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- [00:04]
A
For those of you who are one of those kinds of people who just wants to listen, even if you haven't seen the show. The Americans ran on FX in the 2010s and it was created by Joe Weisberg, who was a former CIA employee of some kind. I don't think he's talked a whole lot about what exactly he did at the same time.
- [00:22]
B
Well, they're famous for being open and transparent about their employee or history.
- [00:27]
A
Transitioned into writing for television. He created a show. There was a true story here in New Jersey, where we both live, of a family of deep cover Soviet spies, I think, living in Montclair, who were. Who were found out, they were kicked out of the country, including their kids, who did not know that their parents were KGB spies. And they all kind of had to go or something along those lines. And so Weisberg saw that and thought, hey, there's a show in this. And so in the Americans, we are following the Jennings family, Philip and Elizabeth, played by Matthew Reese and Keri Russell. And there's a lot to talk about with Matthew Reese and Kerry Russell in a bit. And they are Soviet spies who at a very young age, in their late teens, early 20s, were chosen and trained to move to America and pose as an American couple and have children and live there for a very long time so that no one would suspect these could possibly be spies. And they would infiltrate the most important corners of American political war machine. All of that while living in a Washington D.C. suburb. And eventually they have two children, Paige and Henry, who are teenagers when the show starts. And the entire series is about what happens when a fake marriage starts to become a real marriage. Because as we find out in the very first episode of the show, Philip is in love with Elizabeth. And Elizabeth could not care less about Philip on a personal level. And what happens and how does their relationship evolve from there. And there's a lot of different twists and turns and ups and downs. By the time we get to the finale start, which is named for a treaty that the Soviet Union was negotiating with America around the mid-80s, whenever this episode is set, it turns out there are rival Soviet factions, one of which is trying to basically remove Mikhail Gorbachev from power because they think he is too friendly with the West. They're hardcore. They want to get rid of him. Elizabeth has figured out that this is going on. And while she herself is. Is super hardcore and super anti American, she also like, believes in the idea of an orderly government and so decides, all right, well, we have to stop this. So they're trying to move against this. Their neighbor, Stan Beeman, an FBI agent who works in, like, counterintelligence and just conveniently moved across the street from the Jennings' and then became Philip's best friend. He has finally, after all these years, begun to suspect that Philip and Elizabeth are spies. Philip, in turn, has begun to suspect that Stan's new love interest, Renee is another Soviet deep cover operative. But because everything is in, like, isolated sleeper cells, he has no way of confirming this. He just assumes it. Their daughter Paige, midway through the series, she gets brought in on the secret. They start training her to be a spy herself. She is really, really angry with Elizabeth and just sort of ready to be done with all of this. Philip, at the end of the previous episode, is meeting with one of his contacts, Father Andre. Discovers that father Andre has been approached by the FBI. Realizes, oh, shit, the jig is up. Runs away. Matthew Reese. Other than maybe Jennifer Garner, I'm not sure there's an actor in TV history who more convincingly runs fast.
- [03:44]
B
We were. There is something we. We talked about recently where I was wanted to bring up TV running. And I'm trying to remember. I'll have to think about it. I think there is. I think there's a. There's a reasonable stable of people for whom TV running is an important part of their.
- [04:01]
A
All right, Garner, I would say, is the champ. Reece, way up there. There. I've got a GIF on my phone of him running in this scene. And it's just like, Tom Cruise would not keep up with this guy.
- [04:10]
B
Sure, sure.
- [04:11]
A
All right. So Philip runs away, he calls Elizabeth, and he uses their code phrase to get the hell out, which is things are topsy turvy at the office.
- [04:21]
B
Yeah.
- [04:23]
A
Which brings us to start. And I can't avoid the pun. Where would you like to start with this episode? Catherine?
- [04:30]
B
I think it's always useful for me, just for my brain to kind of take myself back to where I was when this finale came out, what the world was like for me in my brain. I was working at Vulture at this point, but I had not been there for very long. And this was one of the most anticipated things that I had ever seen us attempt to tackle. Not that the Americans was ever a massive success. Right. Like, this show was the classic critical darling. But most people that you're talking to on the street have never, yes, Seen it. They may have heard of it maybe, but. But it was not, you know, well known among, I think, most normal TV viewers, much less most normal people. And so there was. And this was this moment in television where a show like that could actually exist for six seasons, which basically does not happen anymore. The idea that this. That a show that was this little known and kind of lived in this niche would have the budget and the Runway to continue to exist all the way through to the end of this story was, you know, we were coming off the tail end of shows like the Wire and the Sopranos and. And all the prestige thing that can run for many years and. And the Americans is one of the last gasps of that continuing to exist. It's hard to imagine this show lasting more than three seasons, maybe, and we would be grateful for those three seasons.
- [06:23]
A
It's like six seasons. I think the last one's a little bit shorter, but all the others are like 12 or 13 episodes. There's a lot of the Americans, which is what is necessary to make it as great as it was. Because you need to see both the very slow evolution of Philip and Elizabeth's relationship as the fake marriage actually does become real, and somehow she does fall in love with him too. And then how much that complicates things. You have to see everything that happens with Paige. You have to believe that Philip and Stan could become legitimately best friends.