Really not getting the love for The Americans

Damn i just finished the first season and I really liked it. I was worried it'd get worse actually !

It should, but it often doesn’t. Even with some of the greatest show of all time. That said I did watch the first 5 or so eps of this and never went further. But I will try again one day, because there are a lot of my favourite series that I gave up on then tried again and fell in love. Parks and Rec’s first season was horrible, springs to mind as one I gave up on.

Yeah I think that it really either hooks someone or doesn’t. I was incredibly underwhelmed by the pilot, watched the whole show (normally I’d drop a show like that but my husband wanted to watch it) and never got better for me. I would say 8 episodes is plenty to tell if it’s going to vibe with you. 

Yup this for sure!

There’s “slow burn” and then there’s “dull.” Even a slow burn show needs to have an engine driving it forward. I will say maybe Andor finds itself like people say after several episodes and turns into an effective slow burn. I didn’t get that far. But the first couple episodes were just dull.

I never understood people who watches 2 episodes and then gives up on a show. I’d understand if they watched 1 episode of a 7.0 rated show and gave up. But if you know that Andor is seen as one of the best scifi shows made you’d think that people would atleast give a season a try.

I don’t think it’s too much to ask that they hook me in the first couple episodes. Many great shows are capable of this. Am I supposed to dedicate like ten hours of my life to the hopes a show might get good?

Nice! Rather dense shows to watch side by side though lol.

What I wouldn't give for watching that show for the first time again. It's so f****** good that the only other show I watched more times is The Sopranos.

That's just one thing though. If you watch a show where any one thing isn't perfect, you'll never see anything. No Sopranos, no Mad Men, no Twin Peaks. Well maybe Twin Peaks. We are trained to believe that camera=truth, so filmmakers can turn that around and use the camera as a liar. It's also important to differentiate between the audience and the characters. It's structured to reflect what the characters are thinking. Most shows aren't trying to trick the audience. The characters think/assume it's the FBI. Things are presented in third-person but from the first-person perspective. There is so much objective third-person in TV and film today that I get frustrated, and it's refreshing when something more sophisticated is used. Objective can be really tiring in show after show after show. Unreliable narrator is the most common term for the opposite (and there are many examples from film and TV) but in this case it's more specific, it's not Submerged Subjectivity or Embedded Unreliability but it's Psychological Realism. It's not important for anyone to ever know those words, they are just what we use when we're drilling down into something. Some other examples of this are in Mr. Robot, Battlestar Galactica, Sherlock, Better Call Saul. And to a lesser degree in The Bear and The Affair. More generally, watch for internal vs. external focalization in other shows. Is the camera is a neutral observer (true third-person) or is the camera is inside a character, seeing only what they see and how they feel it, even if it's still positioned outside their body. That's much more common. Anyway, this particular scene is psychological realism and external focalization, that Better Call Saul later used so well. We are experiencing the world as the characters experience it, not as some neutral observer.

Ok I love burn notice, but saying that it's better than The Americans is f****** nuts...

Lol it's totally fine if you didn't like it but that is an absurd comp

That’s wild lol

How many shows have you watched? The Americans sometimes feels more 80s (not just because it was set then). How many 50s/60s/70s/80s series have you watched? Even right now there are ~500 series on in the US and Canada alone.

Bold take.

I think it was season 5 where it was mostly the dad being 100% emo Hot Topic. But I could be remembering wrong.

They aren’t supposed to be. This is their *job*. It’s not a story about spy craft, it’s a story about the effect of spy craft on these two Russians, and how the pressure starts to impact and alter their family and their relationship.

Idk why fans get mad and downvote just because you don’t like something. Madness. We have different tastes it’s so childish. Oh well I guess that’s Listnook for you, it doesn’t really matter. Anyway yeah lol my biggest memory of that show was how many sex scenes there were. They weren’t super graphic but it was just the sheer amount. My favorite scene is actually in the last season which I can’t say without spoiling but, I liked the daughter in the show at least. XD  Some of the spy plot is okay. It’s not like terrible and I get why some people find it interesting, but I also never really got how it was seen as a top anything show.