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The Americans - S3 of the KGB spy drama - Keri Russell & Matthew Rhys - Wed on FX

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C

Cornballer

Member
- YahooTV on the makeup team: 'The Americans': It Takes a Village to Create Those Undercover Disguises

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C

Cornballer

Member
- Andy Greenwald's review for Grantland
The Americans has won no Emmys, its ratings have broken no records. And yet, in its insistent, understated way, the show has proven that cable dramas, like spies, don’t need to be loud to be great. It’s far more important to pay attention to the smallest detail, to exploit every fatal weakness. The Americans transports you to another place and time only to reveal, with quiet desperation, that you really haven’t traveled anywhere at all. What is a sleeper agent anyway but someone with powerful, unsettling desires hiding in plain sight? And what is an American but someone who believes, deeply and truly, in the right to live out private contradictions in public? We are as we’ve always been: one nation, undercover.
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S

Stratosphere

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I just recently caught up on the first two seasons thanks to Amazon prime. Needless to say, I'm hyped for tonight!

My only question is, why do they air it so damn late? (11 PM local for me)
 
U

ultron87

Member
I almost missed that this was back tonight. That would've been tragic. The Grantland review has me really hyped. Especially the mention that the storylines are more blended this year instead of the Beeman stuff being almost entirely separate from the Jennings like it was in Season 2. That'll be great.
 
C

Cornballer

Member
- Poniewozik for Time.com: Review: The Americans Puts Mother (and Father) Russia to the Test
As the season unfolds, the tension in the Jennings household echoes in the espionage stories, which in various ways also involve parents and children, the choice between security and idealism, between loyalty to family and loyalty to the larger cause. In its melancholy way, The Americans seems to be speaking to today’s America and its generation of helicopter parents, who often find out that as hard as it is to take care of children, it can be even harder to let them find their own way.
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C

Cornballer

Member
- Matt Zoller Seitz: TV Review: For the Love of God, Watch The Americans Tonight
The Americans is the best show most people aren't watching. Given how uncompromising it is, and how many games it plays with our sympathies, that's not a surprise. The whole show is so slippery that it's hard to find anything in it to hold onto. No sooner has a scene or subplot become emotionally concrete, and sometimes hugely affecting, than it takes a surprising or alarming turn, and flips your sympathies upside-down. This Reagan-era time capsule about Russian spies posing as American travel agents is one of the better current examples of antihero TV. The entire point of that mode has been — or at least should've been — to let us approach familiar institutions and bits of received wisdom from strange moral and ethical angles, so that you can see the things in mitochondrial form. It's one thing to look at marriage, parenting, fidelity, and patriotism through the eyes of conventional middle-class bourgeois Americans, as the vast majority of TV shows do. It's quite another to see them enacted, subverted or mocked, in an alternately sincere and calculated way, by Soviet secret agents.
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C

Cornballer

Member
- Salon: “You’re only as healthy as your darkest secret”: Director Thomas Schlamme on what drives “The Americans” and his new show “Manhattan”
Q: What do you like about “The Americans”?

A: I have always thought “The Americans” is more like “The Sopranos” and less like “Alias.” If you could really deal with what it’s like to have a family, to be an American under this extraordinary storytelling of a Russian spy during Reagan’s America, it would be a monumental achievement, and I think they really pulled it off. I did this episode called “Gregory” in the first year, which was the first episode where you started to see that there was real emotion in their relationship. You started to see them connect to each other and being parents, which is what the series has slowly become. That family drama of “The Americans” was what I was so attracted to.

Especially in the third season of “The Americans,” these people are struggling with whether or not to let their children know who they really are. On that surface level, I didn’t have to reveal to my children that I’m a Russian spy. But do I lie to my kids about the fact that I, almost every day, went to college stoned? Everybody has said that you don’t tell your children you smoked dope because they’ll think that’s OK—and that’s a tiny thing, but it’s an easier thing to relate to the same issue on a much bigger scale.
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C

Cornballer

Member
- VanDerWerff on Vox: The Americans is the best show on TV. So why isn't anybody watching it?
Landgraf told me that he believes the show suffers because of its emotional acuity. He believes the most popular shows on TV are those that provide the audience with an escape, either one that allows them to laugh or one that is so divorced from actual reality that no one would ever have to fear living through it. (See also: The Walking Dead.)

But The Americans is different.

"The Americans is a very existentially truthful show. It's very truthful not only about spying, but all the metaphors that it gets to through spying — lying and false identity, certainly about the very real challenges of marriage and being a parent. And my suspicion is that for some people, it hits a little too close to home," he told me.
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N

Nabbis

Member
Being originally from Russia, i can't watch this show without either facepalming or cringing. It's not supposed to be accurate or culturally informed, but good God.
 
D

Deku Tree

Member
I am ready for S3... When I watch it tomorrow night....

BTW does anyone watch "The Fall" on Netflix? I couldn't find an OT.
 
B

Blue Bomber

Member
Excited for tonight's premiere and this new season. One of my favorites shows from last year. I've been rewatching season 2 recently to get back in the groove. Still upset at FX for not releasing season 2 on Blu-Ray :mad:

RatskyWatsky said:
The Americans is (are?) back!
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lol. I had the same problem describing this show to my friend the other day.
 
I

IronRinn

Member
Mr. Saturn said:
Yeah this and Justified should hopefully wash the taste of SoA's final season out of my mouth, although I guess the joke's on me for watching it in the first place.
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Ain't nothin' gonna get me clean after that. Have to live with that mistake for the rest of my life.
 
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