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selenakNaturally, the reply contains lots of spoilers for The Americans seasons 1 and 2. But none for season 3. I am unspoiled and would lilke to remain so, so if you know anything, don't tell me.
First of all, since season 1 was a good debut season and season 2 was a great season, I live both in joy and fear. Progressive upwardness or sudden slump? I've encountered both in my fannish life. For every Breaking Bad that built and kept its high level from start to end, there was a Fringe which started to go down in mid season 3. Or earlier. (Heroes, alas.) But so far I'm an optimist with this show. So:
- more moral ambiguity without cheap cynicism; The Americans makes you sympathize with its protagonists, but it also gives us sympathetic victims of their endeavours instead of resorting for the easy way out, i.e. confronting them only with worse people or no-characterisation having redshirts
- more family and marriage metaphoric and literal analysis; I've said this before, but if the first three seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer had "high school is hell" as their motto (meaning it both in the literal and metaphoric sense, and using the high school scenario combined with the fighting of demons for mythically enlarged stories about adolescence), The Americans has "Marriage is hard" and "Is your family your family?" written on the sails of their respective seasons. The Cold War background, the constant spillover between professional and private that comes with being a spy allows for marriage to be treated both as a literal and metaphorical concept; the sudden "who is this stranger that used to be my daughter and is now a teenager/ Who are these strangers that used to be my parents?" that often comes with parent/teenage child situations is suddenly written large when there really is a great and lethally dangerous lie on the foundation of the family in question. So I expect more of this.
- now we're getting into what I hope for/want: more background on Philip/Mischa. As opposed to Elizabeth, who gets the majority of the flashbacks and in general is more able to talk about her past, even in censored form, Philip has to be in extremis to admit to something as seemingly harmless as liking the cold and when he does finally start to confide a key childhood experience is cut off by the plot. All this man of mystery teasing is intriguing, but can only be dragged out for so long. More info, please, show!
- I heard Margo Martindale's show was just cancelled, so Claudia could be back as a regular, but presumably not in this next season already, since the cancellation news is rather recent and they've been shooting season 3 for a good long while. Whoever gets the regular handler role in s3, though, I hope they will have more presence than Kate. I mean, looking back I get why Kate had to be young, pretty and none too experienced (because her role in Jared's life would not have been believable otherwise), but it felt like a let down after Claudia, and she never was an interesting character in her own right. Whoever does s3 handler duties if it's not Claudia: make her or him someone to be reckoned with!
- if Nina for whatever reason (last minute rescue? Because plot McGuffin?) doesn't end up back in Russia, I'd love for her to meet Elizabeth. Elizabeth has had some of her best scenes with other women (Claudia, Lucia, Paige), but Nina hasn't had a scene with another woman at all (leaving aside two lines of dialogue about Vlad in season 1), and I would be very curious as to what they would make of each other.
- still on a Russian note: Arkady getting more fleshed out in season 2 had been great to see, so more of this will be much appreciated. If the show can find another excuse to give him more scenes with Gaad, all the better. The two near the end of s2 were priceless.
- not an easy solution to the terrible dilemma set up at the end of s2; by which I don't mean P & E couldn't/shouldn't compromise (among other things, Philip has to know they just can't go on pretending the KGB announcement has never happened; Paige will find out sooner or later, and given that, it really should come from them; conversely, Elizabeth might see the prospect of finally being able to share a cause with her daughter as a way to get Paige back, but even assuming Paige would be sympathetic to this particular cause, which I doubt, Elizabeth has seen and experienced too much to want this life for her if she thinks through all the implications). I just mean that whatever the solution will be, it should be earned and not deus or dea ex machina.
- re: Stan, the show should take a page from Breaking Bad's book. BB got around the problem of needing Hank on the one hand to be a smart and capable detective and on the other hand not being able to let him realise his brother-in-law was a meth dealer until the final season by letting Hank identify and track down every other Little and Big Bad in the drug business who gained narrative prominence. So I'd suggest giving Stan some investigative successes on people not Philip and Elizabeth.
- Martha not ending up dead; my ideal case scenario would be that Philip uses her wish for children as a reason to end "Clark's" marriage (or she does), deciding that by now the risk of exposure is larger than her use as a source anyway; and then, after the marriage has ended, Martha starts to get distrustful and perhaps even starts to get a horrible suspicion, because she's intelligent (she made the connection between the heightened presence of police the day the Connors were killed and the reason why). But whether or not she gets suspicious, and whether or not her marriage to Clark endures, I want her to live.
December Talking Meme: The Other Days
First of all, since season 1 was a good debut season and season 2 was a great season, I live both in joy and fear. Progressive upwardness or sudden slump? I've encountered both in my fannish life. For every Breaking Bad that built and kept its high level from start to end, there was a Fringe which started to go down in mid season 3. Or earlier. (Heroes, alas.) But so far I'm an optimist with this show. So:
- more moral ambiguity without cheap cynicism; The Americans makes you sympathize with its protagonists, but it also gives us sympathetic victims of their endeavours instead of resorting for the easy way out, i.e. confronting them only with worse people or no-characterisation having redshirts
- more family and marriage metaphoric and literal analysis; I've said this before, but if the first three seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer had "high school is hell" as their motto (meaning it both in the literal and metaphoric sense, and using the high school scenario combined with the fighting of demons for mythically enlarged stories about adolescence), The Americans has "Marriage is hard" and "Is your family your family?" written on the sails of their respective seasons. The Cold War background, the constant spillover between professional and private that comes with being a spy allows for marriage to be treated both as a literal and metaphorical concept; the sudden "who is this stranger that used to be my daughter and is now a teenager/ Who are these strangers that used to be my parents?" that often comes with parent/teenage child situations is suddenly written large when there really is a great and lethally dangerous lie on the foundation of the family in question. So I expect more of this.
- now we're getting into what I hope for/want: more background on Philip/Mischa. As opposed to Elizabeth, who gets the majority of the flashbacks and in general is more able to talk about her past, even in censored form, Philip has to be in extremis to admit to something as seemingly harmless as liking the cold and when he does finally start to confide a key childhood experience is cut off by the plot. All this man of mystery teasing is intriguing, but can only be dragged out for so long. More info, please, show!
- I heard Margo Martindale's show was just cancelled, so Claudia could be back as a regular, but presumably not in this next season already, since the cancellation news is rather recent and they've been shooting season 3 for a good long while. Whoever gets the regular handler role in s3, though, I hope they will have more presence than Kate. I mean, looking back I get why Kate had to be young, pretty and none too experienced (because her role in Jared's life would not have been believable otherwise), but it felt like a let down after Claudia, and she never was an interesting character in her own right. Whoever does s3 handler duties if it's not Claudia: make her or him someone to be reckoned with!
- if Nina for whatever reason (last minute rescue? Because plot McGuffin?) doesn't end up back in Russia, I'd love for her to meet Elizabeth. Elizabeth has had some of her best scenes with other women (Claudia, Lucia, Paige), but Nina hasn't had a scene with another woman at all (leaving aside two lines of dialogue about Vlad in season 1), and I would be very curious as to what they would make of each other.
- still on a Russian note: Arkady getting more fleshed out in season 2 had been great to see, so more of this will be much appreciated. If the show can find another excuse to give him more scenes with Gaad, all the better. The two near the end of s2 were priceless.
- not an easy solution to the terrible dilemma set up at the end of s2; by which I don't mean P & E couldn't/shouldn't compromise (among other things, Philip has to know they just can't go on pretending the KGB announcement has never happened; Paige will find out sooner or later, and given that, it really should come from them; conversely, Elizabeth might see the prospect of finally being able to share a cause with her daughter as a way to get Paige back, but even assuming Paige would be sympathetic to this particular cause, which I doubt, Elizabeth has seen and experienced too much to want this life for her if she thinks through all the implications). I just mean that whatever the solution will be, it should be earned and not deus or dea ex machina.
- re: Stan, the show should take a page from Breaking Bad's book. BB got around the problem of needing Hank on the one hand to be a smart and capable detective and on the other hand not being able to let him realise his brother-in-law was a meth dealer until the final season by letting Hank identify and track down every other Little and Big Bad in the drug business who gained narrative prominence. So I'd suggest giving Stan some investigative successes on people not Philip and Elizabeth.
- Martha not ending up dead; my ideal case scenario would be that Philip uses her wish for children as a reason to end "Clark's" marriage (or she does), deciding that by now the risk of exposure is larger than her use as a source anyway; and then, after the marriage has ended, Martha starts to get distrustful and perhaps even starts to get a horrible suspicion, because she's intelligent (she made the connection between the heightened presence of police the day the Connors were killed and the reason why). But whether or not she gets suspicious, and whether or not her marriage to Clark endures, I want her to live.
December Talking Meme: The Other Days
