BG is at a neighborhood party, so there is no Medium Cool tonight. He offered to tee up a post anyway, but Medium Cool without BG just isn’t Medium Cool. (Maybe lukewarm, but definitely not Medium Cool.) So I let him off the hook, but BG will be back next week!
Can we talk about The Americans? At least for a little while?
I hadn’t watched in years – 4 seasons behind! – but recently started watching again. What a great show. I am about to start the final season – and I’ll confess that I watched the series finale a couple of days ago. Sue me. I wanted to know whether they went back.
SPOILER:
They went back. I wanted them to stay in America and live happily ever after. Are they sociopaths? One of the reviews of the finale said the Jennings were sociopaths. The Vietnamese kid Tuan who didn’t give a shit if his buddy died in his strategic suicide attempt as long as it moved the pieces on the board to where they were supposed to go – now he’s a sociopath.
But it seemed to me that there were good people on both sides. (For real!) At least some good people, it addition to the awful ones.
I think Stan is a good guy. Phillip is a good guy. Oleg is a good guy. I guess I am using “good guy” is a stand-in for someone with a moral compass. I was fond of Gabriel by the end. I feel sorry for *Martha; if I were Martha I would be very bitter. I hope Phillip and his son get to meet.
So there’s my shallow people-oriented take.
What made this such a great show? Great writing? Great acting? All the disguises? The sex? Relationships? Was it a metaphor for all of our lives? Was it that very few people were all bad or all good? What about the ending? I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in Russia, with all the corruption, living in fear all the time. Plus it’s really fucking cold.
The one thing that made no sense to me was that Phillip and Elizabeth would want to go back.
So we can start with The Americans, and then talk about whatever comes up.
*Though it looks like Martha might get a child of her own? So maybe not bitter after all?
schrodingers_cat
I loved this show but could not watch it after the 2016 election because it hit too close to home.
dexwood
Lazy academics. Hope Balloon Juice docked his pay.
WaterGirl
@schrodingers_cat: I think that may have been when I quit watching, too. But now I’m able to watch again, and it really is a terrific show.
WaterGirl
@dexwood: Absolutely! We’ll make sure he gets no time off with his next contract.
Narrator: there is no contract.
hells littlest angel
About halfway through the series, I decided it was the darkest comedy I’ve ever seen. Living the dream — owning your own business, raising a family, and slipping out in the middle of the night to steal state secrets and assassinate targets!
The only off note in the ending was Stan letting them go. Totally against his character. He should at the very least have shot to wound.
WaterGirl
@hells littlest angel: How do you kill the family of a boy you love?
VOR
I felt worst for Paige. She trusted her parents and now no one will ever trust her ever again.
WaterGirl
@VOR: I think Paige makes a new life for herself in either the US or Canada.
hells littlest angel
@WaterGirl: They were responsible for the deaths of quite a few people who were close to him. Just letting them walk away was not what I’d expect him to do.
WaterGirl
@hells littlest angel: Too many pronouns. :-)
They (the Jennings) were responsible for the deaths of quite a few people who were close to him (Stan).
Who did the Jennings kill that were close to Stan?
*totally unrelated, but I felt bad for Nina.
Dan B
Mike in NC
That was a great show. Several years ago we bought the Apple TV, but have had a few access problems recently. I’m thinking about replacing it with a Roku Ultra tomorrow. Any comments about Roku?
SiubhanDuinne
I won’t be participating in this thread, because I’ve never seen it and really have no idea what it’s about. When it was first released I have a vague memory of hearing the word “comedy” in connection with it, and probably thought something like “Ho hum, another sitcom.” Anyhow, I’ll look in now and then and see what I learn and if it ends up sounding like something I’d enjoy. And please don’t worry on my account about any spoilers — by the time I watch it, if I ever do, I’ll have forgotten them all!
WaterGirl
@Mike in NC: There are people here who would marry Roku, I think. I have never used it so I don’t know personally.
Dan B
@Mike in NC: My partner bought ROKU. It works well with only one glitch in a year.
hells littlest angel
@WaterGirl: His partner and his boss. They also corrupted and disappeared Martha.
WaterGirl
@Dan B: It sounds like shots were fired, also. Hard to know what’s true until the dust settles, but it sounds horrific.
Dan B
@WaterGirl: There is speculation there were shots fired but it seems likely.
Horrible move. If you are in the minority violence is always disastrous for your community.
WaterGirl
@hells littlest angel: Phillip and Elizabeth had nothing to do with the murder of his boss.
As for Stan’s partner, maybe that was in the early seasons I watched 6 years ago? Or maybe it’s his current partner and that hasn’t happened yet? (I’m only up to season 5)
Craig
That show was the first place I became aware of Margo Martindale. Then I started seeing her everywhere. What a great actor.
Nicole
@SiubhanDuinne:
Perhaps you confused it with “THE ARISTOCRATS!” ;)
hells littlest angel
I don’t think Beeman would have agreed with you. Anyway, I didn’t say he should have killed the Jenningses.
WaterGirl
@Craig: For me it was Justified. That’s the first show I ever saw her in. She is a great actor.
WaterGirl
@hells littlest angel: I thought you were saying that Stan should have prevented them from leaving. All he had was a gun, so I assumed you thought Stan should have shot the Jennings.
Did I get that wrong?
dexwood
@WaterGirl: I’d never marry Roku, but we do fool around. Enjoy the thread all. Have always intended to watch the show, might even, but would rather avoid spoilers.
WaterGirl
@dexwood: It’s totally worth watching the show. All 6 seasons.
Having paused for 5 years doesn’t help me remember all the details of the first 2 seasons :-).
You should definitely watch.
WaterGirl
@dexwood: I hope you dated first!
WaterGirl
@Dan B: I can’t imagine what would cause three black men to do that.
Even if you’re angry about the verdict, it’s a Christmas parade. ??
Surely there is something we don’t know. (besides nearly everything)
SiubhanDuinne
@Nicole:
Another movie I have never seen — although that’s one I think I really should.
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: Feel free to start a conversation here about anything you like. There doesn’t seem to be a big run onconversation about the show.
Sure Lurkalot
I’m curious! I admit I read more than watch but how do you all squeeze in all these series? And remember down to tiny details?
I’m just overwhelmed by the breadth of choices.
Dan B
@WaterGirl: It’ the kind of attack on innocents that inspires mob justice. Every dark skinned person in America is now much less safe from mobs and the police.
zhena gogolia
@SiubhanDuinne: I don’t think it’s a comedy. I tried to watch it and made it about 15 minutes in before the violence drove me away.
I think today’s audiences have a much higher tolerance for violence than I do. (Unless it’s a murder mystery with Miss Marple or Barnaby.)
SiubhanDuinne
So the caption to the first photo says Episode 408. SERIOUSLY? Even for retired people like me, 408 hours (or even 204 hours if they’re half-hour episodes) is a huge time commitment. Have fun, all, but i think I’ll bail on this.
WaterGirl
@Dan B: Do you really think this makes them less safe? Seems to me that they weren’t safe at all even before this.
UncleEbeneezer
All of it. The acting was incredible. The plot twists were just bonkers! One of those shows where you just have no idea when something really whacked is about to happen. Loved the camerawork, lighting and costumes. And imo, they absolutely stuck the landing on the ending. I didn’t want that ending, but it felt right for me, in the spirit of the show. But also THE SOUNDTRACK!! So many great 80’s cuts used to perfection. Definitely one of my Top 10 (maybe Top 5?) series ever. I was just thinking about this show the other day and how so many people I know still haven’t seen it, which is a shame because I think it is truly superb.
Dan B
I see The Americans is on Prime. Watched a clip of the ten sequences that shocked. It was a bit much. I trust there is much more than death.
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: I believe that 408 refers to Season 4, episode 8.
There were 10-13 episodes times 6 seasons. Maybe 75 in all? Still a lot, but it’s not 408. :-)
trollhattan
Damn close to The Perfect Show and if its end closes the New Golden Age of Television, so be it. Did not think the “Breaking Bad” finale could ever be topped but will consider that of “The Americans” to be on the same level at least.
Elizabeth Jennings is that date you really, really want to go on even suspecting one of you might not survive it (pro tip: it’s you). Felicity, we hardly knew ya. Also, how great was it to see Margo Martindale again after her exit from “Justified”?
UncleEbeneezer
@Dan B: WAY more than death. It’s mostly about relationships, family, trust, loyalty and intrigue. There’s plenty of death but not huge, unending swaths of it.
WaterGirl
One of our jackals just wrote with some fun background on the show – she said it’s okay if I share with you.
WaterGirl
@Dan B: Way way way more than death. I don’t like violent shows – I don’t watch Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones or anything like that.
This show was definitely worth watching.
PJ
My opinion: The Americans was just ok. The acting was good, but the writing was mediocre. I spent a fair amount of time in and around DC in the mid-to-late ’80s, and the show did not capture the look and feel of the town or the culture in the city at the time (or of the country as a whole, for that matter). I get that it’s just a TV show, and they filmed it in New York, but the lack of verisimilitude took me out of the story too often. The subtext of the show also was very pro-Reagan and GOP policy of that time (all the Star Wars fantasy shit and “tough on Communism” bullshit), which made it hard to take.
“There were good people on both sides” is what Reagan said about WWII (and pretty much what Trump said about Charlottesville). The Jennings committed terrible, heinous crimes in support of a system that was based on lies and terror and the eradication of civil liberties. That they were believers (more for Elizabeth than for Philip) doesn’t make them better people.
The Spy vs. Spy part of the show would intrigue me up to a point, but I was always wishing it was better written. They never knew what to do with the kids – Paige was just there to whine, and, up until the last season, Henry was just there to eat. They could have used their experiences and participation in American culture of the time to contrast with and comment on their parents’ mainstream consumer lifestyle (I foolishly hoped the DC punk scene to make an appearance), but this was a mainstream show written by people who seemed to have no idea what it was like to live through that time in the US.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I loved the show. There are comic moments, but of all the anti-hero, dark TV of the recent Golden Age, I think it was the darkest
They were Russian/Soviet patriots and ideologues, especially Elizabeth. And once their cover was blown, Phillip had pretty much no choice. I guess he could have flipped, but Elizabeth would have hunted him down herself.
I felt sorry for Paige, even more so for Henry, whose parents were pretty much ready to abandon him.
Martha, Nina, Stan…. they left a lot of wreckage behind them. Gabriel was awesome. Oleg was an interesting character, and I was a little disoriented when he showed up on Homeland at pretty much teh same time. Beloved Character Actress Margo Martindale rocked. You can imagine she killed some Germans with her bare hands.
Anybody else think it’s ridiculous that Matthew Rhys won an Emmy and Keri Russell didn’t? To the extent that those things matter. Barbara Stanwyck and Cary Grant never won Oscars, etc
WaterGirl
@UncleEbeneezer:
Well said!
Dan B
@WaterGirl: I belive there is going to be a blizzard of hate from the right wing media and it’s one more reason to avoid my partner’s FOX viewing siblings. People who thought an Obama chia pet was a hilarious Chrisrmas gift will likely condemn all black people and the libs who love them. Other Thanksgiving conversations will probably be much worse.
Craig
@WaterGirl: Agreed. I liked Mathew Rhys a lot in The Americans, but Perry Mason really made me appreciate his acting.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Thanks for sharing your take on the show.
Yes, lots of collateral damage.
Kids are so at the mercy of their parents’ ideology, and Paige is a great example of that.
I did not know that. They both deserved them in my opinion.
Dan B
@UncleEbeneezer: Thanks. I figured that and the ten shocking clips were designed to shock, and felt relentless. Now to persuade my partner and figure out how to work Prime.
WaterGirl
@Craig: I also like that Mathew Rhys looks like a regular guy. Sometimes he’s good looking, and something he looks like an average guy. He’s not all pumped up and he doesn’t have sculpted muscles.
Nicole
@SiubhanDuinne:
I haven’t seen it since it was in the theater, but I really enjoyed it, as I remember. I’ve seen the first 10 minutes twice, as we had gone to see Broken Flowers, but there was a mixup in the projection booth and we saw the first ten minutes of The Aristocrats before they figured it out.
I don’t remember a thing about Broken Flowers other than Bill Murray was in it.
WaterGirl
@Dan B: Maybe you can come up with some line that you just pull out in response to every piece of bullshit.
How about this:
“What? Needless killing is reserved for nazi-loving white guys?”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Nicole: I have a pretty high threshold for gross, and I had to bail on The Aristocrats after a time, I can’t remember how long I lasted.
Dan B
@WaterGirl: And Matthew Rhys is South African or something. His American accent is impressive if you’ve ever seen him interviewed.
UncleEbeneezer
@Dan B: Some of the deaths are VERY intense, don’t get me wrong, but it’s much more like The Wire with respect to violence than say Game of Thrones. It’s about the level of violence you expect for spy shit during Cold War.
VeniceRiley
I loved that show. It was the high stakes for mistakes, plus the way they made you feel for every individual. Everyone was a person.
Nicole
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I can handle verbal grossness. Visual is a whole other thing. I love horror movies, but I watch a lot of them through my fingers. I enjoyed the 2018 Halloween, but I think, while I heard the whole movie, I saw maybe 40% of it.
Craig
@WaterGirl: yeah totally. And all his wigs and costumes in The Americans was cool.
raven
“Dickinson” is great but no one has seen it because it’s on Apple TV +.
Major Major Major Major
@Dan B:
My Twitter feed is saying they were dancing kids, and I’ve seen no details on the driver, so let’s maybe chill out until we know like, anything.
Dan B
@WaterGirl: The siblings include the wife who’s an attorney. They drink heavily and become increasingly sadistic. The older sister is not bad but she loves the GOP and doesn’t understand why we don’t. After all the GOP are protecting us from criminals. No connection to the “Christian and Southern” base see us as pedophiles and criminals. And they see our neighbors as seriously dangerous.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Craig: I liked the way the wigs became kind of a gag, at least to the point where Martha told Clark, “Well of course I know it’s wig!”
(Margo Martindale in Paris, je t’aime. And no, she didn’t speak a word of French when they filmed the scene. )
Dan B
@UncleEbeneezer: I loved Breaking Bad but got overloaded by GOT.
raven
@Major Major Major Major: “The city’s police chief, Dan Thompson, told reporters before an evening press conference that more than 20 people were injured. Authorities have identified one person of interest, although Thompson did not say if that person was in custody. The chief added that the scene was safe and there were no further threats to the public.”
Dan B
@Major Major Major Major: Im waiting for the details and hoping it’s better than it seems at the moment. Right now it is fog of war level of clarity.
eclare
@WaterGirl: That’s like Friday Night Lights. Kyle Chandler won an Emmy for playing Coach Taylor, but Connie Britton never did for playing his wife.
Great, far-ranging series. No knowledge of football is required.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@Dan B:
We were already less safe from mobs and the police.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Major Major Major Major: the police press conference is scheduled to start on the half hour, I believe. I had to turn off the TV
raven
@eclare: And little to do with the real story of the Permian Panthers.
eclare
@UncleEbeneezer: The Wire is my favorite TV series hands down. I got about five episodes into GoT and just couldn’t take the violence.
Kent
She is so badass. She has an even better role as the rural mob boss and patriarch in the second season of Justified.
Major Major Major Major
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: video games for me, refreshing my feed won’t make the news break faster…
Kent
We lived in rural Texas during the entire period of Friday Night Lights and as a teacher I attended dozens and dozens of HS football games. That show absolutely NAILED the zeitgeist of rural central Texas. It was pitch perfect.
The only unrealistic part of the show was when he moved cross town to the poorer school and they had crappy equipment and a crappy old field. That would not happen in Texas. Even the poor schools have world class football fields with field turf, etc. This is Mart HS, the poorest and most run down pathetic high school in the entire Waco region. Over 60% of their students are in poverty. And it is tiny with only about 200 students. But this is their football complex: https://texasbob.com/stadium/stadium.php?id=1191
WaterGirl
@eclare: I never watched that one because of football. But I did start watching All American, even though it’s football, and I think that’s a great show.
If I could go back in time, I would watch Friday Night Lights.
eclare
@raven: Isn’t there a book about them?
raven
@Kent: Have you read the book? Even the movie punked out and became a feel good flick.
WaterGirl
@eclare: I have not seen The Wire. I should have watched it while it was on Netflix or Prime. Now I don’t know where it is streaming.
Winston
One of my favorites. There are appalling scenes and lots of sex and violence. I watched the show from the beginning, when it first appeared, breathlessly awaiting the next season and then binged it last spring from start to finish. Highly recommend. The ending is spectacular (in a subdued way).
raven
@eclare: Yea, it’s called Friday Night Lights and it’s fucking brutal what they do to the kids. “The Wall of Shame”.
eclare
@WaterGirl: See if it’s streaming somewhere. Seriously the show covers a multitude of issues.
Eolirin
@WaterGirl: I think it’s on HBO Max. Will double check.
Can confirm.
eclare
@WaterGirl: It’s an HBO show, doubt it was ever on Amazon, etc. I’m sure it’s on HBO Max.
Mary G
Don’t get me wrong, I binged the thing during a severe illness in 2019 and think it’s some of the best TV I’ve even seen, but I view it as a modern Shakespearean tragedy much more than a dark comedy.
I also couldn’t stop thinking about shortly after the time the show was set in, the Jennings’s country collapsed and the brief vision of a democracy emerging blacked out. More tragedy.
In my imagination, if I did fan fiction, they arrived home, Keri told Uncle Vlad that her husband was a softie and he was sent away to finish the short rest of his life in a work camp. She is still very.happily employed throwing people out of windows
dimmsdale
I stumbled over your spoiler alert, WG, and am trying to scour it out of my eyes–(not your fault: I depend on the NY Public Library for dvd’s rather than stream, and they have YET to acquire the final 2 seasons). I’m going to have to give the comments a miss too, same reason, but I wanted to chime in & say how much I love the series–grippingly written, beautifully acted. There’s a tremendous amount of first-rate drama on TV these days, and The Americans is at the top of the heap, IMO.
raven
@WaterGirl: Omar (Michael Kenneth Williams) just died on an overdose. Great actor among many in the cast.
WaterGirl
@Eolirin: Ooh, I believe I have that because I get HBO through cable.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
if The Americans is too dark and too violent, here’s Sleepers, a British comedy about Soviet sleeper agents stuck in Britain as the USSR collapses. I saw it when it ran on PBS, which was somehow about thirty years ago, and I remember enjoying it.
WaterGirl
@raven: Oh no, I have always liked him as an actor.
eclare
@WaterGirl: I’ll tell you what I tell everyone when they start The Wire: give it four episodes to get into. The stories can take a while to develop. Episode four is the first episode with Omar, a character you will not forget.
WaterGirl
@dimmsdale: I just edited up top so you have to highlight that part in order to read what I wrote.
edit: So that means you dreamed what you thought you saw. You’ll just have to watch the show to see what happens.
WaterGirl
@eclare: I will. I have been meaning to watch that for years now.
Kent
Didn’t read the book. But saw the movie with Billie Bob Thorton and watched the whole series. The movie was a little darker than the series, but the series was plenty realistic. Especially the whole abortion subplot in one of the later seasons. The nailed that.
oatler
All I know about that show is AV Club reviews where they kept referring to a “mail robot”.
raven
@Kent: Yea, I was so bummed at what I saw as a sell out by Thornton I never watched the show. Here’s a wiki entry on Boobie Miles.
WaterGirl
@oatler: I just saw the mail robot episode yesterday or the day before!
eclare
@Kent: I am still amazed a big three network, NBC, ran the abortion story.
WaterGirl
@Kent: Wow. On the football complex for a very poor school.
Priorities!
raven
@WaterGirl: Watch the Last Picture Show. You won’t have to WATCH football but it’s prominent in the film
raven
@Kent: Football, baseball and track. Proly rodeo too.
Kent
@WaterGirl: I taught in the Waco area. This is the stadium of the wealthy suburban school where I taught https://texasbob.com/stadium/stadium.php?id=142
This was the stadium of the two poor mainly Black and Hispanic schools across town. https://texasbob.com/stadium/stadium.php?id=183 Many future NFL stars played there in HS including LaDainian Tomlinson
Basically the same thing, rich or poor. Folks will vote to build new stadiums, but not so much for academics.
WaterGirl
@raven:
I did watch that when it first came out.
WaterGirl
@Kent: Amazing, and such fucked up priorities.
raven
@WaterGirl: It’ so good and Cloris Leachman deserved every bit of her Oscar as the football coach’s wife. God she was sad.
Kent
@raven: That is a mostly Black school so no on the rodeo. That is most definitely a white thing for the most part.
raven
@Kent: roger
Dan B
@Kent: Quite different in the NE Arkansas town we lived in. Impossible to put a football field in a ravine where the black school was located. And academics in Arkansas was a joke
The white school buildings were modern but the textbooks lacked covers and some were 40 years old, plus the teachers had high school diplomas or elementary school degrees.
Kent
@WaterGirl: And we were a backwater town with substandard facilities. This is Allen TX, rich suburb north of Dallas. A single school uses this stadium. https://theoldcoach.com/areas/dfw/allen-hs-60-million-stadium-tour/
And a close-up https://texasbob.com/stadium/stadium.php?id=1292
WaterGirl
@Kent: Amazing.
Gravenstone
@SiubhanDuinne: Suspect that may be a formatting choice. 408 may well correspond to season 4, episode 8.
raven
@Kent: Good overview of the book, movie and show.
This is a perfect example of how basing the characters in fiction allows the show to tackle relatable real-world issues. Bissinger’s novel wasn’t well-received in Odessa due to its seemingly negative portrayal of the local community. The makers of the show likely decided to use a fictional setting to avoid such a situation. Ultimately, using a fictional setting and characters allows the show to free itself from the constraints of adapting a true story. It also helps in creating an emotionally resonant narrative that is timely and tackles the various themes and subjects of the novel without deterring from the spirit of the source material.
trollhattan
@WaterGirl:
In Soviet Russia, Mail Robot have own story ark. Be staying tuned!
Dan B
@Kent: OMG!
What becomes of the football players after high school? Being a star at that age. It’s often the high point of their lives.
eclare
@raven: Interesting, thanks.
trollhattan
@raven:
“Omar comin’!” always heralded something amazing was about to happen. Very sorry he’s no longer with us, great actor and no easy part to pull off. ETA Was good as Chalkie in “Boardwalk Empire.”
WaterGirl
@trollhattan: hahaha
trollhattan
@Dan B:
It’s a vast pyramid with a tiny point on top, representing the guys who make it to the pros. Suspect they’re very hinky about researching brain damage among HS players.
Dan B
@trollhattan: Boris your grammar is suspicious.
Dan B
@trollhattan: I seem to recall some reports of brain damage in kids who played football in elementary school and Junior High. It was much worse because the brain is still developing.
Leslie
Have never seen The Americans, so I can’t contribute there, but I can chime in on The Wire being one of the best shows ever aired. Definitely worth watching.
raven
Gin & Tonic
@raven: Old friend of mine went to a high school that had a rifle team – he was on it. True story. Seems pretty hard to sustain an injury in target shooting.
raven
@Gin & Tonic: If everyone follows procedure.
trollhattan
@Gin & Tonic:
Neighbor kid is on a scholarship for…trap shooting. Or is it skeet, get them mixed up. In Missouri.
raven
@trollhattan: the horror
trollhattan
@raven:
Have to admit, this one gets my No Duh Award.
Kent
@trollhattan: Just from watching a lot of HS sports of every type I think knee injuries are the most common in football. I can’t count how many football players I had who had blown ACLs. The head injuries don’t really present until later in life I think.
Raven
@trollhattan: I don’t know why I bother. I know what time it is here.
Gin & Tonic
@trollhattan: The school with the rifle team was in NYC. I kid you not.
Raven
@Kent: cumulative
eclare
@Kent: Friend of mine’s daughter tore her ACL playing soccer her senior year of high school. Luckily her college let her come on and red shirt her to keep her scholarship.
Kent
@Raven: Right. Not saying they don’t get injured. Just that you don’t normally see HS students diagnosed with CTE like you do long-time pros. Because it is cumulative. But you always see HS players on crutches with ACL injuries.
Craig
@WaterGirl: The Wire is sublime TV drama. HBO Max
Craig
@eclare: Omar Little is one of the greatest characters in TV history.
Yutsano
My Shakespeare professor in college gave us a handy dandy guide for determining if his play should be considered a comedy or a tragedy. If everyone dies in the end it was one of his tragedies. If most everyone lives, it’s a comedy. Historicals were their own thing and these rules did not apply.
OldDave
Jonesboro? I grew up clueless in a nearby lily white town.
cain
Y’all got married today.. it went well! I will do a dump tomorrow
eclare
@cain: Yay!
karen marie
@Dan B: The entire state of Wisconsin can go fuck itself as far as I’m concerned.
Gin & Tonic
@cain: Felicitations!
Ohio Mom
It may not happen a lot but high school athletes can ruin their brains.
The older sister of one of Ohio Son’s fellow IEP students, the smart, golden girl who was expected to go to medical school, got a good clunk on the head while playing lacrosse and came away with severe, disabling processing and memory issues. I was friendly with the mom and she was devastated.
Ohio Mom
@cain: Congratulations! We’ll look forward to hearing all the details.
dimmsdale
@WaterGirl: thank you, and YES! that must have been one of the fake alternate endings I dreamed! now if NYPL will just get on the stick, I can find out.
ellie
My husband and I binged watched The Americans this past spring. What a great show!
trollhattan
@Raven:
Bother with what? Want facts? I have a few, being a sportsdad.
Hob
@PJ:
That’s a pretty odd reading of the show, IMO. I can’t remember any pro-Reagan content, other than the fact that a bunch of the characters are FBI agents who are Reagan’s employees and have an unsurprisingly conservative culture. As far as “Star Wars fantasy shit”, SDI does come up in the story but we’re clearly given to understand that it is bullshit. That’s not me reading between the lines, it was a specific plot point: a US military official goes out of his way to make contact with Philip and tell him that the Star Wars stuff is bullshit, not because this guy wants to help the Soviets, but because he’s afraid that Reagan’s boasting about imaginary military technology will increase the risk of war if the Soviets take it too seriously.
As for “tough on Communism bullshit”, I’m not sure what to make of that since in your very same comment you made a point of how you couldn’t find any sympathy for Philip and Elizabeth because the Soviet regime was so terrible. It kind of sounds like you are tougher on Communism than the show was.
trollhattan
@Gin & Tonic: .
Heh, why not?
Do they train inside or out, I wonder?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@cain: Congrats!
Hob
@PJ:
Everyone’s got their own ideas about what feels authentic, and a show is written by many people, but the show’s creator Joe Weisberg was born in 1965 and did know what it was like to live through the ’80s, even if he didn’t move to DC till 1990.
As someone younger than Weisberg who was an early teen at the time, I’ll just say that to me The Americans feels more accurate to the ’80s than literally any period show or movie set in that time that I’ve ever seen. Just in terms of production design, they understood what so many shows don’t: that people in any given year don’t all have clothes and cars and furnishings that came out in that year, but are largely using stuff from the last 5 or 10 or 15 years.
laura
@cain: Congratulations and best wishes to your spouse. Wishing you a very satisfying union.
CaseyL
I loved The Americans, and thought of it as a lot of things: family drama, relationship drama, plus the intrigue/suspense.
I can sorta kinda get into the mindset that betrayal and murder are ugly necessities when you’re fighting for your country, as part of a mission to create a better world. But there has to come a point where you evaluate whether your actions are really helping achieve that goal, or just turning you into a monster.
So I found Elizabeth less sympathetic as time went on, when she saw close up and personal the lives she wrecked – she might shed a few tears, but it never changed her dedication to her mission, and she went on wrecking lives. The fact that she Truly Believed in the Soviet Union didn’t cut much ice with me. What was it about the USSR she “truly believed” in? She hadn’t been there in 20 years, what did she know about what life was like? Did she really think it was an idealistic egalitarian society? She’d have to be willfully blind to go on believing that, as there were many sources of information about the realities of life in the USSR besides US propaganda.
And I usually felt bad for Phillip, who seemed to hate what he was doing, hated what he was becoming… but was too weak to do anything definitive about it, up and including allowing Elizabeth to turn Paige into a mini-Elizabeth.
But it was an amazing show. I would love to have seen a follow-up, a Where Are They Now.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Another “Sleepers” fan! I so loved that miniseries. I keep trying to find it online, but the only item that keeps coming up is an entirely different thing, a movie with Kevin Bacon.
trollhattan
@Hob:
They hit aspects of the period repeatedly. I especially loved the arc about EST, having had several friends
suck…lured into it to varying effects. Spot on. And goddamn, the eyeglasses. [shudder]trollhattan
@CaseyL: Have felt since the finale that Elizabeth will be crushed when the Wall falls and Philip will be thrilled.
Kent
@Hob: I was born in 1964 so graduated from HS in 1982. I think the show absolutely nailed the zeitgeist of that time. The clothes, the feel. What high school and family life was like then. What offices looked like. They even got Washington DC right. It didn’t really become gentrified until the late 90s and early 2000s. I was there in 1987 and there were strip clubs around Dupont Circle and K street. Don’t ask me how I know. The whole place was a bit seedy and tired once you were outside of places like Georgetown. Much of it was nondescript suburban office parks.
Steeplejack (phone)
@WaterGirl:
Yes, five seasons with 13 episodes, the sixth season with 10 episodes—75 in all.
CaseyL
@trollhattan: … and then Phillip being crushed when Putin takes power, and Elizabeth being thrilled. Hard to see how they stay(ed) together. Many of the reasons they were so tight in The Americans will no longer apply.
Kent
@CaseyL: Yep, no way they stay together in the USSR. But frankly it was a fake marriage anyway. I don’t know if they were actually legally married in their own names and identities. The marriage was a cover.
trollhattan
We had another 4:00 a.m. raccoon party in the persimmon tree outside the bedroom window this morning, so took it upon myself to strip the remaining persimmons today. Good lord, there must have been fifty pounds of them, in various states of chewed upon. Hoping to get a full night’s sleep now, but they probably have to go up there and PROVE it to themselves the snack shack really is closed. Bastards.
Dan B
@OldDave: Batesville
Dan B
@Dan B: The year was 1960. Jim Crow, the Klan. Fun times!
UncleEbeneezer
@eclare: We started The Wire and weren’t feeling it, after only 15 minutes or so. Ditched it. Then I went back to it and made it through the first two episodes. After that second episode I was hooked and made my wife start from the beginning. Never looked back. Absolutely loved it though the ending was kinda meh, to us.
If you loved The Wire, check out Snowfall on FX. It is John Singleton (Boyz N’ The Hood) and tells the story of the crack epidemic in Los Angeles (rise of gangs, Mexican cartels and CIA involvement in drug trade). It has a similar feel to The Wire and is really, really good.
Anyway
I watched all of Breaking Bad and Friday Night Lights as they aired — watched an episode here and there of The Americans but never got into it.
The British version sounds interesting.
UncleEbeneezer
@Hob: Check out Snowfall on FX. Also nails the 80’s (in Compton CA) better than most. Deutschland ’83 and Red Oaks also do a decent version of the 80’s imo.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
one thing about The Americans, Phillip and Elizabeth must have worked on a schedule of 57 hour days
susanna
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
@Kent: I could be wrong, but believe my first sighting of the marvelous MM was as an airline rep working over Steve Martin hilarilously in “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.”
Entertaining, fun movie to watch just to find out, perhaps?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@susanna: it’s a Thanksgiving movie, as I recall? been a long time since I watched it
Brian
@Dan B: Welsh
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Keri Russell – from Russia with love (photos)
HeartlandLiberal
For those wanting something different, my wife and I just finished Princess Weiyoung on Netflix. All 54 episodes! It is a lavish period costume drama set in the Chinese emperor’s court. Complex and evolving story of love, betrayal, intrigue, power struggles, and murder, but a love that conquers all for a brief time. The costumes are just beyond description marvelous. The story line / plot is convincing. HIGHLY recommended. We have watched a number of multiple episode Chinese productions, some good, one so bad we quit watching after first story cycle. But this was the best ever. A story of triumph of the will over adversity in a society whose middle name is treachery.
WaterGirl
@CaseyL: I really appreciate your comment. you gave voice to my thoughts exactly, even if I didn’t have words for them.
WaterGirl
@trollhattan: Yes.
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack (phone): Thanks for the confirmation. That was my math, too, but I used some weasel words because I was too lazy to go back and confirm that all of 1-5 were 13. I knew 6 was 10.
cleek
what made it great is that they used The Cure’s “Siamese Twins” in S1 Ep 8.