Third (and final! I promise!) linkspam this week

[jae]

The official reviews of season two are starting to roll in from various U.S. publications: from the San Francisco Chronicle, from the Tampa Bay Times, from Indiewire, from the Los Angeles Daily News, from the San Jose Mercury-News, from Slant Magazine, and finally, from the Huffington Post (this one is really a negative review of season two of House of Cards, but there's a positive comparison with The Americans in the final bit).

The full Wall Street Journal Live at Bryant Park "How The Americans Recreates the Cold War" panel has been posted (30-min video).

An interview with Keri Russell (Elizabeth) from the LA Daily News (with some season two spoilers).

And an interview with Matthew Rhys (Philip) from the New York Daily News (also with some season two spoilers).

And an interview with Noah Emmerich (Stan) from Paste Magazine (also with some season two spoilers).

And an interview with Peg Schierholz and Lori Hicks from the Hair and Makeup Department, from the Washington Post.

A couple of things from Twitter: according to script supervisor Molly Nussbaum, The Americans made the very top of this coming week's "must list" in Entertainment Weekly. And it looks like actor Gillian Alexy is going to be back playing Anneliese toward the end of the season!

And the comm's own quantumreality with the third part of the essay on symmetries in The Americans.

The Americans is going to be the subject of canada.com's TV Chat critics' panel on Monday at 2pm eastern time.

The TV Ate My Wardrobe blog sent someone to cover the season one DVD/Blu-Ray launch event.

The Staten Island Advance on the use of a local location as a backdrop to an episode of The Americans.

And finally, here's a little clip of Keri Russell on Late Night With David Letterman (on channelling her inner Elizabeth when her apartment was broken into).

Comments

[quantumreality]

I am hopping with glee now :D

I'm trying to avoid S2 spoilers generally, but I HAD to see who that casting spoiler was, and I was like HA WHOA because hot blond lady who treats spying like a game kinda disappeared suddenly in the first season - so it's nice to see that plot thread being taken back up in S2.

[sistermagpie]

Man, these articles just get me so thrilled all over again about the show. Things like that Slate article are practically reminders of how they kind of made it just for me. Love the little things dropped in here and there, like MR saying how Philip and Elizabeth are essentially victims of making life choices too soon - not because they were necessarily the wrong choices for them, but because there's just no way you know whether you can do this when you're a teenager. Leading to that big conflict between them. That they both want to do this, but deal differently with the fact that it's so unsustainable. It's the conflict of the D-words: Death vs. Defection. Elizabeth can't choose defection, and if she won't Philip's going to have to choose Death as well.

Also the stuff about how the show mines how much tension comes from just passing information with no need for gunplay, sex or fighting. That was always something that sometimes struck me in listening to people talk about the show last season, the kinds of people who had Really Bad Ideas for what should happen, which usually involved bigger and bigger craziness with tons of surprise reveals rather than what the show seems to do instead, which is zero in on the true danger of every tiny second of their lives. And also that they're not afraid to look at things from different angles--they don't have to follow up on Stan almost catching them. The trail can go cold and they can go through a period where they're not dealing with the same stresses.

One other thing in that Slate article is I had to laugh at them describing a scene where most of the action was people hurling monologues at Philip while he can't say anything because LOL! Philip does that all the time anyway. Which almost makes it better because you know he's listening.

[soupytwist]

EEEE ANNELISE!

And omg, I feel like I'm watching this little show grow up, or something. So exciting!

[georgley]

There is so much positive buzz around this season! So looking forward to seeing how it progresses!

Too much

[cerveny]

I am starting to think that there is too much of positive buzz. Maybe that it is the way it works but I would be lot happier with more lukewarm response. This looks like hype.

[sistermagpie]

I was just reading The New Yorker's negative review of True Detective by Emily Nussbaum and it ends with this line:

"Bring me some unpretentious pulp like Cinemax's "Banshee" or an intelligent thriller, like FX's "The Americans," which is beginning its second season later this month, and actually does have fresh things to say about sex, sin and the existential slipperiness of human identity. Or to quote Nietzsche: "Is life not a hundred times too short for us--to bore ourselves?"

[georgley]

A review from Slate. Love the sound of the Elizabeth and Martha stuff!