The Americans in the Media

[Umbelina]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/21/arts/television/the-americans-the-midges-recap.html
 

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In Washington, Stan and Dennis Aderholt, apparently at a standstill in their work, resorted to ambushing Soviet officials — one at a diner, one in a men’s room — and trying to recruit them through intimidation. Both times the Soviets walked away without a word.

Historical note: Stan and Dennis’s second target worked for Amtorg, the trade organization that operated as a front for Soviet intelligence. Amtorg’s main claim to fame after World War II was as the place where the notorious F.B.I. turncoat Robert Hanssen went first to begin spying for the Soviet Union. Plot thread?

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/22/us/search-for-answers-new-york-years-spy-chasers-feel-betrayed-one-time-top-gun.html

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Robert Hanssen

[TimWil]

Allison Wright gave a very sweet interview on NPR's Weekend Edition yesterday. The Americans was mentioned, of course, along with the Broadway play she's currently in. She also revealed that she was adopted and that Carol Burnett's performance as Miss Hannigan in the film version of Annie is what inspired her to be an actress!

[Umbelina]

https://player.fm/series/the-americans-podcast

Keri and Mathew on the podcast for Kansas, along with the show runner.

[Umbelina]

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I’m glad The Americans is tackling the food crisis of this era in Soviet history. Throughout this episode, I just kept thinking of my grandmother’s cousin, who was the head of obstetrics at a Soviet hospital. When she was finally able to visit us in New Jersey in the early ’90s, a trip to the grocery store ended with her hyperventilating and fainting at the sight of the shelves full of food. Even she, a woman in a highly privileged position, had no access to food — let alone what we strolled by on a daily basis without a second thought.

http://www.vox.com/culture/2017/3/28/15091190/the-americans-whats-the-matter-with-kansas-recap

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But what I really want to know is what's up with Renée, Stan's new girlfriend. My bet? Mossad.

 

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As for how things may play out with Henry, I’ll just put this out there for us to mull: Mischa arrives at JFK Airport at the end of this episode, only a couple hundred miles away from his unsuspecting father and oblivious half-brother. It seems rather pointed that Philip’s two sons are both such mysteries to him at the moment, and it makes me wonder what might happen when one of those mysteries finally reveals himself.

[stagmania]

This is amazing. I'm going to try some of these strategies on my friends who are still holding out.

[crgirl412]

26 minutes ago, stagmania said:

This is amazing. I'm going to try some of these strategies on my friends who are still holding out.

That was funny!  Thanks for posting!! 

[Umbelina]

Most of the critics really seem to have loved this episode, for the nuanced relationship issues among other things.

http://www.fox5ny.com/good-day/244670825-video

Margo Martindale video interview.  Warning!  Spoilers about Misha.

Edited March 30, 2017 by Umbelina

[Erin9]

9 hours ago, Umbelina said:

Most of the critics really seem to have loved this episode, for the nuanced relationship issues among other things.

http://www.fox5ny.com/good-day/244670825-video

Margo Martindale video interview.  Warning!  Spoilers about Misha.

This was my favorite episode of the season so far. I could almost pick the last episode for the peek into Philip's childhood and the dance, but as a whole, I think this one was better. 

[gwhh]

Great interview with KR:

 

[Umbelina]

http://www.vox.com/culture/2017/4/4/15183538/the-americans-episode-5-recap-lotus-123-mischa

Nice, thorough review of this episode.  VOX makes me like this season more than I do when I am watching it.

Well, the acting is always great, I think the problem for me has been pace.  It just seems slow, and the whole poison grain thing was so obviously NOT going to be true, that it made this outcome more predictable than I've even known this show to be.

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9. Oleg’s Dinner Guests (Last week: Not ranked)

Those poor girls. My God. Imagine how awkward that whole thing must have been, especially during the wait for Oleg to come back from work. Do you think the first one to show up just thought it was going to be her there, alone? And then the second one showed up and she was like, “Wait a second…” and then the third showed up and she was like “What the hell?” What about that third one, walking into a house with a covered dish, ready to meet an eligible young man, only to see two other women already at the table, just as confused as she is. And what if Oleg had hit it off with one of them? Would the other two have stayed through dessert, just twiddling their thumbs and wanting to crawl under the floor and into the cold Soviet dirt to escape the whole situation?

It’s not ideal.

 

http://uproxx.com/tv/americans-anxiety-report-mischa/

Edited April 6, 2017 by Umbelina

[Umbelina]

http://www.vulture.com/2017/04/the-americans-recap-season-5-episode-5.html
 

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All season long, Mischa has been inching his way toward Philip like Scatman Crothers responding to a psychic distress call in The Shining. And because Mischa appearing on the Jennings’ doorstep would be catastrophic for the mission — to say nothing of the family itself — we might have expected him to meet a similar fate. Perhaps something more subtle than an ax in the back, but no less resolute. What happens instead is less dramatic and more crushing: Gabriel simply forbids Mischa from seeing his father, and that’s the end of that. And Mischa reacts with the innocence and the neediness of a child, his limited English producing clipped phrases like, “I want to see father” and, “But I come for him,” and “Forget father?” This isn’t the outspoken, enemy-of-the-state type that Claudia so disingenuously warned against. This is a kid who risked everything to be with his dad.

Philip does not know any of this is happening. Perhaps he’ll never know. And that’s why the scene with Gabriel and Claudia is the one that ties the episode together: The Jennings have no control over their fate. Decisions are being made on high, by “the Center,” that officials believe to be beneficial to Soviet interests with respect to the United States. Those decisions are made without regard — or at least without priority — to its agents’ dignity or honor or satisfaction with their work, and they’re sometimes spectacularly wrong, as they were with the supposed American initiative to devastate wheat harvests nationwide. Because the Jennings have to draw on so much creativity and improvisation and independent intelligence to carry out a given assignment, we sometimes forget that they’re as captive as any foot soldier on the front lines.

 

[Umbelina]

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“We didn't have anything, now we have everything,” Philip tells Elizabeth in bed after remembering how his father used to bring stuff home from work. At this early point in the episode, as he recalls his mother cleaning a filthy pair of shoes, Philip is obviously thinking about how much he materially has in America. But what shape will his memories take, tomorrow or the day after, when he knows that those shoes were pulled from the feet of a man that his father possibly had a hand in killing? The Americans comprehends the complicated irony of Gabriel's blessing also being a curse, then cunningly sees how the emotional torch that this man guiltily carries and passes on to another is of a piece with the soul of the Russian nation, or at least that of the purest communist mindset and its ardent belief—as espoused by Elizabeth at one point—that “we're all in it together.”

http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/article/the-americans-recap-season-5-episode-6-crossbreed

yikes.

Maybe that's why they had that bread?  Prison bread.  Clothes from dead people. 

Edited April 12, 2017 by Umbelina

[Umbelina]

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Philip’s father worked for the KGB as a guard in a prison camp. Now he realizes he has even more in common with his daughter Paige than genetics: They both were raised knowing nothing about their parents’ real lives whatsoever, and they both have KGB killers for fathers. Only in circumstances this warped can introducing her to his and Elizabeth’s elderly handler just before he returns to the Soviet Union feel like a heartwarming act of benevolent connection. And of course, Philip has no idea that the man he’s brought his daughter to see turned his long-lost son away just a few days earlier. Throughout the whole episode, actor Matthew Rhys looks like he’d just gotten awful news seconds before the cameras started rolling, and his face is shot up against the edge of the frame as if he’s trapped. Yeah, I’d be worried too.

http://observer.com/2017/04/the-americans-recap-5x06-the-nobodies/

And, one of my favorites...VOX http://www.vox.com/culture/2017/4/11/15259086/the-americans-episode-6-recap-crossbreed-gabriel

Wow, the threat to Philip is an interesting take, and idea.

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“Crossbreed” makes no bones about the fact that Philip in particular is on thin ice with the Centre, and will always be on thin ice. Given the direction of this season so far, it seems Gabriel’s departure signals that perhaps the biggest threat to the Jenningses at this point isn’t external — Stan and the FBI are nowhere near them at this point — but rather internal.

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“You’ve done too much. You’ve seen too much.”

That line, spoken with infinite sadness by Gabriel as he tries to gently break the news to Elizabeth that she and Philip might never be allowed to go home themselves — or, at least, not in the way they’ve always imagined — was one of the most startling and scariest of the series, to my mind. Combined with Claudia’s hints last episode about problems with Philip’s “file,” it made me think, like Genevieve, that Directorate S itself might be the biggest threat to the Jenningses.

 

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I’ll be honest: I was getting pretty tired of every other scene on The Americans being Philip and Elizabeth turning on a tap and debriefing each other on something we’d literally just seen one of them do. So in that respect, “Crossbreed” was a welcome relief. It’s a pretty sedate hour, all things considered, but it’s intimate and revealing in a way I’ve been waiting for all season. From Elizabeth trying to find Young Hee to Gabriel telling Philip the truth about his father, everyone’s attempts to reconcile with their past failed big time. (The one telling exception here could be Oleg, who finally confronted his copy of the tape of him talking to Stan by burning it — to the tune of Peter Gabriel, no less.)

Edited April 12, 2017 by Umbelina
added vox

[chick binewski]

Matthew and Keri will be on Watch What Happens Thursday night 4/13 and I am ridiculously excited about this.

Edited April 13, 2017 by chick binewski
Matthew needed more t's.

[crgirl412]

26 minutes ago, chick binewski said:

Matthew and Keri will be on Watch What Happens Thursday night 4/13 and I am ridiculously excited about this.

Me too!!!!  I wonder what games they are going to play and I'm sure they'll do a shotski! 

Somehow, I can't see Andy Cohen getting into The Americans but his BFF and AC2 Tour partner, Anderson Cooper might be.

[SunnyBeBe]

16 hours ago, chick binewski said:

Matthew and Keri will be on Watch What Happens Thursday night 4/13 and I am ridiculously excited about this.

GREAT!  I came here to post this and saw that you already did.  I bet a lot of people who might not come to this thread would like this info.  Anyone know how  to make sure it gets their attention?  I guess we aren't allowed to post about it on the Episode thread.  I may try to send some PM's to a few people that I think would want to know......I mean, who wouldn't want to see it??? lol  Of course, it'll be available later on the Bravo site.  I don't think I've ever seen them in that kind of setting before.  It'll be interesting.  I don't see either of them as that animated.  Matthew's accent makes him ten times hotter to me. lol 

I do know that ANDY LOVES some Keri Russell though.  He may be gay, but, he's wild over her. 

[SunnyBeBe]

Did anyone watch WWHL last night?  I thought Keri was great, but, I was a little surprised with Matthew. He's not at all like I expected.  I've heard him talk before in his regular accent, but, for some reason, it wasn't as appealing last night.  He was quite the kidder....at least, I think he was kidding.

Well, no spoilers and that's okay.  It seems that Matthew can't be trusted with them.  lol Did anyone see Matthew in his role on the HBO series Girls?  I hadn't heard about that and the prosthetic until last night.  Oh my....here's an article on it.

http://www.vulture.com/2017/02/matthew-rhys-hbo-girls-fake-penis.html

I wish they had asked more about The Americans, but, it's only a 30 minute show.

[EtheltoTillie]

I actually just posted it on the episode thread as off topic. People should know about it. We will see if the mods let it go. 

I usually don't like WWHL, but I tuned in for this one. I thought Matthew sounded a bit like Richard Burton in his real accent.

I too wasn't sure Matthew was kidding about Waitress.   (Six degrees of separation:  my good friend lives in the building where Adrienne Shelley was murdered.  That was awful!)

Edited April 15, 2017 by GussieK

[EtheltoTillie]

I wish someone had asked about a sequel to The Magic of Ordinary Days. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_of_Ordinary_Days

I guess that sequel will never happen now. 

Edited April 15, 2017 by GussieK

[chick binewski]

Matthew was a bit more - idk - jokey? than I expected, but I think the problem with the Waitress comment was Andy's inability to accept sarcasm when he's looking for gossip. His trolling for a threesome was also irritating, but I did like his intro "Their show is banging and so are they!" because I am twelve.

Liked the Rhys' Pieces game, loved the puppies & finding out Matthew pursued Keri 10 years ago. But the line of the night was Matthew mentioning Keri made an old woman overdose on her meds and deadpanning 'that wasn't on the show'. *ded*

[SunnyBeBe]

Yeah, I think Andy had trouble navigating with Matthew's humor.  I just wonder how Matt and Keri fit off camera. I'll admit, that confuses me.  I'm not sure I see them as a match.  Oh well.....

[kokapetl]

I saw a bit of Matthew Rhys's wine show. The posh accent really surprised me.

[sistermagpie]

57 minutes ago, Kokapetl said:

I saw a bit of Matthew Rhys's wine show. The posh accent really surprised me.

I don't think it's posh. It's just Welsh.

[SunnyBeBe]

Matthew's American accent on the show really is so different from his actual accent.  Even the tone is very much lower.

[SunnyBeBe]

Has anyone seen the warnings about Spectrum cable discontinuing with the airing of some cable stations like Fox and FX?  Is it all Spectrum cable companies or just Charter?  My local area just converted to Spectrum from TWC recently, but, I don't think they are Charter.  Does anyone know much about it?  Should I be worried?  

Edited April 17, 2017 by SunnyBeBe

[Moose135]

I got that same warning on last week's show - I'm a TWC customer that just got moved to Spectrum in their acquisition.  I don't think there is a difference between Charter and Spectrum.  From my understanding, Charter is the corporate entity, and Spectrum is the brand name they use for cable service.

[Umbelina]

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Caroline Framke: Halfway through watching “The Committee on Human Rights,” I realized I was annoyed.

Throughout its run, The Americans has always had its characters stop to debrief each other on the particulars of one mission or another, or even just a slightly strange interaction that could, with a stroke of bad luck, mean disaster. And maybe season five isn’t worse than any other on this front, but I sure have felt the drag of these scenes more than ever. Getting renewed for two seasons at once might have made The Americans feel like it could afford to take its sweet time, even this deep into the season. And there were plenty of moments where “The Committee on Human Rights” seemed especially slow.

 

http://www.vox.com/culture/2017/4/18/15342370/the-americans-fx-episode-7-committee-on-human-rights-recap

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Alissa Wilkinson: I think the episode's relative quietness, though, is interesting, because The Americans is one of those shows where events from earlier episodes that didn't seem all that important at the time come back in a big way later on. I think “The Committee on Human Rights” just threw a bunch of Chekhov's guns onto a variety of mantels, and I'm curious about which one is going to go off first.

[Umbelina]

http://dcs.megaphone.fm/SM4668040928.mp3?key=e131998d6c10d31e0ebab725c4d04228 

This week's podcast.  Rhys is there, and the art department, and the Joel's.

[Umbelina]

Should we be feeling mounting pressure — or frustration?

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Libby Nelson: Ooh, I’m dying to talk about this — because I wish I were having the response to these episodes that you’ve experienced, Todd.

I want to feel the building pressure and the looming sense of doom. Instead, I’m just frustrated and lost. I’m confident it’s all heading somewhere, but not from anything we’ve seen in the show itself; I simply have too much faith in The Americans to believe otherwise. (Well, and the fact that I had the same impression for most of season five of Mad Men — whose final episodes then turned out to be the best arc of the series’ entire run.)

Then again, I’m still watching week to week, and this season feels influenced by the rise of streaming and bingeing — it seems like we have a lot of plot lines and yet somehow not a lot of plot.

 

http://www.vox.com/culture/2017/4/25/15422026/the-americans-episode-8-recap-immersion-tuan

I love that last sentence, wish I'd written it myself.

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In part, I suspect, this mirrors how Philip and Elizabeth are feeling too, pulled in a dozen different directions between missions they’re not fully invested in. The result is that while there’s a lot going on, most plots feel like they’re nowhere near a climax. Existing characters’ stories feel like they’ve slowed to a crawl — Stan has taken months to develop a source, which is accurate, I’m sure, but not necessarily a thrill a minute to watch — and new additions don’t get the emotional space and time to breathe that made William and Young Hee, for example, such vital figures last season. The Jenningses, and The Americans itself, are spread thin. It can’t be meaningless that Tuan once again, in “Immersion,” begged for time and attention that our protagonists simply don’t have.

There is also a nice discussion about children/parents younger/older generations in this review/discussion.

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Is this whole season about the inability to escape the past? Perhaps!

Todd: That inability to wholly account for the past has haunted this entire season. We're only now really getting into, say, Stalin's gulags (one of the few things most American laypeople would think of when it comes to "the Soviet Union") and how they continue to haunt certain characters.

And the generational conflicts around Mischa and Paige are starting to unravel at an alarming rate, even if that's happening mostly off to the side of the main story. Children are accounting for the sins of their parents all over the place, even when they don't know what they are.

 

Edited April 26, 2017 by Umbelina

[Umbelina]

Alan Sepinwall

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Is ‘The Americans’ Stuck In A Rut In Its Penultimate Season?

http://uproxx.com/sepinwall/the-americans-immersion-recap-review/

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When FX renewed The Americans for two final seasons, it gave Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg the opportunity to plot out the entire concluding arc of the series without having to worry about how many episodes they would have to tell it, or whether the series might end abruptly before the whole story had been told. That’s a great and reassuring thing, in theory. But what seems to be happening is that the show’s being plotted out with both of those years in mind, and there’s been a slackening of tension in this particular season as a result. There’s still the tremendous sense of dread, there are still the superb performances from the cast, and there are still individual episodes like “Lotus 1-2-3,” but the narrative has felt stuck in the mud for much of this season, as if everyone is marking time for whatever grand and terrible plans the show has for them for next year.

 

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At its best, The Americans is a great psychological drama and a great suspense thriller, but at the moment it’s almost entirely the former.

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There are a few issues The Americans has been struggling with this year as the endgame gets set up. The first is that the show shed a lot of interesting characters last year without coming up with replacements who provide the same emotional heft.

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But a lot of it — Philip re-baiting the hook with Deirdre by inventing a fake wife he’s cheating on with her, the discovery of an actual affair by Alexei’s wife Evgheniya, etc. — is missing that spark that The Americans has at its best. Everything’s a bit detached and slow at the moment, which isn’t ideally where you want to be this close to the end.

I trust that Fields and Weisberg have a great plan for that final year, and I suspect there will be some moments over this season’s last five episodes that will punch me hard in the stomach the way The Americans likes to do. But something’s been lacking for a lot of this year, and “Immersion” helped me recognize it.

 

[sistermagpie]

This episode also reminded me of Mad Men Season 6 when people were frustrated at characters falling back into old patterns that were now less interesting. I think the main moment being when Elizabeth sat down to chat with Granny about conflicts with Philip.

[Umbelina]

I think they are obviously building to SOMETHING big, as one reviewer at VOX said.  They will probably deliver, but damn, the labor is going on forever, and they have lost that remarkable tension this season, and, as I said before, pace.  The sense of dread is overwhelming, but at this point, even some of the most ardent reviewers are beginning to say "OK, get on with it."

I still love "a lot of plot lines, but not a lot of plot."

Edited April 26, 2017 by Umbelina

[Ellaria]

38 minutes ago, Umbelina said:

I think they are obviously building to SOMETHING big, as one reviewer at VOX said.  They will probably deliver, but damn, the labor is going on forever, and they have lost that remarkable tension this season, and, as I said before, pace.  The sense of dread is overwhelming, but at this point, even some of the most ardent reviewers are beginning to say "OK, get on with it."

I still love "a lot of plot lines, but not a lot of plot."

The Vox and the Sepinwall reviews are a breath of fresh air. Nice to see some of the "professional viewers" expressing some of the same impatience that "normal viewers" are feeling.

Regarding tension, it almost seems as if we are being teased with it. As an example: I did not initially welcome the introduction of Misha and his journey to America. However, they successfully built anticipation of his arrival as well as sympathy for this poor guy. While I didn't expect him to land on Phil's doorstep, I was eagerly awaiting their meet up. Then...poof...back to Mother Russia he goes along with any tension that developed about Misha's role in P's life. The "now you see him, now you don't" handling of Misha's story line is a big failure, for me.

I agree that they are building to something but what? I assume that it will be P's eventual breakdown. The only other possibility is Stan finally figuring out who his neighbors are but I don't think that's coming until next season.

[Umbelina]

I think they are building to a huge disaster.  Lots of pieces on the board for that, but in the past they had little payoffs as well.

In some ways this is the most "real" spying we've ever had.  Boring, tense, with some fairly low value targets on all sides of the spying game, CIA, FBI, and KGB.

Bob Baer said on the RED DVD commentary that real spying is boring most of the time, so no one really writes movies or TV shows about what it's really like.  Boring, boring, boring, then sudden action and danger and risk...most agents of case officers don't really pan out, and the bureaucracy is deadening. 

Well, in many ways we are seeing that now, so it's more real, but when you are watching a show that in the past has always had little pay offs, it's hard to not want a bit more of that.  Who likes watching chess pieces endlessly set up?  Make a move.

[Umbelina]

https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/01/29/former-cia-spies-call-the-americans-more-exciting-than-reality

I was searching for information on the Russian Illegals we rounded up and found this article about The Americans, with some quotes by former CIA station chief, who also worked in Moscow, Bob Baer.

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“If you go for 100 percent realism, you’re going to put the audience to bed,” Baer says. “I used to run illegals and you would let them float around a community looking for people who could be potential sources – people with marriage problems, with money problems, people who hated their government. Then they would bring in a case officer who was protected with diplomatic immunity to recruit someone – they would never recruit anybody themselves.”

[Umbelina]

https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/5/9/15599144/the-americans-episode-10-recap-darkroom-wedding

Vox guys really handing in there with this show, but honestly, I think they are trying to convince themselves that more is happening than is really happening.

On the other hand, I hope they are correct, because holy shit this season is slow.

[Umbelina]

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/05/the-americans-patience-pays-off-in-the-brilliant-s.html

total rave from Paste.

[SlovakPrincess]

Eh.  Gotta disagree with the Paste article.  I thought the ending sequence and song were kind of pretentious ... and I don't feel like my patience is paying off, lol!  

Nothing in this episode was surprising or new for me, and I didn't see any grand pronouncement on family and love.  Alexei and family have always disagreed about whether moving to the U.S. was worth it.  Oleg and his parents have always had a sort of muted mutual misery going on.  We already know Phil and Liz really love each other.   And we have seen Paige meekly and passively gravitate towards her parents' secret life and away from any independence or outside companionship for the entire season (which has been super boring, in my opinion).  

From the Vox article, this cracked me up:  "Also: Philip and Elizabeth's big mission of the year essentially boils down to getting some bullies to mock a teenage boy. Good work, everyone!"    

Actually, I thought their big mission was to steal a potted plant, but I guess that was only the first half of the season!  ;)

Edited May 13, 2017 by SlovakPrincess

[Umbelina]

https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/5/16/15646920/americans-episode-11-dyatkovo-recap

The producers should be paying VOX.  I think the VOX writers are giving the show more attention than the show writers are.  Still, another excellent and thoughtful review that almost completely refrains from any criticism of the endless set ups.

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Then again, this episode also made it clear that even returning to the Soviet Union doesn’t necessarily mean seeing the reality of what it takes to get by in the country. Oleg certainly got told this week, by both his partner and his prisoner, that he’s still living a privileged life, blind to the choices other people have to make to survive.

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/05/the-americans-review-dyatkovo.html

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So, too, does the presence of Philip (Matthew Rhys), left in the earlier entry to complete the mission on the warehouse floor: Here, he must bear witness, and the heft of the occasion is too much to lift. In a sense, The Americans has spent multiple seasons building up to this moment, in which Elizabeth pulls the trigger because her husband cannot; his discontent surfaces in “March 8, 1983,” “Travel Agents” and “Lotus 1-2-3” only to be tamped down again, but “Dyatkovo” sees it burst forth as if from Pandora’s box, impossible to put back where it came from. The hour’s suspense emerges, to a significant extent, from watching Philip replicate his entire arc in perfect miniature, edging toward the line in the sand before pausing to consider what it might mean to cross it. He’s unimpressed, for instance, when Claudia (Margo Martindale) attempts to leaven the news that the Centre weaponized the Lassa virus by noting that it’s been named after William; he hesitates at each stage of the Granholm operation, first paralyzed by the fear that they have the wrong woman, then unmoved when he learns she’s the right one.

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The Eichmann that Philip and Elizabeth encounter in Newton, Massachusetts is, as Arendt described the original, “terribly and terrifyingly normal”: When the Nazis invaded Dyatkovo and murdered her family, Natalie Granholm was no older than Paige, and in the decades since she’s rebuilt some semblance of the moral life; in between, in the war’s cruel crucible, she participated in the deaths of hundreds of Russian prisoners. “You’re lying,” Elizabeth snarls, before the prospect of Granholm’s husband’s return elicits her confession. “Your life is a lie.”

I'm seriously impressed by Matt Brennan, the writer of this article.

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And so the question remains: Can people change? Has Natalie Granholm? Has Elizabeth? Has Philip? Have you? Because Arendt’s point, in describing the banality of Eichmann’s evil, is that we’re all capable of it under duress, and that we cannot know whether we’d pull the trigger until the gun is in our hands. For Philip, seeing his father, or himself, in Granholm’s atrocities, it turns out that the task before him is a bridge too far; even for Elizabeth, slipping into her rage as if it were a coat in the back of her closet, the act dredges up a desire to “go home” to Russia that she’s resisted all season. “Dyatkovo” is no apologia for collaborators—Granholm ultimately offers up her life, hoping that the Jennings might spare her husband—but it is clear-eyed that our choices are, in the main, contingent, which is why the defiance of inhumane orders is always such a courageous act. Against the risk of standing up for what’s right, evil is easy, and once its residue settles on the skin, it can never be scrubbed off.

http://www.vulture.com/2017/05/the-americans-recap-season-5-episode-11.html

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With Black Book, Verhoeven boldly indicts the mob mentality that seized the Netherlands after the war, but he also implies that war doesn’t often reveal heroes and villains so unambiguously, especially among ordinary citizens, who are whisked along by the forces of history.Philip can’t bring himself to pull the trigger. Elizabeth bails him out by finishing the job. But while driving away, it’s clear that even she has found her limit. “I want to get out of here,” she says. “We should just go. I mean it. Let’s go home.” Natalie Granholm could have been her — could have been any young woman in that situation — and there’s no argument to be made that killing her is just. Elizabeth could squint hard enough to see the super-wheat project as salvageable, one that cost an innocent life but may save many more if this pest-resistant strain helps feed a starving country. Killing Granholm and her husband offers no such outs: It confronts them with the toxicity of their actions, just as the pages of Pastor Tim’s diary did last week. They don’t know the full story. They never have. And hearing it from a target shrinks their moral authority to nil.

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I thought of Verhoeven and Black Book often during the stunning final 15 minutes of “Dyatkovo,” which confronts Philip and Elizabeth with similar truths. As soldiers for the Soviet cause, they were brought into the spy game through the same manipulation and us-versus-them propaganda they’re currently deploying on their own daughter. They have enough experience by now to know that the world isn’t so black-and-white, but not so much that they question the righteousness of a mission to kill Natalie Granholm, a woman charged with helping the Nazis lure over a thousand Russians to their death at a pit on the edge of her hometown. As it’s explained to the Philip and Elizabeth, Granholm fled justice through a German hospital, where she was being treated for venereal diseases for bedding so many Nazis. They’re told that she’s now living out comfortable, privileged life in the States, never having answered for her crimes.

Edited May 17, 2017 by Umbelina

[BW Manilowe]

Keri Russell will be honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 11:30AM Pacific Time on May 30th.

https://twitter.com/variety/status/867130521666584577

If you're not in the area (it's a public event, but I haven't seen the location of Keri's star yet) or you can't go for some other reason, the ceremonies are normally streamed live online; they're also posted for later viewing after the live presentation. If nobody beats me to it, I'll try to post that link when it's available.

[BW Manilowe]

More info on Keri's Hollywood Walk of Fame Star presentation:

Keri's star will be located at 6356 Hollywood Boulevard. So if you're ever in LA, you can go see it once it's installed if you like.

The unveiling ceremony (at which she will be present--she has to attend to receive the star; haven't heard about Matthew yet, although the honorees usually have at least 2 people speak on their behalf at their ceremonies, so Matthew could speak for Keri, or come just to support her) will be live streamed as it happens, then available for viewing after, at walkoffame.com .

https://twitter.com/wofstargirl/status/867135372903550976

This Tweet names the speakers for Keri's ceremony. Matthew isn't 1 of them, but JJ Abrams & 1 of the Joels from The Americans's Producer/Creator staff are among the 3 named.

https://twitter.com/cnnladavid/status/867139579429568512

Edited May 23, 2017 by BW Manilowe
To add more info.

[Umbelina]

http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/kids-arent-all-right-americans-heads-toward-end-it-255824

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It’ll be interesting to look back at season five in the context of The Americans as a whole; in the short run, episodes like “The World Council Of Churches” are the greatest test of the notion that the family material matters just as much as the spy material. Tonight, those two halves cannot be disentangled: Philip and Elizabeth’s next big move will have a tremendous impact on their family, and Oleg’s past actions may forever separate him from his.

https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/5/23/15680738/the-americans-episode-12-world-council-of-churches-recap
 

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As the episode ends, Tuan tells his “parents” that he figured out a solution to the Pascha problem — just tell the kid to slit his wrists, so his parents will think that living in the States is so unbearable they'll have no choice but to take him back to the USSR.

Philip and Elizabeth, realizing just how ridiculous this plan is and how many ways it could go horribly, horribly wrong, spring into action — and may inadvertently trip the surveillance surrounding Pascha’s family. See you next week!

 

 

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But speaking of family, loyalty, and allegiance to the Soviet Union, let’s talk about Oleg. This season has really delved into the failures of the Soviet Union, especially its failure to live up to its own ideals — the ideals Elizabeth, in particular, still believes she’s fighting for. While Paige is reading Karl Marx, Oleg is realizing he lives in a profoundly unjust and unequal society. That alone, as his father suggested, could be enough to put him in danger. But it’s not just that — the slow, painstaking investigation into Oleg’s background is finally circling his decision to tell Stan Beeman about the biological warfare mission.

People have been killed for much less. “The World Council of Churches” suggests that when all is said and done and we’re looking back on six seasons of this tremendous show, it’s possible that he was the hero all along.

 

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It is hard to see how whatever’s up with Stan isn’t setup for season six, but at the same time, it's hard to imagine season six devoting a lot of time to … whatever this plot line is.

[Umbelina]

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Paige was actually happy about the pastor’s fate — after hearing his decision, she was able to get a full night’s sleep. She’s still operating in the shadows, though. She’s impressed by her parents’ ability to resolve the situation without knowing how close they came to killing him. (She also doesn’t know that in a few years the World Council of Churches, the organization that offered him the job in Argentina, will be accused of having been infiltrated by the K.G.B.) The swamp of lies forces, or lures, Philip into fatuousness: “We’d never do anything like that lightly, obviously.”

And most significantly, she doesn’t know about her parents’ sudden resolve (irritatingly sudden, in dramatic terms) to take her and Henry back to Moscow. It’s the bizarro version of Pastor Tim and Alice happily moving to Buenos Aires, where Clare Louise can learn Spanish. Philip and Elizabeth broached the idea with Claudia, who was encouraging and said, smiling smugly and cluelessly, that Paige and Henry would have “very interesting lives.”

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/23/arts/television/the-americans-season-5-episode-12-world-council-churches.html

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Showrunners Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg, who scripted this episode and next week’s season finale, know Philip and Elizabeth so well that they draw a subtle distinction between them: Both urge Tuan to call Pasha and stop him from cutting his wrists, but when Pasha doesn’t answer, it’s Philip alone who takes the initiative to march down to the Morozov’s house to intervene, which is more reckless than Elizabeth will allow herself to be. In any case, they’ve gotten to a point where they cannot abide the collateral damage necessary to achieve a larger goal for their country. Their role as parents now takes clear precedence over their duty as patriots.

 

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• Oleg may not be free (or alive) much longer, but his investigation of corruption within the food industry has left him so disillusioned that it’s going to be hard for him to carry on anyway. Only functionaries will serve any jail time. Their bosses will continue propping up the same system. They will, in Oleg’s words, “take the bread people are supposed to eat and make a fortune on it.”

http://www.vulture.com/2017/05/the-americans-recap-season-5-episode-12.html
 

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Where is the fifth season of The Americans taking us? With just one episode left, this slow-burn season is still largely a mystery.

But let's start with Oleg, whose storyline has done a funny kind of double-work: While Philip and Elizabeth loyally serve the KGB in the States (with Elizabeth, at any rate, closing her eyes to its flaws), Oleg is witnessing the KGB's perfidy as well as its irrelevance back in the Soviet Union.

 

 

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Oleg's is a claustrophobic storyline, one that shows a minister's comparative wealth — the meals, the drinks — and how little that luxury profits him. It's useful, then, to get some other views of life in Russia — this time through Mischa, Philip's long-lost son — who conveys that Philip's brother is well and thoroughly intimidated by his brother's success. No one is allowed to ask about Philip, who in his homeland appears to be at cosmonaut levels of secret heroism. (I really do hope our Americans make it home because it would be fascinating to see their habits, built on a lifetime of careful anonymity, exploded by whatever quiet forms of celebrity would attend their return. How are ex-agents treated? Would they get invited to the minister's house?)

This isn't a spoiler, I hit the wrong tag, and can't remove it.

Spoiler

 

Whether that ends up being the Centre using Henry against them — my initial thought, which is looking less likely — or Paige turning on them, or Philip and Elizabeth turning on each other. But as we gear up for the finale, one thing is for sure: For a show about intelligence, no one knows enough anymore. Not Beeman and Aderholt, whose open-mouthed astonishment at being confronted with Sofia's betrothed leaves us as much in the dark as they are. Not Oleg, who's not sure what his interrogators have on him. Not Philip, who still doesn't know what Renee is after or for whom. Not Henry, who apparently knows nothing at all.

And especially not us.

 

http://theweek.com/articles/700942/something-going-americans

Edited May 24, 2017 by Umbelina

[BW Manilowe]

More info on Keri's upcoming Hollywood Walk of Fame Star ceremony. This Tweet says that her fellow cast members Matthew, Noah (Stan Beeman) & Holly (Paige) will be there as well (though they won't be speaking on her behalf).

https://twitter.com/wofstargirl/status/867768583115460608

[MisterBluxom]

Moved to "The Cast in Other Roles".

Edited May 31, 2017 by MissBluxom

[IrishPirate]

Info about Keri Russell in a movie can go in "The Cast in Other Roles." Posting something new in that thread will bump it up toward the top of the list.

[BW Manilowe]

Keri gets her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame today! The live stream of the ceremony starts at 2:30PM Eastern/11:30AM Pacific at walkoffame.com. You can also watch the ceremony later at the same website.

[BW Manilowe]

From NBC News: Actor's Breakout Role in The Americans Straight Out of His Family History.

Edited May 30, 2017 by BW Manilowe
To fix spacing & punctuation.

[BW Manilowe]

Variety interviews Keri about her Walk of Fame Star & other things.

http://variety.com/2017/tv/awards/keri-russell-star-on-hollywood-walk-of-fame-1202446173/

[BW Manilowe]

This Tweet includes a few pics from Keri's Walk of Fame star unveiling ceremony. Yes that's Matthew kissing her in 1 of them. They also took a group pic of Keri with Matthew & cast mates Holly Taylor & Noah Emmerich with the star, which you can see during the video of the ceremony (the link to the video website is about 4 posts above this).

https://twitter.com/variety/status/869646593896480768

And here's a pic of Keri's star, presented for her work in television. The feet belong to Ana Martinez (aka @wofstargirl), who works with the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce (which sponsors the Walk of Fame) & produces the star unveiling ceremonies on their behalf. She talks to Keri a bit in the video (but, at least on my device, the sound was out/cut by that point--it went out/was cut during the photo ops involving Keri & the star after it was unveiled).

https://twitter.com/wofstargirl/status/869655915443736576

Edited May 30, 2017 by BW Manilowe
To add more info/a link.