theamericans | Week thirteen (sob!) linkspam

Entry tags:

Week thirteen (sob!) linkspam

First, a veritable cornucopia of post-season interviews with showrunners Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields: from Hitfix, from the AV Club, from Vulture, from TV Line, from Yahoo, from TV Guide, from tv.com, from Slate (audio, ~30 minutes, available only to subscribers, though a partial transcript is available here), and from Grantland (audio, ~57 minutes). [Editorial comment: take some time to read/listen to these if you can--they're all so different and so good!]

Next up, some reviews of season two: from Vulture, from the AV Club, from Screen Invasion, from Bustle, and from Talking TV With Ryan and Ryan (audio, ~48 minutes).

From Hitfix, an interview with Matthew Rhys (Philip).

From the New York Post, an interview with Noah Emmerich (Stan).

Keri Russell (Elizabeth) took part in a joint interview of many of the potential Emmy nominees for Best Actress with the Hollywood Reporter. This link has both a transcript of parts of the interview and video of a riff on the "what would you do if you weren't an actor" question" (~ 4:40). [Edited to add: the full video interview is now up (~1 hour).]

Two interviews with Annet Mahendru (Nina): one from Yahoo and one from U.S. News.

An interview with Costa Ronin (Oleg) from OK Magazine.

From The Wire, an interview with Margo Martindale (Claudia).

Two interviews with the composer for the show, Nathan Barr: from the Hollywood Reporter, and an excerpt from a piece from Film Score Monthly Online.

From Vanity Fair, a piece on the realism behind many of the show's spy storylines, and The Atlantic has a column on the show's refreshingly real take on Russians. And from Think Progress, a piece that challenges the realism in the season finale's plot twist.

From The Wire, the last season two "wig of the week", on the finale. And further in the disguises vein, TV Ate My Wardrobe has a piece on the best disguises of season two.

A column in Entertainment Weekly debates whether or not Elizabeth is a bad mom.

The Hollywood Reporter has The Americans at #2 in last week's "power rankings".

Paste Magazine has a piece on the 10 most shocking moments on the show.

"Behind The Red Door" has been pre-nominated in the AV Club's Tournament of Episodes.

From Indiewire, a summary of the pre-finale (but post-screener) tweets from some of the critics.

FX released a little mini-feature on The Art of the Edit (only viewable from within the U.S.).

According to Headline Planet, the ratings were up slightly for the season finale.

The LA Times has a piece on the recent trend in spy-related television series, including comments from The Americans co-showrunner Joel Fields.

An astrology blogger has written an mythological/astrological interpretation of the finale.

And finally, a glimpse into a writers' room joke: the supposed original pitch for the Stealth arc. :)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

http://www.tv.com/shows/the-americans-2013/community/post/spying-on-the-americans-with-series-creators-joel-fields-and-joe-weisberg-139258913685/
http://www.zap2it.com/blogs/the_americans_executive_producers_joel_fields_and_joe_weisberg_talk_about_the_season_finale_and_what-2013-05

Look forward to reading the rest :)

Thank you! Adding them now. :)

-J

P.S. That zap2it link is actually from last year's cornucopia of interviews. :)

Oooops!!! Sorry!

Just a heads-up that both the Grantland and Slate audio interviews with Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg have some great stuff about the events of "Behind The Red Door." Also, since the latter is subscriber-only, is that something people would want me to transcribe here in the comments? It would take some time, but I'd be willing to do it if someone else really wanted to access it.

-J

Behind the Red Door is one of my favorite episodes of the series, so I would love to hear more about it from the producers. A transcript would be very welcome if you're so inclined.

Okay, I'll see what I can do! (The Grantland podcast is totally free to everyone, though, and it also goes into that episode and its fallout, so be sure not to miss that.)

-J

Willa Paskin: I'm going to start this interview in perhaps a tawdrier way than I should, by talking about sex. Because I think you guys have done some stuff this season--you've done some stuff with the show that is extremely, I mean, without being particularly salacious, you've done some stuff that's extremely interesting, nuanced, and sort of titillating but not just titillating, in ways that other shows don't.

Joel Fields: I think there were a couple of guiding principles for us for this season--we did want to explore sexuality in their relationship. As we were exploring their marriage, we wanted to dig into what that part of their relationship would be. And we wanted to make sure that the sexuality, whenever it was portrayed, was always in a way that explored character and revealed character. So that's what we were after.

Joe Weisberg: We thought about that a little bit in terms of had we always succeeded in the first season? Or had we occasionally fallen a little bit into being gratuitous the first season, and how could we avoid that?Like, our guiding principle is what Joel just said: that if we were always revealing character, then it would not be gratuitous. So a good example is that 69 from the season opener, that there were a lot of things going on there. Elizabeth had just been shot, she had just come back from that and she was coming back home and she had just had to perform a honeytrap, and now the couple--the married couple was reunited and wanting to connect and be intimate in this situation that is essentially unimaginable to almost any of us. I mean, if you look at those circumstances, how would the two of them sexually connect in that circumstance in a way that we could show visually? And in a sense we essentially ran through all of the sexual positions, what are all the possibilities, and anything sort of regular that you're sort of used to, it seemed wouldn't really do the trick. And then we came up with that idea for the 69, and it was so different, and not cliché, and it had a little element of humour to it, and even seemed a little bit bizarre, there seemed also to be something incredibly intimate about it. Maybe because you don't see it very much.

Joel Fields: In fact, I'd add one other thing to it, which was part of that 69 scene that was very important to us was the little moment that preceded it in the car. It was a silent scene, driving in a car at night, the hardest sort of scene to shoot, the first scene that you would cut for production because you've got to create the camera mounts and you've got to go out at night and it's not easy, but it was so important to see that moment of them driving, of her intuiting that something had gone wrong for him, him admitting that something had gone bad with that operation with the Afghans but not wanting to trouble her with it, and then that long silent moment where they just held hands after going through the operation they'd just gone through that led into the 69, that showed that they were trying to connect.

Willa Paskin: There was also something a little funny about it, with Paige's--you know, this Freudian moment, where you come upon your parents and sort of in keeping with this family, it's just the extremest version of the thing you could see. And it's also interesting for how that influences Paige, when she's talking about her family episodes later, where she says "maybe they're all cheating on each other." You almost think that that would be not her takeaway from having seen her parents--that part seems under control.

Joel Fields: And what's Paige's response to seeing that extreme thing? Yell at her brother.

Joe Weisberg: Well, right, and then the next morning at breakfast, Elizabeth is eating the bacon, so we're not afraid to get the humour out of it--we want to get the humour out of it. But there was a lot going on in that scene, and in that sense...we have something called a tone meeting where we talk to the director about what the tone of it is, and it seemed to us that if that wasn't handled perfectly in tone, the right amount of humour, the right amount of shock from Paige, the right response from the parents, then the whole thing would be bizarre. Almost sick, almost awful. And yet Tommy Schlamme, one of the greatest directors in television history, who was directing that episode, and what he did was really so masterful and so perfect, and the whole thing was great. With all these elements in it, we got so wrapped up in all these things we're now discussing with you, that when some of the reaction from people was all: "oh my god, they did a 69 on television!", we were surprised by that reaction because we had forgotten that that would be a natural reaction to it. We were thinking of all these ideas.

Willa Paskin: So the other episode I thought that was really sort of remarkable about this is the episode basically where Elizabeth has had this conversation with Martha about what an animal in the sack Philip is, and it gives her sort of these ideas, and a story progresses that is this extremely sexy story for a while. Elizabeth flirting with Philip, she wants him to have sex with her like he does with Martha, and then they actually do have sex and it turns so quickly and it felt to me like, if you think about other shows? You lead up to the titillation, like you're going to deliver it to us, and then you sort of just pulled the rug out from under us and we're like "no, this is a totally different and so much more messed up dynamic than you could even imagine--this is not going to be like a really hot sex scene, this is going to be basically a rape trauma, all these things are going to come up."

Joe Weisberg: Yeah, that's like our show. *laughs*

Joel Fields: We don't need to think about other shows. We can be completely messed up and traumatic all on our own. *laughs*

Joe Weisberg: Because of these characters and where they're coming from, I mean, that makes me think also of the religion story with Paige this season, that she's going to church, and we don't-- We did a little bit think of other shows that have done a story about a kid getting religious, but because of where our characters are coming from--they're communists and they hate religion--that story will be so different in our show without our even having to do anything, that we don't have to worry about the other shows. And this is really the same thing. There are plenty of other shows where somebody dresses up or plays a character--like, oh my god, what they did on Girls with that this season, that was fantastic.

Joel Fields: That was so good.

Willa Paskin: That was so good.

Joe Weisberg: But where our characters are coming from, that they're spies, and they've got these crazy costumes and characters, there's just no concern that it could even relate to any other show. They're going to go to their crazy dark places if you set that up. And not only that, we're going to set it up in the script and have these ideas and our stories for it, but the actors are going to take it to places that we can't even imagine in a scene like that.

Willa Paskin: I also felt like the ripple effect of that incident--though they didn't discuss it ever--was like episodes long. It felt--I mean, that was intentional. It felt like they were--

Joe Weisberg: And it's going to keep going.

Willa Paskin: I did also wonder--this may expose me in an unbecoming manner, but I was curious: is that how Martha and Philip have sex? Or is he just frustrated with Elizabeth in that moment of him being aware of all of the horrible ramifications of what she was asking in a way that she wasn't aware, and he got frustrated with her?

Joe Weisberg: This is one of the ones where I'm interested to see if we have the same answer.

Joel Fields: Yeah, me too, go ahead.

Joe Weisberg: I think that is how him and Martha have sex, but without him being upset.

Joel Fields: Yeah, I think that's right. When I think about the scenes where we've shown Clark and Martha having sex, that seems to be the position, and it seems to be pretty animalistic. So that's right. The difference is for Philip as Clark, he's playing a character there, in a comfortable performance. And it's not a place he wanted to go to with Elizabeth. It's not a part of him he wanted to connect with her. And that's scary.

Willa Paskin: Did you, writing that scene between Martha and Elizabeth, that was a really fun scene to watch. Was it fun to have them do and to write? It was almost a case where the complications become almost farce as opposed to being so heavy, that you can kind of let loose.

Joel Fields: It's really the best. I'd say that scene was fun to conceive of--the minute we realized we were going to do that scene, it was fun from then until now. It keeps being fun.

*everybody laughs*

Joel Fields: But I'll just say about that, part of the great things about this season has been discovering for these incredibly out-of-touch, emotionally inarticulate characters, a way for them to start to connect to parts of their souls in disguise. To other people, to strangers. So the idea that Elizabeth, dressed up as Jennifer, pretending to be Clark's sister, speaking to Martha, her real-fake husband's real-fake wife, who has no idea--that suddenly she's able to gain insight into this man she's been with for fifteen years and she's able to react to that and think about that. That she's able to share with Brad pieces of her rape trauma from way back in Russia--all of that has been really rich territory for us to explore.

Edited 2014-05-24 00:11 (UTC)

I'm so glad they both said that yes, this is how he and Martha have sex, because that's how it came across to me and that's the most interesting read, I think! It's the "without him being upset (and the implied addition that Martha likes it)" part that changes everything!

I love that pretty much everything they say here is what's right on the screen--they've barely scratched the surface of these two trying to connect and now they've thrown the curve ball. This isn't a couple that can just disagree and go their separate ways. They must crave this stuff like a drug now!

That's the most interesting bit to me, too, but the most interesting single line is "And it's going to keep going." The event's going to continue having repercussions into season three, and we have that straight from the horse's mouth!

-J

Yeah--well, and I suspect that they don't necessarily mean they have a plan for it, it's just that that scene is so central to who the characters are that it's almost always a subtext. Like I love the convo about how some people didn't get why she apologized, but if you know these characters you see why she did and what she'd done. It wasn't an apology for not liking what she said she wanted or for crying or whatever. It was for crossing a similar line with him that he crossed with her in the scene, leaving them both horrified. Only in her case I think she knew that they both understood just what line he'd crossed and why, while with him this is new territory. She's further along in her ability to articulate and understand how she feels, I think.

And the conflict over Paige, I'll just say, offers definite reasons to look at it more closely.

Exactly--they realize how central that scene was, and recognize that it can't help but continue to have ripple effects. Which means that it's something they'll talk about as they write or plot other scenes between them, because they realize they have to take it into account. That's just so thrilling to me! I just love these guys and the way they think so hard about their characters. There's nothing superficial about this show at all.

-J

Thank you, I have been looking for information about this subject matter for ages and yours is the best I've discovered so far.

Andy Greenwald: Let's go back a few weeks. There's that scene where, after probably my favourite episode of the season, where Elizabeth is pretending to be Clark's sister, and they have a boozy conversation about what an animal Clark is.

Joe Weisberg: And you think we're not funny.

Andy Greenwald: Okay, again, that was funny!

Joe Weisberg: You can't talk about how funny the show is and then say it's not funny.

Andy Greenwald: I apologize. I was just suffering through the last two episodes. But that led to--okay, so that was funny. But then look what you did, that led to the roleplay scene, the sexual roleplay scene between Philip and Elizabeth, that was again--horrible! And I think, really bold on the part of you guys and your writers, because that was there for you to--it was there. It seemed like an inevitable endpoint. But it would have to take great skill and care to pull it off. I think you did. But I imagine that must have taken a lot of conversation on how to do it correctly.

Joe Weisberg: *sighing* We spent a lot of time on that, and it's a devastating scene, and even after they're together, he goes into the bathroom, that's another--it's part B of the devastating scene. *sighing*

Joel Fields: Intimacy is--is scary. It's scary to open up what's really inside, and if you want to be with somebody, you want to be married, you want to share more and more of yourself, but the more you do, the scarier it is and the more there's danger for rejection. Particularly when you've got some secret self-loathing.

Andy Greenwald: Yeah. Or a lot.

Joel Fields: And I'm just speaking about myself, I'm not even talking about the show.

*everybody laughs*

Andy Greenwald: No, I just thought we could then pivot into talking about The Americans on this.

Joe Weisberg: You know, there were very interesting discussions on the scene later, which is another scene I love, where they're doing the dishes afterward. And she actually apologizes to him.

Joel Fields: Yeah.

Joe Weisberg: And so many people very reasonably said: "why is she apologizing to him?" Which is a perfectly reasonable comment, I mean, in an aware, therapized, everybody knows what the hell is going on world, I think he probably would have apologized to her. Or everybody would have apologized to everybody, or of course, they would have never been in that situation.

Joel Fields: Right.

Joe Weisberg: But some people pointed out--and I think this was something we had actually said--and again, we like to be open to everybody's interpretations, so none of this is sort of posited as "what's right." But that on some level, conscious or not, she intuited that she had asked him to step outside of his identity, when their identities are already so fragile.

Joel Fields: Yeah.

Joe Weisberg: Not that she would phrase it that way, or understand it quite in those terms.

Andy Greenwald: Because Philip Jennings is itself a cover.

Joe Weisberg: Exactly.

Andy Greenwald: That they had--there has to be some baseline. There has to be something that can be relied upon.

Joel Fields: But who knows what's on the other side of that chasm. In other words, a season from now, two seasons from now, in all of these things, as deep as the valley is on the other side, there should be something better. You can make the journey.

Love this so much.

I really liked that Greek-mythological analysis of the "Echo" episode.

It fits quite well, too. The KGB, in deciding that Philip and Elizabeth have been such amazingcakes devotedly wonderful agents, has decided to preen in its own mirror about its success in getting them implanted into the USA and isn't hearing a word against the foolhardiness of telling them something that amounts to a sea change in the comfort zone of what orders they're given.

And Philip and Elizabeth are expected to just say "Yes, we'll hand you Paige."

P&E have been socialized for years to conform, both by a society that heavily emphasized collectivist behaviors in its official propaganda, and by their training, which required them to treat all missions as serving a greater good than their immediate problems (see, for example, Fred and the shoes: the shoes are more important in the long run than whether or not they can spirit him out from under the cops' noses).

But Paige and Henry aren't a part of that; they have no socialization or training to do what Philip and Elizabeth do every day, and P&E recognize that, and aren't prepared to go along with it until they have no other options, no other way to end-run that directive.

Those Annet Mehendru interviews DO make me feel better about Nina! SHE DOESN'T NEED A GUN! ♥ ♥

Actually, what I advised was that you read the interviews with the showrunners. They're not spelling out anything about Nina's fate, but they are spelling out very clearly that she will be in season three.

-J

OMG I mis-remembered and THAT'S EVEN BETTER!! *runs to read them right now*

Damn, I LOVE how the people who make the show talk about it. Daaaaamn. And I love that Nina is going to be back, and that they REALISE that she went from a function of Stan's story to a Nina story in her own right! Aahhhhhh!

Aren't those interviews just the best? They love their characters and those characters' stories so much, and they think hard about them and they just...take the whole thing so seriously!

And I mean, maybe that sounds dumb, because of course they care--they're the ones who came up with these people in the first place, after all. But in my experience that's anything but obvious in the television game.

-J

They really do - they take the characters seriously, and they take DOING A GOOD JOB WITH THEM seriously. I love it.

And thankyou so much for typing up the stuff about Behind the Red Door, that's amazing.

So much respect for Joe and Joel. There's so much to talk about that each interview is so indepth and interesting. We're so lucky to have a show who's showrunners are so on the ball and intuitive and are willing to share their own take of things with the audience.

Yeah, right? Last year's post-finale interviews were equally awesome, but they were all pretty similar. What strikes me most this time around is that each one is just so different! They're getting entirely different sets of questions from each interviewer, and they're answering each set with real depth and insight (which speaks to just how honest that depth and insight is, if they don't have to rehearse their answers to make them interesting).

-J

I loved listening to that Grantland podcast. Good questions and it's a joy to hear Joe and Joel formulate their answers together. Their dynamic is so great. I think it was Andy Greenwald who brought up that season 1 had more procedural episodes/this season was even more serialized, and I definitely experienced it that way. To such an extent that I found it hard to discuss the individual episodes without being able to know how they'd fit into the bigger picture. Now that it's all over, I'll have to do a rewatch.. not that that's a bad thing to have on a to-do list :)

Thanks for compiling all these lists week after week, Jae!

-Emma

We'll definitely be doing a rewatch on the comm together for just that reason-hope you join in!

Yeah, I have been so impressed with Andy Greenwald this season, both as a writer and as an interviewer. Plus, he's been very good to our show. :) And Joe and Joel are just golden. Their interviews are always the very best.

I hope you will rewatch with us, Emma! We're going to take a break first, but then the tentative plan is to do a full rewatch of season two, followed by a rewatch of at least selected episodes in season one (with each one hosted by a community member). So please do keep coming back and checking the comm, we're not going anywhere.

-J

P.S. Ik zit deze zomer zes weken in NL--misschien een drankje doen? :)

That would have been cool.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Week thirteen (sob!) linkspam

To add to the Cornucopia

Re: To add to the Cornucopia

Re: To add to the Cornucopia

Re: To add to the Cornucopia

Heads-up

Re: Heads-up

Re: Heads-up

Transcript of the BTRD-related (and tangentially related) bits of the Slate/Willa Paskin interview

Re: Transcript of the BTRD-related (and tangentially related) bits of the Slate/Willa Paskin intervi

Re: Transcript of the BTRD-related (and tangentially related) bits of the Slate/Willa Paskin intervi

Re: Transcript of the BTRD-related (and tangentially related) bits of the Slate/Willa Paskin intervi

Re: Transcript of the BTRD-related (and tangentially related) bits of the Slate/Willa Paskin intervi

no subject

Transcript of the BTRD-related bits of the Grantland/Andy Greenwald podcast

Re: Transcript of the BTRD-related bits of the Grantland/Andy Greenwald podcast

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Yay for all these interviews!

Re: Yay for all these interviews!

Re: Yay for all these interviews!

Stealth arc