The Americans (Season 2)
Aug. 30th, 2014 11:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakBecause I couldn't resist and marathoned that one, too, courtesy of Itunes.
Everyone who said that the show didn't falter in its second season but even improved: you were right! Not that it's impossible to nitpick (weren't the Young Pioneers obligatory in the USSR, even for the children of the nomenklatura like Oleg? And how come BIG SPOILER was a good enough shot for BIGGEST REVEAL in the final episode?), but it built on and deepened what it had established in the first season. Characters who were mostly cyphers before, like Arkady and Agent Gaad, were fleshed out (and got to meet, twice, which were great scenes). And if you marathon the entire season, which means that the first ep of same isn't watched too long before the last ep, you see how tightly written it is.
That Emmet and Leanne Connors as the other Illegals with kids who were killed in the season opener were obvious counterparts/parallels/might have beens to Philipp and Elizabeth, with their fates - and the fates of their children, one dead, one surviving - an opportunity for P & E to see what would/could happen to their own children should they themselves die was obvious from the get go, but as the season unfolds and then climaxes you can see just how insidious and disturbing this is. Philip and Elizabeth always told themselves they were keeping their spy lives and their family life separate, but as Paige getting suspicions in the s1 finale indicated, this was at best a temporary illusion.
Paige, but also Henry in the episode where his intellevision obsession and break in catches up with him, function as parallels Philipp and Elizabeth as well, in addition to being their own characters. You know, I'm really impressed so far of how the show handles the kids, AND by the fact I can write "kids" plural, not just singular. In my viewing history, there was both Heroes and Homeland, where you had a spy dad with two children but only one who actually counted in the narrative (Claire in Heroes, Dana in Homeland, while the younger brother basically just stood around as set decoration which is a problem if you have simultanously the show insisting that the morally ambigous/villainous parent has "I'd do anything for my child!" is a key motivation. Now The Americans gives Paige more to do than Henry, who is younger, but Henry is his own person, too, and you never get the impression that Philip and Elizabeth don't love him as much as they do Paige. The casting also lucked out with both, because it's not any child actor who can deliver a key breakdown monologue, which is what Henry does in the "I'm a good person, I know the difference between right and wrong!" scene where he essentially says what his parents desperately try to tell themselves all the time (while believing it less and less, especially in Philip's case.
Paige being a lot like a Elizabeth was clear to the audience (and Philip) for eons, but Elizabeth didn't consciously realise it until the later s2 episodes. But Paige isn't the only younger Elizabeth echo running around this season. There is also Lucia, who is very much idealistic young Elizabeth, not yet bloodied and without a partner. Elizabeth acting as a mentor to her and then, forced to choose between Lucia and the mission, letting her die while looking at her was a devastating mid season scene. It becomes even worse with the big finale revelations and the implications for Paige.
When her parents separated for a while in s1, Paige did the very typical thing of casting Philip as the fun Dad and Elizabeth as the mean Mom, so I thought it was a good choice by the show to make sure from the get go this season that this isn't how the narrative sees them, and of course Paige herself stopped when exposed to (some) of her father's frightening side when Philip laid down the law after finding out Paige was lying to them and checking on Elizabeth's alibi while there was (he believed) an illegals-and-their-family-offing killer stalking around. The family and spying worlds became ever more intermingled through the season - Paige knows her parents aren't telling her the truth while insisting on her own truthfulness, Philip and Elizabeth react less and less how a "real" Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, US citizens, would to what is on one level a typical the teenager-striking-out-at-her-own and on another pushes so many buttons for them. Not just cultural ones (i.e. their Russian childhoods versus Paige's privileged American existence, or the question of religion/opiate of the masses). One thing the season really conveyed well was how deeply damaged people they are through what they do. When Philip lashes out against the news that Paige donated 600 dollars to the church, he's doing so after having murdered three bystanders in a row.
Which is why the big finale revelations, while not without its contrived elements (see above), worked perfectly on me on an emotional level. It strips the last of any illusions Elizabeth and Philip may have had that they can keep their children safe and uncontaminated by their actions by showing the very source of their professional existence demands this sacrifice, too, while also showing them an exampe of what their children could become in that case. And after a season in which they grew ever closer and even managed to weather the disastrous triggering of each other in the most personal way (btw: this is how you use sex as adult storytelling, other shows; it's not about the explicitness of the flesh shown but about what it says about characters), it sets up a gigantic conflict between them for season 3. Because Elizabeth, having realised that Paige's discovery of religion mirrors her own youthful need to serve a higher cause, may be able to rationalise herself into seeing a KGB future for Paige as a way to end the growing distance between herself and her daughter and to finally share the truth with her, but there is no way Philip is ever going to agree, especially after this season and mid existencial crisis and self loathing about body counts.
Meanwhile,on the FBI front: or actually the Rezidentura front, because while the first season paralleled the Philipp/Elizabeth plots and the Stan plots and their respective families, this season not only shifted the narrative screentime attention from Sandra to Nina, but also the viewpoint. I'd say the second season, as opposed to the first one (except perhaps in the last two eps for each), reverses focus from Stan to Nina. It's Nina we follow in that part of the show, whose work and personal relationships we see (to Arkady, to Oleg), while Stan is mostly shown in relationship to her (again, until the last two episodes, just like Nina got more view point focus in the last two s1 episodes) and isolated from nearly everyone else. Stan's big choice moment at the end of the season - conviction/loyalty/the greater good against love/the life of a person (as far as he knows) - was one that the season managed to make actually uncertain (to me, at least), which is an accomplishment because I thought in s1 when Arkady told Nina he wanted her to turn Stan that this couldn't possibly work. In the end, it didn't, but Stan compromised himself enough and committed himself enough to Nina to make it seem indeed possible, before his commitment to FBI and country won out.
Use of humor in the show: shouldn't be overlooked, because solely by summing it up you could think it's relentlessly grimdark, which it isn't. And it's always ic. For example: Paige, snooping around the house, coming across her parents having sex may be a standard tv trope, but Elizabeth and Philip don't react the standard trope way (even if Paige does, bolting out and the next day being ultra embarrassed); there is no hasty pulling of the covers - which would have been ooc for a couple whose job, among other things, makes them sex workers - or running after Paige, they wait until the next morning to talk to her. (And the position they're in when Paige opens the door isn't standard tv anything, given that it's a 69 (at least that's what fanfic has taught me it's called in English); it is, however, pretty symbolic for their relationship. Also: Philip falling in love with a shiny new car, and teasing Elizabeth about shoes. Arkady's snarky dressing down of Oleg in the later's first days at the Rezidentura. Gaad's reply to Stan's "I feel responsible" with the ultry dry (and true) "You ARE responsible" instead of the standard reassurance. Etc.
80s trivia: Good lord. Oliver North. He still exists? And gets consulted about tv episodes dealing with the Iran-Contra afffair, apparantly, for obvious reasons. Also: casual antisemitism in the Soviet Union (not just in the 80s, of course, but certainly then.) Andropov name dropping before Andropov gets Chairman. And Henry is extremely sceptical whether Wrath of Khan will be any good considering TMP sucked. I have to admit, I'd never thought remembering the 80s would make me feel nostalgic, but it does.
Doylist woes: I know Margo Martindale got her own show, but I missed Claudia desperately. Am in two minds about TPTB making Kate such a non-character. I mean, I can see why she had to be a young and pretty woman given the big finale revelation, but that, in addition to her apparant incompetence (except for her last episode), made her look even more like an unworthy replacement on both a Watsonian and Doylist level for one of the first season's most original characters. I was so relieved we got Claudia back at least for some guest apparances. So, um did Margo Martindale's new show get cancelled? If so, it would be logical to bring Claudia back full time now on both a Watsonian and Doylist level, given how volatile the situation between P & E and the Center is right now, but if that's impossible, the next handler really should be an interesting character in her/his own right.
Another Doylist observation: damm, but Matthew Rhys was so good this season. He certainly deserved an Emmy nomination.
Speculation: Martha's disagreement with "Clark" about having children might actually be a way for Martha to exit her unwitting mole role without getting killed. I hope so!
Everyone who said that the show didn't falter in its second season but even improved: you were right! Not that it's impossible to nitpick (weren't the Young Pioneers obligatory in the USSR, even for the children of the nomenklatura like Oleg? And how come BIG SPOILER was a good enough shot for BIGGEST REVEAL in the final episode?), but it built on and deepened what it had established in the first season. Characters who were mostly cyphers before, like Arkady and Agent Gaad, were fleshed out (and got to meet, twice, which were great scenes). And if you marathon the entire season, which means that the first ep of same isn't watched too long before the last ep, you see how tightly written it is.
That Emmet and Leanne Connors as the other Illegals with kids who were killed in the season opener were obvious counterparts/parallels/might have beens to Philipp and Elizabeth, with their fates - and the fates of their children, one dead, one surviving - an opportunity for P & E to see what would/could happen to their own children should they themselves die was obvious from the get go, but as the season unfolds and then climaxes you can see just how insidious and disturbing this is. Philip and Elizabeth always told themselves they were keeping their spy lives and their family life separate, but as Paige getting suspicions in the s1 finale indicated, this was at best a temporary illusion.
Paige, but also Henry in the episode where his intellevision obsession and break in catches up with him, function as parallels Philipp and Elizabeth as well, in addition to being their own characters. You know, I'm really impressed so far of how the show handles the kids, AND by the fact I can write "kids" plural, not just singular. In my viewing history, there was both Heroes and Homeland, where you had a spy dad with two children but only one who actually counted in the narrative (Claire in Heroes, Dana in Homeland, while the younger brother basically just stood around as set decoration which is a problem if you have simultanously the show insisting that the morally ambigous/villainous parent has "I'd do anything for my child!" is a key motivation. Now The Americans gives Paige more to do than Henry, who is younger, but Henry is his own person, too, and you never get the impression that Philip and Elizabeth don't love him as much as they do Paige. The casting also lucked out with both, because it's not any child actor who can deliver a key breakdown monologue, which is what Henry does in the "I'm a good person, I know the difference between right and wrong!" scene where he essentially says what his parents desperately try to tell themselves all the time (while believing it less and less, especially in Philip's case.
Paige being a lot like a Elizabeth was clear to the audience (and Philip) for eons, but Elizabeth didn't consciously realise it until the later s2 episodes. But Paige isn't the only younger Elizabeth echo running around this season. There is also Lucia, who is very much idealistic young Elizabeth, not yet bloodied and without a partner. Elizabeth acting as a mentor to her and then, forced to choose between Lucia and the mission, letting her die while looking at her was a devastating mid season scene. It becomes even worse with the big finale revelations and the implications for Paige.
When her parents separated for a while in s1, Paige did the very typical thing of casting Philip as the fun Dad and Elizabeth as the mean Mom, so I thought it was a good choice by the show to make sure from the get go this season that this isn't how the narrative sees them, and of course Paige herself stopped when exposed to (some) of her father's frightening side when Philip laid down the law after finding out Paige was lying to them and checking on Elizabeth's alibi while there was (he believed) an illegals-and-their-family-offing killer stalking around. The family and spying worlds became ever more intermingled through the season - Paige knows her parents aren't telling her the truth while insisting on her own truthfulness, Philip and Elizabeth react less and less how a "real" Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, US citizens, would to what is on one level a typical the teenager-striking-out-at-her-own and on another pushes so many buttons for them. Not just cultural ones (i.e. their Russian childhoods versus Paige's privileged American existence, or the question of religion/opiate of the masses). One thing the season really conveyed well was how deeply damaged people they are through what they do. When Philip lashes out against the news that Paige donated 600 dollars to the church, he's doing so after having murdered three bystanders in a row.
Which is why the big finale revelations, while not without its contrived elements (see above), worked perfectly on me on an emotional level. It strips the last of any illusions Elizabeth and Philip may have had that they can keep their children safe and uncontaminated by their actions by showing the very source of their professional existence demands this sacrifice, too, while also showing them an exampe of what their children could become in that case. And after a season in which they grew ever closer and even managed to weather the disastrous triggering of each other in the most personal way (btw: this is how you use sex as adult storytelling, other shows; it's not about the explicitness of the flesh shown but about what it says about characters), it sets up a gigantic conflict between them for season 3. Because Elizabeth, having realised that Paige's discovery of religion mirrors her own youthful need to serve a higher cause, may be able to rationalise herself into seeing a KGB future for Paige as a way to end the growing distance between herself and her daughter and to finally share the truth with her, but there is no way Philip is ever going to agree, especially after this season and mid existencial crisis and self loathing about body counts.
Meanwhile,on the FBI front: or actually the Rezidentura front, because while the first season paralleled the Philipp/Elizabeth plots and the Stan plots and their respective families, this season not only shifted the narrative screentime attention from Sandra to Nina, but also the viewpoint. I'd say the second season, as opposed to the first one (except perhaps in the last two eps for each), reverses focus from Stan to Nina. It's Nina we follow in that part of the show, whose work and personal relationships we see (to Arkady, to Oleg), while Stan is mostly shown in relationship to her (again, until the last two episodes, just like Nina got more view point focus in the last two s1 episodes) and isolated from nearly everyone else. Stan's big choice moment at the end of the season - conviction/loyalty/the greater good against love/the life of a person (as far as he knows) - was one that the season managed to make actually uncertain (to me, at least), which is an accomplishment because I thought in s1 when Arkady told Nina he wanted her to turn Stan that this couldn't possibly work. In the end, it didn't, but Stan compromised himself enough and committed himself enough to Nina to make it seem indeed possible, before his commitment to FBI and country won out.
Use of humor in the show: shouldn't be overlooked, because solely by summing it up you could think it's relentlessly grimdark, which it isn't. And it's always ic. For example: Paige, snooping around the house, coming across her parents having sex may be a standard tv trope, but Elizabeth and Philip don't react the standard trope way (even if Paige does, bolting out and the next day being ultra embarrassed); there is no hasty pulling of the covers - which would have been ooc for a couple whose job, among other things, makes them sex workers - or running after Paige, they wait until the next morning to talk to her. (And the position they're in when Paige opens the door isn't standard tv anything, given that it's a 69 (at least that's what fanfic has taught me it's called in English); it is, however, pretty symbolic for their relationship. Also: Philip falling in love with a shiny new car, and teasing Elizabeth about shoes. Arkady's snarky dressing down of Oleg in the later's first days at the Rezidentura. Gaad's reply to Stan's "I feel responsible" with the ultry dry (and true) "You ARE responsible" instead of the standard reassurance. Etc.
80s trivia: Good lord. Oliver North. He still exists? And gets consulted about tv episodes dealing with the Iran-Contra afffair, apparantly, for obvious reasons. Also: casual antisemitism in the Soviet Union (not just in the 80s, of course, but certainly then.) Andropov name dropping before Andropov gets Chairman. And Henry is extremely sceptical whether Wrath of Khan will be any good considering TMP sucked. I have to admit, I'd never thought remembering the 80s would make me feel nostalgic, but it does.
Doylist woes: I know Margo Martindale got her own show, but I missed Claudia desperately. Am in two minds about TPTB making Kate such a non-character. I mean, I can see why she had to be a young and pretty woman given the big finale revelation, but that, in addition to her apparant incompetence (except for her last episode), made her look even more like an unworthy replacement on both a Watsonian and Doylist level for one of the first season's most original characters. I was so relieved we got Claudia back at least for some guest apparances. So, um did Margo Martindale's new show get cancelled? If so, it would be logical to bring Claudia back full time now on both a Watsonian and Doylist level, given how volatile the situation between P & E and the Center is right now, but if that's impossible, the next handler really should be an interesting character in her/his own right.
Another Doylist observation: damm, but Matthew Rhys was so good this season. He certainly deserved an Emmy nomination.
Speculation: Martha's disagreement with "Clark" about having children might actually be a way for Martha to exit her unwitting mole role without getting killed. I hope so!
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Date: 2014-08-31 11:28 am (UTC)