Question of the week #55

[treonb]

The Americans has received widespread critical acclaim, but has thus far failed to grow an audience equal to the size of a lot of other "prestige dramas." What do you think the reasons are for that?

You can expect spoilers for the entire first three seasons in the comments.

(There's no expiration date on these questions, so if you're reading this post months later and feel like jumping in, please do.)

Comments

[jae]

Today I ran across this comment that I once made in a discussion in my own journal, and it struck me that it made for a better response to this question than the one I actually gave!

I've become convinced that The Americans doesn't tend to work for people who don't (for whatever reason) want to watch it with their brains fully engaged--it's a verrrrrrrry subtle show that relies on you not only remembering but fully comprehending the various layers of things that have happened in past episodes without shoving reminders in your face first. There are actually things in it--sometimes crucial things!--that are so subtle that I sometimes don't fully understand them until second viewing, and I already watch pretty attentively the first time around. That means that if you're not watching carefully, you only end up seeing the frame of an episode rather than the meat, and the frame is just so very much not the point of that show.

-J

[sistermagpie]

This reminds me of a comment I read once where the person said, "Every episode is the same. They're always have to plant some bug to listen to what somebody else is saying."

[jae]

I find that sort of comment so frustrating!

-J

[treonb]

Can you give an example?

[jae]

Of which part?

-J

[treonb]

Of crucial things that were portrayed subtly. Because I think I'm a shallow viewer and I generally enjoy the show.

[jae]

The only thing that leaps immediately to mind is the way that Elizabeth's recollections of her rape tend to be portrayed: both when she had to use it to try to seduce Brad, and during the "roleplay" scene. In neither case did the show hit us over the head with "remember, she was raped! remember! this is why this is affecting her the way it is! you have to remember!" There wasn't even a reference to it in the "previouslies" before the episode. And judging from Twitter, this meant that a lot of casual viewers didn't get the reference either time--possibly people who never saw the pilot, or who had forgotten about it because they were not hit over the head with it.

But there have been a lot of things beyond that too. It'll be easier to mention them as they occur throughout season four, I suspect; remind me in our discussions.

-J

[sistermagpie]

I'd also say that for some people it's "subtle" in that the important moments are happening in quiet scenes. So that's why people say things like "nothing happened" when what they mean is there was no big change of the status quo. So they register things like Elizabeth almost getting caught by the FBI but if she's talking to Paige and Paige refers to Gregory as a "drug dealer" in a way that's judgmental that doesn't register as important. It's just a filler scene that's marking time until a big blow up.

But really that's where most of the drama on the show takes place, in those little moments where people show their positions on things and the other person has to adjust to it or whatever.

It's related to things like the rape because just as you miss the significance if you forget that Elizabeth was raped and that's motivating her in a scene, in a scene like that you need to think about who Gregory was, what he was doing, what choices he made, how Elizabeth wants to present it, how it comes across to Paige, how Paige is presenting it, what that means for Paige's potential recruitment, what the indications are for Paige and Elizabeth coming to an understanding or not...

Elizabeth and Paige both get that in the scene fro their own perspectives. But it's very easy to just read the only important in the scene as being that Paige looked up Gregory's history and is telling Elizabeth about it.

[jae]

The Gregory one is an EXCELLENT example of exactly what I meant. The perception of the show depends on the audience remembering things and making connections between things, and if you miss those things altogether because you aren't paying close attention (or weren't paying close attention when the things that are being subtly referred to were first mentioned--or maybe didn't even see the original episode).

For what it's worth, though, I really don't think Treon counts as a shallow viewer of the sort I meant in my original comment. I mean, Treon, even if you are in fact the shallowest of shallow in your original viewing, anybody who then subsequently discusses each episode to death in this community is going to have a different view of the show than the sort of casual viewer who's maybe walking in and out of the room while the show airs.

-J

[treonb]

Well, yes, it is hard to miss things when it's all pointed out to you ;-) And I do get a better appreciation of the most subtle points thanks to this comm.

I think that I didn't understand you at first because those subtle points are more related to the drama of the show, not really to the 'spy story' aspects (which do appeal to me more). To take the 'bug' example above, that's what spying is all about.

[jae]

I guess I do think if you JUST try to watch the show as a spy story, though, it won't seem like enough. That's what I meant by "the frame" in my original comment--the spy story is the frame, and as spy stories go, it's less meaty than others, which could seem dissatisfying. But that's really because the meat is elsewhere.

-J

[treonb]

I definitely agree. So maybe their biggest problem is that the people who like the drama are turned off by the idea of spy show and don't even give it a chance, and the people who want a spy show don't see what they signed up for and feel cheated.

[jae]

Support for the latter half of that: the pilot got a HUGE audience, and the network bragged about that everywhere, but there was a STEEP dropoff in ratings in the second week, and they continued to drop for a while before eventually stabilizing at something much lower.

-J

[sistermagpie]

Yes, just recently I came across a comment I made where I'd been talking to somebody who didn't like Stan, and they were basically trying to argue that things like the poor writing (in their view) of Stan was what turned people off the show. I had said that people found the show boring and that's why they said they didn't watch it. They felt that when people said "It's boring" they meant the characters were boring. And that was just obviously not true at all, imo. It wasn't that people were following the character arcs close and thought the characters were boring, it was that they watched for twists in the spy plot. So unless a talking scene directly led to a big plot development it was a wash out because it didn't lead anywhere.

Where really all that stuff is the meat. I was thinking last night a lot about how I imagined, character-wise, how Philip and Elizabeth would react to Paige telling Pastor Tim and for me, at least, it felt like there were all these passing character moments that seemed like they could lay the groundwork for it. That's the sort of thing that usually matters.

It was also doubly interesting to think about because with Elizabeth you had a specific backstory to apply to the situation, while with Philip it was just patterns of behavior which made it even *more* subtle. Because you didn't even have flashbacks or past incidents that were discussed, it was just noticing what things he's reacted to in the past and how and what that might say about his character without having any explanation. Not to mention, too, that with characters like Elizabeth we're sometimes meant to understand more about her than she understands about herself. So again, you often have to look at things characters have done rather than even what they say, and what people say always takes precedence in the mind of the viewers. (Here too there's Jared claiming he killed his family out of loyalty for the cause, but that's totally not what happened.)