So I’ve heard “The Americans” is this fantastic show. Super high critically rated (while having low ratings - which seems right up my alley ). So I started watching it on Amazon Prime, especially because I wanted to binge it before this season started. But I find I just don’t care about the characters at all. So a show I started to watch a month ago with the intent to binge, I find myself at Episode 7 in the 1st season, just as Season 5 starts airing on TV.
So… does it get better? Does it move quicker? Do you care any more about the leads or the FBI Agent any?
I have had the available seasons stood by ready to watch ‘some day’ simply because Keri Russell is one of the most lovely creatures ever to have been born.
But I’ve never been in to historical fiction — it’s almost impossible to understand how people thought in past generations — and like you I’ve failed to care about the characters. Plus I really, really dislike both competing causes.
I wonder if it’s partially a nostalgia thing? People who grew up in the 80s really enjoy revisiting their youth and thinking about the spy v. spy Cold War games?
The reason I say it is that the individual who was really saying I need to watch “The Americans” was in college during the 80s, and when I tell him how compelling how I found “American Crime Story: People vs. O.J. Simpson” (my nostalgia - since I was teen in the 90s), he seemed totally uninterested.
I like the show, but really have trouble when the protagonists are such evil people. I think it’s sort of revisionist to say the US and the Soviets were just two sides of the same coin (or even the same side of one coin). There was a difference. At least in Mission Impossible the team never murdered innocent civilians because they worked late, or had a job that the team wanted.
I don’t care about them much either, though more than “not at all.” For me, this is the key criterion in a TV series. I can tolerate unlikable characters as long as they’re interesting.
That’s why I put Orange is the New Black near the top of my list — Orange/Black has many characters you start to like, or pity, or understand. I don’t know how much of this is due to good acting, how much to good script-writing.
But I don’t dislike Americans too much; the relatively suspenseful plots may help make up for the unlikable characters. And there’s an “investment” effect — once you’ve invested time learning the characters and setting, there’s an incentive to keep watching. So I’ll probably start binge-watching again anyway once several Season 5 episodes accumulate! :smack:
Well, Constantine FitzGibbon would disagree with you on that particular coin, and no doubt Gore Vidal also; however I’m sure the CIA were never responsible for any deaths or torture or inconveniences to any innocent civilians through 20th century Latin America.
For that matter I can’t recall the real life soviets ever killing any American innocent civilians in America.
Millions in Russia, America not so much. Even in the generation earlier the famous spies, the Col. Abels and Gordon Lonsdales, never came within a hair of pulling off wet jobs.
Phillip and Elizabeth aren’t evil people. They, especially Phillip, are essentially good people, well maybe not good but no worse than many others, in service to an evil cause. If you can enjoy Walter White breaking every rule in the book just to line his pockets and stroke his ego, then you can enjoy these two knowing, from the perspective of history, that whatever small victories they may enjoy, they end up the losers.
Part of the appeal of the show is that instead of treating the characters as sadistic villains, it treats them as sane people who genuinely believe they are doing their patriotic duty. (Neither Elizabeth nor Philip is ever depicted taking pleasure in killing.) This makes for more-nuanced storytelling: one member of the pair has gradually come to question the value of what they do, while the other is still convinced that they are good people doing what any good patriot would do.
This seems fairly true to life–there are many such people in the world, doing awful things with complete satisfaction that their actions are ethical and upright.
That’s worth pondering. The Americans provides us with that opportunity.
I was born in 1977, so I feel nostalgia for both decades, but slightly different aspects of them. The 80’s feel more nostalgic, though, just because they seem more foreign. The 90s don’t really feel like a different era to me. But the 80s? Totally.
I haven’t watchedThe Americans yet, though it’s been on my radar for a while. I just started binging American Crime Story: People v. O.J. Simpson, and even though I’ll end up watching the whole thing (only 10 episodes), I really don’t like it much. I’m certainly not getting any nostalgia from it. Even before I got to your post, I read the OP and thought, “That’s exactly how I feel about The People v. OJ.” I didn’t really expect them to make any of those characters sympathetic, but they can’t even make them interesting? I really don’t know why it’s gotten such acclaim from the critics or from my friends.
It’s a great adult show. That’s partly because of the complexities; the ambiguities, the contradictions, the awkward truths, and partly for its depiction of family - the show is mostly about family. Which isn’t an 80s nostalgia trip.
If you want a show with characters you like maybe go back to Little House on the Priare. This is adult drama dealing with adult topics.
By the fact no-one has yet suggested they did ?
Pretty generally the then FBI and police services were quite interested in communist activity from the 1940s to the 1980s, and they would have mentioned any suspicions of commies committing murders. Noisily.
I also don’t think American agents secretly poisoned the Politburo; or that we each have an angel-mouse and a devil-mouse on each shoulder; or that Abraham Lincoln had a helicopter gunship.
Until you have some evidence of any positive assertion, the believer in the negative side is not meant to produce evidence to the contrary.
Yes, it does get better. No it doesn’t move quicker. Yes, I do care more about both the leads and the FBI agent - and deeply about many of the secondary and tertiary characters.
That said, I liked the very first episode. So, it got better at doing a thing that I liked and thought they did well. If it isn’t your cup of tea, then no, it isn’t going to become a different show than the one you’ve already not liked very much for the past 6 hours.
It is slowly paced. They tend to deal in slowly ratchet up the tension, with occasional quick cuts of extreme violence (that aren’t always related to the thing that caused the tension in the first place). But, I like that kind of thing.
There’s a little bit of the nostalgia thing (I was a kid during the time period this takes place), but it’s mostly that I think it does a good job of exploring interesting ideas (finding and losing faith, loyalty and fidelity, ethical boundaries, strength and powerlessness, etc.) from an odd angle. I find the relationship between the Elizabeth & Philip fascinating; it isn’t something you see on TV every day (except in some ways, it is). I think the show works. But I can see that not everyone would like it.
That’s certainly a factor. I was of an age with Paige and Henry (the two kids) at that period in history, and it totally reminds me of what life was like. Minus, ya know, the murderous spy parents
I’ve binged the first season of* The Americans* with enjoyment & will certainly continue.
But I could never stomach Little House on the Prairie. Because I loved the books & Michael Landon was *not *Paw. Besides, I know the TV show invented some weird plot elements. If I wanted to name a “likeable” show, it wouldn’t be that one.
I’d just leave it at “The Americans is not for everyone.” There are several universally respected series I know I ought to see–but haven’t been in the mood. I mean, I tried* The Gilmore Girls*–but couldn’t make it through season 2…
Well, since I actually met 3 out of 4 of my grandparents, if we are murderous spies, we’ve been doing it since at least the 30s, which makes this lot look like a bunch of pikers.
). So I started watching it on Amazon Prime, especially because I wanted to binge it before this season started. But I find I just don’t care about the characters at all. So a show I started to watch a month ago with the intent to binge, I find myself at Episode 7 in the 1st season, just as Season 5 starts airing on TV.