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The Americans in the Media

maraleia

By maraleia
in The Americans [V]

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sistermagpie
sistermagpie

I actually did get all of that, I just didn't see why it would be that satisfying to me. I spent seasons 1-4 hoping that Mischa was a lie created to manipulate Philip, so I was totally disappointed wh

Plums
Plums

Couple of new articles this morning about the end of the series. A Vox piece that is very nice and doesn't give away any spoilers for the finale other than to say the reviewer saw and loved it. 

SlovakPrincess
SlovakPrincess

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/19/arts/television/richard-thomas-of-the-americans-on-agent-gaads-fate-john-boy-and-jimmy-carter.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&_r=1 "Do you

hellmouse

hellmouse

This is an interview from 2017 with Irina Dvorovenko (Evgheniya Morozov in season 5). I had no idea that was a principal ballerina with the American Ballet Theater before retiring in 2013! She talks a little about her own experience growing up in the USSR.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/arts/dance/irina-dvorovenko-the-americans.html

Quote

On “The Americans,” which stars Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys as undercover Soviet spies in the United States during the Cold War, Ms. Dvorovenko plays a forlorn, isolated woman with a depressed son and a husband who has embraced his new country. Ms. Dvorovenko is somewhat unrecognizable in the role: Sallow and drawn, her usually glittering sapphire eyes disappear into the camera with piercing melancholy. As it happens, it’s not the biggest stretch.

“It’s my childhood,” she said.

Ms. Dvorovenko, born in 1973, grew up in Ukraine with dancer parents and studied gymnastics before entering ballet school at 10. For her, the show’s time period has brought back a flood of memories. Many have to do with hunting for food. (In the transcript of our interview, that word comes up 21 times.) In one scene, her character shows dismay at the abundance of groceries in the United States; Ms. Dvorovenko said she understands Evgheniya’s shock.

“When perestroika happened, the stores were completely empty,” she said, adding that her husband remembers waiting, at the age of 10 or 11, for a store to open and grabbing whatever he could. “They were literally bending the metal cages to grab the raw chicken. We never had gyms — the workout was eight or 10 hours a day to run all over the area to find the food in any possible store. Women never smiled.”

While on tour with the National Opera and Ballet Theater of Ukraine in the early 1990s, she said she and her fellow dancers were on a mission: to bring home as much food as possible. Ms. Dvorovenko pointed to a table to indicate how large her bag was. “You unzip, unzip, unzip?” she said, with a giggle. “You have, like, a dead body in it.”

The show’s wardrobe brings back memories, too. Ms. Dvorovenko’s description of it? Ugly. “The only colors people were wearing were brown, black and dark gray,” she said. “My parents were different because they were traveling to the West to perform, and they were buying fancy clothes. I was embarrassed to wear them because none of my childhood friends had any.”

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crgirl412

crgirl412

12 hours ago, hellmouse said:

This is an interview from 2017 with Irina Dvorovenko (Evgheniya Morozov in season 5). I had no idea that was a principal ballerina with the American Ballet Theater before retiring in 2013! She talks a little about her own experience growing up in the USSR.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/arts/dance/irina-dvorovenko-the-americans.html

These are the elites of the country hoarding food to bring back!!  I thought they were treated very, very well- especially those who traveled abroad so they wouldn't defect.   

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crgirl412

crgirl412

5 hours ago, Umbelina said:

Things were a real mess then, the country was broke, crime ruled, and the powerful cemented their money and power.

I wonder if the real spies living here during the late 80's were as out of touch we saw Philip and Elizabeth.  By the time it all changed in the early 90's, they would've known from American news what had been going on all of those years.  I would love to hear from them. 

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Umbelina

Umbelina

(edited)

In fairness, most reviews are positive, some absolutely gushy.  http://www.metacritic.com/feature/the-americans-fx-series-finale-review-start

One that goes into far more depth and is WELL worth a read?  This reviewer includes things from other seasons as well.  Seriously, read this one, he makes many great points, and they aren't the point's I've made. 
http://ew.com/tv/2018/05/30/the-americans-series-finale-review/ 

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This finale wasn’t terrible, had a few moments of pure bliss. But it felt limp, unwilling to push its characters too far. There was tremendous tension, which The Americans was always good at, and disappointing follow-through, which The Americans always struggled with. The personal collided, finally, with the political, and the result was emotionally gratifying but narratively unsatisfying. It suffered, unexpectedly, from a climactic Attack of the Cutes. I cried, I groaned.

 

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And you had to remember the FX drama’s fifth season — a fascinating snooze — which gave the impression that the story was shifting macroeconomic. You felt The Americans was evolving above the simple pleasures of gunshot catharsis. “The real tragedy is the bureaucratic corruption of the Soviet food supply” is a compelling thesis, many TV-drama universes removed from “Walt kills everyone with a machine gun.”

But this final season was a gory overcorrection. Elizabeth (Keri Russell) went on a killing spree, bang-bang, snap-crack, [sound of a mournful paintbrush shoved down a throat].

 

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Meanwhile, Paige (Holly Taylor) gets to start a new life, a college dropout on the run from society who’s already sampled liberal Christian activism and radical communist subterfuge. The memoir writes itself.

Meanwhile, poor Stan discovered half his existence was a lie, or all of it: His best friend, his best friend’s wife … heck, his wife? This is freaky stuff, no doubt, cusping on Full Kafka. 

 

Edited by Umbelina
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Umbelina

Umbelina

https://deadline.com/2018/05/the-americans-series-finale-spoilers-review-recap-keri-russell-matthew-rhys-fx-1202399755/
 

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The Americans will always be one of the greatest television shows ever but tonight’s series finale was not one of its greatest moments.

Lacking the tension that has defined the show from its 2013 debut up until tonight, hobbled with inconsistencies and stumbling with sentimentality over and over like a roadside sobriety test drunk, the Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg-penned end to the sixth and final season of the FX Cold War drama was lukewarm at best.

Such an unfortunate and tepid close is a sin in a sense, betraying the foundations of a great series so the Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys-portrayed long time Soviet moles could effortlessly escape the snare of incompetent American authorities. Long faced but bottling up the loss of their children by choice and circumstance, the disguised duo took a jaunt across the Atlantic from porous Canada, avoided Interpol, and made it back to the seemingly welcome embrace of the still Mikhail Gorbachev-led Mother Russia.

 

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It was a cheat and lazy writing from a series that never pandered and clearly lost its usually disciplined and near perfectly paced way.

Instead it was spinoff set-up central and the Keystone Cops with the hunted Jennings and their pursuer and next-door neighbor FBI Agent Stan Beeman forced to appear like the sulky amateurs we just spent six years learning they are not for narrative rookie twists. No need to robustly recite chapter and verse every part of the mainly decorative finale but surely viewers could have been given more credit.

 

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With the fall of the Berlin Wall imminent in real life, a failed coup against Gorbachev and the collapse of the Soviet Union officially within four years, not to mention Boris Yeltsin’s reign of error and the rise of Putin, the bloodless return of Russell and Rhys’ characters to at least some portion of the KGB and chilly Moscow itself screams out “мы вернемся” rather than “это конец,” even if Fields, Weisberg, FX boss John Landgraf or no one else knows the revival plan yet.

Quote

In that context, The Americans ender has a lot of company in the annals of finales, but that’s the problem with this end – The Americans was never like everybody else, it was one of the greats and that got lost in translation tonight.

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Plums

Plums

(edited)

this is finally posted in it's entirety!

edit: I hadn't watched it all when I posted it, but Keidrich has a super adorable moment where he's talking about the history of henry's character on the show and tries to reference the crush on sandra, but he's so embarrassed he can't finish the sentence and everyone laughs at him. and then he and holly have a sibling banter moment. v cute. 

 

Edited by Plums
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anonymiss

anonymiss

On 7/5/2018 at 4:58 PM, Plums said:

this is finally posted in it's entirety!

edit: I hadn't watched it all when I posted it, but Keidrich has a super adorable moment where he's talking about the history of henry's character on the show and tries to reference the crush on sandra, but he's so embarrassed he can't finish the sentence and everyone laughs at him. and then he and holly have a sibling banter moment. v cute. 

 

 

Just watched it. They all seemed kind of over it, esp. Keri and Matthew. Holly seems like Paige.

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sistermagpie

sistermagpie

6 hours ago, kokapetl said:

I don’t remember anyone’s house exploding. 

Wasn't there a bomb in an scientist's house in S1? P&E were trying to stop that German assassin but one bomb still went off? An FBI agent might have gotten killed there...?

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Dev F

Dev F

(edited)
10 hours ago, Umbelina said:

So that's why Elizabeth didn't do the logical thing and kill Claudia, because the producers "promised her."  Wow.

No, but it might be why they wrote a story in which it was logical to let Claudia live. The idea that they had a whole ending planned out that would've required Claudia to die, but then they were like, "Whoops, we promised Margot we wouldn't do that!" so they left her alive but didn't change anything else is absurd.

Though I suspect what Martindale is actually talking about is that they didn't kill her off during the years in which she was mostly unavailable to do the show, instead letting her appear as her availability allowed. That seems more likely than her having some weird attachment to the idea that the character never dies, even as the show is going off the air.

Edited by Dev F
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sistermagpie

sistermagpie

11 hours ago, Dev F said:

Though I suspect what Martindale is actually talking about is that they didn't kill her off during the years in which she was mostly unavailable to do the show, instead letting her appear as her availability allowed. That seems more likely than her having some weird attachment to the idea that the character never dies, even as the show is going off the air.

Yeah, I think she would have been just fine with a juicy death for Claudia in the end. She certainly got a good reception for that on a certain other show she's known and loved for.

Also I always imagine when people say things like that they're kidding--I mean about promising the actor something and that's why they'd stick for it.

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Umbelina

Umbelina

They should have had Elizabeth kill her, for logic.  Who knows why they didn't?  Maybe the promise, but more likely because they wanted to be "edgy" and "surprising" and since killing Claudia is the only thing that made any damn sense for Elizabeth and Philip's survival, they not only had Elizabeth confess all to her (TWICE!) they then had the Elizabeth, who had been on an unprecedented murder spree all season, let her live.

Ridiculous.

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Dev F

Dev F

1 hour ago, Umbelina said:

They should have had Elizabeth kill her, for logic.  Who knows why they didn't?  Maybe the promise, but more likely because they wanted to be "edgy" and "surprising" and since killing Claudia is the only thing that made any damn sense for Elizabeth and Philip's survival, they not only had Elizabeth confess all to her (TWICE!) they then had the Elizabeth, who had been on an unprecedented murder spree all season, let her live.

Ridiculous.

I honestly don't understand why you keep searching for some elaborate, secret explanation for this decision, when it's explained in the writing itself: Claudia indicates that the inevitable result of Elizabeth's message about the coup reaching Moscow is "They'll take apart the Centre's leadership. The people who supported you all these years. They'll put them in jail. All of us." Since that fate is inevitable, and Claudia herself is willingly going home to face it, killing her would be pointlessly vindictive.

Now, I know you don't accept Claudia's premise, and you can definitely make the argument that it doesn't make sense given the real-world history of Russian hardliners at the time. But I don't get why you don't just assume, therefore, that the show's failing was asking us to accept this shaky premise. Instead, you assume that the writers intended for us not to accept their own premise, and then you have to conjure all sorts of elaborate theories to explain why the writers didn't want us to! That seems like a pretty literal violation of Occam's Razor to me.

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Umbelina

Umbelina

Nothing is an "elaborate theory" that I've said, unless I try to fanwank a way that Elizabeth or Philip aren't murdered by Claudia and the coup people for betraying them.

As for why did it come up?  Because of the video!

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crgirl412

crgirl412

(edited)

This isn't really about The Americans in the Media but about the Jamal Khashoggi debacle.  I have to say first: I think it is terrible that it happened and was planned by his own countrymen.  How this connects to The Americans:

As I watched the public camera footage of those who killed him walking around and entering and leaving the embassy, I literally thought to myself: "even in this day and age [meaning the camera/cell phone footage] Elizabeth would've been able to do this without getting caught!!"

Edited by crgirl412
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SoMuchTV

SoMuchTV

6 hours ago, SunnyBeBe said:

The driver who hit and injured actress Ruthie Ann Miles  (Young Lee) and killed her children, found dead of suicide. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6361299/Woman-wheel-car-fatally-ran-two-young-children-dead-apparent-suicide.html

I don't want to "like" your post, because that's not exactly the message I want to send, but thanks for posting that. I had seen the headline but didn't realize that this was the Ruthie Ann Miles incident.

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topanga

topanga

5 hours ago, SoMuchTV said:

I don't want to "like" your post, because that's not exactly the message I want to send, but thanks for posting that. I had seen the headline but didn't realize that this was the Ruthie Ann Miles incident.

 

5 hours ago, SunnyBeBe said:

i know what you mean.  It was such a horrible tragedy for some many.  

Yes. My heart goes out to her and her family. Losing your children has got to be one of the most devastating tragedies a parent can experience. 

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Umbelina

Umbelina

On 3/18/2019 at 7:09 PM, sistermagpie said:

In honor of the 20th anniversary of The Sopranos the NYT has a list of what they think are the best shows since then and each one has someone involved in the show quoted talking about something about it. For the Americans, it's Alison Wright.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/arts/television/best-drama-series.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur

I'm so glad you linked that.

NOT so much about The Americans though I liked Alison Wright's take there, but because LOST (a show I gave up on in frustration before the end) was listed, and down the google rabbit hole I went, eventually ending up here: 

OMG, I wish I had found this ages ago.  LOST explained clearly.

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BW Manilowe

BW Manilowe

(edited)

From ABC News/Good Morning America (aka GMA): Keri Russell Opens Up About Her Broadway Debut in ‘Burn This’ (VIDEO)

It’s the first revival of a/this play by Lanford Wilson. Keri’s co-star is Adam Driver, with whom she also co-stars in the upcoming ninth film in the Star Wars franchise.

For anybody in the area, or anybody who might wanna take a road trip to see her in it:

The play is at the Hudson Theatre on Broadway. In the linked info page in this paragraph from the theatre, it says it’s a strictly limited engagement (but doesn’t say how limited/doesn’t give a closing date). The previews began on March 15th; the play opens on April 16th.

Apparently Matthew (whom Michael Strahan, the interviewer, called Keri’s husband; she called Matthew “my guy”... twice) got her interested in doing the play. I liked the interview but thought it was too short & I thought that Keri’s lipstick was too bright, or something; at any rate I thought it should’ve been a different shade.

Edited by BW Manilowe
To add a word.
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sistermagpie

sistermagpie

I don't know if this counts as media, but didn't know where else to put it. I was walking down the street today and came across a new, little museum that recently opened--the KGB museum! So I went in (shocked it was open--small, interesting museums seem to always be closed) and had a tour. My favorite part was when the guide (everyone who worked there was Russian) was showing us a listening device that was like a stethoscope and I thought oh, that must have been the thing Philip used when he was eavesdropping on Anneliese and Yusef.

And then the guide said, Philip used this! Then he clarified...you know, in the show The Americans. With the Afghan guy.

I loved that not only did he know just the episode etc. but that when he first brought it up he just said Philip like of course he was a historical figure we al knew.

I also got the book "Spy School" full of exercises to sharpen the sky skills (translated from the Russian). Here's the museum:

https://kgbespionagemuseum.org/

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