The Americans on FX

I haven't seen 'Shameless.' We don't get Showtime, and our DirectTV bill is high enough already.

'The Americans' is better than 'Breaking Bad.'

I haven't watched 'Justified' and really have no interest in it, so by default I'd say 'The Americans' is better.

I love 'Dexter.' We watch it when it comes out on DVD. 'The Americans' is on par with the best seasons of 'Dexter,' and better than the last season of 'Dexter' I've seen because 'The Americans' doesn't include entire episodes in which the main character just sits around talking to Mos Def about religion and philosophy.

 

Didn't realize it until I read Sepinwall's blog, but Martha's dad was played by Richard Kline, AKA horndog neighbor Larry Dallas on "Three's Company."

They should have gone to dinner at the Regal Beagle.

 

Wow, had no idea. Guess not having all that black hair and an open shirt made him hard to recognize.

 

That was an interesting episode, probably the worst of the series but not bad by any means. They put the onus on Keri Russell. She had to carry this episode and had a whole bunch of really tough scenes. I thought she nailed most but whiffed on the most important, the breakdown. It didn't seem right, and it didn't seem like Elizabeth Jennings. Maybe the blame shouldn't fall to Russell. Maybe Russell played a poorly written scene as realistically as her character would have acted in that scenario. The agent's screed about being a bureaucrat while Elizabeth is a murderer and liar was not good enough to warrant that kind of turn.

That said, Russell did nail the scene in the car with Claudia and the scene in the hotel room with Phillip. Those were just as important both to the plot of the show and to the character's development. That scene with Phillip in the hotel room, where he reveals he has an apartment now, was perfect, the best in the episode. I really enjoy when they back off the throttle on the spy games and remind us about the family stuff. Matthew Rhys also seems more comfortable as a dad, while Russell seems as uneasy as a mother as you would expect Elizabeth to be.

The daughter is a shitty actress, though, which could hurt the show more in the long run.

And is there any chance Nina makes it out fo this season alive? My inclination is to think that first assignment was a test.

 

The kids being shitty actors also hamstrung "The Sopranos" at times. Robert Iler (AJ Soprano) is one of the all-time worst actors to portray a major character in a "prestige" TV drama. Notice he hasn't really worked since.

On the flip side, the girl who plays Sally Draper on "Mad Men" is awesome, as are several of the younger actors on "Game of Thrones" (particularly King Joffrey and Arya Stark).

As for Nina getting a "test," I thought that too. I knew if she went to Stan with the bug in Weinberger's office she'd be dead by the end of the episode.

 

The episode was not action packed, but it did develop the characters further. People were complaining about the break neck pace on the show, and it needed an episode like this to slow down.

And Stan Beeman's wife can act as well. That was a pretty damn good confrontation scene.

 

Yeah, the show needed an episode like that where, at the very least, they pulled the foot off the gas a little bit.

The only complaint I would have is that Elizabeth's turn was definitely a poorly written and explained. Realizing that Cecilia was playing her? Fine. But it just wasn't well-executed.

 

Two points:

1. A show doesn't have to pull it's foot off the gas to develop characters. This show has been a good example of that.

B. I wasn't crazy about the emotional breakdown scene either, but for a different reason.
From a character point, it was revealing. She didn't breakdown because of the CIA guy's prodding. She broke down because she had lost control. The murder of her surrogate father made her angry and vengeful, but realizing she had allowed herself to become emotionally out of control is what pushed her over the edge.

But the reason I didn't care for the scene was because it was only trying to give us a glimpse of her character. It wasn't serving the story or plot in a good way. She would have killed him any way, or Phillip would have. It's cleaner that way.
Instead, they let him go and the CIA guy gives information to the FBI. He can't reveal much and lies to cover up the fact that he got beat up by a woman, but his use of the word 'couple' put a thought in Stan's head.

 

It could also show she is a little more human than we might think. She isn't robo-Commie killer 24/7.

 

Once they got him, they had to kill him, just for self preservation purposes.

 

They should've killed him. It would've been much cleaner.
And it would've made more sense for her to kill him after she'd come to her senses.

Letting him go was a shoddy device to let us see Stan's face as a he put another piece of the puzzle in place.

 

Dexter is a ridiculously bad show now. I can't believe anyone would put it alongside Breaking Bad and Justified. It was very good or great for three seasons, but the four other seasons have been dreadful. The writing, acting and production are cartoonish and shallow, neither of which are things that can be said for the other company mentioned here. The most recent season was decent, but the writers' decisions were still so stupid that I often couldn't wait for the season to end.

That said, the fact that The Americans is, after less than a season, on par with BB and Justified, speaks to how strong this season has been. There are multiple compelling characters (which is a hell of a lot more than anyone can say about Dexter), including what I'd classify as an unexpected great in Stan. BB/Justified has these in Jesse Pinkman and Boyd Crowder, two characters who originally weren't supposed to last long, and I think this helps elevate a show toward greatness. I don't know that this is the case for Stan, but I wouldn't have predicted that Noah Emmerich would've been as awesome as he's been, and I think the writing for his character has been elevated to match his performance.

Seasons and therefore shows are often remembered by how they handle the last two episodes, and there are interesting choices to be made in the next two weeks. Something will have to give, somewhere, and I wonder if the Nina angle isn't predictable enough that the writers have or should've abandoned it. Regardless, I can't wait to see what happens.

Fuck Dexter.