Let's have a do-over! How The Americans might have been written better...

[Bannon]

There was some positive response to this topic, when it was proposed in the latest episode thread, so I thought I'd start it. This has been one of the most paradoxical shows I've ever stuck with through a long run. The acting for the most part has been outstanding. The Martha arc was tremendously written, one of the best I've enjoyed in any show, aided by the magnificent Allison Wright. Yet I have been frequently flummoxed by writing errors that seem very obvious to me. I have many thoughts as to how they might have been pretty easily avoided, but I'd be interested in what others think.

[Bannon]

Can most of us agree that it would have been perfectly possible to write a very interesting show about KGB illegals in the U.S. in the '80s, without having them rack up a body count appropriate for a major battle in the Civil War?

[Erin9]

I agree with that. It’s not a big issue to me though. Most of the people they killed I didn’t know well enough to really care. The big heartbreaker was in S3 when she killed the elderly woman Betty after talking to her over a period of time. Maybe Gene the guy Philip killed to try and save Martha. And the Russian couple from last season. Those are the ones that come to mind immediately anyway.

There will be a ton to talk about when the show ends because we’ll know just exactly what did and did not matter. 

Over all, I’d say this has been this one of the most engrossing, fascinating and thought provoking shows I’ve watched. But, of course, mistakes get made or things the writers thought were brilliant, we don’t. 

[CaliCheeseSucks]

I'd add the poor sucker in the wheat lab last season, the poor Naval Observatory guard this season (which I think was motivated by a combination of "my daughter screwed up" *and* "dude hit on my daughter"), the general last week, the audit guy this week... Even though we didn't know them well, I'm so over Elizabeth Jennings: Murder Machine that it is bothering me innocent person after innocent person is disposed of so she can keep getting her way. 

Maybe the end game is the FBI realizes they're dealing with a serial killer. (And then the BAU sweeps in! Just kidding.) 

But the show was far more suspenseful when the kills were rare and grounded, organic to the narrative. The first three seasons seemed very earnest in trying to depict realistically the drama of Russian illegals living, working and raising an American family. The suspensions of disbelief were rare and within reason. Not so much anymore.

[Umbelina]

A complete rewrite of last season.  

[Bannon]

3 minutes ago, Umbelina said:

A complete rewrite of last season.  

The shame of last season is that there was no need for it to be awful, and could have used the same elements to ground it in a historically interesting way. Imagine P and E telling Claudia, "Hey, there isn't a damned thing about this wheat project which resembles a bioweapons program, and, in fact, as soon as this agricompany makes this wheat strain viable, we can just buy It. Stop wasting our time with this nonsense". Claudia replies, "Hey, I believe you, but these morons back in Moscow what to check the boxes on their paperwork, so just do as you are told".

Such an angle has the distinct advantage of resembling how the world works, with bureauracies just chugging along, doing stupid bureaucratic things, which also lies at the heart of why the Soviet system collapsed. Also, if they insisted that a schlub had to get murdered at some point, then P and E know from the start that the schlub murdering is completely pointless, which greatly heightens the feeling of alienation. Better yet, they could have left out the schlub murdering, and played up the comic frustration of P and E criss crossing the country for weeks or months on end, having utterly pointless sex with annoying targets. Give E an unattractive target with poor hygiene. There could have been some laugh out loud moments which advance the story very well. 

I cannot figure out why these writers stumbled so badly last season.

[Bannon]

45 minutes ago, Erin9 said:

I agree with that. It’s not a big issue to me though. Most of the people they killed I didn’t know well enough to really care. The big heartbreaker was in S3 when she killed the elderly woman Betty after talking to her over a period of time. Maybe Gene the guy Philip killed to try and save Martha. And the Russian couple from last season. Those are the ones that come to mind immediately anyway.

There will be a ton to talk about when the show ends because we’ll know just exactly what did and did not matter. 

Over all, I’d say this has been this one of the most engrossing, fascinating and thought provoking shows I’ve watched. But, of course, mistakes get made or things the writers thought were brilliant, we don’t. 

It wasn't a matter of me caring about the people being killed. It's a matter of telling a story that requires the audience to suspend disbelief to a ridiculous degree, and it makes Liz in particular a lot less interesting, because only a total sociopath would kill for years on end like that without having a breakdown, and total sociopaths are fundamentally uninteresting people.

[Erin9]

8 minutes ago, Bannon said:

It wasn't a matter of me caring about the people being killed. It's a matter of telling a story that requires the audience to suspend disbelief to a ridiculous degree, and it makes Liz in particular a lot less interesting, because only a total sociopath would kill for years on end like that without having a breakdown, and total sociopaths are fundamentally uninteresting people.

I guess I don’t focus much on the kills. There have been so many, and I don’t think much about the realism of it. (OT- but if you ask me about Suits, Donna getting promoted to COO distracts the heck out of me because she was so clearly unqualified for that role. Moving up was fine; that was not believable. So- I see your point about the kills being a distraction for you.)

 I think all the kills this season have a point though. I can’t believe it is lost on the writers she’s killed 3 people in as many episodes. I hope so anyway! We shall see. 

I see your point about Elizabeth, but I’d argue that she is breaking down and has been for some time. 

[sistermagpie]

Just now, Bannon said:

It wasn't a matter of me caring about the people being killed. It's a matter of telling a story that requires the audience to suspend disbelief to a ridiculous degree, and it makes Liz in particular a lot less interesting, because only a total sociopath would kill for years on end like that without having a breakdown, and total sociopaths are fundamentally uninteresting people.

Yes, that's the issue for me too. The kills mean nothing--not because we don't know the people but because they decide to kill people for almost any reason. It's one thing when they're acting as assassins--I can accept that as part of their job. But most of their kills are because they made a mistake. It makes them bad spies and it makes murder seem unimportant to them. Especially when no murder has any consequence ever. Presumably Elizabeth killing people every week is supposed to show her fraying, but that would carry a lot more weight if they'd established murder as a last resort instead of their solution for just about everything.

And yet, imo, the far more resonant stories aren't about them killing anybody, it's about them affecting people who live on. The Martha story being the most obvious example. That's stuff that's more about lying and spying. This past ep ended with Elizabeth murdering yet another large man with no problem because she made a mistake and then got lucky and the real cliffhanger was two guys meeting in a park like actual old-school spies. I could actually fear for them because they seemed vulnerable.

Watch, next week a terrier will run up and sniff Oleg's leg and Philip will have to strangle the dog and its owner.

[kokapetl]

Remember when we thought Paige was going to hang herself? That would have been realistic. 

[Bannon]

3 minutes ago, Erin9 said:

I guess I don’t focus much on the kills. There have been so many, and I don’t think much about the realism of it. (OT- but if you ask me about Suits, Donna getting promoted to COO distracts the heck out of me because she was so clearly unqualified for that role. Moving up was fine; that was not believable. So- I see your point about the kills being a distraction for you.)

 I think all the kills this season have a point though. I can’t believe it is lost on the writers she’s killed 3 people in as many episodes. I hope so anyway! We shall see. 

I see your point about Elizabeth, but I’d argue that she is breaking down and has been for some time. 

The breakdown is way, way, way, too slow in the making, for somebody who has been on a killing spree for 6 years; there is certainly no reason to think her homicidal habits went into hibernation between 1984-1987. To me, it simply would have made for a much better show to dial back the ol' ultraviolence from the beginning.

[Erin9]

43 minutes ago, Umbelina said:

A complete rewrite of last season.  

Yeah. I didn’t hate it as much as some. I spent a decent amount of time defending it, as I recall. But- it was the slowest and least engrossing of an otherwise addictive show. Clearly the weakest season imo.

Maybe they could have at least given a full explanation of Philip’s childhood, instead of the drips we got. There probably isn’t time for that now.

Or explain what the KGB guys wanted from Gaad. Maybe we’ll get to it, but again, short on time to pick up these threads. 

It’s hard to complain about Renee, yet, since we don’t know for sure what’s up with her,  but she could have been mysterious and more three dimensional at the same time. 

There were things that worked- that even watching this season that I say- okay- I see why that happened now. Like the mass burnout that was so depressing, but clearly has a point now. 

But, yes, that season could have been better. 

[Bannon]

4 minutes ago, Kokapetl said:

Remember when we thought Paige was going to hang herself? That would have been realistic. 

It really would have been one of the bravest choices ever made by writers in heavily serialized t.v. drama, and portraying the fallout on the surviving Jennings, including Henry, if done right, may have vaulted it to among the top dramas in t.v. history. Instead, to me, this will always be a show with some brilliant elements, and some mystifying mega-misteps.

[Bannon]

13 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

Yes, that's the issue for me too. The kills mean nothing--not because we don't know the people but because they decide to kill people for almost any reason. It's one thing when they're acting as assassins--I can accept that as part of their job. But most of their kills are because they made a mistake. It makes them bad spies and it makes murder seem unimportant to them. Especially when no murder has any consequence ever. Presumably Elizabeth killing people every week is supposed to show her fraying, but that would carry a lot more weight if they'd established murder as a last resort instead of their solution for just about everything.

And yet, imo, the far more resonant stories aren't about them killing anybody, it's about them affecting people who live on. The Martha story being the most obvious example. That's stuff that's more about lying and spying. This past ep ended with Elizabeth murdering yet another large man with no problem because she made a mistake and then got lucky and the real cliffhanger was two guys meeting in a park like actual old-school spies. I could actually fear for them because they seemed vulnerable.

Watch, next week a terrier will run up and sniff Oleg's leg and Philip will have to strangle the dog and its owner.

Again, the Martha arc, to me, is among the best things I've ever seen. So well done that it didn't bother me that the KGB should have killed her in the end, in much the same way that it didn't bother me that Jesse Pinkman should have been killed in one of the earlier seasons of Breaking Bad. 

[Erin9]

10 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

Yes, that's the issue for me too. The kills mean nothing--not because we don't know the people but because they decide to kill people for almost any reason. It's one thing when they're acting as assassins--I can accept that as part of their job. But most of their kills are because they made a mistake. It makes them bad spies and it makes murder seem unimportant to them. Especially when no murder has any consequence ever. Presumably Elizabeth killing people every week is supposed to show her fraying, but that would carry a lot more weight if they'd established murder as a last resort instead of their solution for just about everything.

And yet, imo, the far more resonant stories aren't about them killing anybody, it's about them affecting people who live on. The Martha story being the most obvious example. That's stuff that's more about lying and spying. This past ep ended with Elizabeth murdering yet another large man with no problem because she made a mistake and then got lucky and the real cliffhanger was two guys meeting in a park like actual old-school spies. I could actually fear for them because they seemed vulnerable.

Watch, next week a terrier will run up and sniff Oleg's leg and Philip will have to strangle the dog and its owner.

I absolutely agree that Philip and Oleg meeting was far more compelling than Elizabeth killing another person. We’re not close enough to the end for me to believe he might just overpower her or someone will hear a struggle and she’ll get caught.

I really didn’t focus on the killing at all. I was impatiently waiting to get back to Philip since he was clearly headed to see Oleg. That was the show to me. That last scene. And everything P and E said to each other or about each other. (And Oleg.) Admittedly I practically tuned out the killing. Which may be another reason it didn’t bother me. 

Martha is a great example of the effects of spying. On a much smaller scale, so was Young Hee and her family. S4 handled that very well. 

[sistermagpie]

Just now, Erin9 said:

I really didn’t focus on the killing at all. I was impatiently waiting to get back to Philip since he was clearly headed to see Oleg. That was the show to me. That last scene. And everything P and E said to each other or about each other. (And Oleg.) Admittedly I practically tuned out the killing. Which may be another reason it didn’t bother me. 

 

Right, exactly. It seems hard to focus on the killing at this point. Even Elizabeth makes a face like, "Crap. I'm going to have to kill him" because it's so not shocking. They barely even have to tell us. It's like that time Philip was planting the computer bug and a guy came in because he forgot his wallet and saw the open door. The guy wound up finding Philip and then they just cut to Philip wheeling out a garbage can because of course he was dead now.

Where as the Martha stuff and Young Hee too is more about dealing with someone who's undercover. They thought they were having a real relationship but the other person wasn't real. It's like the opposite of Philip and Elizabeth who thought they had a cover relationship but it became real. That's the issue most people who come into contact with undercover people or con men experience.

[Erin9]

22 minutes ago, Bannon said:

It really would have been one of the bravest choices ever made by writers in heavily serialized t.v. drama, and portraying the fallout on the surviving Jennings, including Henry, if done right, may have vaulted it to among the top dramas in t.v. history. Instead, to me, this will always be a show with some brilliant elements, and some mystifying mega-misteps.

It would have been brave. But I would not have wanted to see that. That would truly have been too much for me. I don’t think I could watch a show that seriously dealt with the suicide of a kid. There’s nothing entertaining about that. Week after week of unrelenting misery for the characters, if they dug into it properly....that would have made S5 look like a season at Disney World. 

Edited April 13, 2018 by Erin9

[Bannon]

2 minutes ago, Erin9 said:

It would have been brave. But I would not have wanted to see that. That would truly have been too much for me. I don’t think I could watch a show that seriously dealt with the suicide of a kid. There’s nothing entertaining about that. Week after week of unrelenting misery for the characters, if they dug into it properly....that would have made S5 look like a season at Disney a world. 

Oh, attempting to tell that story correctly would have been monumentally risky; like purposelessly trying to climb Everest without oxygen, while being inadequately dressed. I can certainly understand why they didn't try it.

[Ellaria]

1 hour ago, CaliCheeseSucks said:

I'd add the poor sucker in the wheat lab last season, the poor Naval Observatory guard this season (which I think was motivated by a combination of "my daughter screwed up" *and* "dude hit on my daughter"), the general last week, the audit guy this week... Even though we didn't know them well, I'm so over Elizabeth Jennings: Murder Machine that it is bothering me innocent person after innocent person is disposed of so she can keep getting her way. .

1 hour ago, Bannon said:

It wasn't a matter of me caring about the people being killed. It's a matter of telling a story that requires the audience to suspend disbelief to a ridiculous degree, and it makes Liz in particular a lot less interesting, because only a total sociopath would kill for years on end like that without having a breakdown, and total sociopaths are fundamentally uninteresting people.

Yes and yes. Liz Jennings Murder Machine is no longer interesting. There is such little nuance to the character. I think that the writers have mistaken "smoking in the yard while wearing an oversized sweater" for introspection. Worst of all, I am bored with her. She solves everything by killing, usually overpowering much larger men (unless she is dropping cars on them). And so many of them were innocents like this week's poor soul. I don't care about what real spies did. I'm watching a dramatized spy story - not the real thing. I should have some investment in the main characters. 

Other issues with the writing:

• Renee (no need to explain)
• keeping Henry in the background for 90% of the show
• Nina and the scientist in prison

The first few seasons of this show were filled with tension. Often had a hard time falling asleep after watching. It can't get better than the pilot episode: Stan snooping in the garage; Philip hiding but watching him. So much of the inherent tension has been lost over the last two seasons.

[Bannon]

4 minutes ago, Ellaria Sand said:

Yes and yes. Liz Jennings Murder Machine is no longer interesting. There is such little nuance to the character. I think that the writers have mistaken "smoking in the yard while wearing an oversized sweater" for introspection. Worst of all, I am bored with her. She solves everything by killing, usually overpowering much larger men (unless she is dropping cars on them). And so many of them were innocents like this week's poor soul. I don't care about what real spies did. I'm watching a dramatized spy story - not the real thing. I should have some investment in the main characters. 

Other issues with the writing:

• Renee (no need to explain)
• keeping Henry in the background for 90% of the show
• Nina and the scientist in prison

The first few seasons of this show were filled with tension. Often had a hard time falling asleep after watching. It can't get better than the pilot episode: Stan snooping in the garage; Philip hiding but watching him. So much of the inherent tension has been lost over the last two seasons.

Oh, gosh, yes, the way Henry was left out of this show was a really bad idea, especially if they are going to now have him play a significant part of the show's resolution. Same thing with Renee, really,  after the character being as blandly written as can be imagined up until now.

I guess the point of the latter part of the Nina arc was to show how that even if the Soviet State didn't immediately murder you for lack of loyalty, it would just use you up until you could no longer be of value, and then put a bullet in your skull. I don't know if so much time needed to be devoted to sending that message. It was pretty weird, wasn't it?

[Ellaria]

1 minute ago, Bannon said:

I guess the point of the latter part of the Nina arc was to show how that even if the Soviet State didn't immediately murder you for lack of loyalty, it would just use you up until you could no longer be of value, and then put a bullet in your skull. I don't know if so much time needed to be devoted to sending that message. It was pretty weird, wasn't it?

That's exactly it - too much time was devoted to that message. The long walks with Anton, talking in the cafeteria. No one really believed that she was getting out of there. And it was disconnected from the rest of the story. 

[sistermagpie]

The things I would have really liked to have been more built into the whole thing might include:

A smoother timeline with not such a big jump to this season. I still find it jarring. Season 5's timeline didn't even make sense for happening over a few months, but at the same time nothing seemed to happen. It wasn't very revealing about the characters and didn't have memorable spy plots either. Either emotionally or in the action sense.

Henry being more integrated into the family--as much as Paige was. With his relationships with his family more fleshed out. 

Philip getting a backstory that informed his character the same way Elizabeth did--even if it came later. It still often feels to me as all the screentime that should have belonged to that was handed off to other random characters who were technically connected to Philip but had nothing to do with him. 

It seems significant that in this week's ep we had plenty of Elizabeth/Paige interaction with their usual Very Important Conversations About Very Serious Things but the character interactions that landed the most powerfully for me were Stan/Oleg and Oleg/Philip, in each case because of the history of the characters (even if Philip and Oleg had separate histories up to this point). Renee, of course, still feels like some weird, clownish side character who would make more sense in a one-off dinner party scene married to a co-worker than married to one of the leads. It's still like, "Who ARE you?" And not, for me, in the sense of her being a spy. Just like as a person.

Oh, and I also like Stan/Aderholdt just fine when they were talking about their ex wives etc.

Edited April 13, 2018 by sistermagpie

[Umbelina]

They should have never dumped half the cast all at once.

They shouldn't have introduced a bunch of plot points, I mean "characters" last season unless they were going to make them whole, and make them interesting, or at least advance the plot more than they did.

They shouldn't have split so many characters into different countries, and if they were going to do that, they should have done it MUCH BETTER.

They shouldn't have dilly-dallied digging holes and watching wheat grow last season when they KNEW they were going to have a huge time jump.

Enough with the cock tease of Philip's childhood too, they BETTER finally address that.

Speaking of cock teases?  Misha?  What the hell was that, and yes, hoping they finally tie that up too.

Mostly, for me, it comes down to last season being a never ending message of SPYING SUCKS!  We got it, long before that boring season ever ended, and if that was all they had to say?  They should have done it better.

I sucked it up with all the stupid things the KGB would never have actual embedded spies do, including all the break ins and murders long ago, it was worth it for this outstanding show.  So, yeah, don't care about that.

Really, it all comes down to last season sucked.

[Bannon]

I know many differ, but the whole Kimmie arc to me was just mystifyingly nonsensical, from start to finish. The 1st time Phil gained access to the house the CIA knew some foreign intelligence agency had identified the CIA officer, and where he lived, and yet  Phil kept traipsing in there for months on end, recovering audio tapes from a brief case. Ending up giving backrubs to teenage girls, as the high school clique' s major pot supplier. Fer' the luv of Ferris Bueller, my eyes rolled so hard I nearly fainted. John Hughes meets James Bond!

[Ellaria]

32 minutes ago, Bannon said:

I know many differ, but the whole Kimmie arc to me was just mystifyingly nonsensical, from start to finish. 

Agree completely. It was painful to watch.

[sistermagpie]

This thread is making me think how this Paige as spy storyline jump is so weak to me. There were times over the years where I was less than thrilled with Paige's  stuff (and other times I liked it ) but I can't get over watching 5 seasons of baby steps of development to get her into the church and get used to the secret and get tired of Pastor Tim...and then we skip 3 years and she thinks she's a spy now. 

I'm just not seeing it. I get what they're telling me about the psychology of it but it still seems fake. Meanwhile I get more nervous about it because the show honestly seems to love pushing this story as the biggest draw. Maybe it's just the easiest to push because it sounds cool to have a teen spy but it just still seems totally unnatural to me. And it's not cool. Paige as a normal college student would be more believable than this. 

It actually feels like the main thing different about her is her carefully curated new hair, makeup and clothing. That's doing most of the work.

And they obviously were trying to write to this all along. All the more reason to not have all the spy/traitor development happen during a time jump.

Edited April 13, 2018 by sistermagpie

[Dowel Jones]

I would have liked to have seen some references to real life incidents such as Hansen or Ames (even if they had to make it fictional to correct for time periods), and even some notice given to high profile defections from the Russian side.  The reason for this being that it would create the air of ever closer entrapment and give the show some real paranoia plotlines.

[Sarah 103]

3 hours ago, Ellaria Sand said:

keeping Henry in the background for 90% of the show

 

3 hours ago, Bannon said:

Oh, gosh, yes, the way Henry was left out of this show was a really bad idea, especially if they are going to now have him play a significant part of the show's resolution. Same thing with Renee, really,  after the character being as blandly written as can be imagined up until now.

Henry is so underutlized. He was a great well-developed character for a kid with tons of potential that never really went anywhere. 

[mattie0808]

My absolute #1 -- EARN Paige's transformation into a spy. I know they think they've already done that, mainly on the strength of personality traits she shares with Elizabeth. When she's into something, she's all-in. She wants something to believe in. She wants her mother's approval. Whatever. That isn't enough, at least not for me. I've not been a Paige hater and defended her for a long time. I liked that she knew something wasn't right with her parents and her family and wouldn't let it go. I gave her a ton of slack for her reaction to her world being turned upside down completely by the truth. But sheesh. I feel they've regressed her...made her way more naive and more thoughtless to get her to the point she's at now. I mean, she needs a BOOK to suggest to her the wild idea that spies may use sex? She still has to ask, wide-eyed, whether or not Elizabeth got tired of eating the same stew for days/weeks on end? The same girl who assumed one of her parents must have been having an affair, and got on a bus to go track down her "aunt," and who caused her parents to worry for a moment that she was using dating Matthew as a pretext to keep an eye on Stan? Also, has the girl just literally NEVER had a single, solitary, slightly political thought enter her head? Doesn't any part of her have any thoughts or feelings about working against the only country she has ever known? Has she never heard negative things about the Soviet Union? Does she think communism is better than capitalism? Anything? I don't understand why the only thought we've ever seen her have along these lines is that her parents are heroes because they stopped the U.S. from ruining the Soviet food supply. Like, what? I feel like there were so many ways to get Paige to the point of throwing in her lot with her spy parents, if they insisted on going that route instead of one of a million other paths. But they basically took none of them, missing sooooooo much we could have seen from her and her parents. Bah!

 

#2 -- Could someone, ANYONE please at least even give me a throwaway line or joke about Henry being a great second-generation illegal prospect? I wanted that when P/E found out he'd been spying on his neighbors, breaking into their house, using their video games, and eating their food for some time without getting caught. I wanted that when he, entirely on his own and with no one knowing, placed himself among the children of movers and shakers in the U.S. I wanted it when he got himself in the FBI's counterintelligence office for a tour! I wanted it turned out he was a surprisingly good student. I know the parentals don't know about him knocking the pervert out with the beer bottle and no one knows about him managing to get a photo of Sandra and hide it in the floorboards of his room, BUT, the show went out of its way to make sure the audience knew that. All of this, ALL OF THIS, for nothing, when we've been through years of the KGB wanting second-generation illegals on board. What?!

 

#3 -- I don't care very much about Pastor Tim, and I could wrap my head around the idea that once Paige told her parents she had told him the truth, they couldn't kill him without losing her. Fine. But, I thought it was insane that his reaction to finding out that P/E were Russian spies was to just kind of shrug, pray for Paige, and give her communist manifestos to read. Makes no sense to me.

 

#4 -- Gad really died for no damn reason, didn't he? Is Phillip ever going to even know his son came to the U.S.? Or is hanging with his brother?

 

#5 -- They really undercut Oleg's story with the time jump. I mean...I'm glad he's married with a family and apparently was fine the last three years, but, everything that happened in Season 5 is meaningless. Same with Kimmy's story, and her father being the (purported) reason P/E couldn't quit. Same with Stan's wife. I don't see how her being with him for this long makes sense if she's anything other than a random woman in love with him. Her "I want to be an FBI spy!" thing was so silly and is really weird if she's supposedly been working him since the beginning.

Edited April 14, 2018 by mattie0808

[Bannon]

Richard Thomas is a good actor, and Gaad a very interesting character. If Martha was going to defect, then Gaad had to resign, but I wish they hadn't killed him off. He could have been credibly allowed to survive the failed KGB snatch, I think.

[CaliCheeseSucks]

7 hours ago, Ellaria Sand said:

That's exactly it - too much time was devoted to that message. The long walks with Anton, talking in the cafeteria. No one really believed that she was getting out of there. And it was disconnected from the rest of the story. 

Yes, this is a good example of a recurring issue on the show: Poor economy of storytelling. They could have established some semblance of what Nina was facing and the futility of it all without devoting so much time to it, particularly given where it ended up. And I feel like I say this about a majority of arcs. 

7 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

The things I would have really liked to have been more built into the whole thing might include:

A smoother timeline with not such a big jump to this season. I still find it jarring. Season 5's timeline didn't even make sense for happening over a few months, but at the same time nothing seemed to happen. It wasn't very revealing about the characters and didn't have memorable spy plots either. Either emotionally or in the action sense.

Henry being more integrated into the family--as much as Paige was. With his relationships with his family more fleshed out. 

Philip getting a backstory that informed his character the same way Elizabeth did--even if it came later. It still often feels to me as all the screentime that should have belonged to that was handed off to other random characters who were technically connected to Philip but had nothing to do with him. 

It seems significant that in this week's ep we had plenty of Elizabeth/Paige interaction with their usual Very Important Conversations About Very Serious Things but the character interactions that landed the most powerfully for me were Stan/Oleg and Oleg/Philip, in each case because of the history of the characters (even if Philip and Oleg had separate histories up to this point). Renee, of course, still feels like some weird, clownish side character who would make more sense in a one-off dinner party scene married to a co-worker than married to one of the leads. It's still like, "Who ARE you?" And not, for me, in the sense of her being a spy. Just like as a person.

Oh, and I also like Stan/Aderholdt just fine when they were talking about their ex wives etc.

Yes, to all of this. I get wanting to end in 1987. I don't get treading so much water in 1984 and then leaping to the end, bypassing the critical developments that we're dealing with in 1987. 

7 hours ago, Umbelina said:

They should have never dumped half the cast all at once.

They shouldn't have introduced a bunch of plot points, I mean "characters" last season unless they were going to make them whole, and make them interesting, or at least advance the plot more than they did.

They shouldn't have split so many characters into different countries, and if they were going to do that, they should have done it MUCH BETTER.

They shouldn't have dilly-dallied digging holes and watching wheat grow last season when they KNEW they were going to have a huge time jump.

Enough with the cock tease of Philip's childhood too, they BETTER finally address that.

Speaking of cock teases?  Misha?  What the hell was that, and yes, hoping they finally tie that up too.

Mostly, for me, it comes down to last season being a never ending message of SPYING SUCKS!  We got it, long before that boring season ever ended, and if that was all they had to say?  They should have done it better.

I sucked it up with all the stupid things the KGB would never have actual embedded spies do, including all the break ins and murders long ago, it was worth it for this outstanding show.  So, yeah, don't care about that.

Really, it all comes down to last season sucked.

Yes to all of this as well. Even if by some miracle Misha returns to have a part somewhere in the final seven hours, I'm hard pressed it will validate all the time we spent with it before as necessary. 

7 hours ago, Bannon said:

I know many differ, but the whole Kimmie arc to me was just mystifyingly nonsensical, from start to finish. The 1st time Phil gained access to the house the CIA knew some foreign intelligence agency had identified the CIA officer, and where he lived, and yet  Phil kept traipsing in there for months on end, recovering audio tapes from a brief case. Ending up giving backrubs to teenage girls, as the high school clique' s major pot supplier. Fer' the luv of Ferris Bueller, my eyes rolled so hard I nearly fainted. John Hughes meets James Bond!

You are definitely not alone there. I loathed the Kimmie arc when it was happening and I hate it even more now in retrospect that it was largely for naught. Again, perhaps - as with Misha - a kernel of that mission will prove relevant to the last seven episodes but I am quite skeptical any such return appearance or link to that time is going to rationalize the amount of time we, as viewers, were forced to follow that storyline.

6 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

This thread is making me think how this Paige as spy storyline jump is so weak to me. There were times over the years where I was less than thrilled with Paige's  stuff (and other times I liked it ) but I can't get over watching 5 seasons of baby steps of development to get her into the church and get used to the secret and get tired of Pastor Tim...and then we skip 3 years and she thinks she's a spy now. 

It would have made hella more sense if we'd jumped three years and found Paige actively working towards being a missionary. They spent five seasons emphasizing her social justice concerns - even if she was torn with the knowledge of her parents' true identities and missions. Flipping her into this enthusiastic spy cosplayer is just eye rolling. It goes against the teenager that we were shown.

 

4 hours ago, mattie0808 said:

My absolute #1 -- EARN Paige's transformation into a spy. I know they think they've already done that, mainly on the strength of personality traits she shares with Elizabeth. When she's into something, she's all-in. She wants something to believe in. She wants her mother's approval. Whatever. That isn't enough, at least not for me. I've not been a Paige hater and defended her for a long time. I liked that she knew something wasn't right with her parents and her family and wouldn't let it go. I gave her a ton of slack for her reaction to her world being turned upside down completely by the truth. But sheesh. I feel they've regressed her...made her way more naive and more thoughtless to get her to the point she's at now. I mean, she needs a BOOK to suggest to her the wild idea that spies may use sex? She still has to ask, wide-eyed, whether or not Elizabeth got tired of eating the same stew for days/weeks on end? The same girl who assumed one of her parents must have been having an affair, and got on a bus to go track down her "aunt," and who caused her parents to worry for a moment that she was using dating Matthew as a pretext to keep an eye on Stan? Also, has the girl just literally NEVER had a single, solitary, slightly political thought enter her head? Doesn't any part of her have any thoughts or feelings about working against the only country she has ever known? Has she never heard negative things about the Soviet Union? Does she think communism is better than capitalism? Anything? I don't understand why the only thought we've ever seen her have along these lines is that her parents are heroes because they stopped the U.S. from ruining the Soviet food supply. Like, what? I feel like there were so many ways to get Paige to the point of throwing in her lot with her spy parents, if they insisted on going that route instead of one of a million other paths. But they basically took none of them, missing sooooooo much we could have seen from her and her parents. Bah!

#2 -- Could someone, ANYONE please at least even give me a throwaway line or joke about Henry being a great second-generation illegal prospect? I wanted that when P/E found out he'd been spying on his neighbors, breaking into their house, using their video games, and eating their food for some time without getting caught. I wanted that when he, entirely on his own and with no one knowing, placed himself among the children of movers and shakers in the U.S. I wanted it when he got himself in the FBI's counterintelligence office for a tour! I wanted it turned out he was a surprisingly good student. I know the parentals don't know about him knocking the pervert out with the beer bottle and no one knows about him managing to get a photo of Sandra and hide it in the floorboards of his room, BUT, the show went out of its way to make sure the audience knew that. All of this, ALL OF THIS, for nothing, when we've been through years of the KGB wanting second-generation illegals on board. What?!

#3 -- I don't care very much about Pastor Tim, and I could wrap my head around the idea that once Paige told her parents she had told him the truth, they couldn't kill him without losing her. Fine. But, I thought it was insane that his reaction to finding out that P/E were Russian spies was to just kind of shrug, pray for Paige, and give her communist manifestos to read. Makes no sense to me.

#4 -- Gad really died for no damn reason, didn't he? Is Phillip ever going to even know his son came to the U.S.? Or is hanging with his brother?

#5 -- They really undercut Oleg's story with the time jump. I mean...I'm glad he's married with a family and apparently was fine the last three years, but, everything that happened in Season 5 is meaningless. Same with Kimmy's story, and her father being the (purported) reason P/E couldn't quit. Same with Stan's wife. I don't see how her being with him for this long makes sense if she's anything other than a random woman in love with him. Her "I want to be an FBI spy!" thing was so silly and is really weird if she's supposedly been working him since the beginning.

Yes to all of this too, particularly wasting plot opportunities with Henry over the years; Pastor Tim's indifference to hearing that the parents of a congregant were FREAKIN' RUSSIAN SPIES - as someone who was a child in the eighties, um, that would have been a VERY BIG DEAL. I don't buy that just because of his progressive faith, he would have not given two whits; Gaad's death being completely meaningless in retrospect (from a plot development point, at the very least); and undercutting Oleg.

[AllyB]

16 hours ago, Umbelina said:

A complete rewrite of last season. 

I think that the first massive mistake that this show made was to not kill the Tims. There was absolutely no way on earth that keeping him alive could be justified. Whether it would have been better storywise to have killed them before or after Paige told Elizabeth that she had told him they were Russians I'm not sure. But keeping the Tims alive and having Paige "work" them was absolutely stupid on just about every level. Killing them and have the Jennings deal with Paige's grief, suspicion and possible guilt would have been a more believable story with much more dramatic potential than that which we got.

[Ellaria]

10 hours ago, mattie0808 said:

My absolute #1 -- EARN Paige's transformation into a spy...

... I feel they've regressed her...made her way more naive and more thoughtless to get her to the point she's at now. I mean, she needs a BOOK to suggest to her the wild idea that spies may use sex? She still has to ask, wide-eyed, whether or not Elizabeth got tired of eating the same stew for days/weeks on end? The same girl who assumed one of her parents must have been having an affair, and got on a bus to go track down her "aunt," and who caused her parents to worry for a moment that she was using dating Matthew as a pretext to keep an eye on Stan? Also, has the girl just literally NEVER had a single, solitary, slightly political thought enter her head? Doesn't any part of her have any thoughts or feelings about working against the only country she has ever known? Has she never heard negative things about the Soviet Union? Does she think communism is better than capitalism? Anything? I don't understand why the only thought we've ever seen her have along these lines is that her parents are heroes because they stopped the U.S. from ruining the Soviet food supply. Like, what? I feel like there were so many ways to get Paige to the point of throwing in her lot with her spy parents, if they insisted on going that route instead of one of a million other paths. But they basically took none of them, missing sooooooo much we could have seen from her and her parents. Bah!

Most definitely...her transformation into a spy has not been earned. The bolded comments are valid and, for me, particularly crucial to accepting this transformation. Rather than provide her with an actual process of accepting her parents’ philosophy and abandoning her country’s politics, we leap three years into the future. Now she is “all in” without giving the viewers the benefit of seeing how she got there.

12 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

It actually feels like the main thing different about her is her carefully curated new hair, makeup and clothing. That's doing most of the work.

And they obviously were trying to write to this all along. All the more reason to not have all the spy/traitor development happen during a time jump.

Her “new look” is certainly doing a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to explaining her transformation. And yes, this clearly was their plan from the start and, with that mind, this could have been handled much better.

[JFParnell]

Everyone in here has made such solid points! Good reading. Yeah, imo: Last season was a clusterfark. Death by 10,000 boring cuts. It was maddening. There's slow burn and there's no burn. C'mon, fake people in the television, do something!

I think most of us tend to rally around the weightier characters and actors. Gaad, especially in his dealings with his KGB counterpart. Pretty much anything Oleg. Conflicted Philip. Poor Martha. So, to be fair, plenty of strong points along the way.

I personally hated losing Gaad -- he felt like a character in a smart, reality-based spy novel who really grounded the proceedings. Richard Thomas really fit the suit and was low-key terrific, and I'd love for them to have further fleshed out his story. Instead we got wheat and a dead Gaad.

The Kimmie storyline was just weird and creepy television, even if it was meant to be so. Of all the things they could have thunk up, they thunk up THAT?? (Sure, it's also differently creepy to break a dead woman's bones and fold her into a suitcase, but, hey, at least there were no uncomfortable backrubs to witness!) 

Yup. Never got on board with Paige either. It's NOT a knock on the actress but on how they unspooled the story. The time jump killed any chance of us seeing her earn -- as @mattie0808 said so well above -- her change. And what change?? Has there really even been one? She doesn't seem to have learned a lick about how to spy in three years of training. Plus, if she is to be a next-gen, long-term Soviet plant, then isn't she better off quietly burrowing into a key position in govt. or law enforcement instead of risking it all in field ops, while still relatively green to the trade, and seeing her mom with a dead general's grey matter all over her face? They seem to have plenty of "watchers" to use in their ops - they don't need to risk Paige when she should be on a different spy-career track. (Not to mention TV show track.) After all, most real spies aren't out there killing people every week -- they're gathering dull bits of disjointed information wherever they can find it and passing it on to others for assessment (which ... wouldn't be terribly dramatic television, fair enough, LOL :) ) 

What else can be said about Henry? We miss what might have been. Such a wasted opportunity. He was also a fun link to 80s themes, with his early interest in newfangled personalized computing and games. Oh, Henry, we hardly knew you. At least you'll be able to tell your lawyer you knew nothing about your parents' world, when they drag you out of hockey practice for interrogation. Can't say the same for big sis. The writers forgetting about you for five seasons will keep you out of jail, so there's that.

I've been among the Stan bashers, and I don't know what the writers have against poor Noah Emmerich, but they turned him into such a doofus -- MOST of the time. Right now it seems Stan can't even find his own shoelaces without Aderholt (the brains of the operation) pointing to his feet. Just from a purely dramatic standpoint, if they were going to make Stan and Philip best buds, there should have been more moments of suspicion from Stan,  more scenes where Stan gets to furrow his Stan brow and wonder, "Hmmm..." and slooowwwwly start to see. Throw us a bone! The garage scene, for example. That was cool and tense, and it looked like a promising start. How far you've fallen, Stan. Did they really place Stan and Philip ACROSS THE STREET from each other all so that Stan would just... be an unwitting pal for most of the series??? I know, I know -- he's kind of a lost/midlife/wife/crisis guy and therefore his decisions are going to be a bit wobbly sometimes, but if we're talking "how it could have been" I'd have liked a more suspicious Stan, please, to provide the kind of tension that a character in his place should offer.

Though I can't stand her, I think Elizabeth's character was handled reasonably well for most of the series, particularly the first few seasons. She's the true believer. We'll see what they do with her. I have been rooting hard for Liz to finally get her just deserts for a long time. So I'm sort of enjoying her meltdown this final season. Yay show. And I'm not gonna use the victim card to justify her actions -- how "they" got her young and turned her into what she is, etc. Technically, that may be true but I don't care, lol. When she let poor old warehouse woman die that was the last straw. She's not an antihero you sort of root for, against your own judgement. She's just an awful human being and she must either die in a painful manner or spend the rest of her days in Supermax.

That said, I can't wait (even though temporally I have to) to see what happens. I'm hoping Oleg and Philip can right the ship in these last 7 eps and help this show die a good death. Fingers crossed!

I had no idea the above had gotten so long. Sorry to clog things up! :)

[AllyB]

1 hour ago, Ellaria Sand said:

Rather than provide her with an actual process of accepting her parents’ philosophy and abandoning her country’s politics, we leap three years into the future. Now she is “all in” without giving the viewers the benefit of seeing how she got there.

When I first realised that the story would be going in the direction of Elizabeth recruiting Paige, I assumed that was the real point in Hans. What better way to make Paige really waver on her country's politics than to introduce her to a young man who was fighting against American involvement in propping up the inarguably disgusting apartheid regime in South Africa. Take S3 Paige, with her burgeoning (Pastor Tim inspired) political interests to an anti-apartheid rally/meeting and have her meet Hans. Paige would have fallen hook, line and sinker for him and his cause. Over not too much time her interest in the church would have been eased over to Hans' political groups. He'd have been her gateway into her parents' world in a way that wouldn't completely stretch the imagination. Once Paige found out about who her parents really were, Hans would probably have been the person she'd confided in. And he could have pretended to be shocked but also lead her into seeing that as a very good thing and a cause she should get behind.

Obviously there would have been some conflict with the Jennings, especially Philip, if Paige became attracted to Hans. Especially if Hans reciprocated in any way, possibly due to treating Paige as a proxy for Elizabeth, who he was established as being attracted to. It would also have made Elizabeth being forced to kill Hans meaningful in many ways. In the show as it was, Hans was an important recurring character in S3 but a glorified extra in S4. His death in early S5 had no real impact on the audience as he had stopped having any impact on the story. The only effect it could have had was on Elizabeth but she kills too often for that. If he had been important to Paige, his death would have affected everyone and maybe even raised a few questions with Stan who may have met him and wondered where he disappeared to. It would have made Philip's realisation that the point of their mission that night was to acquire a biological weapon that the USSR used in Afghanistan an actual plot point rather than just one more thing for Philip to feel shit about and Elizabeth to shrug off in wilful denial. Imagine the jeopardy of having an 'all in' Paige discover that her young mentor/boyfriend was her mother's asset all along and he died at her hand while acquiring one of the most awful kinds of weapons. Imagine the conflict it could have created between Philip and Elizabeth and how helpless it would leave Philip in terms of trying to get Paige out of the KGB because the knowledge he has would destroy her.

I don't know, it sounds ott fanficcy when I type it out but compared to the boring, 2.5 seasons where Paige lies in her room, sulks a lot about her parents lies, works the Tims, sulks a lot about working the Tims, dates Matthew for reasons, sulks about dating Matthew, hides in her wardrobe after the mugging/murder, trains in the garage, sulks about dumping Matthew, etc, maybe using Hans would have been better, even if it was fanficcy.

[sistermagpie]

14 hours ago, mattie0808 said:

Also, has the girl just literally NEVER had a single, solitary, slightly political thought enter her head? Doesn't any part of her have any thoughts or feelings about working against the only country she has ever known?

It seems like every political thought she has in her head is put there by somebody else she's imprinted on. First Tim, then her mom and Claudia. We've never seen her explain any of them either. Which is telling us clearly that she's actually pretty shallow.

The second part really creeps me out. We've seen plenty of people on the show who work for the "other side" but it always made sense even without careful explanation. It was explained by the character and context. With Paige the only explanation seems to be that she lacks the thing most people have that make them feel connected to their home. She'll just happily take lessons on how to be Russian instead of American--even though it's clear she feels no attachment to that country either. Doesn't matter to her that her country's given her a good life, that everything she knows and should love is there. Nor does she have a personal issue that makes her feel betrayed by the US. She also doesn't have a reason to think she has to commit treason for the greater good of the country (like Oleg or the General did). 

Yet when the showrunners talk about it they obviously want us to see this as somehow cool or intriguing. Even the whole "she's like Elizabeth" stuff doesn't work because Elizabeth's pov is very clearly explained by her experience. She's also the opposite of Paige in terms of loyalty. She would never betray her country--certainly not as lightly as Paige is. It's not even like Paige's entered into some crazy fantasy, like some young American Muslim whose parents are from another country and who's drawn to ISIS for the reasons angry young man are drawn to groups like that. It's cosplay. Nobody in their right mind would want to work with this girl. Her main cheerleaders seem to be two older women who need a young girl to validate their own life choices.

The showrunners describe her as "intelligent and curious" but their definition of that seems to mean Paige never asking a single challenging question. In fact pretty much all her questions are personal ones. There's really no sense of her being any more politically knowledgeable than she was with Pastor Tim. Sure she sasses about Robert Bork, but that actually seems kind of fake in retrospect. It's a cheap way to tell us Paige is supposed to be confident and strong now, even though she's not like that anywhere else. Frankly, I assume she's just parroting something somebody else said, Probably Elizabeth or Claudia using him to prove the US is sexist. Really, Paige's new "feminist" streak seems like just another way to flatter Elizabeth and Claudia.

10 hours ago, CaliCheeseSucks said:

Yes to all of this as well. Even if by some miracle Misha returns to have a part somewhere in the final seven hours, I'm hard pressed it will validate all the time we spent with it before as necessary. 

It's so hard for me to make sense of this. Not only did they give Philip an actual son in Russia they gave him a freakin' BROTHER who's still alive and well with a family. And then they didn't use that story in any way that had to do with Philip. It was just the story of some random Russian kid whose father could have been any Russian immigrant, any Directorate-S agent. The main plot point seemed to be getting Gabriel to quit. (Claudia, of course, has no such guilt about the incident and doesn't feel the need to tell Elizabeth or Paige about it of course.) And the freakin' brother seemed to only exist to give Mischa an end to a story that we didn't care about to begin with. And that wasn't even really an end because he wanted to meet his father, not find anybody he was related to. I think I wanted to hear more about Mischa Sr. than his son did and I didn't get any info at all. 

I can't believe they drop in in season 5 that the main character who's family-focused is completely cut off from a brother and with 7 eps left they're acting like there's nothing to say about that. Or anything about his childhood. When asked about this back in S3, iirc, the showrunners claimed that Philip and Elizabeth just "weren't talkers" and that's why we didn't know about their past. Despite the fact that we know pretty much everything about Elizabeth's past.

Likewise, Gaad's death seemed to be about getting Arkady back to Russia so he could send Oleg to the US.

4 hours ago, AllyB said:

I think that the first massive mistake that this show made was to not kill the Tims. There was absolutely no way on earth that keeping him alive could be justified. Whether it would have been better storywise to have killed them before or after Paige told Elizabeth that she had told him they were Russians I'm not sure. But keeping the Tims alive and having Paige "work" them was absolutely stupid on just about every level. Killing them and have the Jennings deal with Paige's grief, suspicion and possible guilt would have been a more believable story with much more dramatic potential than that which we got.

I thought having Paige blab and then have to deal with the reality of what happens when you tell somebody a secret made sense to me. But there's a lot about it that didn't really make sense--especially Tim being so ridiculously cool about them being Russian spies. He seemed as naive as Paige, who also hasn't gotten any better in the remaining years. The fact that, ultimately, even Paige betraying her parents' secret wound up being about as serious as Paige letting a guy walk off with her fake picture ID in retrospect is probably not great. It's like her whole experience reinforces her perspective that a) none of this is that scary and b) it makes her the center of attention and makes her feel cool.

2 hours ago, JFParnell said:

And I'm not gonna use the victim card to justify her actions -- how "they" got her young and turned her into what she is, etc. Technically, that may be true but I don't care, lol.

Years ago someone on the group said they didn't like Gregory because he was a character who existed "solely to blow smoke up Elizabeth's ass." I wouldn't go that far, but the line did make me laugh because it is kind of amazing how big of a fan club Elizabeth has in her life. She's really been incredibly lucky, especially with the guy they paired her with as a husband--just in terms of how this is obviously the person--maybe the only person--who could have made her a whole person. So the fact that she chooses fear again really raises the stakes. I've seen some people who resent Philip for "abandoning"her to spy alone, but that's basically taking Elizabeth's view that Philip just ought to always do whatever she wants, even if it's her idea for him to do otherwise. 

More importantly, Philip's story at this point is at least to me the most exciting and the most straightforward to root for. Arkady, Oleg and Philip are sort of doing a classic Western plot (fits with Philip's line dancing and country music--they ought to use some in the soundtrack sometime). Oleg is the brave east coast lawyer type who's sent to the frontier to track down a retired gunslinger who's now working a farm (with limited success) to protect a fledgling society.

[Loandbehold]

19 hours ago, Ellaria Sand said:

Nina and the scientist in prison

 

19 hours ago, Bannon said:

I guess the point of the latter part of the Nina arc was to show how that even if the Soviet State didn't immediately murder you for lack of loyalty, it would just use you up until you could no longer be of value, and then put a bullet in your skull. I don't know if so much time needed to be devoted to sending that message. It was pretty weird, wasn't it?

 

19 hours ago, Ellaria Sand said:

That's exactly it - too much time was devoted to that message. The long walks with Anton, talking in the cafeteria. No one really believed that she was getting out of there. And it was disconnected from the rest of the story.

All of this. If they were going to kill Nina, then they took way too long to do it. Her arc was just too far removed from the rest of the show. Also, I would have liked to find out that Oleg's father withdrew his support and that's what led to her death. Especially since we learned that Oleg's mother had spent time at a gulag. His father wouldn't want that kind of suspicion to come down on his remaining son when he could tell why Oleg asked him to look out for her. And, for Oleg to find out why Nina was killed and the stress that would have put on the relationship with his father. Instead we had to watch Oleg investigate corruption involving food at supermarkets. 

[sistermagpie]

20 hours ago, Bannon said:

I guess the point of the latter part of the Nina arc was to show how that even if the Soviet State didn't immediately murder you for lack of loyalty, it would just use you up until you could no longer be of value, and then put a bullet in your skull. I don't know if so much time needed to be devoted to sending that message. It was pretty weird, wasn't it?

I agree that there was a problem with the Nina arc because I wasn't invested in it at all. But I think the point of it was about Nina realizing that she didn't want to live her life as someone who just always did whatever she had to do to survive. On paper I like the idea. Her whole time on the show started with her getting caught doing something for reasons we didn't get, but after that she was just always doing what she had to do. Except for the moment she confessed to Arkady because of Vlad.

So the prison stuff was about her choosing to act out of what she thought was right even though it got her killed. She was free because she was no longer just following orders to stay alive--and that's why they killed her.

As an idea it's compelling and very in keeping with the themes of the show, but I don't think they ever managed to really make it work for some reason. Maybe it was just that Baklanov and that relationship wasn't interesting to watch. 

[Umbelina]

Such good comments everyone!

I just watched Season 4 again.  All in all, it was simply an incredible season where SO much happened. 

By the way, Nina was executed in Episode 4 of Season 4.  Her story in a fairly cushy Soviet prison didn't bother me quite as much as it did some of you though.  Nina being arrested had great impact on other stories, especially Stan's and Oleg's, and was the catalyst for bringing them together, and a great deal of soul searching on their parts.  In some ways, it resonates today.  It also sharply contrasted the way Philip's "agent" Martha, and Stan/Arkady's "agent" Nina ended up (since she was a double.)  It didn't stand alone in other ways either, it brought back the former Resident she'd betrayed, and it did have the connection with Anton's story.  I thought Anton was fully fleshed out, as well as believable, and added to the entire Russia is desperate to keep up with the USA tech over all theme/reality of that time.  That is what eventually brings the USSR down after all.

As I touched on before though, the decision to drop half the cast is simply mind boggling to me.  Think of the people we'd lost, either by distance or lack of interaction with the other characters we actually knew.  All gone, all at once. 

Season 5 replaced all of these people, because I really don't count Oleg checking grocery stores and wandering around moodily in dark Russian streets disconnected from everyone we've known on screen, or Martha and Gabe's tiny scene either.

• Nina
• Martha
• Oleg
• Gaad
• William
• Arkady
• Tatiana (She really grew on me, wonder what happened to her after she was denied Kenya?)
• Gabriel

These people were all important, fleshed out, and added so much to The American's.  Instead we got a bunch of scenes with new characters (plot points, not developed, I don't even really remember their names.)

I'd be quoting so many of you here, completely agree about nearly all comments about the endlessly boring and annoying and unbelievable Pastor Tim story as well.

I haven't minded the final season so far, it's no Season 1, 2, 3, or 4 so far, but it's not the deadly dull waste of time last season was either. 

The Paige story is, and always has been, ridiculous.  I hope their pay off is worth it, but honestly, how can it be?  It's dragged the show into "unbelievable" in too many ways to count, though many of you have brilliantly outlined some of them here.

At this point, if we finally get a back story for Philip, and SOME KIND OF REASON that not only makes sense, but is satisfying, for the Misha bait-and-switch bullshit?  That will also please me.

I don't care what Renee is there for anymore, even if they have a boffo reason for her, I'm too pissed at them for last season to give a shit.  What happened to these writers?  They used to have such incredible pace, timing, and make me not mind the slightly exaggerated world because they kept me on the edge of my seat.  Elizabeth looking out of her window at the Utility Truck in Season Two wasn't "big action" in any way, yet it had me wanting to bite my nails.

What happened to those guys?

[SlovakPrincess]

As heartbreaking and grim as the Nina story was, I actually think it was mostly well done.  At the time, it seemed to drag in parts, but looking back it played out the way it had to ... Nina basically negotiating with herself and with the prison guards how much she was going to compromise of her morals, and eventually basically sacrificing herself because she couldn't "buy back pieces of her life" anymore by hurting others.  Maybe it could have taken less than two seasons, but overall, I didn't have a huge issue with it.

Things I DO have a major issue with:

- I'm sure there was a point to Gaad dying in the weird, sudden, violent way he did, but I've forgotten what it was, and as I recall it didn't drive the story in a way that made sense.  But maybe I'm misremembering.  

- Paige being such an isolated kid with no apparent hopes and dreams for her future ... such that she's kinda like "sure, sounds good, I guess" [worried eyebrow raise] about this whole KGB spy thing.  It loses a lot of dramatic potential that she's been so passive over the last season or so. 

- Did William say something useful to Stan during his death scene or not?!  They made it seem like it was this possible thing, and Stan seemed to maybe be looking at Philip's house with suspicion at the end of that episode / season (while Paige and Matthew were dating while Philip was telling Paige he hated the idea) ... and then NOTHING happened with any of that!  

- Last season, they sort of started to explore something interesting with Elizabeth genuinely liking her wheat scientist lover guy, and Philip trying - and hilariously failing - to get the other scientist to be his next Martha because she was like "um, I just want occasional sex, I really do not want you moving in here."   But that fizzled, too.  

- Moving Oleg back to Russia permanently was not a great idea last season, or at least they should've given him a love interest!  

Edited April 14, 2018 by SlovakPrincess

[Umbelina]

22 hours ago, SlovakPrincess said:

As heartbreaking and grim as the Nina story was, I actually think it was mostly well done.  At the time, it seemed to drag in parts, but looking back it played out the way it had to ... Nina basically negotiating with herself and with the prison guards how much she was going to compromise of her morals, and eventually basically sacrificing herself because she couldn't "buy back pieces of her life" anymore by hurting others.  Maybe it could have taken less than two seasons, but overall, I didn't have a huge issue with it.

Things I DO have a major issue with:

- I'm sure there was a point to Gaad dying in the weird, sudden, violent way he did, but I've forgotten what it was, and as I recall it didn't drive the story in a way that made sense.  But maybe I'm misremembering.  

- Paige being such an isolated kid with no apparent hopes and dreams for her future ... such that she's kinda like "sure, sounds good, I guess" [worried eyebrow raise] about this whole KGB spy thing.  It loses a lot of dramatic potential that she's been so passive over the last season or so. 

- Did William say something useful to Stan during his death scene or not?!  They made it seem like it was this possible thing, and Stan seemed to maybe be looking at Philip's house with suspicion at the end of that episode / season (while Paige and Matthew were dating while Philip was telling Paige he hated the idea) ... and then NOTHING happened with any of that!  

- Last season, they sort of started to explore something interesting with Elizabeth genuinely liking her wheat scientist lover guy, and Philip trying - and hilariously failing - to get the other scientist to be his next Martha because she was like "um, I just want occasional sex, I really do not want you moving in here."   But that fizzled, too.  

All William said during his finale suffering/musing was something about how he could have been happy, like them, the couple he'd been working with, a couple of kids... "She's...pretty, he's ...lucky."  He also said "they wanted me to be married, but we were fighting, well, I was fighting."

I don't think that was anything to go on for Stan.

I agree with everything else you said, except about the Wheat Season.  The only thing I liked about that season was Elizabeth finding out Wheat Guy was 'cheating' on her.  Losing some of those sexy-time skills hon?  That look between Philip and Liz when they saw him with that other lover was great.

Edited April 15, 2018 by Umbelina

[sistermagpie]

32 minutes ago, Umbelina said:

As I touched on before though, the decision to drop half the cast is simply mind boggling to me.  Think of the people we'd lost, either by distance or lack of interaction with the other characters we actually knew.  All gone, all at once. 

 

It makes such a huge split between the seasons. You watch early ones and the show seems so much more alive. Then so many of them are gone in one fell swoop and, as you say, they're replaced with character that don't make the same kind of impression at all. 

30 minutes ago, SlovakPrincess said:

- I'm sure there was a point to Gaad dying in the weird, sudden, violent way he did, but I've forgotten what it was, and as I recall it didn't drive the story in a way that made sense.  But maybe I'm misremembering.  

 

No point that we ever learned. Kind of the opposite. Arkady basically sighed and implied he thought whatever their plan was he thought was dumb to begin with. So Gaad with his big personality and interesting glimpses of home life was replaced by the new head who's more generic. Thank goodness for Aderholdt. He's the only one who makes the FBI feel like home.

31 minutes ago, SlovakPrincess said:

- Did William say something useful to Stan during his death scene or not?!  They made it seem like it was this possible thing, and Stan seemed to maybe be looking at Philip's house with suspicion at the end of that episode / season (while Paige and Matthew were dating while Philip was telling Paige he hated the idea) ... and then NOTHING happened with any of that!  

 

I don't think it was meant to be anything. William spoke longingly of a guy with a pretty wife and a couple of kids. Stan maybe looked out at Philip going home to his pretty wife and two kids and remembered what William said, but it probably wasn't with any suspicion. Just a more general thought about how yeah, Philip had it pretty well.

And now Stan has a wife who seems totally generic.

33 minutes ago, SlovakPrincess said:

- Last season, they sort of started to explore something interesting with Elizabeth genuinely liking her wheat scientist lover guy, and Philip trying - and hilariously failing - to get the other scientist to be his next Martha because she was like "um, I just want occasional sex, I really do not want you moving in here."   But that fizzled, too.  

 

The Philip stuff, I think, could just be funny as a contrast to Martha--I love the scene where he easily gets her back by saying he's married. He just has to go the opposite way. But the Elizabeth stuff, best I can guess, was maybe just setting us up to see the way she is now. That is, she believes that feelings interfere with her work, so now she's repressing them all. She no longer as any Young Hees or Ben the Wheat guy, just people she hasn't killed yet. Even Philip's at arm's length. Henry's at coastline length.

[JFParnell]

52 minutes ago, SlovakPrincess said:

Last season, they sort of started to explore something interesting with Elizabeth genuinely liking her wheat scientist lover guy, and Philip trying - and hilariously failing - to get the other scientist to be his next Martha because she was like "um, I just want occasional sex, I really do not want you moving in here."   But that fizzled, too.

Oh, you know I'd completely forgotten how P&E each had to eat a bit of romantic humble pie during Wheat! Philip getting shot down was pretty funny. Do they teach "Rejection: When a source won't sleep with you" in spy school?

16 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

That is, she believes that feelings interfere with her work, so now she's repressing them all. She no longer as any Young Hees or Ben the Wheat guy, just people she hasn't killed yet.

LOL! Homicide is fast becoming Liz's default option in any social setting. Would she kill Philip if the centre ordered her to?

Edited April 14, 2018 by JFParnell

[Umbelina]

Reading through this thread just gave me a flash of what the finale might be.  I put it in that thread.

It makes a dreadful kind of sense as we think back on the issues of this show, a show which, for the record, most of us have very much enjoyed for most of it's run.

ETA, I mention it here, because it really came to me only because of all the comments, specifically about Paige, in this thread.  Also, because I really think it's what may happen, it just makes sense with the writers decisions to continue on and on with the Paige as KGB story.

Edited April 14, 2018 by Umbelina

[Ellaria]

14 hours ago, CaliCheeseSucks said:

Yes, this is a good example of a recurring issue on the show: Poor economy of storytelling...

...Yes to all of this as well. Even if by some miracle Misha returns to have a part somewhere in the final seven hours, I'm hard pressed it will validate all the time we spent with it before as necessary...

...Again, perhaps - as with Misha - a kernel of that mission will prove relevant to the last seven episodes but I am quite skeptical any such return appearance or link to that time is going to rationalize the amount of time we, as viewers, were forced to follow that storyline.

Kudos to the use of the phrase “economy of storytelling” because it is exemplified by Misha and his arc. I wasn’t thrilled when they first introduced him because I’m not a fan of the secret love child storyline. (Let’s face it; it was not a new idea.) Then, as we got to know him and understood his struggles, I found myself rooting for him. Even though it was highly unlikely that he would end up on the Jennings’ doorstep, I was looking forward to Liz’s reaction.

Instead, Misha ended up being a plot device in Gabriel’s storyline. Kind of a long run for a short slide, IMO. And Philip’s back story - which was hinted at all season - gets dropped.

I don’t like getting invested in characters and storylines that never have a payoff. Misha was one of those. Stan and his super spy skills better not be another.

[Umbelina]

Oh, by the way, I think I figured out why the writers kept having Henry hang out with Stan so much, it was that Henry was shooting up like a weed.  Stan is SO very tall that Henry still looked like a younger, shorter kid in scenes with him.

[sistermagpie]

1 hour ago, Ellaria Sand said:

Instead, Misha ended up being a plot device in Gabriel’s storyline. Kind of a long run for a short slide, IMO. And Philip’s back story - which was hinted at all season - gets dropped.

 

It's more stunning the more I think about it. They spent so much time on Mischa's journey, which would have been fine in itself if it had a point--the actor, luckily, was very likable. But it's not like we knew, specifically, how Mischa felt about his father so the only way to care about it was via Philip. Plus it raised even more questions--how on earth was his criminal mother able to somehow send him a box of contraband in the USSR? Are we supposed to think she's the most well-connected spy in the world or something? (I note her father doesn't even seem especially nervous about Mischa's law-breaking given his own daughter has presumably been executed.)

The scene with Gabriel was touching, but then we get the hint to Philip's backstory that's just like...what? This isn't like Aderholdt mentioning an ex-wife where it's just info about him that we should take as part of his character. This is central to the entire idea of the show and it's played as if the brother might as well be some distant cousin who was the best they could do for Mischa. Really, it's not worth exploring these people in actual Russia who still keep Philip in their hearts? Meanwhile, in the USA, there's a reason that for the first few seasons people assumed Philip was an orphan. Why is his father practically the only family member he remembers existed when the guy died when he was 6? (And btw, how did he die?)

[SlovakPrincess]

Oh geez I forgot about the frustration of the Misha plot!  Must’ve blocked that out ...

[Umbelina]

35 minutes ago, SlovakPrincess said:

Oh geez I forgot about the frustration of the Misha plot!  Must’ve blocked that out ...

It's hard to remember all the frustrations of that terrible season. 

It was like watching Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown over and over again, and WE were Charlie Brown, endlessly hoping that this story might be good.

Edited April 14, 2018 by Umbelina

[Miles]

The main thing I would have changed is also the Misha-plot. Not even the journey, but the conclusion. This needed a better payoff.

He also would have been the perfect conduit to how young people in the sovjet union thought at the time. Maybe that's where Philip got his ideas about how it actually is back home and not from the Washington post, but he's keeping Misha being there a secret from Elizabeth, because she is a crazy murder maschine. Or something like that.

 

17 hours ago, JFParnell said:

LOL! Homicide is fast becoming Liz's default option in any social setting. Would she kill Philip if the centre ordered her to?

Now I'm imagening her getting invited to a party, whatever she brought not being up to snuff with what other people brought, her getting emberrased and her response to all of it being to kill all the guests there. Including a 500 pounds sumo wrestler, 275 pounds navi seal and 300 pounds boxer. With her bare hands, of course.