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The Americans - S4 of the KGB spy drama - Keri Russell & Matthew Rhys - Wed on FX

- FX/Washington Post feature: 1983 - The Most Dangerous Year

It's a multimedia timeline that goes through some of the events from 1983 in the Cold War and how they'll crossover with The Americans. There's also a lengthy S3 recap video at the bottom of the page.

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SpoilerTV's advance preview (spoilers)
The Americans continues to be the single most underrated show on television. The season premiere does an extraordinary job of balancing story, action, and drama. Amidst this great balancing act, it even finds time to introduce compelling storylines that will have major effects in the next three episodes.
 
- Cleveland.com review: 'The Americans' digs deeper and gets stronger in fourth season
If you've had this sensational espionage series under regular surveillance since it began in January 2013, you realize this has been the clear trajectory for the suspenseful drama set during the Reagan administration. FX has sent four of the new episodes to critics, and they strongly suggest that, yes, "The Americans" can dig even deeper with this story of two deep-cover KGB agents posing as an American couple living in a suburb of Washington, D.C.

Could this tight-wire tension act get even more compelling? Could the Cold War spy-vs.-spy chess match become more complex, intriguing and addictive?

All intel suggests indicates an emphatic "yes!" to all inquiries.
 

Pryce

Member
Man, this show is on track rank right up there in that "The Wire, Mad Men" group.

Season 4 reviews have me hyped even more.
 
- Onion A|V Club review
While the narrative twists and turns with every new revelation and compounded lie, the series’ phenomenal visual schema remains remarkably consistent. Simply put, The Americans is one of the very best directed, photographed, and edited shows on television, and the fourth season features some of its best setpieces to date. Though the series frequently relies on visual storytelling to move the plot forward, what’s more impressive is how the camera deftly adopts different modes to best capture the needs of any given episode, whether it’s subtleties of the actors’ performance, the quiet suspense of voyeurism, or the jarring violence that occasionally invades the frame like a virus.

Grade: A
 
- Sepinwall interview: Why Alison Wright knows more about 'The Americans' than 'Poor' Martha does
In online discussion of the show, it seems like half the time, the character’s full name is Poor Martha.

Alison Wright: That’s actually official now, I think.

Do you see her as a victim? Because you talked about how she lives in the grays. How do you view it?

Alison Wright: I probably would see her very differently if maybe I’d only ever read her storyline. It’s something that I have thought about, and I wanted to do at the beginning of this season — to ask to only see my storyline from now on, to not know — but I think I was too far down the track already, just having the awareness of the other life, and that will affect whether, I think, she’s a victim more than if I had never known. I think that they’ve written in more strength and spunk for her as we’ve gone along to lean away from that victim mentality, is what I feel that they’ve done, and they’ve introduced certain things to make it seem like she’s not that dumb, you know, she’s not that clueless. She’s stood up to him a few times in arguments. She wasn’t just a doormat, because she can’t just be a doormat, because that would be boring. And I think because she came into her own in the relationship, too, it did give her strength and independence of character, in a way.
More via the link.
 
- Philly.com review
There is little to say about the four episodes I've seen that wouldn't spoil something, except that The Americans remains as sick, and as seductive, as its secrets.

And, as much as I love it, I don't see how any of this can end well, or even what ending well might look like.
- Slant Magazine review
Russell and Rhys are such superbly articulate and specific performers that it's hard not to empathize with their characters.
 
- IndieWire Review: 'The Americans' Season 4 Brings Grave Consequences, Long Coming
The Season 3 cliffhanger — where Paige (Holly Taylor) shared a secret that's never before been out in the open before — set up showrunners Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields to let the dominos fall, and while it's never quite clear through the first four episodes provided for review exactly where they'll fall, a more imminent threat than ever hangs over the new season. A season that, of course, is on the equally stellar level of its predecessors (as if there was ever a doubt). The self-assured nature of the overall production, starting with Season 1, Episode 1, lends a certainty of quality that so perfectly contradicts the mysterious nature of the overarching plot.

Grade: A
 

-griffy-

Banned
Are we ready for another season of screaming "Why the hell aren't you watching The Americans?" to everyone? I don't know what it is about this show, I've been telling friends/family to get on it for years now but no one save for my mom has actually jumped on board. Mr. Robot was easy last year, got everyone to watch that show. The Americans though? Nope.
 

Niraj

I shot people I like more for less.
Are we ready for another season of screaming "Why the hell aren't you watching The Americans?" to everyone? I don't know what it is about this show, I've been telling friends/family to get on it for years now but no one save for my mom has actually jumped on board. Mr. Robot was easy last year, got everyone to watch that show. The Americans though? Nope.

Yeah, I don't know either. I've gotten three friends and my parents to watch it, but that's it. I've gotten a lot of "I tried, but it started too slowly."
 

IronRinn

Member
Are we ready for another season of screaming "Why the hell aren't you watching The Americans?" to everyone? I don't know what it is about this show, I've been telling friends/family to get on it for years now but no one save for my mom has actually jumped on board. Mr. Robot was easy last year, got everyone to watch that show. The Americans though? Nope.
Yeah, I can't get anyone to watch it and it's infuriating. To be fair, though, I put it off for 2 seasons before I got on board. And yeah, as helloresolven said, getting it on Netflix would do wonders for getting people to watch.
 
- WSJ review
A season startling in its intensity and its endless probing intelligence--not to mention the raw suspense that hangs over every moment of every scene.... There is nothing that is the equal of The Americans on TV screens now.
- We Got This Covered review
Some breakneck busyness in The Americans' fourth season does little to distract from the feeling that you’re watching the beginning of the end for TV’s best drama.
 
- Roger Ebert.com review
It is that depth of character and nuance in the writing that elevates “The Americans,” along with its willingness to offer stunning narrative developments. It’s never easy to tell where “The Americans” is going, but I’m now convinced that when we close the final chapter of this televised novel we may finally appreciate one of the best shows we’ve ever seen.
- Den of Geek review
The Americans just absolutely kills. It remains a truly fantastic, thought-provoking and at times discomfiting experience.
 
- Matt Zoller Seitz's review for NY Mag
The Americans has made an art of exploring the peril and necessity of deception, never shying away from the collateral damage it inflicts. Melding the prosaic and the metaphorical, the mundane and the absurd, always with a poker face, the series has gotten sharper and more confident by the week. It now carries itself with such relaxed confidence, it can build to a tragic twist so subtly that you simultaneously wipe away a tear and laugh at yourself for not seeing it coming from a continent away.

- Boston Globe review:
FX is bringing back “The Americans” for season four. And, based on the first four episodes, it’s as compelling as ever — more compelling, in a way, now that Elizabeth and Philip Jennings have told their teen daughter that they are Russian spies. Can she keep a secret? The series is not to be missed, even if the Emmys have shamed themselves by practically ignoring it.
 
- Tim Goodman's review for THR
It’s a good thing that viewers can’t immediately binge-watch FX’s The Americans, arguably the best ongoing series on television, because there are moments in the first four episodes where it feels like there’s a vice tightening on your chest. And there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for that feeling: The first four episodes (that’s how many were made available to critics) are among the best the series has ever done.
- Vox review
In its first three seasons on FX, The Americans has never been a huge ratings hit. Its most recent season finale barely topped 1 million viewers. It’s never been nominated in the Best Drama category at the Emmy Awards. It’s never even been nominated for a Golden Globe, an awards show that loves to shower prizes on little-watched series. And there are no dragons or zombies to be found. Yet despite everything working against it, The Americans is also hands-down one of the best shows on television.
 

Philippo

Member
So in.
I always try to sell this to my friends because its a GOAT show, but here in Italy it seems like nobody knows it :(
 
- Variety review
In its first three seasons, the show’s melancholy nature set it apart, as well as its commitment to exploring complicated ideas about dignity, autonomy and the harsh outer limits of morality. It’s long been in the top tier of TV dramas, and this year, it looks set to stay there.
 

TheOddOne

Member
- Vulture: In Season 4, The Americans’ Brilliance Sneaks Up on You.
The Americans does this as well as any show in TV history, and with more modesty than many of its predecessors. It has a knack for creating metaphorically or symbolically rich situations that never strut about announcing themselves as such. It’s all there if you care to delve into it, but it’s never in the foreground and affixed with a tag; often you catch it hiding behind, or within, the characterizations and plot twists, as spies hide in plain sight.
 

Disgraced

Member
Ever since catching on a few weeks or so back I've been nigh evangelical about this show. But it's the same as you guys here—can't really get anyone to bite. It's a hard sell I guess. I have one friend I think is going to check it out. He's a history nerd, so he should like it. Haven't spoke to him since last week, ought to ask if he took a look.
 

Boogie9IGN

Member
soooo excited, I just finished s3 a month or two ago and love that it's back already!

Def picking up some pirozhki and blinchiki from the deli tomorrow for my traditional dinner while watching!
 
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