Question of the week #23

[treonb]

Last week ABC premiered a Cold-War-era spy miniseries called The Assets.  (You can read more about it here)

I personally looked at it and decided it wasn't for me because the Cold War wasn't really what attracted me to The Americans.  This question is therefore twofold:

1. What were the things that attracted you to our show?

2. Do you intend to give this show a try? If you've watched it, would you recommend it to other fans?

You can expect spoilers for the entire first season in the comments.

(There's no expiration date on these questions, so if you're reading this post months later and feel like jumping in, please do.)

Comments

[jae]

I'm going to answer your questions in the reverse order. :)

I did watch the first episode of The Assets. It held my attention, enough that I plan to watch the rest of the miniseries (it's not a whole show, just a mini), but it didn't thrill me in any way. Basically, they're telling a much simpler story than our show does, really--a story where the lines of good and evil are clearly drawn and the good guys finally end up getting the bad guy in the end, but not much thought is given to why the "bad guy" might have done what he did. I think our show might well have forever spoiled me for stories like that.

I have a strong suspicion that this show might be the reason why the initial January return date of our show might have originally been pushed back to February, to be honest. But as annoying as it is to have to wait, thinking about that a bit more, I'm...actually okay with that? I mean, the critics all seem to be mentioning The Americans when they review The Assets, and saying that our show is much better--and that can only be good. It means we wait a bit longer, but maybe that's the price we pay for a stronger viewership this year.

As for what drew me initially to our show, it's actually not a copout to say EVERYTHING. As I said in my own journal partway through the first season last year, the whole show is a conglomeration of storytelling techniques and topics and themes and ideas that have been important to me throughout my whole life (it's actually a bit eerie sometimes!). But if I have to pick just one thing, it's the notion of people who have taken on alternate identities so convincingly that they themselves have started to believe them. That kind of story is always my kryptonite (I would have gladly watched a much lesser show with that particular note at its heart), so I was right there from the start. But then it was SO MUCH BETTER than it could have been, too. I really stood no chance with this show. :)

-J

[treonb]

I have a strong suspicion that this show might be the reason why the initial January return date of our show might have originally been pushed back to February, to be honest

That makes so much sense! If that's the case, I fully support it :-)

[treonb]

Since I asked, I'll also answer..

Hard to say what really drew me to this show. It was definitely not the idea of the Cold War or an 80s themed show. I think it was the idea of the undercover spies posing as normal people. I didn't think I'd like it much, especially since it was billed as the 'Russian pov' show, but it made it into my 'at least give it a try' list.

As it turned out, I love the aspects of pretend normalcy, and I love the understated humor. I also love the 80s aspects and touching events that I should know about but send me to read up on them anyway, but that's a bonus.

[sistermagpie]

I'm curious-what sounded especially uninteresting about the Russian pov aspect to you?

[treonb]

I guess I should have said THE Russian pov. With the KGB being the heroes and the FBI being the bad guys. In practice, I'm not sure how much it really shows the Russian pov at all. The KGB (and Russia) are not shown in a favorable light at all. Elizabeth is likable despite it all, not because of her Communist convictions, And Philip has no problems becoming an American anyway. Stan and company are not 'the heroes', and we don't want them to succeed, but they're not the bad guys either.

[jae]

*nods* There are no good guys and bad guys on this show--that's one of the genius things about it. Even when you're sure that someone is just irredeemably bad, like Claudia, they will eventually show something about that person's motivations that allow you to sympathize.

I'd have watched a hypothetical show that had the Russians as heroes and the Americans as villains, but I wouldn't have enjoyed it half as much.

-J

[sistermagpie]

Ah--I see. It's definitely much more interesting--and probably realistic--this way. I always like the way we just see these individual people with their own complicated relationships to their country's agenda trying to do what they feel they need to do.

[sistermagpie]

I'll answer in the opposite order as well, since I like talking more about The Americans than The Assets. :-)

1. I did watch it, and it was okay, but not that interesting. It's pretty straightforward and so far neither the story nor the characters are that interesting. AA doesn't seem like he was much of a spy. It's like chasing the guy in The Americans who introduces Elizabeth to the colonel: an alcoholic who needs money and gets away with it with a lot of luck and sloppiness on the part of his handlers. Yet the handlers are being presented as big heroes, and I'm not sure how that's going to work.

The family life of the main good guy seems very cookie cutter with her daughter walking around in the type of outfit that would be used as a joke in an 80s sitcom where the teenager announces she's becoming cool and going out to the club so that mom can march her back into her room to change. (Though thinking about it now I'm not sure what Mom was supposed to be objecting to in the outfit beyond the fact it was just too much of a caricature of the 80s.)

Then later mom snaps at her daughter unfairly and within seconds the girl's deep in a phone conversation detailing exactly what's wrong with her mother's parenting ("She's never around and when she is she's obnoxious") so Mom can feel bad. So so far it hasn't grabbed me.

2. I was attracted to The Americans for spying, especially Cold War spying. I love stories about spies, but get frustrated when they do things that seem really unrealistic to me (even knowing that sometimes things that seem unrealistic are true when it comes to spies). What I mean is, I hate spy things where the spies are always telegraphing their true feelings while looking right into the face of the people they're allegedly fooling--hate that.

But these guy are perfect with the mad spy skillz (and it's frankly even better that it gets unrealistic in the other direction so they get to sneak around and beat people up) and the way the show is so interested in the psychology of spying and longterm undercover work. Not just in terms of the way the show has two very different characters in the leads that approach it very differently, but the way it's so interested in what motivates people's loyalty.

I think one of the things I like about Cold War spying is the subtle differences between cultures the characters move between--as opposed to, for instance, if someone is undercover in an organization like al Quaeda where they're have to have that religious mindset.

So I guess what attracted me was the hope that I'd get a really good spy story, but to be honest I wasn't expecting to get it. I put it on my TiVo almost feeling like I had to give it a shot. I was pleasantly surprised by early episodes but it was Gregory that made me a huge fan. I guess that episode for me really laid out where the heart of the show lay.

[katiac]

For me it was the wonderfully complex mess that was the past of Philip and Elizabeth's marriage, and the possibility for what it could be in the future. The scenario they set up had so much natural conflict, and that really attracted me to hearing more about their story. It wasn't one of those where there's a "conflict of the week" thing like you see in so many TV shows where sometimes the problems seem artificial, the drama seems forced, but rather that there were so many angles in which they were screwed up individually, screwed up at trying to having a relationship, and were living this difficult, impossible, draining, false situation that they'd gotten into for something more important than themselves.

The thing that really hooked me into the show was seeing a commercial for it about a week or so before the pilot aired that had Elizabeth's line about, "I joined the KGB when I was 17, never had a boyfriend, we didn't know each other," and then the shot of them in the motel room, which just gets your mind spinning with how crazy and compelling that idea was, all the conflict that would be inherent in two strangers forced to live together and play married so they could spy, and then to have them 15 years later as a more seasoned married couple and finally falling in love with each other just had all the ingredients of a great, messy love story. And for me, that's really why I watch. I enjoy the spy aspect of it too, and the 80's aspect of it, but what makes it different from every other show is that the relationship and the marriage is central.

And now that we're coming up on the second season and more focus on the family, I'm so excited for that too. They've done a marvelous job in creating rich characters that have so many layers to explore, and IMHO one of their biggest gold mines is the conflict of how they created Paige and Henry for the mission, and yet love them dearly, and yet continue to lie, feel guilt, and struggle to be that family.

[maidenjedi]

Not knowing anything about The Assets beyond what has been described here, I'll have to punt on that part of the question.

But as to what drew me to The Americans, the answer is definitely the overall premise. I tuned in because it was an 80s-era spy show, and stayed because the pilot episode had cinematic quality, showed incredible depth in terms of characterization, and it kept getting better. There wasn't a down week. In the first season!

I'm not a fan of all spy shows, or even most spy stories. But the concept of Cold War-era spies in domestic situations as well as dangerous covert ops really intrigued me.

[lovingboth]

I love the use of 'our' :)

1. Being in the UK, I had heard somewhere that it was worth watching. The first couple of episodes confirmed that: intelligent, interesting, and well-acted long-form story telling. Had the episode I am trying to forget been one of those - the one that was such an insult to the viewers' intelligence - I may well not have bothered with the rest.

I have not seen most other US series. I thought Sopranos was wonderful to the end. I am at the break in season four of the Battlestar Galatica re-imagining and I suspect it jumped the shark at the very end of series three. I am mid-way through series two of Breaking Bad. At some point, I must do Man Men (just seen the first few). All of these have very flawed characters as their 'heroes'.

I gave up on Desperate Housewives on the plane crash. I don't think I got past series four or five of West Wing. I look at the list of primetime Emmy winners and go 'nah' to most of them.

I despaired at the US remakes of two fabulous UK series: Being Human (drama, very very good until two episodes of the last series) and The Inbetweeners (comedy). I am delighted that the attempt to remake Peep Show (comedy) failed.

2. I don't know that it will get here. I probably cannot be bothered to search it out.

[apolla-savre.livejournal.com]

1. I'm obsessed with Russia/the USSR. So when I saw an American drama told from the POV of Soviet spies in America, I thought, "The worst that can happen is it can be terrible and I won't watch any more." I watched it and really loved it. It had great writing, great acting, really decent accuracy. Then I found out a lot of my fellow RST students were watching it and we all really liked it (though one kid was bothered that a church that's really in St. Petersburg was stated to be in Moscow.)

2. I probably will, later on. The synopsis doesn't really sound interesting to me, so it can wait.