The whole cast is extremely good, as is the writing, but I think Matthew Rhys is the best actor on television.
The latter half definitely wasn't as good as the middle arc, but still enjoyable to see where it's all going. I wonder if they'll bring in new characters as quite a few have been written off this season.
I always feel the need to bump this thread at least once a season. I probably enjoy Game of Thrones more, but this is the best written show on television. It never holds the audiences hand, never goes for something over the top just to provide an exciting episode. They just keep it moving, if nothing happens in an episode, then nothing happens. Keep building until something does happen. Then it drops a muted masterpiece like last night. Matthew Rhys is unf**king believable. He won't get any awards because it's not flashy, but he is so damn good.
I'm enjoying the season so far. I think last night was a turning point for the season. Spoiler I think Philip's son will be killed by the KGB in retaliation for his defection or to prevent him from seeing Philip. Philip will somehow find out about this and it will be the nail in the coffin for his loyalty to the USSR. Somehow, that will trigger the end game of the show. I'm starting to think Philip will confess to Stan that he's an agent and secretly work against Elizabeth, whose loyalty to the USSR never falters.
I think that Philip and Elizabeth's marriage will ultimately be adversarial. We know that it was arranged and they began to love each other in spite of their circumstances. They've had bumps in the road like any couple, but have worked through them. However, that doesn't change the fact that they're married in order to further the cause of the Soviet Union. I think that once Philip decides he's done with the KGB, the true "end game" will be between Philip and Elizabeth, not the two of them against Stan. Stan will play a role, perhaps even knowingly, but this show is more than a spy show; as its creators have said, it's "about a marriage" and Stan isn't party to that.
Anyone have any predictions on the final season? while this season has been somewhat less eventful than the last 2, I'm really enjoying the slow burning drama. Spoiler I feel like Oleg will be the one to ultimately bring down the Jennings, and I can't WAIT to see old chums Stan and Phil interact once Stan has his "leaves of grass on the toilet" moment. One thing that has me confused is Mischa's storyline...I get that it was the catalyst for Gabriel quitting, but where is Mischa now? Is this going to be what makes Philip finally defect? Somehow I see Philip in prison and Elizabeth on the run...
I think it's super hilarious Henry has become an elite human being while they weren't looking. They chose the wrong child to accidentally groom to be a Russian spy. I think something Henry does will bring them down because they haven't been paying attention.
I can't really predict what is going to happen this season, but I feel that Claudia taking over as handler again can't be good. I really enjoyed Martha's reaction to Gabriel when he came to visit her and she got tired of his BS.
I will admit, the season has disappointed me a lot. I enjoy shows that are slow burns like Mad Men, but it seems like this season of The Americans hasn't made much progress toward a resolution (aside from the last episode). I don't need many episodes of Oleg chasing down corrupt cogs or Paige struggling with violence. Or episodes of Stan and Aderholt recruiting a Russian woman for an unknown purpose now. Or the entire Mischa plot line to this point. I will say this is what I think happens: Spoiler Oleg is now firmly disenchanted with the USSR. He knows the country imprisoned his mother and that his father is one of the self-serving bureaucrats denying a higher quality of life to their fellow citizens. He feels that his brother died for nothing in Afghanistan and, most importantly, he's spent enough time in America to contrast it with the Soviet Union. I believe Stan will give the go-ahead to the CIA, on behalf of Gaad, to turn Oleg and the latter will willingly become an asset. I do not think Oleg gives up the Jennings family because, if I recall, the Rezidentura did know their identities. I could be wrong about that, though. I think Stan will have a "Hank on the toilet" moment when he thinks back to a dying William describing their family life and how "She's pretty... He's lucky." I also think they will frame Pastor Tim in an attempt to draw the FBI's attention away from them; it's no mistake that Paige is reading a copy of Das Kapital with his handwriting in it and he was stranded in Derg Ethiopia last season.
How good has this season been? Not sure how they're going to wrap this all up in only 2 more episodes. It's a travesty that Keri Russel and Matthew Rhys have never won an Emmy...not to mention the show itself never winning.
It's been excellent and I think this show will gain a broader, post-airing audience once all of it is streaming on Amazon next year. I was pretty wrong in my earlier prediction (but there's still time!). I truly have no idea how the story will wrap up, but here are some random thoughts: Spoiler I think Renee is a KGB plant sent to watch over the Jennings from across the street. I think she will either kill Stan when he attempts to make a move against them or she herself will attack them in retribution for going against the KGB's wishes regarding Gorbachev and Dead Hand. Elizabeth will kill Claudia after an attempt is made on their lives. She's always disliked Claudia and learning that Claudia knew all along about Dead Hand and is plotting to overthrow Gorbachev will sever what few bonds of familiarity they grew to share. Paige will die. I don't know how, but she will get sloppy on a mission and Elizabeth will regret bringing her into the fold. Oleg will die. I also have no idea how this will happen.
This show is so damn good. It's like Breaking Bad in the sense that it started out OK but got consistently stronger as the seasons went along. I think FX made a mistake not allowing this on Netflix earlier. Breaking Bad's creator was open about how many viewers the show gained in later seasons from people that binge watched it. These last few seasons have been preposterously good. I seriously have no idea how this show is gonna end, but it's certainly gonna be ugly. Spoiler There's certainly not gonna be a happy end, but the only thing I'm hoping for is that Stan's old lady is just a red herring. Something about Stan being duped again just wouldn't sit right with me.
I DVR'd the first 9 episodes of S6 and watched them over the last 4 days. It's been another great season. Can't wait for the 90 min finale Wednesday. There are precious few shows I recommend catching up on if you are more than one season behind. We have an exception here. In two days the Americans will finish up with 75 total episodes. If you haven't watched it and want to treat yourself, start from the beginning, take your time and enjoy the journey. Don't rush it and binge. Savor every last drop. One thing I won't spoil: The vein in the eye makes another appearance in ep 9.
I second the bolded part. Quite frankly, it's the best show on television and it hasn't been close for years. Accurate too, according to former CIA agents. via WaPo: I was chief of disguise at CIA. ‘The Americans’ got a lot right. Spoiler: minor spoilers in article Jonna Hiestand Mendez worked in the CIA's Office of Technical Service for 27 years, retiring as chief of disguise. She is a founding board member of the International Spy Museum, and with her husband, Antonio J. Mendez, is author of the forthcoming book "Moscow Rules." After 27 years in the CIA working on operational assignments around the world, I am somewhat numbed to the fictional espionage that engulfs us — the books and movies and TV shows that always get it wrong. That’s why I have largely shunned the genre, barely noting the reviews of the latest creations that celebrate the life of an intelligence officer. “Homeland”? No. The Bourne movies? No. “Alias”? God, no! It’s the main reason I work as an adviser and speaker at the Spy Museum in Washington: to present an informed but still entertaining picture of the work of a spy. But then came “The Americans,” the FX TV series set to finish its sixth and final season to near-unanimous critical acclaim. It proved to be the outlier in my perception — and I wasn’t surprised when The Washington Post reported that Gina Haspel, the career CIA officer nominated to direct the agency, is a fan of the show. I was late to “The Americans” and had some catching up to do initially. But from the first spectacular episode, I was hooked, because the setup resonated. The show centered on a modern American family of spies with children and a suburban lifestyle. That had once been my life. But wait. These spies were not American at all. They were faux Americans — Russians, in fact — something I also knew a little about. There had once been Soviet sleeper agents posing as Americans. The structure of the FX show, predicated on the family dynamics that result when espionage is the parental career, allowed for a thoughtful exploration of the necessity to manage the daily deception that is part of the job of a spy (or, as we would call it at the CIA, an operations officer). My husband, Tony, and I had 52 years between us working with the CIA in mostly foreign assignments. We had to convince nosy neighbors and casual acquaintances, as well as office mates, that we were what we purported to be — somewhat boring administrative professionals. If we made it boring enough, it worked. Tony’s children, however, would eventually notice that their dad was gone far more often than their friends’ dads, and that he never talked about his job, that he was meeting strangers at home with great privacy. Then he would take them, one by one, to a very grown-up lunch and give them “the talk.” He always told me that his kids handled the information more carefully than many adults do. But he also never tried to recruit them, as happens in “The Americans,” to take on the life of a spy themselves. While “The Americans” concerns itself with maintaining the charade of a false identity and masquerading as someone you are not, it pushes further, exploring the nature of love when you live with someone who lies for a living, and the moral dilemmas that can arise from those circumstances. On one long assignment to Europe, my husband and I kept a guest book on a shelf inside our front door. When I came home from days away, I would sit down and write him a note, give him the departure and return details of my next trip, and then go again. He would do the same. Today that book is one of my treasures, something like a diary, but without any of the personal stuff. It is the unclassified record of multiple deceptions, covers and meetings. “The Americans” gets the tradecraft and the technology of the 1980s generally right, at least the way it worked when Ronald Reagan was president. The script is littered with dead drops and communication protocols, disguises and cyanide pills, secret writing and signals that were used for impersonal communication with your agent or your team. It is all properly executed; it is done the way we did it, and it is one of many ways that Joe Weisberg, the creator of this series and a former CIA officer himself, shows his hand and his familiarity with CIA tactics and methods. He and I went to the same tradecraft school at the agency, and we learned the same lessons. When I watched Matthew Rhys, the husband on “The Americans,” speed in reverse through an FBI roadblock in the final episode of Season 1, well, I have practiced that maneuver countless times, wrecking more than one car while learning the procedure. They did it right. The makeup artists for “The Americans” do, too. It is universally recognized that women wear disguises more easily than men do. Women have been disguising themselves from their early teens for generations; men, not so much. Convincing a male CIA officer that he should wear a wig and a fake mustache was one of my first challenges in the disguise business. I went on to become chief of disguise at CIA, and had other, more compelling disguise materials to offer, but the men were never a natural fit. Rhys makes the case, however, for disappearing under nothing more than a knit cap and a pair of glasses, a scruffy mustache and a messy wig. He becomes the consummate little gray man, invisible, the one nobody can remember was even on the elevator. Where does “The Americans” go astray? The sex and violence are over the top and gratuitous but probably deemed necessary by the writers. I disagree. I was taught to shoot at static targets and out of moving vehicles with a variety of guns, but in nearly three decades on the job, I never carried one. Never had to kill anyone, although I almost got shot myself. A gun would not have helped me then. Only a few episodes to go. We will miss this show, where the action is both shaken and stirred, where the chemistry between Keri Russell, who plays the wife, and Rhys became so real that the actors are a couple now, with a child. Interesting that a real relationship was born out of a TV “marriage” that began as an absolute lie.
Tonight is the series finale! Any predictions? Spoiler I think there will be some kind of reveal with Renee. She will either impede Stan's progress or use her interview as a guide to kill Oleg on behalf of the center. I do not know. Henry will refuse to go with his family, wherever they're going. Paige dies.
Spoiler Getting Sopranos vibes after that last episode. I think they might leave the Renee thing as a loose end with perhaps a little nod to it at the end. There will be clues dropped to her true nature that the Internet will argue about. With Henry, I think Stan figures it out before the Jennings can reach him and the FBI is sent to the prep school to detain him or something. The 3 remaining Jennings get into a shootout and Liz and Phil end up dying, while Paige has to watch the whole thing. The mail robot gets hacked by Oleg with a dormant virus that resurfaces in 2016 to swing the U.S. presidential election.
A very good finale to an absolutely great series! Props to them for ending it while the show was still good.
Thought the finale was excellent, that sequence with the Jennings and Stan was just fantastic. Everybody was acting the hell out of that scene. I'll miss the show and the wig......
