The Americans on FX

Listened to a podcast the other day which interviews the showrunners. One of them (Joe Fields, I believe, who also worked on Frasier) equated Tuan to Niles on Frasier. Apparently, to normalize Frasier they took all of his neuroses and put it into another character but even more so (i.e. Niles). I guess Tuan is to Niles what Elizabeth is to Frasier.

 

Elizabeth is a lot older and in different circumstances.
As cold and ruthless as she can be now, Elizabeth must've been a lot to reckon with when she was a new agent.
And she would've never needed the kind of surrogate family connections that motivate Tuan.
A 20-year-old Elizabeth would've been one cold-blooded, ruthless agent.

 

I can't really figure out why Tuan's "house" would have drawn any suspicion in the first place.

Perhaps I missed it, but what --- if anything --- would have triggered a need to conduct surveillance of the place? It had to start with something.

 

Who says this be like fiction??

 

Is Tuan's house under surveillance or the Russian family with Posha?

 

The entire Oleg storyline this season exists to show how shitty life is in the Soviet Union in the early/mid-80s even for people with connections in high places, and what the Jenningses would be going back to, rather than the socialist utopia Elizabeth believes it to be.

That said, I did think Oleg was going to jump off the bridge there at the end. Every time he leaves the house, he looks at his mother like it's going to be the last time he sees her.

 

Tuan mentioned a routine he has that he keeps turning the lights on and off to simulate a family living there and coming and going at regular intervals. Part of the reason he asks for P&E to be there more often is to make the simulation more realistic.

1. They exaggerate it, at least based on the memories and stories from the people I've talked to.
2. It was much, much worse in the 90s. THAT was misery exceeded only by 1941-45.

 

Fair enough. I was thinking it was for the Russians because when we see Phillip charge out of the house to stop Posha from slitting his wrists, we don't see the surveillance until after they turn the corner and get closer to the house. If Tuan's house was under surveillance why don't we see them until after they get out of sight of the house?

I think the routines and lights are to keep the surveillance people from getting suspicious about a random house on the block.

 

Hmm. I didn't notice that. Anytime I blink my eyes I miss something on that show.

 

Goddamn it. They couldn't give us a little more for the finale? Looks like they're going to save their load for next year. This would have been a good penultimate episode for the season and the finale be Tuan screwing them over and Phillip and Elizabeth scrambling to fix it to keep their cover. Maybe bring in Paige on her first mission and it goes wrong as the episode ends.

Next year better be balls to the wall.

 

That season had some really good moments but as a whole not on par with previous seasons.

 

Exactly how this wet fart of a season was always going to end.

Philip is sad, Elizabeth is committed to the homeland but loyal to Philip, Paige is adjusting, Stan is weird, they know they can't do this forever but don't know what to do with the kids. Exactly where we started the season.

It feels very much like they had planned on this being the last season but then has to rewrite and push all the stuff they had planned to next year. Some shows have filler episodes. This one had a whole filler season.

The quality of the work was still there outside of the lack of plot velocity. That scene with Martha was amazing.