Stavos
you KNEW all this time???!?!?!?!??!!?!?
you KNEW all this time???!?!?!?!??!!?!?
The Americans: The 2nd best espionage/spy show on TV
- Thread starter GAMETHEORY
- Start date
Well done FINALLY Pastor Tim.
Damn Oleg...
good for you
Stan you a asshole.
good for you
Stan you a asshole.
Kerri BETTER have won a damn Emmy for this performance.
sidebar...
Elizabeth thang be driving these dudes INSANE!!!
Elizabeth thang be driving these dudes INSANE!!!
interesting..
how they show you that most of these "confessions" are bullsh*t
mostly people (even PRIESTS) settling old scores or petty vendettas.
how they show you that most of these "confessions" are bullsh*t
mostly people (even PRIESTS) settling old scores or petty vendettas.
damn Paige..
LET'S GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
LET'S GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Its gonna take me a minute to absorb all that.
Stan...
you did good.
you did good.
http://www.vulture.com/2018/05/the-americans-finale-dream-sequence-decoded.html
The Meaning of Elizabeth’s Dream in The Americans Finale
The Americans is a series typically uninterested in the vocabulary of dreams. Its visual language is sharp, lucid, and exacting — which is why Elizabeth’s (Keri Russell) brief dream during the series finale is equal parts jarring and seductive.
The scene takes place after a series of tremendous losses for Elizabeth and Philip (Matthew Rhys). They’ve been able to elude authorities, but in turn, they’ve lost everything that has come to define them. They’ve severed themselves from their brutal reality as Russian spies. They decide to spare their son, Henry (Keidrich Sellati), from a life on the run in Russia so he can remain in America. Paige (Holly Taylor) chooses to not to join them in Russia, slipping from the train they boarded, her good-bye to her parents a wordless and somber gaze brimming with mixed emotions. For Elizabeth, these tragedies are compounded by the loss of her profession as a spy, something she ended with finality in the penultimate episode by killing off KGB agent Tatiana to save a man she herself was previously ordered to kill. When her handler, Claudia (Margo Martindale), asks her in that episode, “What’s left for you?”, Elizabeth remains taciturn. What is left unspoken in the air between them is Elizabeth’s love for her family — that’s what she had left to hold onto. But as this dream suggests, everything that once defined Elizabeth has now turned to ash.
Throughout the series, Elizabeth has proven to be exceedingly skilled at hardening herself against the world around her. Her physicality this season in particular has been tense, as if on the edge of either an emotional collapse or brutal battle. Merely one second into the brief scene nestled into the end of the finale, I figured it was a dream simply by how Elizabeth moves. Relaxed, unfurled, more open to the possibilities of life rather than hardening herself in the face of its consequences. Compare the opening moments of the dream — in which she’s at ease in bed, her hair splayed on the pillows as soft light streams in — to the stunning confrontation with Stan (Noah Emmerich) in the garage. There, her body is tightly coiled, like a snake poised for attack, every movement carrying the threat of violence.
This is why the dream proves to be so revelatory. In everything from Russell’s carefully wrought performance to the sound design, the scene juxtaposes death and desire to create an unvarnished window into a woman who has grown adept at placing boundaries between herself and the world she navigates.
The sixth and final season is an intriguing mirror to its first, detailing how far these characters have come. In the dream, this comes in the form of Gregory (a charming and slyly seductive Derek Luke), a black radical Elizabeth convinced to join her cause, and more importantly, her first true love. She considered leaving Philip for him before he died at the end of the first season, after being framed by Russian forces. Elizabeth wakes in bed with Gregory laying next to her, plumes of smoke curling from his lips. It’s clear, even though he doesn’t say a word, the strength of the bond between them. Watching them together — their knowing gazes and physical shorthand — I wondered if this dream was based on a memory of Elizabeth’s or her unconscious dredging up everything that is now unattainable. Gregory only appeared in three episodes of the first season, but his presence has lingered throughout the show, becoming another tragedy in Elizabeth’s life and at one point during the fourth season, a cudgel she uses during a tense argument with Philip. Like this dream, Gregory has operated on The Americans as an intriguing window into an Elizabeth that’s more open, loving, and curious than she is with Philip. When Gregory places his hand on Elizabeth’s stomach as she wordlessly gestures for the cigarette they’re sharing, the scene swerves in an even more heartbreaking direction.
“I don’t want a kid anyway,” she says with nonchalance. As she takes a drag from her cigarette, the nearly imperceptible flutter of children’s laughter can be momentarily heard. This sound design choice brought me back to my own childhood memories of days on beaches under the burning sun, of jungle gyms and evenings in which anything felt possible, before I understood my own parents had an inner life as knotted as my own. Elizabeth then turns away from Gregory to regard the abstract art lining his walls, much like she did during the first season. It’s a pointed choice: earlier this season, when the terminally ill painter Erica (Miriam Shor) was introduced, whose dark, textured art preoccupies Elizabeth, my mind immediately went to Gregory. What he introduced Elizabeth to in the first season, Erica shows her how to find the beauty in during its last.
It’s at this point that Gregory disappears entirely from the dream, as if he blinked out of existence. Elizabeth turns slowly, regarding the paintings across the room, until her eyes fall upon a work that Erica did, one she was given as a gift after her death, only to set fire to it. The artwork is in black-and-white, and it features a woman, mouth agape, on the edge of torment or sorrow. The scene starts to operate even more on dream logic. The edges grow hazy. Cuts feel designated more by emotion than logic. Then Elizabeth’s eyes fall upon a painting on Gregory’s nightstand of Henry and Paige, a little younger than they are presently, and even more obviously morose. Seeing these paintings, and their devastating effect on Elizabeth, brings to light that this dream is as much about who she is now as who she once was, and will never be again. It’s a catalogue of losses and yearnings, everything she desires but remains out of reach, that she will only be able to savor in dreams and memories.
The Americans has dealt with the dreams and reveries of its characters only a couple times before. The most notable exception being the heartbreaking final moments of Nina Krilova (Amber Mahendru), who dreamed of escape just before her execution for treason in the fourth season. It would be easy to view the dream Elizabeth has as uncharacteristically blunt in its revelations. The dreams of people — fictional and otherwise — can often feel indulgent. What’s profound in someone’s personal experience can seem ridiculous and laborious when spoken aloud.
Elizabeth’s dream scene lasts only for about one minute and 30 seconds. But it haunted me alongside the other expertly crafted moments of the finale — the confrontation between Stan and the Jennings in the garage, Paige’s shocking good-bye on the train platform. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been thinking a lot about the architecture of my own dreams, which recently have returned to a specific nightmare I’ve had since childhood involving the home I grew up in and the horrors I associate with each groove, each corner, and each hall, in a place that no longer exists as I remember it. I think for Elizabeth, her dream operates at a similar tenor. It’s both a reconstruction of past memories and the emotion of her present concerns.
In a recent conference call about the final season, Russell noted she views the painting of Henry and Paige in the dream as “what the loss of kids is doing to [Elizabeth].” On a larger level, this dream operates as an index of losses and sorrows. It’s etched into the sound, the visuals, and the appearance of Gregory. It’s an elegy in the form of a dream, indicating that Elizabeth carries wounds that fester more deeply and longer than she is ever willing to let on.
The Meaning of Elizabeth’s Dream in The Americans Finale
The Americans is a series typically uninterested in the vocabulary of dreams. Its visual language is sharp, lucid, and exacting — which is why Elizabeth’s (Keri Russell) brief dream during the series finale is equal parts jarring and seductive.
The scene takes place after a series of tremendous losses for Elizabeth and Philip (Matthew Rhys). They’ve been able to elude authorities, but in turn, they’ve lost everything that has come to define them. They’ve severed themselves from their brutal reality as Russian spies. They decide to spare their son, Henry (Keidrich Sellati), from a life on the run in Russia so he can remain in America. Paige (Holly Taylor) chooses to not to join them in Russia, slipping from the train they boarded, her good-bye to her parents a wordless and somber gaze brimming with mixed emotions. For Elizabeth, these tragedies are compounded by the loss of her profession as a spy, something she ended with finality in the penultimate episode by killing off KGB agent Tatiana to save a man she herself was previously ordered to kill. When her handler, Claudia (Margo Martindale), asks her in that episode, “What’s left for you?”, Elizabeth remains taciturn. What is left unspoken in the air between them is Elizabeth’s love for her family — that’s what she had left to hold onto. But as this dream suggests, everything that once defined Elizabeth has now turned to ash.
Throughout the series, Elizabeth has proven to be exceedingly skilled at hardening herself against the world around her. Her physicality this season in particular has been tense, as if on the edge of either an emotional collapse or brutal battle. Merely one second into the brief scene nestled into the end of the finale, I figured it was a dream simply by how Elizabeth moves. Relaxed, unfurled, more open to the possibilities of life rather than hardening herself in the face of its consequences. Compare the opening moments of the dream — in which she’s at ease in bed, her hair splayed on the pillows as soft light streams in — to the stunning confrontation with Stan (Noah Emmerich) in the garage. There, her body is tightly coiled, like a snake poised for attack, every movement carrying the threat of violence.
This is why the dream proves to be so revelatory. In everything from Russell’s carefully wrought performance to the sound design, the scene juxtaposes death and desire to create an unvarnished window into a woman who has grown adept at placing boundaries between herself and the world she navigates.
The sixth and final season is an intriguing mirror to its first, detailing how far these characters have come. In the dream, this comes in the form of Gregory (a charming and slyly seductive Derek Luke), a black radical Elizabeth convinced to join her cause, and more importantly, her first true love. She considered leaving Philip for him before he died at the end of the first season, after being framed by Russian forces. Elizabeth wakes in bed with Gregory laying next to her, plumes of smoke curling from his lips. It’s clear, even though he doesn’t say a word, the strength of the bond between them. Watching them together — their knowing gazes and physical shorthand — I wondered if this dream was based on a memory of Elizabeth’s or her unconscious dredging up everything that is now unattainable. Gregory only appeared in three episodes of the first season, but his presence has lingered throughout the show, becoming another tragedy in Elizabeth’s life and at one point during the fourth season, a cudgel she uses during a tense argument with Philip. Like this dream, Gregory has operated on The Americans as an intriguing window into an Elizabeth that’s more open, loving, and curious than she is with Philip. When Gregory places his hand on Elizabeth’s stomach as she wordlessly gestures for the cigarette they’re sharing, the scene swerves in an even more heartbreaking direction.
“I don’t want a kid anyway,” she says with nonchalance. As she takes a drag from her cigarette, the nearly imperceptible flutter of children’s laughter can be momentarily heard. This sound design choice brought me back to my own childhood memories of days on beaches under the burning sun, of jungle gyms and evenings in which anything felt possible, before I understood my own parents had an inner life as knotted as my own. Elizabeth then turns away from Gregory to regard the abstract art lining his walls, much like she did during the first season. It’s a pointed choice: earlier this season, when the terminally ill painter Erica (Miriam Shor) was introduced, whose dark, textured art preoccupies Elizabeth, my mind immediately went to Gregory. What he introduced Elizabeth to in the first season, Erica shows her how to find the beauty in during its last.
It’s at this point that Gregory disappears entirely from the dream, as if he blinked out of existence. Elizabeth turns slowly, regarding the paintings across the room, until her eyes fall upon a work that Erica did, one she was given as a gift after her death, only to set fire to it. The artwork is in black-and-white, and it features a woman, mouth agape, on the edge of torment or sorrow. The scene starts to operate even more on dream logic. The edges grow hazy. Cuts feel designated more by emotion than logic. Then Elizabeth’s eyes fall upon a painting on Gregory’s nightstand of Henry and Paige, a little younger than they are presently, and even more obviously morose. Seeing these paintings, and their devastating effect on Elizabeth, brings to light that this dream is as much about who she is now as who she once was, and will never be again. It’s a catalogue of losses and yearnings, everything she desires but remains out of reach, that she will only be able to savor in dreams and memories.
The Americans has dealt with the dreams and reveries of its characters only a couple times before. The most notable exception being the heartbreaking final moments of Nina Krilova (Amber Mahendru), who dreamed of escape just before her execution for treason in the fourth season. It would be easy to view the dream Elizabeth has as uncharacteristically blunt in its revelations. The dreams of people — fictional and otherwise — can often feel indulgent. What’s profound in someone’s personal experience can seem ridiculous and laborious when spoken aloud.
Elizabeth’s dream scene lasts only for about one minute and 30 seconds. But it haunted me alongside the other expertly crafted moments of the finale — the confrontation between Stan and the Jennings in the garage, Paige’s shocking good-bye on the train platform. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been thinking a lot about the architecture of my own dreams, which recently have returned to a specific nightmare I’ve had since childhood involving the home I grew up in and the horrors I associate with each groove, each corner, and each hall, in a place that no longer exists as I remember it. I think for Elizabeth, her dream operates at a similar tenor. It’s both a reconstruction of past memories and the emotion of her present concerns.
In a recent conference call about the final season, Russell noted she views the painting of Henry and Paige in the dream as “what the loss of kids is doing to [Elizabeth].” On a larger level, this dream operates as an index of losses and sorrows. It’s etched into the sound, the visuals, and the appearance of Gregory. It’s an elegy in the form of a dream, indicating that Elizabeth carries wounds that fester more deeply and longer than she is ever willing to let on.
They finally listened and did the right thing....
Let's count how many times the Fonz has begged them to give this man an Emmy...
Man this season looks like it is going to be nothing but tension and that the walls are finally starting to close in on them. And again I have to say... if fucking Matthew Rhys doesn't get a mutherfucking Emmy win for his portrayal of this character it is a travesty. This guy has deserved an Emmy every single year. That conversation that he had with Martha the first scene.... about killing dude to protect her.
Glad for Remi.... but god damnit... Matthew Rhys had better win a fucking Emmy before The Americans is finished.
Gawd damn.... I've been Caping for this for Years... LOL
Sub
Gonna have to come back and read this thread. We just started watching it a couple weeks ago and finished S3 last night. We watched the first 2 seasons when they aired but got bored during the second season and quit the show. Third season was much better.
Gonna have to come back and read this thread. We just started watching it a couple weeks ago and finished S3 last night. We watched the first 2 seasons when they aired but got bored during the second season and quit the show. Third season was much better.
Hold up... I missed a couple
Damn I didn't even recognize Ewen McGregor in that Fargo trailer... Damn you FX why must you make it so hard for Matthew Rhys to get his damn Emmy.
Naw Fam... You can't quit this show.. You have to Watch every single episode and every single little detail... no matter how small.
There were small Details dropped in the first season that ended up being part of the Reason.... for them getting found out.
LOL We started re-watching it from the beginning, the 2nd season wasn't as bad in binge mode, but it was definitely weaker than season 1 and 3.
Im late ...been meaning to watch this show for a long ass time and wife and i finally started streaming this from the begining a couple weeks ago....we at season 4 now...already is one of our favorite shows
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Holy hell...
I just read this TWICE and was thinking that was do damn well written, where did i copy that from?
Then i realized i actually wrote that.
Wow...
Messing with @largebillsonlyplease @fonzerrillii and @ansatsusha_gouki
Got me sounded all smart and sh*t
I re-watched a few episodes of the finale recently
the fact the actress who played Marta aint win a at LEAST ONE award?
Is a huge indictment on the entire industry.
I am VERY happy they DID finally get love in the final season.
sidebar...
If
f*ck that
WHEN you get a series...
would you want a contract that GUARANTEED that you would have the opportunity to CONCLUDE the story?
Would you write out the series with a predetermined Beginning Middle and End?
And want a contractually guaranteed number of seasons and episodes?
Would that be a deal breaker?
Would you WANT that?
Would it feel freeing or stifling...like if you SUDDENLY decided you needed MORE or LESS episodes?
I'd do an arc
And need the arc to be completed
Whether we pack more into expisodes to get it done
Or deep dive without it being filler to carry it on.
I can do a full transcendent story in 3 seasons 12 episodes
But also I could stretch it to 5 easy with more detail work
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