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Apr 23, 2015 10:23
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That really didn't feel like a season closer. I agree, this season was a whole lot of nothing.
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Apr 23, 2015 10:37
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If the show had switched around events so Paige found out about them in the finale we'd all be NO WAY!!! BEST SEASON EVER!!!ing right now. I do feel like the show suffered from trying to balance so many stories, particularly given how many are left in play at the end of the season. But if its a choice between too many stories or too few, I feel like they made the right choice.
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Apr 23, 2015 12:04
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Jack Skeleton posted:That really didn't feel like a season closer. I agree, this season was a whole lot of nothing. To be fair, history's sort of on autopilot until Gorby comes along. That's why they had to do the Apartheid subplot - just to fill space. Given some time to think about it, if they're employing like a dozen people to monitor Mail Bot's chatter, it's only logical that Phil and Liz's phones are monitored as well. Remember there was a hardwired line to that house Learick liquidated. My guess is that Pastor Tim and his wife will die tragically in a "gas leak" and Paige will have to be sent to "boarding school." Henry will get an Atari 2600 and promptly forget he ever had a sister.
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Apr 23, 2015 13:14
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I'm pretty torn on this season as a whole. While there were some moments that worked really, really well it also wasn't really a season in any coherent way. I don't need a single central villain or story for a season, but a direction would be nice. We bounced from plot to plot in such a strange fashion that it was hard to get attached to any one story and then none of them amounted to anything anyway. A few small plot points here and there aside I don't know what was accomplished with these thirteen hours. I don't even know that you can say that this was the 'Paige finds out' season because she had so little screen-time. A decade or so ago we dissolved the border of the episode, stopped caring whether anything that started in an hour ended in it and this allowed for serialization to really kick-in and 'the golden age' to start. I feel like The Americans is one of the shows taking this idea to the next stage -Game of Thrones the other big one, though not by choice - by not even bothering with structured seasons, they're just going to carry the threads from the second season finale right into the fourth season premiere and beyond. It will likely play well in the long run, and for those who marathon the whole show when its over, but for those of us stuck watching week to week, year to year, it's a little awkward. I'm wondering if I should just wait and watch the rest when the show is done, it's not like the five people watching are likely to spoil it for me.
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Apr 23, 2015 13:15
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I can't believe all the negative comments on S3. I really enjoyed it and thought it was a great season. I hate Paige. Stan is a complete f up. Philip is coming apart at the seams. I loved seeing the C64, it brought back many good memories!
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Apr 23, 2015 13:24
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Radiohead71 posted:I can't believe all the negative comments on S3. I really enjoyed it and thought it was a great season. I hate Paige. Stan is a complete f up. Philip is coming apart at the seams. I loved seeing the C64, it brought back many good memories! Seasons 3-4 is usually when goons turn on a show.
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Apr 23, 2015 13:36
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My interest in Paige tracked how well she was handling it, and now she's handling it like a chump.  Also:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8EMx7Y16Vo Accretionist fucked around with this message at 13:50 on Apr 23, 2015 |
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Apr 23, 2015 13:44
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Paige owns. Martha owns. This season really highlighted how Philip is falling apart at the seams, by the end he can barely hold it together anymore. Who can blame him? Also that whole final sequence with the Reagan speech intercut between Liz & Phil and Paige & Pastor Tim with Stan & Henry on the sidelines was a masterpiece. Lugaloco fucked around with this message at 14:16 on Apr 23, 2015 |
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Apr 23, 2015 13:56
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JohnSherman posted:I don't know how I feel about Paige's reveal to her pastor. I just don't see how her arc could continue in any believable fashion. Philip and Elizabeth are going to kill Pastor Tim, but then what? Are we really supposed to believe that Paige will forgive her parents for killing her moral guide and confidant, and come to terms with committing treason in any reasonable period of time? A season of Paige living in fear of her parents is not something I'm looking forward to. He goes on his African adventure and doesn't come back. Paige too edit: The Nina plotline went absolutely nowhere. They really should have just left her off the show. Her season 2 ending was perfect. CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK fucked around with this message at 14:36 on Apr 23, 2015 |
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Apr 23, 2015 13:59
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Viginti posted:I'm pretty torn on this season as a whole. While there were some moments that worked really, really well it also wasn't really a season in any coherent way. I don't need a single central villain or story for a season, but a direction would be nice. We bounced from plot to plot in such a strange fashion that it was hard to get attached to any one story and then none of them amounted to anything anyway. A few small plot points here and there aside I don't know what was accomplished with these thirteen hours. I don't even know that you can say that this was the 'Paige finds out' season because she had so little screen-time. The characters' relationships to each other (Philip with Elizabeth, Philip with Martha, Elizabeth and Philip with Paige) have radically changed. The characters themselves have changed, a lot. All of this was done well, which is why the season had these really grueling, emotional scenes that everyone loved. The 'golden age' of television is not about serialization, or dissolving the border of the episode. Game of Thrones and The Americans are still trying to tell a story every episode, by having all the scenes relate to each other, build up on each other's emotional and intellectual beats, and whatnot. The plot stuff in this show isn't really that different than all the 'what's happening with the company now' stuff that happens in Mad Men that isn't actually all that important.
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Apr 23, 2015 15:49
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Paige is going to be the new Skylar and it's going to be really groan worthy/terrible.  I think she's awesome and would love it if she turned her mom and dad in.
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Apr 23, 2015 15:54
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Paige is going to be the new Skylar and there will be a bunch of articles about how you have to love her or you're a misogynist/traitor to America.
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Apr 23, 2015 16:13
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Lugaloco posted:Paige owns. "I had no choice . . . I'm sorry." The hanging in the background. An amazing scene revealing exactly how Phillip is feeling about his work. The connection with Sandra was not something I was expecting; will be interesting to see how it plays out next season. LmaoTheKid posted:Paige is going to be the new Skylar and it's going to be really groan worthy/terrible. Phillip made noises about defecting in S1; that outcome might not be so bad from his perspective. Red Dad Redemption fucked around with this message at 16:30 on Apr 23, 2015 |
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Apr 23, 2015 16:26
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I think the season was the weakest of the three, but still fairly good. It was much better than Justified's "off" season (S5), but the Apartheid and Soviet/Afghan stuff (Philip having another son aside) was sort of slow.Sober posted:Well, I stand corrected. They tried to sugarcoat it the best they could and heavily implied they were spies without actually using the word. Sort of one of those "Well, I wasn't going to say that, but since you did, yeah" type things. Kind of felt like "Oh drat...we didn't really practice how we were going to tell Paige this.".
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Apr 23, 2015 16:31
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If you've watched as much TV as I have it's pretty clear what happens next... the CIA turns paige into a counter spy, and she has to monitor all her parents espionage activities. In order to get away with all this she has to kill someone, break the bones in the body in order to stuff them into her school backpack, she has to perform dentistry on stan's kids, and also hides a microphone in her parents wigs.
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Apr 23, 2015 17:30
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Sheikh Djibouti posted:Phillip made noises about defecting in S1; that outcome might not be so bad from his perspective. I forgot about that (and I just binge watched to catch up before last night), good point. You can kind of see the same look in his eyes after he had to kill the computer guy and then when he said he wasn't very happy at the weird self help cult meeting.
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Apr 23, 2015 17:36
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I agree that they might have taken the slow burn concept a bit too far in this season. I mean, was there really any need for the EST scenes with Sandra in this episode? I get that Phillip is feeling really conflicted but that's been the case since season 1. All in all that was an incredibly low-stakes episode, let alone finale (except for the final scene of course, which was done masterfully). All in all though this is still one of the best shows on TV and the wait for season 4 is going to kill me.
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Apr 23, 2015 18:10
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This was the best season so far imo. The best thing about this show is the characters, their interactions, and it's tense atmosphere. Like someone said before itt, a whole hell of a lot has happened with the characters and how they relate to eachother, and the show's gotten as dark and tense as it's ever been. Last season did the whole season long mystery/arc wrapped up in the finale thing and it didn't play to the show's strengths imo, I'll gladly take the super slow burn with major plots bleeding into the next season over that.
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Apr 23, 2015 21:21
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bowser posted:I agree that they might have taken the slow burn concept a bit too far in this season. I mean, was there really any need for the EST scenes with Sandra in this episode? I get that Phillip is feeling really conflicted but that's been the case since season 1. All in all that was an incredibly low-stakes episode, let alone finale (except for the final scene of course, which was done masterfully). I think the point of Sandra is that it's showing that Phillip, for all his allegiance to his wife and their incredibly complicated relationship, has no one he can talk to or open up to about the hell going on inside his head. Even with Sandra, he was still somewhat closed and not super willing to open up about what's going on so it's just a reinforcement of his dour mood and the "I feel like poo poo all the time" comment he made to Yousaf. Honestly, I was more on the edge of my seat about what he was going to say to Elizabeth at the end intercut with Regan that I was Paige blowing the whistle on her parents. As everyone has mentioned, he's breaking down. I imagine the Pastor Tim thing will be handled at the first of next season, and the majority could very well be pressure from The Center to have Elizabeth "remove" Phillip and carry on with her two kids indoctrinating them both. Also, Phillip sleeping with Sandra would be bad writing in my opinion. There's no reason for it from a character standpoint, and just creates drama for the sake of drama.
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Apr 23, 2015 21:43
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BIG HEADLINE posted:To be fair, history's sort of on autopilot until Gorby comes along. With one very extreme exception: Able Archer. I really want them to make that a major part of next season.
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Apr 23, 2015 23:33
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What a bummer, I hoped Paige would get to go to Siberia or whatever shithole and see what they're really fighting for. Also she should've called Stan there at the end, he's already bonding pretty well with Henry and together they could live happily ever after. Overall I'd agree with whoever said that while there were many great individual moments, overall the season just doesn't work as well as the previous two. Just way too many things were pointless and went nowhere, which can work in Mad Men not not quite here.
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Apr 23, 2015 23:37
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So this week's Slate podcast gave me a really stupid idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGo7NfOPwks I don't know why, I'm so sorry.
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Apr 23, 2015 23:51
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I want to play Strat-o-Matic with Stan.
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Apr 24, 2015 00:02
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Pedro De Heredia posted:The characters' relationships to each other (Philip with Elizabeth, Philip with Martha, Elizabeth and Philip with Paige) have radically changed. The characters themselves have changed, a lot. All of this was done well, which is why the season had these really grueling, emotional scenes that everyone loved. Have they though? Certainly the season had a lot of very strong individual scenes like the trip to the dentist, and superb sub-plots like PedoPhil, but I don't know that the arcing was really very clear or prevalent in terms of the season wide structure. Phil is disillusioned, but that was how we were introduced to him, this is simply another step down an established path. Martha and Paige were confronted by things this season but we don't really get to see either of their final reactions to them, there is no emotional status quo for either. Stan is off being Stan with Bobby Draper and Elizabeth is inscrutable and oscillatory, too hard to pin down to any linear arc. None of this is a bad thing, in fact in a moment to moment and series wide sense the show does, as you say, excel at these emotional moments, but on that middle level of season structure this third effort falls down a little with its looseness for me. Take Gabriel as a real mis-en-abyme for this, what was his arc? Hell, what was his character? I have faith that he will have good material in the future, because he's Frank Langella, but so far he's nor really an entity outside of the strong performance. Look at the Nina stoylines in season two and three, does her work this year feel anywhere near as resolved or contained? The missions that they spent all year setting-up, do you feel like they had the same relevance or resolution as the stuff last year tended too, given the singular mission it surrounded. Now, that last one is interesting. I would like to believe that the show is intentionally making the missions unsatisfying this year - and yes, I realize that 'the spy stuff isn't the point of the show', but it spends too much time doing it for that defense to hold too much water - to reflect to us what Phil is going through. They don't see the point anymore, they don't see the connections. I don't know that this was clear or coherent enough across the season though if it was the point. I still loved the show in every sense but structure and I don't know that it did anything 'wrong' with setting the season out like this, as it may all pay off later, but it simply wasn't as satisfying in the moment.
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Apr 24, 2015 00:04
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I thought there was a lot of dead weight this season but the good moments were FANTASTIC. Also I like Paige. What's remarkable is I like all the characters for different reasons, which rarely happens.
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Apr 24, 2015 00:11
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I really liked this season but I'm pretty bored with one season antagonists and the like. The format needs to evolve and I think this season is a move in the right direction.
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Apr 24, 2015 00:22
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Didn't expect Paige to be a snitch.
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Apr 24, 2015 01:34
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nooneofconsequence posted:Didn't expect Paige to be a snitch. She wanted to get a free trip to Europe before she destroyed her family.
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Apr 24, 2015 06:21
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I thought Stan was Oleg’s friend. At this point, Martha is practically the only character who hasn’t disappointed me.
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Apr 24, 2015 11:32
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Platystemon posted:I thought Stan was Oleg’s friend. Well, the only reason Oleg was helping Stan was to get Nina back. Once he finds out that didn't/won't happen, I've a feeling he'll try to kill Stan again, since other than liking America, he'll have no reason to stay.
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Apr 24, 2015 11:58
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I do have to ask what Oleg thought would happen. Stan’s hunch wasn’t enough to arrest Zinaida, and real proof would be hard to come by. Of course Stan wouldn’t think twice about throwing Oleg under the bus when it was him vs. Nina. He really should have seen that one coming.
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Apr 24, 2015 13:27
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Viginti posted:Have they though? Certainly the season had a lot of very strong individual scenes like the trip to the dentist, and superb sub-plots like PedoPhil, but I don't know that the arcing was really very clear or prevalent in terms of the season wide structure. Phil is disillusioned, but that was how we were introduced to him, this is simply another step down an established path. Philip was disillusioned since the first episode, but more in the 'I don't actually care about this job' sense. Now he's falling apart in an interesting and depressing way. quote:Martha and Paige were confronted by things this season but we don't really get to see either of their final reactions to them, there is no emotional status quo for either. We definitely saw Paige's final reaction: rejection. quote:Stan is off being Stan with Bobby Draper and Elizabeth is inscrutable and oscillatory, too hard to pin down to any linear arc. None of this is a bad thing, in fact in a moment to moment and series wide sense the show does, as you say, excel at these emotional moments, but on that middle level of season structure this third effort falls down a little with its looseness for me. Stan is an underplayed character. His story was he tried to save Nina and didn't do it. Which makes sense, it would have been utterly ridiculous if he'd actually succeeded. It is true, though, that many characters didn't really seem to do much this season, like whatshisname, the head of the Russians. quote:Take Gabriel as a real mis-en-abyme for this, what was his arc? Hell, what was his character? I have faith that he will have good material in the future, because he's Frank Langella, but so far he's nor really an entity outside of the strong performance. Look at the Nina stoylines in season two and three, does her work this year feel anywhere near as resolved or contained? The missions that they spent all year setting-up, do you feel like they had the same relevance or resolution as the stuff last year tended too, given the singular mission it surrounded. He's just their handler, he doesn't need an arc. Pedro De Heredia fucked around with this message at 13:43 on Apr 24, 2015 |
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Apr 24, 2015 13:40
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Pedro De Heredia posted:Which makes sense, it would have been utterly ridiculous if he'd actually succeeded. It would have been an ape of the plot of the very odd Cold War movie "White Nights," where Mikhail Baryshnikov gets the CIA to trade a worthwhile KGB asset in exchange for Gregory Hines. If you haven't seen it...it's poo poo, but it's that kind of mid-80s poo poo that's nostalgic.
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Apr 24, 2015 14:02
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I'm not a churchgoer - but was it normal that a teenage girl would be calling their pastor at all hours to cry and whine about their parents back in the pre-internet age? I don't see that poo poo being acceptable at all in modern times and would expect today's annoying SUV mom to facebook complaints about it and start some lynching action if she didn't like the pastor's influence on her teenage daughter. For the sake of the show, I see the pastor just brushing off Paige's complaints as "teen stuff" and not calling the FBI. I was in 9th grade in 1983 as well so old enough to remember having to contact everyone via land lines and voice mail/cryptic messages. I still have no idea how we found each other on Friday nights or after a concert, but we somehow did.
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Apr 24, 2015 15:54
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Her relationship with her pastor is creeping me out. There was no religion in my upbringing so maybe I just don't get it, but I keep waiting for Pastor Tim to bust out, "Psst... Hey Paige, you want to feel closer to god???," and earn himself a one way ticket to the luggage.
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Apr 24, 2015 17:24
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theres not gonna be any sexual aspect to their relationship
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Apr 24, 2015 17:25
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I don't get why the FBI jumped all over Zinaida with zero proof other than "A Russian agent said she was theirs". Of course they would say that, especially if she wasn't. I would have loved Zinaida to have been completely innocent and Stan accidentally fucks her over with bad information from Oleg who is unknowingly performing a masterstroke for his government.
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Apr 24, 2015 17:27
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Fetus Tree posted:theres not gonna be any sexual aspect to their relationship Doesn't stop me from getting the creep vibes, though.
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Apr 24, 2015 17:33
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I'm sort of curious why Walter White was teaching a sex seminar.
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Apr 24, 2015 18:44
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