.
The scene is related to the clock in the study we saw Phil’s asset take video of. The whole scene is very ill-advised and haphazard mainly because the bureaucratic Russians are in a hurry and the S-Directorate has been told to use the potential mark the bureaucratic Russians want to use. It also depends on her caring about her son more than the country when working for the Secretary of Defense lol. This scene is ridiculous but plays out as well as it could have.
16:32-In a moment of introspection about the level of danger they’re in without proper planning, we get the set up that Henry is like Phil and that Paige is delicate to Elizabeth. She wants to make sure they can make it without her. Phil thinks they can. Elizabeth isn’t so sure about Paige. This is never ever paid off in the show and was a giant missed opportunity related to Henry and employed later as a horrible opportunity for Paige.
20:35-In another wtf moment there is an enormous fight inside the maid for Weinberger’s apartment that is located right next to the main stairwell. This shit is loud. Does anyone ever call the cops? This is now at least a 2-day op and there has been yelling and people thrown into walls on both days. In the first scene, Phil rammed the woman hard into a wall and you’d think people would have noticed that too. In this case, this is way too loud not to bring a lot of heat. The fight ends with Phil breaking the seemingly extremely capable fighter’s arm.
We then find out the maid has told her brother, even though she was told if she told anyone her son would die. Will Phil show compassion? Will he wonder who else she might have told? Does he feel comfortable waiting around for the cops as he screams at the top of his lungs at her? Phil says again what he said the first night but does have compassion saying you can’t ever tell anyone about this ever again. Good luck explaining all the wall damage and the fight with her brother to the landlord and cops. But they probably won’t show up. At least he got the clock and now only has to deal with the maid one more time later.
WHY IS THIS HERE? 23:31 We go back to Elizabeth and Paige and Elizabeth wants to take Paige mall shopping. I don’t know about you, but it might as well have been the kiss of death to go to the mall with your parents at age 13. You heard about it endlessly if you ever were seen with your mom there. I’m not talking from experience, I just know about this. Elizabeth has just found out she’s the parent you don’t want to be seen with even though she was completely embarrassed by her dad’s behavior at the mall in episode 1. I do not need to see you bond with this child like ever, and not like this. Say goodbye to this scene.
WHY IS THIS HERE? 23:18-Here’s an acting choice in that scene that irritated me. Up to this point, Paige has been disaffected doing her homework while Elizabeth tries to talk. Elizabeth asks her to look at her. She turns around and puts her pen down. A better acting choice would have been to turn around and keep holding the pen like she can’t wait to get back to it. Elizabeth says I love you and Paige says it back but immediately goes back to her homework. Weird.
WHY IS THIS HERE? 25:20-I’m not sure the purpose of this scene, but Phil tells Henry to brush his teeth. Henry responds that he already did. Phil says if he goes into that bathroom and his toothbrush is dry. Henry interrupts, crosses his arms, and says, ‘you’re gonna what?’ with a very serious expression on his face. Phil crosses his arms back and gets an irritated expression on his face. These kids are rebellious now, but that’s really the only point of the scene. Snip snip snip.
WHY IS THIS HERE? 26:13-I guess the answer was ‘play hockey’?
27:31-It’s time for another ‘you fuckin’ idiot, Stan’ scene with Phil. He asks Phil if he’s ever had caviar and Phil says once at a tourism convention but didn’t like it. Stan starts talking about how he lifted it off the guy from the stereo store operation and then says, ‘hmm, I shouldn’t talk about it really’. That’s enough info to serve up a bunch of red flags to Phil. Idiot.
WHY IS THIS HERE? 28:08-In the caviar scene, each is shown taking a bite before it goes to commercial. They should have cut at the ‘Cheers’. I don’t care about watching them eat.
28:59-We go back to the stereo store, and they shake the guy down AGAIN. If this guy is working for the Russians, man you are effing up so hard Stan and Chris. The man appears to be willing to talk but they don’t take the acoustic foam that’s being used as a gag out of his mouth, so it’s hard to say. We’ll have to guess whether they corrected this and he’s now an ‘asset’.
32:29-Stan confronts who I know as Nina in a surveillance operation about what she’s doing with the stereo store. He thinks she’s a smuggler. We have no idea why FBICI would be after a stereo smuggler based on the earlier surveillance. We have no idea why they were put onto this op, but presumably the stereo store guy gave some better information about Nina. You would think they’d have gotten information she might be a spy or vulnerable or something. But I guess they just picked a random woman who’s way out of Stan’s league from the Soviet Embassy to follow. I really don’t effing know. This is bad writing even though it still plays in the overall context of the show. She nods her head acting as if all these smuggling ideas are what’s going on. I have no idea why FBICI would be going after a smuggler (the first surveillance of her), or whether she’s setting a honeypot. It is Stan after all, and he’s an idiot.
WHY IS THIS HERE? 34:29-There’s an emergency scene between the asset from the beginning of the episode and Phil. He picks her up and she threatens him with several good times. He finally fakes his way through it, and she talks about leaving with him tonight as she gets out of the car. This was after she threatened to tell people what she was doing. In normal times, this is a death sentence. He talks her down from that. But when she leaves the car with the ominous words, that sounds like a big uh-oh. If this were paid off at the end of the episode, this scene was fine and could be included. Instead, we’re left wondering why it was here because it doesn’t propel any plot forward and becomes an unnecessary thread we’re now forced to track. Put that in the next episode, no one was even thinking about her anymore after her early scenes.
37:00-For the third time, tons of screaming inside this apartment. Where are the fucking cops??? After the maid, Viola, refuses to put the clock back they decide to try to kill her son right then and there and she acquiesces. She ultimately puts the clock back and Elizabeth gives Viola’s son the antidote.
39:47-It sure looks like there’s a 15-minute Nagra reel in the trunk, maybe 30 minutes max. Not sure how useful it will be or how the device is triggered. That meeting needs to be happening right now basically.
40:29-Nothing pisses me off more than when someone in a super serious line of work comes home for the night and doesn’t lock their door. Elizabeth does this. Even if you’re in a safe place, you know you lock the door or you wouldn’t have unlocked it or needed keys when you came home.
40:39- The beginning of this scene is Phil preparing a plate of caviar for Elizabeth. We find out that Phil, of course, was lying when he said he’d had caviar before to Stan. Elizabeth and him were too poor growing up to try it. It then becomes an introspective scene, and Elizabeth says the bosses should not expect them to do the impossible. Phil says they did it, and it must be very very big for them to do it being inside the Secretary of Defense’s house. Because that’s where all the top secret classified meetings between world powers occur, in his insecure office that no one is minding.
42:45-Toward the end of the multiple false ending episode, the new boss of the FBICI is saying they now have a source inside the Rezidentura for the first time in 4 years (an apparent dig at Jimmy Carter). That would be Nina. I guess we’re canceled out. FBICI has a low-level diplomatic bag carrying smuggler with unknown access, while the Russians have the Secretary of Defense. Seems about even to me. Phil and Elizabeth are hardly celebrating, but the FBICI might as well have had Nina pop out of a cake for the gigantic pats on the back they’re giving themselves. It turns out the phone call everyone was gathered around was with the president, according to Stan. Stan says to him, ‘we don’t know how to lose here’. When all they ever did on this show was lose. Stupid ass FBICI. Hahaha joke’s on all of us. The new boss says that wasn’t the president. Stan confesses it was the Chief of Staff and now everyone thinks he’s a jerk. Gaad (the new boss) leaves the scene saying, ‘if we’re gonna stop these people, this is the way to do it’, by running lackeys. So, in other words, they’re not going to stop these people. If only Stan had a better nose, they’d be looking into his neighbors which is how you really stop it.
43:51-We get a bonding scene with Elizabeth waking up Paige in the middle of the night to pierce her ears which is when all ear piercings should happen. Like when the Tooth Fairy comes. Phil is sitting by Henry’s bed in another room while he sleeps. Elizabeth does the poke and a drop of blood gets on Paige’s sheet. I have no idea what the symbolism of this is. This scene easily could not be there, but they’ve spent so much time on family and how close things were to going to shit in this episode that I guess they had to have more family stuff.
45:47-The final scene is in the Rezidentura. We see Nina is some kind of secretary, which will of course be to the boss, even though he’s not the boss yet. That’s just the way America runs in luck. She’s already asking a bunch of questions being the good source she hopes to be. Nina, Nina, Nina enjoy living while you can…
The two Russians from the early scene in the episode pop on the tape between Weinberger and his counterpart from the British. They are just talking about the most top secret shit ever in his office, practically with their mouths next to the clock apparently. Just stop it.
And now I will stop, too. Thanks for reading if you did.
I tried a re-watch a while ago but tapped out when I realized half of the first season is just Philip and Martha having sex
lol, haven’t made it that far yet but you can bet it ends up on my bad bingo card. I think episode 3 was my favorite of the season, but I don’t remember for sure.
I’m definitely going to go back and read all of this at some point I swear
:anchorman:
no I’m serious, I really do want to figure out your point of view here