Seasons one and two group rewatch: "Safe House" and "Only You"

[jae]

This is the discussion post for "Safe House" and "Only You" (episodes 1.9 and 1.10) in the group rewatch of seasons one and two. When you rewatched the episodes, was there anything you noticed that you didn't notice the first time (and any subsequent times) you saw them? What things about them did you perhaps view differently after having seen the later episodes?

You can expect spoilers for the entire first and second seasons in the comments. Feel free to join in even if you only got to rewatch one of the episodes.

A day with the Americans

[jae]

Yesterday, sistermagpie and I got the chance to spend about five hours as guests of the The Americans team that is currently filming season three. It was every bit as amazing as that makes it sound and then some! The guys who took over scheduling my visit (it was complicated to plan since I had to come in from so far and book my flight well in advance) were friendly and responsive from the get-go, and once we arrived at the studio, all of the cast, crew, and creatives we met went above and beyond anything we had imagined.

When we arrived, we were given a set of sheets with information about the day's filming. The top sheet included information about who was in charge (in terms of executive producers, the producer, and the director), a weather forecast, an address of a nearby hospital (just in case!), as well as a list of cast members and stand-ins and the times they had to be on set for which purposes (for hair and makeup or on set ready to perform). It also included special instructions for the various scenes (such as props that needed to be present), and a little bit at the bottom about the advance schedule for the following day's shooting (which scenes they were going to do, etc.). The pages that followed were excerpts from the script for the day's scenes.

First we watched a bit of filming, then we were taken on a long and very thorough tour of the various sets and production offices by a couple of very generous crew members, and finally we came back to watch more filming. We met and briefly spoke to creator Joe Weisberg and Daniel Sackheim, Stuart Zicherman and Molly Nussbaum from the writing staff, as well as Matthew Rhys (Philip), Keidrich Sellati (Henry), Noah Emmerich (Stan), and Annet Mahendru (Nina). We also saw Holly Taylor (Paige), Keri Russell (Elizabeth), and the director for episodes 303 and 304 (we'll let the team reveal who that is as they see fit) up close but didn't talk to them.

What follows are our (completely spoiler-free!) thoughts about what we saw. We've tried to put together a description of the kinds of things that we as pretty hardcore The Americans fans would want to hear about if one of you had been lucky enough to get to do what we did.

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We are so excited about season three now, we can't even express it. (!!!!!)