Official Promo link and pictures

[sistermagpie]

http://collider.com/the-americans-season-6-trailer-keri-russell-matthew-rhys/#images

Article with pictures from next season, some of which is revealing. Plus the first "official" trailer, whatever that means.

Watch on YouTube

The one confirmation I really like in those pictures is that the guy Philip is meeting in disguise on the bench is Oleg. (Also yes, Henry's at boarding school and playing hockey there--though from the trailer you'd think they still just have the one child.)

With a split in the KGB it seems really intriguing to me to have the Jennings' contacts being Claudia and Oleg. Claudia's a badass, but she also seems to keep her mindset very much in WWII. Like Elizabeth, she doesn't see a problem with anything the Centre does, and last year said that she spent some time in Russia but didn't seem to like it because she couldn't relate to her modern non-spy Russia daughter and grandchildren.

Oleg, otoh, is the character most grounded in the practical realities of modern-day Moscow and he's very much a modern Russian, besides, of course, being someone willing to defy the Centre for what he thinks is the greater good of the country. I've always been annoyed at people sometimes casually acting like Elizabeth and Paige are "the Russian ones" (despite one of them not even being Russian at all) and I really would like to see the strength in the more thoughtful Russians in ways we often didn't in the past. Characters like Oleg (and Philip, really) have been taking a lot of stuff in for several seasons and have a broader perspective.

Comments

[saraqael]

I'm intrigued to know why Oleg is back in the US contacting Philip. On the surface, it does appear that this season will feature a split between the hardliners (Claudia, Elizabeth) and those who are more open to a thaw (Oleg, Philip). With one of the short promos showing Claudia tell Elizabeth that Stan must be dealt with, I wonder if Claudia will want Stan to be killed, or merely deflected away from whatever activity that Elizabeth is working on.

I'm hoping that Henry is finally going to get something to do this season. Of course, his fate could merely to be having all of his future ambitions crushed when/if his parents are finally outed as illegals. I've seen various comments over in FB that maybe Stan will adopt Henry so that Henry can grow up and join the FBI. That's a very sweet, but I think, completely unbelievable outcome for him. I'm neutral about Paige's fate. The show never sold me on her choice to become a junior Soviet spy. Perhaps this season I'll regain my interest in her.

Edit: so far as calling this the 'official' trailer, I think it is just to distinguish it from all of the mood-setting short promo bits they've run so far.

[sistermagpie]

I've seen various comments over in FB that maybe Stan will adopt Henry so that Henry can grow up and join the FBI. That's a very sweet, but I think, completely unbelievable outcome for him.

I've heard those too--for years now. I think it's honestly a byproduct of just kind of a sloppy thinking people have, especially when it comes to kids. To many people if a child on TV has a pleasant conversation with another adult the other person has become their "real father." (Stan's never even been able to fully be present for his own son--and yet he clearly still is Matthew's father; he hasn't just been handily replaced by Sandra's new bf--I've always found Stan/Matthew to be one of the more interesting arcs on the show, fwiw.) It makes me weirdly anxious because it suggests that it's really easy to replace a parent. People used to say the Tims were Paige's "real parents" even back in S3.

It's saying that getting to enjoy an entertaining kid who likes you and then send them home is being a parent while dealing with the kid even when they're rude, or being ignored, or being held in contempt, is *not* being a parent.

I mean, I get why people go that way since pretty much all Henry's conversations in the past few seasons have been with Stan, but even there they often established that Stan could go for long periods w/o seeing him. For all people claiming that P&E had no idea what was going on with Henry they actually showed plenty of interest in what was going on with Henry, and figured stuff out without being told.

I do wonder if there's significance to the way Henry rarely interacts with the family but almost always gets echoes of Philip. Even here his hockey-playing is something we first saw him doing with Philip, obviously it's a popular sport in Russia (one of Philip's first lines on the show is about it), Philip plays it himself, etc. (Philip is completely cut off from his family, so that might be the challenge to overcome there, mirroring Paige following Elizabeth.)

Re: Oleg, it does seem like it must be pretty important to get him to the US--he left for a reason. It would actually be kind of cool if they *weren't* meeting in the US--that would be realistic, wouldn't it?

If the courier mentioned is the hockey player from last season it might mean that the comedy of that hook-up was intentional, showing just how eager many average Russians were to interact with the West. (It might, of course, be the courier that Claudia is saying must be dealt with--she may have been saying "Stan Beeman" in response to something else, like who recruited the guy, and it was edited to sound different.)

Another interesting thing in the preview is the continuing difference in the way Philip seems to frame their activities in terms of personal responsibility while Elizabeth continues to see it as a test of personal strength. For her it's all about total commitment and *no questions* while Philip is saying no, the belief in a Grand Concept does not simply justify everything. (And as I think I once said before, this is echoed in Paige's view, even down to a throwaway line where she talks about going to Ethiopia to build a school with Pastor Tim and brushes off Henry's question of why they are doing that as if it's a silly question.)

[saraqael]

Stan isn't a replacement parent for Henry. He's kind of like an uncle. I do think the show was making a statement about Henry's relationship with his own parents, though. For all that I agree that Philip and Elizabeth were being good parents to him and knew what he was doing, etc., the show went way out of it's way to show constant parent/child discussions with Paige, and virtually none with Henry. By contrast, we saw numerous instances of Henry hanging out with Stan, chatting with him about a variety of things, and we also saw that Henry had just gone ahead and made his own plans to go off to the elite boarding school without even consulting with his parents. P&E love Henry and they're proud of him and want the best future for him (within their circumstances) but I do think that they lost track of Henry somewhere along the way. I don't think they're alienated from him and I don't think there is any ill will between them at all. I just do think there is something to be inferred from the fact that the show used precious minutes of screen time and dialogue to show Henry and Stan interacting instead of Henry and Philip.

The courier: I wouldn't be at all surprised if the courier does turn out to be the hockey playing boyfriend of the Russian informant. It's neater that way. The writers wouldn't have to introduce yet another new character.

Claudia's statement about dealing with Stan: I agree that this statement is wide open to interpretation right now. The trailers and previews on this show are often not what they seem.

[sistermagpie]

Stan isn't a replacement parent for Henry. He's kind of like an uncle. I do think the show was making a statement about Henry's relationship with his own parents, though.

Oh, I agree. That's part of what I find so creepy about jumping to an "real father" scenario. It's like people can only see two possibilities of an adult is talking to a child: parent or predator. But there's lots of other possibilities.

Like with Paige and Pastor Tim he was her youth pastor. She shared personal stuff with him--he didn't invite her into his personal life except in very specific ways that were appropriate with that. Stan and Henry, I think, do have a more personal relationship. There's times where Stan does share things with Henry because he knows Henry personally. And I do think it's intentional that Henry's having those conversations with Stan and not Philip--but that's also not unusual, especially in families where there's personality conflicts during adolescence.

I always thought another thing with both Pastor Tim and Stan was they were, in the eyes of the kids, the opposite of their parents. Stan's a cool FBI agent (whose long hours don't bother Henry because he's not his father), Pastor Tim was a political activist etc. Paige was intensely obsessed with Pastor Tim at 14 and now probably doesn't think about him. And her interest in him came with a lot of work on her part. Stan, I agree, is more like family. He's there whether Henry's in his Stan-obsessed phase or not. It's not all or nothing.

[jae]

This is a VERY well done trailer. So much to unpack!

-J

[quantumreality]

Watching this, it's surprising how much Paige looks like Elizabeth now, and it's a little jarring :O

Also why is she fighting with ... her dad??? WTF :O

[sistermagpie]

From the clip my guess is that he's worried about her overconfidence about her skills and so is telling her to show him what she'd do to him if he was an attacker.