Week eleven linkspam

[jae]

breitbart.com has an interview with showrunners Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg.

Photographer Rob Howard spent a day with Joel Fields to photograph him in various parts of his life with some accompanying introductory audio. The results of the project are here (including some great shots of what looks like the recording of the finale).

Costa Ronin (Oleg) has been doing lots of interviews lately: one in The Examiner, and one from yahoo.com.

The Atlantic has some great insight into the technical aspects of this past week's episode.

Columns galore on the show this week: from the National Review, from acculturated.com, and from the Modesto Bee. A columnist for Cox Newspapers has also nominated The Americans as one of the five shows worth bingeing on.

The Wire's "wig of the week" is Elizabeth's social worker disguise.

NBC has ordered a new Russian spy show for fall, and the critics are comparing the concept with The Americans: at Vulture and at the AV Club both.

Talk show host Rachael Ray did an interview with "Dr. Phil," and he mentioned The Americans (third video, the The Americans reference starts at 3:59).

FX has released a little featurette on Clark and Martha (only viewable from within the U.S.).

Comments

[treonb]

NBC has ordered a new Russian spy show for fall, and the critics are comparing the concept with The Americans

It sounds more like the Gordin Cell. (and indeed, I searched around, and it is: http://www.deadline.com/2014/05/nbc-picks-up-comedy-marry-me-to-series/)

[jae]

Yeah, I did some digging about that, too, but I didn't mention it because I figured no one but you would know what I was talking about, and you would guess. :)

-J

[treonb]

I actually started off by thinking it's an interesting idea, but that I can't see it working with kids of illegals, and what does deactivated mean, anyway? So it took me a while ;-)

I am curious how they're going to build the story differently. The actors aren't Russian-speaking which I suppose means everything will be in English.

[jae]

It certainly changes things to make it the kids of illegals (or one illegal and an American spouse, I guess?), that's for sure. I'm not sure that makes a similar story impossible, but it does make it different in ways the writers had better have a hold on or else the show will be silly.

Deactivated means they no longer work as spies, I guess? I don't know if that even happens, to be honest. I mean, it must, right? But I assume if it does, it would happen after they were to get hauled back to Russia. Though there are admittedly a lot of things we simply don't know about Russian illegals in today's world--it could work.

-J

[treonb]

The main thing that I think would be problematic is that going to work for the CIA would mean a serious security review and a LOT of questions about your background. It could be very dangerous. I'd expect the illegals to steer their kids towards jobs which will be just below that level of scrutiny.

But if they're going the Gordin Cell route, then it's not illegals, just people forced into service. They don't have fake identities to hide.

[jae]

Yeah, that's a really good point.

-J

[wendelah1]

I was going to say the same thing--working for the CIA would require a very rigorous security check. Voluntarily or not, I do think however they ended up working for the USSR, they'd still try to steer their kids away from anything that would result in prying.