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“The Americans’” creators discuss the season finale

Thu, 02 May 2013 03:00:00 +0000

"The Americans," FX's excellent and exciting spy series about two married, deep-cover KGB agents, Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, living in 1980s America, finished its first season in fitting fashion: with a finale full of, but never overrun by, action. The season ender contained not one but two covert missions, a sting, a high-speed car chase, and a shooting, but ended quietly, with the CIA momentarily foiled and Philip and Elizabeth, a bullet wound in her side, finally reconciled. Next season has near endless juicy material to explore: Nina, now a USSR double agent, is out to flip Stan; Elizabeth may want Philip to come home, but one of his alter-egos is still married to Martha; the Jennings' daughter is getting suspicious of her mother; and the Cold War is only escalating. "The Americans''' two showrunners, Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg, also the series creator and a former CIA agent himself, spoke with me about the finale, season 2, the intentional lack of cliffhanger and those super wigs.

How much of what happened this season did you know was going to happen when you began?

Why can’t I hate “The Americans”’ Elizabeth Jennings?

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 22:50:00 +0000

Likability, well on its way to becoming a dirty word, is on everyone’s lips these days: Why aren’t Anne Hathaway and Taylor Swift likable? Why are Jennifer Lawrence and Mila Kunis? What does it matter if Hannah Horvath or Amy Jellicoe is unlikable, so long as they are interesting? Why are women, both real and fictional, constantly being assessed for likability while men doing similar things get a pass? And what is with our current, not gender-specific cultural obsession with the unlikable anyway? And with making the unlikable lovable?

Matthew Rhys: “I still blink hard when the young PAs say, ‘We’re doing this period drama’”

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 01:00:00 +0000

The Cold War-era espionage thriller "The Americans," which is halfway through its first season on FX (and airs on Wednesday nights at 10 p.m. ET), is not the first series to challenge the audience to identify with unsympathetic characters. But this early 1980s drama pushes American views a little harder, asking us to root for KGB sleeper cells living in suburban northern Virginia as Americans — and see CIA and FBI agents as the enemy. Welsh actor Matthew Rhys, who last appeared on U.S. television in ABC's family drama "Brothers & Sisters" as a gay lawyer (and whose TV brood included Rachel Griffiths, Calista Flockhart and Sally Field), returns to the small screen to play Philip Jennings, a Russian spy, who takes all of his roles very seriously, no matter which identity he's assumed. He is an effective strategist when it comes to collecting intelligence — and a scrappy thug when he needs to be. But equally interesting is the domestic drama within "The Americans": Philip is devoted to his wife, Elizabeth (Keri Russell) — despite the fact that theirs is an arranged, sham marriage — and an extremely protective father to their daughter and son, who know nothing of their parents' secret and past lives. And part of Philip wonders if it would just be better for the family to defect, to buy into the American way of life — which would, of course, mean betraying his country and abandoning his life's work.

“The Americans”: Rooting against America has never been so fun

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 18:13:00 +0000

“The Americans,” FX’s wonderfully sly, ass-kicking new spy show, premieres tomorrow night and stars Keri Russell ("Felicity") and Matthew Rhys ("Brothers & Sisters") as Elizabeth and Phil Jennings, two Russian sleeper agents under deep, deep cover in 1981 America. The two began training in the early ‘60s, learning to speak English with no accent, to fight with no survivors. Paired together in their early 20s, forbidden from talking in Russian to one another, and told not to share their real identities, they were sent off alone, together to the United States posing as a young married couple. More than a decade later, they are balancing top-secret, ultra-dangerous Cold War missions with two kids, a house in the D.C. suburbs, and a travel agency. Their arranged, fake marriage, full of resentment, disagreements and passion, and characterized by complete dependency and entanglement, looks not so dissimilar from a knotty, real marriage.