The Americans on FX

I audibly said "Holy (David Ortiz's curse word)" when Nina walked in and gave herself up. Wonder where the arc goes from here on her character. One season and done - of course we saw that with the Amador character.

 

Having Russian spoken --- when it normally would have been spoken --- would have added so much more realism. It's pretty easy to pretend you're "one of us" when you speak English without the hint of a foreign accent. Too easy.

You have to come over here at a young age or seriously study pronunciation to speak without an accent. Maria Sharapova does it (she was 7 when she came here). A teacher I know learned British English and sounds perfectly British when she speaks English.

 

What? Are you talking about Philip and Elizabeth? They were trained to break their accents and forbidden from speaking Russian.

 

Sure. But that's a made-for-TV crutch that didn't have to be included. It just gave a handy explanation for "why do they always speak English?"

Peter Earnest, the founding executive director of D.C.'s International Spy Museum and a 35-year CIA spy veteran, said he never encountered a Russian who was able to completely lose their accent. If you haven't lost it by puberty, you can't lose it, he claims.

And no matter how well you are trained, if you stub your toe or drop something, you will let out a "Shit!" or a "Блин!" in your native language. You just will. It would have been nice to see the occasional misstep (they are human, after all).

Just a minor nitpick.

 

Did you see how Philip and Elizabeth were trained? My guess is they were beat for any slip throughout the training. They also have been in America for 15-plus years, speaking nothing but English. Stub a toe, and you'll resort to the language most comfortable to you. That's English for them now. One of the signs of learning a foreign language fluidly is when you start dreaming in it. That often happens, in situations of full immersion, within a few months.

Nina, on the other hand, speaks Russian often in the show.

 

Just started watching this last night, on the strong recommendation of a close friend.

Question -- should I go back and start from Episode 1? I'm assuming so.

 

... Why wouldn't you?

Yes. It's a serialized drama. You need to start from the beginning, like with all serialized dramas.

 

I know...

 

For a long time I'd been thinking the best case scenario for Martha is she ends up abandoned and miserable after "Clark" just disappears one day. Worst case, and perhaps likely, was she has to be killed. But the longer it goes, the more desperate and infatuated she seems I wonder if Phillip and Elizabeth won't eventually try to turn her.

 

This show is going to some interesting places and bummed next week is the final episode (but at least it already was renewed).

With all this going on no one mentioned Stan. He's put himself in a precarious position now that Nina will be acting as a double agent. Or I guess, really, a triple agent.

 

I'm really nervous for the finale. There's just so much potential for it to be unsatisfying. I don't see how they can wrap up the season in a way that cashes enough of the dramatic checks they've written to feel satisfying and still leave enough of a cliffhanger to set up next season.

We all knew Nina trying for triple-agent status was going to happen, but I liked how they made it feel at least somewhat plausible. She came clean to Arkady, which puts him in one heck of a pickle. He's suddenly based his career around his big molehunt that took out the former resident. Admitting he was wrong would be very dangerous for him.

On the other hand, they've pushed Martha to the very teetering edge of credibility. The fact that she can apparently hold down a job, dress herself, and generally not drool constantly shows that she's intelligent enough to see through this, "we see what we need to see in people" or not. I'm hoping for a "I've known for a while, Clark. I just needed some excitement" moment right before her inevitable suicide.

Obviously, we're not getting to "FBI figures out it's Phillip and Elizabeth" in the next episode. But when we do get there, in two seasons or 10, it's apparently going to come from the bottomless fountain of "I'm Stan Beeman, and my time with the skinheads made me omniscient so I just know." If he wasn't such a breakout character, I'd say they need to kill him off, because at the pace he's making these magical deductions, Phillip and Elizabeth will be in custody in about four more episodes and that'll be the end of the show.

I'm guessing Paige decides that the only way she can compete with boobs and guitar skillz is to up the sexual ante.

 

Nina turns Stan, Stan goes double. Nina links up Philip and Stan to work together. But they do it to save both the US and Soviets. And they each walk away with new found respect for each other and no one gets turned in

End of season 2