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The Americans on FX

12K views 141 replies 46 participants last post by  phrelin 
#1 ·
#52 ·
Maruuk said:
I led with terrible writing, bad directing, awful music, and finally zero eye candy.
Exactly. eye candy shouldn't even enter the equation. You make it sound as if you could get by on terrible writing, bad acting and awful music as long as it had eye candy. I know this is a geek board and most get off on that stuff, based on years spent in Moms basement, but come on, you don't watch a show like The Americans expecting any "eye candy"
 
#53 ·
The Americans is a spy show. If this was a film it'd star the young version of Angelia Jolie (she's too old now) and the hottest guys they could find. In other words, it'd be a major male/female babefest. But this being a cheapasz FX show the best they could do was Keri Whatzherface, not exactly major box office any more. Not my cup of tea but you older folks enjoy! I mean, if EYE CANDY didn't matter here, why didn't they cast Melissa McCarthy??

Gossip Girl got my attention with babes but it was really the fantastic character of Chuck Bass that held my attention. Downton is in trouble plotwise precisely because they have no sexual tension left to drive their Jane Austen-esque plot--they pulled the "Friends" jump-the-shark trick by marrying off or killing the 2 cute girls.

A TV show doesn't make it or break solely on the cute girl quotient for me, but it sure helps! Film is a totally different thing. I mean, who's hot in the Bicycle Thief or Cinema Paradiso? Though I admit to being a big fan of Ludivine Sagnier! I do kind of follow her films for her.

Now you take "Don't Trust the B..." Super hot lead, but also very creative and funny premises and writing! It's great when you have a win-win situation!
 
#54 ·
"The Americans" is a show set in 1981 with flashbacks to the 1960's. The plot is not centered around T&A and as with ALL televison shows it has a flaw or two.
 
#55 ·
Maruuk said:
The Americans is a spy show.
That's your first mistake. You might know better if you saw the whole first episode through to the ending - it was near the ending of the first episode that we saw the main overarching story arc laid out.

But don't take my word for it. Read about it from the FX show site (emphasis added):
The Americans is a period drama about the complex marriage of two KGB spies posing as Americans in suburban Washington D.C. shortly after Ronald Reagan is elected President. The arranged marriage of Philip (Matthew Rhys) and Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell), who have two children - 13-year-old Paige (Holly Taylor) and 10-year-old Henry (Keidrich Sellati), who know nothing about their parents' true identity - grows more passionate and genuine by the day, but is constantly tested by the escalation of the Cold War and the intimate, dangerous and darkly funny relationships they must maintain with a network of spies and informants under their control. Complicating their relationship further is Philip's growing sense of affinity for America's values and way of life. Tensions also heighten upon the arrival of a new neighbor, Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich), an FBI agent. Stan and his partner, Agent Chris Amador (Maximiliano Hernández), are members of a new division of Counterintelligence tasked with fighting against foreign agents on U.S. soil, including KGB Directorate S illegals, Russian spies posing as Americans.
You derived assumptions about the show, maybe from its trailers which I guess you're expressing frustration about...
If this was a film it'd star the young version of Angelia Jolie (she's too old now) and the hottest guys they could find. In other words, it'd be a major male/female babefest. But this being a cheapasz FX show the best they could do was Keri Whatzherface, not exactly major box office any more. Not my cup of tea but you older folks enjoy....
The description of the show is not some wild fiction with gorgeous female and male model types running around in fantastic sports cars chasing and killing each other.

"The Americans" sounds a bit like this ABC story dated Jan. 15, 2013:
A married pair of alleged 'sleeper' spies went on trial in Germany Tuesday, accused of spying for Russia for more than two decades while living a quiet middle-class life and raising a daughter who had no idea of her parents' true identities.

... In a page out of a cold war novel, the Russian couple moved to West Germany in the late 1980s posing as Austrian nationals of Latin American descent. They are accused of transferring information on NATO, European and German security policies to the Soviet and then Russian intelligence service. As part of their alleged cover, Andreas, who claimed to be in his early 50s, worked as an engineer and Heidrun, in her late 40s, played tennis with local women. They collected an alleged 100,000 Euros in year in salary from the Russian government.

Their last alleged caper was the recruitment of a Dutch Foreign Ministry official, who reportedly sold them secret documents on NATO operations for $96,500, according to the German newspaper Die Welt.
Or much closer to home is the Anna Chapman sleeper spy ring arrested by the FBI in June 2010 and swapped a few days later for four Russian double agents. Read this NY Post story How many spies remain?. Or maybe the story Russian Sleeper Agent Allegedly Tried to Recruit Son Into Spy Business which tells us:
A Russian spy who was kicked out of the U.S. has now been accused of trying to recruit his son into the espionage business. And the son reportedly went along with the plan.

According to anonymous U.S. officials cited by the Wall Street Journal's Devlin Barrett, the plot stemmed from a group of infamous Russian sleeper spies who were unmasked and deported back to Moscow two years ago. Before they were kicked out, they allegedly attempted to use their children as intelligence agents to bypass security clearances. Peter Krupp, the attorney who represented one of the accused spies, declined to answer the accusations on-the-record. But he told the Journal that his client said the U.S. officials are "crap." The attorney relayed that his client would never have taken the risk of revealing his secret identity.

The story focuses heavily on one alleged spy kid, Tim Foley. According to the Journal, his parents revealed to him sometime before their June 2010 arrest by the FBI that they were spies. Foley then agreed to join his parents in their pursuit of espionage. U.S. officials said Foley then "stood up and saluted 'Mother Russia,'" and said he was willing to return to Russia for spy training, Barrett writes. This moment was reportedly captured by federal agents who had bugged their home.
Yeah, I'm old. When I was an undergraduate student I loved the Bond books - male romance novels. But by the time I graduated people were being killed in Vietnam as the Cold War continued to be hot.

If you want movies about spies see Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Zero Dark Thirty not a Bourne or Bond movie. Or better yet, read all the John le Carré novels.

Sorry, but for what this story is about Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys were excellent choices. For what you want, watch reruns of "I Spy" with Robert Culp and Bill Cosby like us old folks did before we learned about life.
 
#56 ·
"That's your first mistake."

Nope, that was yours. I had researched the premise thoroughly, that's the only reason I was watching it. But when you see a production so weak and sloppy with hackneyed writing and bad casting and so many substandard executions of basic production values in the first 15 minutes--ya gotta bail or be a masochist. It's just uninspired tripe from beginning to end.

I used to watch "I Spy" but only because there were basically no other choices back then. It was a pretty awful show even in its day! But you can't fault anybody back then for the lack of choice. Today, hell, watching crap is a mortal sin given all the possibilities.

Bottom line: some folks like the show, others don't. Same as it ever was.
 
#57 ·
Maruuk said:
The classic straw dog syndrome. I led with terrible writing, bad directing, awful music, and finally zero eye candy. But the only attack point was the desire for an attractive female lead. Fair and balanced?

I appreciate and respect you folks who worship older actresses like Cher and Liza Minnelli and Bette Midler. Can't we all get along?
You've made your point, please let it go and not ruin the thread. Thanks.
 
#60 ·
Absolutely will keep watching. I was enthralled once the story started to play out. Loved the musical score. And Keri Russell? Fell for her in "August Rush", she still does it for me.
 
#62 ·
Scott Kocourek said:
We watched the show last night and really enjoyed it. Let's give those that hated the show a chance to complain and I'll close this thread and start a new one after the next episode for those that continue to watch.
Same here, watched it yesterday and enjoyed it. Will continue to watch
 
#65 ·
yosoyellobo said:
Enjoy the show. I like the way he took care of the pervert.
+1
and the captain when he found out what he did to his wife when she was in training.
 
#67 ·
Maruuk said:
I was aware of that. Thus the stultifying "Tusk" theme that they just kept looping over and over awkwardly. Worst attempt at an action TV series score I've ever heard. Sounded like the music editor cut some rough "Tusk" loops in over the scenes as a temp score and they accidentally left it all in as it was. Yikes, brutal.
I loved it.
 
#68 ·
Maruuk said:
I was aware of that. Thus the stultifying "Tusk" theme that they just kept looping over and over awkwardly. Worst attempt at an action TV series score I've ever heard. Sounded like the music editor cut some rough "Tusk" loops in over the scenes as a temp score and they accidentally left it all in as it was. Yikes, brutal.
You mean, there was music? ;)
 
#70 ·
Maruuk said:
Well, not score but just a badly butchered bunch of instrumental loops from the original "Tusk". It went on and on and on like an erratically skipping broken record. I shudder to think of it.
I was so engrossed with the on-screen action that I completely ignored the "music".

How can anyone forget (loosely quoted) "When I come back I'm gonna stick it in your heart."? Loved it!
 
#72 ·
spartanstew said:
No dots to connect Tom. Some watch TV just for eye candy, some watch for story lines and acting. If the cast is hot, fine, but that's not a reason to watch or not watch IMO.

And nobody's horse is quite as high as yours TomCat, but we do appreciate your posts in this thread not being your normal novels that nobody reads.
Hmmm. Other than the fact that you are on record as actually connecting those dots, I can't with a straight face find much of any strong argument with any of the rest. :lol:

BTW, the novel will be out in Q1 of 2014. Pre-orders are accepted right here.

But then you might be surprised at the level of regular positive feedback my posts get (mostly in PMs because they'd be pilloried if they did that in the threads), which I'm sure you must get also :rolleyes:. The news flash here is that I don't post for you; I post for me. Some actually read and appreciate, but that's only gravy; I use the internet as a place to organize my thoughts and hone any minimal writing chops I can muster, and that is the only reason other than to help answer people's questions. Whether lurkers with their pointy little heads read them is of zero importance, and most don't have the reading comprehension ability of a fruit bat anyway (this forum being a prime example lately). You, on the other hand, are free to have an opinion regarding the level of success there, but lots of positive opinions are already on record, so your's probably wont really amount to much.

No one cares, but just to set the record straight, I do not watch a show for eye candy (Baywatch was cancelled, right?), and I am a little bewildered that this has somehow hijacked the thread. It might make me watch a little longer Cough![Continuum]Ahem! before jetissoning a series, though. And I can appreciate it when its there. Sue me.

**************************************

It also seems a little bush league to be knocking actresses (not Spart, BTW) in their mid-thirties just because they don't fit your particular fantasy, even if they might be better-looking than 99.999% of the rest of the women in the world. And likening them to 67-year-olds who were never hot; pretty weak. But then that from folks who seems to think this forum is only a good place to empty their garbage and care very little for anyone else's opinion other than it presents them an opportunity to stomp all over it (that's all we needed was one more @#$%^&*%$#@! to make the forum complete).

The secret to building credibility is to not present weak arguments that stretch the truth with too much hyperbole. Do that, and it all starts to sound like Charlie Brown's teacher, "Wah wah wah, wah wah-wah wah, wa wah." Try the opposite of that, just once.

And Taylor Swift? Apparently over the hill, about to hit the wall, right? We don't need to blur the lines between the upper limit of who's lost it and the lower limit of statutory pedophilia any more than we have, or no one at any age would be acceptable.
 
#75 ·
Just to calm the hysterics, nobody in here watches a series exclusively for eye-candy, and nobody has ever said they did. Let's just stop the straw man routine. And can different guys disagree on who's hot and who's not? That's what fuels half of all bar conversation. It doesn't need to result in hating or ad hominem attacks.

Are attractive women often utilized as a significant factor in production values by TV productions because they know it boosts ratings? Do refs blow pass interference calls in the end zone?
 
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