The Americans Season 3

Cafe Society
701

I’m sorry that I missed you saying that you would be rooting for P and/or E to go to prison.

I may not be American (I was born and live in Canada), but my strongest beliefs in life are for the “correctness” of our basic freedoms - such as:

From the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:

(a) freedom of conscience and religion;
(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press;;
(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
(d) freedom of association.

Before I read that, I had written the following off the top of my head:

Free Speech, Free Thought (and several others that can be grouped into Freedom of Expression)
Freedom of Association
Freedom of the Press
Freedom of Religion

But I decided to quote the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms because it is just too easy to miss a basic freedom and they are just too important to miss any of them.

I want to say something about your closing sentence:

“I want my country to win, and in no way can I root for P and E. I don’t admire them. They represent a system that I abhor, and my hope at the series conclusion is that—barring defection— they languish in an American prison for the rest of their lives.”

It’s just my guess. But the ending of this show will very likely be dictated by TV network constraints and may not have much to do with what the show runners or audience would really like to see.

Personally, I would love to see one of them (P and/or E) accept a deal with the US govt where they get several million dollars to tell all they know and then both of them go off to live happily ever after in a typical US midwestern town and take Stan with them (Good Old Stan - what’s not to love about Stan)?

I would like to see Paige and Henry grow up and become loving parents and grandparents (kind of like the ending on Six Feet Under). I’d love to see them attend P & E’s funeral and never ever learn their parents were really KGB agents but instead they all leave this world as proud and loyal Americans who live and work in such a way to support the basic freedoms and the associated way of life.

Of course, the way the show will actually end will almost certainly not be like that. The show runners will almost certainly never have time to arrange all of that.

My second choice would be for them to be exchanged for some American spies and a good cover story be told to Paige and Henry - but again - the time constraints would probably never allow that.

Maybe we could start another thread and give everyone who would like the opportunity to post how they would like to see the show end? I’m probably being far too sappy (and stupid) to imagine such a thing could ever become a reality. But I’m just that kind of person (sappy and stupid).

The one thing we have in common is a love for basic human rights and freedoms but the one thing I just cannot understand is that it seems approximately half the world doesn’t know or care about the difference between living free or living in a dictatorship where they don’t have basic freedoms.

My biggest fear would be that one day, some dictator could actually win and the world will wind up living under some system with “The Big Man” in charge. The reason why that could never happen is that any system like that would have a few people at the top and they would fight with each other - each one wanting to eat the biggest piece of the pie. Anyone who has studied how the Nazi system worked (and didn’t work) can see just how easy it was for that system to fail.

How in the world could people accept the fact that lving under Stalin in a “communist” system would really mean that everyone was treated equally? Stalin murdered millions of people to ensure he remained on top. How can so many millions of people accept that absurd truth? Meaning that one man is on top for life - but he sells the idea that everyone is equal? It’s just so ridiculous. Isn’t it?

Bottom line? We may one day lose all memory of what it means to live free. I would think that people with children would be just terrified at the thought of that happening. And, in the past, it has come fairly close several times. It is possible. It could happen. If a large economic calamity was ever to happen, that could be the beginning. If people were starving, most anyone would be willing to trade away their freedoms for some food. I’m fairly certain of that. And once that were to happen, it could become a very fast trip down a long, slippery slope. It seems like it requires eternal vigilence to prevent that. If you love the USA, IMO (and I sure do expect some flak over this), that is the one thing about the USA I thank God for - eternal vigilence to protect our free way of live and our basic freedoms. OK. I told you I was sappy and stupid. But that is really the way I feel about it.

I have a lot more to say about this. But there really is just not enough time and not enough room. But I love this show and the fact that it gives us the opportunity to discuss such things every week.

702

No apology necessary Charlie…and my good wishes to the people of Canada!

The ratings for The Americans continue to plummet. I don’t see this show going past a fourth season, unless they sign a deal for it to stay on Netflix or something like that.

Below are numbers taken from the comment section of the web site TVbythenumbers.com., and I believe the orginal source is tvseriesfinale.com

The Americans Season 3 A18-49 Ratings and Total Viewers
Episode 1 - 0.63 A18-49 Rating and 1,895,000 Total Viewers
Episode 2 - 0.35 A18-49 Rating and 918,000 Total Viewers
Episode 3 - 0.29 A18-49 Rating and 1,018,000 Total Viewers
Episode 4 - 0.24 A18-49 Rating and 972,000 Total Viewers
Episode 5 - 0.19 A18-49 Rating and 811,000 Total Viewers
Episode 6 - 0.24 A18-49 Rating and 931,000 Total Viewers
Episode 7 - 0.35 A18-49 Rating and 1,224,000 Total Viewers
Episode 8 - 0.31 A18-49 Rating and 1,125,000 Total Viewers
Episode 9 - 0.27 A18-49 Rating and 988,000 Total Viewers

Good luck P and E. These are terrible ratings for a basic cable network. The show has lost half of its audience this season, and I continue to believe the storylines involving Paige and then Kimmie have something to do with it.

We’ll see what FX does.

703

The US paid for and trained death squads throughout Central American and in South America. What these death squads did was get a bunch of murderers together to go and murder neighbors with political views that they disagreed with. Had this happened in the US, most of the people who post on this board would have been murdered. I love the US, but we have done some truly evil things. The Reagan administration deeply hated liberals and paid for murdering liberals in foreign countries. To describe this as anything less than evil is to turn a blind eye to it. The Americans briefly touched on this with the Nicaraguan agent and what happened to her family.

704

My worst fear isn’t the series ending quickly (I loved the TV series Fargo, and there are only 10 episodes per “story”).

My fear is that we’ll get to a series end, but no story end - that the show will be cancelled while all the current season episodes have been written and shot, and we’ll never know what happened to the Jennings.

705

On behalf of everyone in Canada, thank you very much and I’m sure we all send those wishes back to you.

I’m very sad to see those dismal ratings. I love this show so much.

But, based on those numbers, I have to go out on a limb and predict the season finale (or the show finale - whichever comes first) will be Martha going crazy and taking her gun and shooting at least one person and probably more.

I guess the show runners didn’t have that in mind when they got that six-shooter for Martha. If they wanted a really crazy scene, they would have gotten her a gun that held a whole lot more bullets. But maybe she will get herself a reloader or two and then she can shoot a lot more rounds than just six.

I feel so sad now at the thought this wonderful show will get cancelled. Really so terrible that TV ratings are plummeting for most all shows. Maybe The Americans will get picked up by some other provider? I sure do hope so.

I think I’m going to go and have a cry now. So sad.

706

Good point!

I really must learn to read all the posts since I last came to this thread before I post anything.

707

You may be right–it may be active distaste that is leading former viewers to make another viewing choice. Certainly the episodes have remained well-written and fast-moving. But if people feel repelled–if they believe the show is being exploitative–then they won’t watch.

I can understand why the showrunners felt that the topic (of how spies might manipulate and make use of kids–even their own flesh and blood) was worth exploring. But it’s a minefield. Perhaps it would have been wiser to give that topic (of how Paige and others might be used) only glancing mention, and instead concentrate on other aspects of the lives of the illegals.

A bit off-topic, but personally I like the way Obama addresses this subject. He tends to frame his remarks in terms of the obvious advantages to any nation of embracing rule-of-law and attention to human rights. He puts it on a scientific, cost/benefit basis, as opposed to getting into the (ultimately) supernatural mysticism that ideologues tend to embrace. (“Nobility” and exceptionalism and [insert deity of your choice] Being On Our Side…all that stuff implies that magic of some sort is determinative in our lives.)

It’s surprisingly simple: economies are more productive and people are happier when corruption, inequality and other abuses of power are minimized.

708

It’s such a shame that the show is losing viewers. I find the storyline about Paige one of the most interesting that they are pursuing this season and I think that it is well worth exploring. But you may be right that it should have been less prominent, perhaps especially in the first few episodes. I must admit I wasn’t happy with the resolution of Jared as murderer last season, and maybe some viewers see the Paige storyline heading in a similar direction.

I’ll keep my fingers crossed for the ratings to rise!

709

I think the prestige of the show will keep it alive long enough for a proper, albeit, maybe rushed ending. I suspect there will be a 4th season but the creators will be told they have X number of episodes to wrap everything up.

710

I just watched a little of S1E1 and I couldn’t believe it was the same Phil Jennings who took 20 minutes to put a bug in a mail robot.

Maybe you remember? He stopped his car with Timoshev in the back seat and took out a screw driver and in about 15 seconds used that screw driver to change both front and back license plates. I had to laugh thinking about the difference between his changing the license plates and planting the bug in the mail robot. It was a very funny comparison.

711

Those are some really rough numbers. I wonder if you are right about the storylines. I think those are interesting, brave choices though and I wouldn’t necessarily want them to shy away in search of ratings.

I would BTW take some issue with your characterization that the ratings “continue to plummet”. They’ve been atrocious all season except for the premiere (which was still bad, but not nearly as bad) but they are actually still higher now than four or five episodes ago. When they hit that stretch where it went .24, .19, .24 (yowch), I’m sure a crystal ball showing the next three at .35, .31, .27 would have actually looked like a rebound.

Yup, this: well said. When I was researching my post to find links, I found one from a 1980s op-ed in which the writer was making excuses for all of this on the basis that it was in service of some larger good of “anticommunism”. All I could think of is what Lois said: “That’s what evil people tell themselves when they do evil things”.

Great post, but I visited the USSR and have studied about it extensively, and I don’t think it is fair to say it was a “rubbish economic model”. They didn’t start in 1917 with a country as wealthy as the U.S., not even close. The revolution succeeded because a vast, destitute, little-educated peasantry (which made up the vast majority of the population) was desperate and starving to death. What they managed to do in subsequent decades in terms of industrialization and ramping up technology and education of its people was actually astonishing.

Leaving aside Stalin, who was absolutely evil and was denounced as such by Khruschev, the USSR had too little in the way of civil liberties, but its political system allowed Gorbachev to come in and remedy that with glasnost. But an ill-fated reactionary coup cut the legs out from under him, and we all know what has happened since then. Had he and those who shared his vision stayed in power, who knows what they could have achieved.

712

Those are the live numbers. FX has tended to only care about Live+3 & Live+7 numbers. If there’s no lift due to DVR use, then they’re in real trouble. But I’m betting they’ve got a full fourth season easily and possibly a fifth (depending on the +7).

713

I remember five years or so ago, wondering why any network (or, more to the point, their advertisers) would see any value in DVR numbers. Then I read that something like fifty percent of DVR users don’t skip commercials (or at least, didn’t at that time). I found this stunningly incomprehensible, and I wonder if it’s still true, and if it is, whether it’s not disproportionately older-skewing viewers in that group (which, unfair though it may be, advertisers tend not to care about).

Seems to me that if there’s anything that would make more sense to add to live viewing, it would be Hulu viewership since you *can’t *skip those commercials.

714

Oh, they have done many evil things and richly deserve to get locked up and have the key thrown away.

But they are not sadistic or cruel. They have loyalty to a cause which they view as more important than human life, but that doesn’t mean they are incapable of compassion or empathy, as they have proven on many occasions.

I do agree that an interesting question is what keeps Phillip going, as it’s clearly not pure ideology to the extent that it is with Elizabeth. Inertia?
And this debate of USA vs Soviet Union is kind of pointless. Regardless of what any one of us might think, there were certainly enough warts on the USA in the time period in question for P&E to be able to convince themselves of its rottenness… particularly when that convincing was what allowed them to continue to do the incredibly difficult things they did day in and day out.

715

Amarinth is correct…those are the live numbers. I’ve heard reports that The Americans does get decent DVR numbers. That is what may keep the show alive. Slacker’s point about DVR users not skipping commercials came as a surprise, and I had a similar reaction. Evertyime I watch something on my DVR, the commercials have no chance…almsot never watch them.

I continue to wonder about Phillip as well. He seems to be growing more disaffected as the weeks go by. I still think the scene

716

sorry…edit time ran out…was just saying the scene where Phillip unloads on Gabriel will remain one of the better closing scenes you will see in a long while.

717

He might not believe in Sov ideology, that does not follow that he hates his country. On this board we have had American, several of them former servicemen display quite a lot of distaste for American government policies, yet no one thinks that they are going to committ treason.

Philip has been shown as caring quite deeply about the USSR, when he killed those Mujahideen representatives in the second season premier, he looked quite pissed off when they said they had killed lots of Russians, the whole Afghanistan sub plot, the insistane that his son play ice hockey.

718

Following up on the DVR issue, I found an article that might brighten the moods of the show’s fans. At least for Season 2 anyway, there was quite an audience bump for The Americans thanks to DVR viewership. This is the most recent article I have found so far. The only problem is that even with a significant bump from DVR’s, the live numbers are still so low that it might not matter.

719

When Philip told Yousef that he wasn’t done, that he was going to keep reporting back to the USSR about the Afghanistan war, he referred to the soviet soldiers as “my people.” You could see it on his face when he listened to the BBC reports about the war, even before he knew his son was there.
He’s not in the same place as Elizabeth is. But he’s also not in the same place that a naturalized citizen (or even a more typical voluntary immigrant) is either.

720

So many people seem to question what motivates Phillip.

But I’m quite certain he has made it clear several times that his family is the most important thing in the world to him and that is what he values above all else.

It may just be a fluke. But I watched a little bit from diff episodes from Season One and I may have just hit on a few scenes where he either said that or acted in such a way to make it clear.

Am I mistaken about that? Or has Phillip not indeed made it clear that he would do anything to protect his family above and beyond everything else? I think that is the one quality about him that I find most admirable and that I can excuse most any other behavior because of that.