The Watch - ‘Roseanne’ and ‘The Americans’ Are Back, ‘Westworld’ Is Coming Soon | The Watch (Ep. 239)

Episode Date: March 29, 2018

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald unpack the new trailer of the upcoming season of Westworld (1:00), and the return of the beloved 90’s sitcom Roseanne and its bold attempt at political discourse (7:00). Later, Ringer TV critic Alison Herman stops by to discuss the new season of ‘The Americans’ with Andy (20:00). Ringer web store here: Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's greenchef. That's greenchef.com slash w-a-tcch for $50 off. I ain't sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan, and I'm an editor at the Rigger.com. and joining me in the studio. He did not win the lottery 20 years ago.

It's Andy Greenwald! And, funny story, my husband is still alive. I think I'm probably the closest thing to you being your husband. I was hoping you would say that. That really makes my heart go flutter. It's been a long day for Andy Greenwald, living in Recita. And Chris Ryan, we're pushing through, man. What a show today.

We are going to be joined later. You are going to be joined later by Alice and Her. I'm going to talk about the Americans in its final season. The debut last night, we're going to talk about the first episode where we see the show going forward. Interestingly enough, after, I don't know how many episodes of the watch, Chris Ryan finally took Edward Norton's exhortation literally. He stood up and walked out of the room when he learned we were going to be talking about the

Americans. By the way, there's a lot of good TV on, and the ringer has you covered in a variety of different ways. You've got recapables every week on both Atlanta, hosted by Amanda Dobbins, and Billions, hosted by Bill Simmons and Mallory Rubin. So you can get like your instant recap going right there. We talked about trust on Monday. We also talked about Barry on Monday, both shows that we're really into.

And today we're going to talk a little bit about the return of Roseanne. Yeah. And the trailer, let's start with the trailer for Westworld Season 2, which you just watched. Yeah. Like Jack from Lost, I'm super into in utero. Uh-huh. Good call. Her shape box is the tinkled piano.

Yeah. in the trailer. And the trailer does what we had sort of heard was coming. It confirms what we sort of heard was coming with Westworld season two, which is an expansion. Getting out of this one horse town or multiple horse town. Robo horses. Robo horses.

And we got some samurai. We got what looks like the incursion of the outside world a little bit more into the West World Park or Parks. There's a shot that suggests some sort of bladish runner city. Am I right about that? Yeah. Yeah. And there's a lot of, you know,

a lot more questions, but it seems like totally it still has the same thing going on. Yeah, you know, I watched it with great interest, hunger. You know what I didn't see in the trailer? Let me know if you did. I didn't see any characters. There are any characters on this show yet? Anything worth caring about?

Or just stone-faced robots talking about reckonings and dreams? Yeah, I think robots are your, are to you what animated characters are to me? No, I mean, I love X-Men. Nakina, you know? Okay. Like, I played with a Transformer or 20 when I was a kid. Okay.

It doesn't matter what the, what tools you're using to paint your masterpiece, you know, but just what is this show, man? What, seriously, when you watch that trailer, and I mean this, not disingenuously, super ingenuous question. What's exciting about this trailer? The fact that they're going to go outside and they're going to start poking around with what would happen if this kind of thing happened. And what is a world?

What is the world in which these parks can be built? You know what I mean? Like that's something that I think in, say, like, take Jurassic Park. You know, you get the idea that this is pretty close to the reality that we're living in. There is a paleontologist and a biologist and they're in Montana and then they get flown down to Costa Rica and there's a park and they've been developing these things. It's like not, there's not something else. But what are the conditions under which a world like this can pop up? And who is Ed Harris's character?

I mean, I think that they're... Those are good questions. Yeah, and it's not even questions as much as I think that even though they are marketing this show as a tone as similar to last season, I think that this is a show that can succeed by having a little bit of mileage on the odometer. That it can be, it can say, look, we've already established certain things about how it's going to feel who these people, quote, unquote, who these quote unquote people, quote unquote are. Yeah. And I think it can go to some interesting places.

I love the way you framed it. I agree with you the idea of what kind of world makes a Jurassic Park. Yeah. It's just that this show is so deeply interested in only like Wayne Knight and a Velociraptor. It went inside out as opposed to going outside in. And frankly, I just don't find, nothing inside is interesting to me. It's going to have to be a pretty colossal bedshitting by this show to not make Fannie Newton, Jeffrey Wright, Evan Ray,

Marshall Wood, Tessa Thompson, uh, all these, Ed Harris. Interesting. This is, that's a headline. The homie Jimmy Simpson is back.

You thought he was gone, but he ain't. Look, you're 1,000% right. He's solving the Pock Biggie murders with one hand and inventing robots with the other? Look,

between the time he put on the black hat and then aged into Ed Harris, he had a lot of free time. Right. I love the way you phrased it. Let's leave it at that because... I have one more question for you. Yeah.

I know that you don't like this show. Have I, I've been clear about that. But do you think that there is also some Ewing theory here with Hopkins? Like maybe it's something else. Like maybe it feels a little bit different without like Anthony Hopkins' gravitas

obviously signals something coming, you know? It is completely unfair to judge a show's new season by its trailer, but this is a podcast and that's what we do. Sure. You could also make the argument that if it's not broke, don't fix it or at least don't let people know you've been fixing it. Yes.

So tonally, this trailer is completely of a piece with the first season. That said, all I can do is go from what we've seen. And from what we've seen suggests that it's really more of the same. It's Dandy Newton threatening people and looking for her robot daughter. It's Evan Rachel Wood. Is that my robot daughter in there? There it.

That's what this is, man. Let's do it. Let's do it. Andy, let's talk about Rosanne coming back. You got the Zach McLaugh on that. I have not had a Zach Mack laugh. It's been a long time. We usually record in the chapel, and Zach Mack is behind like 80 layers of bulletproof

glass. On purpose. Yeah. Because he's going to need Jimmy Simpson to investigate. Because he had to record the heat rewatchables, and he's never been the same. Let's talk about Roseanne. Because you want to know what? 18 million people watch this show.

People wanted to watch this. And if you want to do some very mathematically math-tight mathing. Say math again. That means that like 50 billion people watch this in like old. times. Yes. And continue, and more people will watch it

on Hulu or what have you. Now, I saw some interesting stuff in Slack. I think, I can't remember if it was Victor or Allison put this in our TV Slack where typically with these reunions,

it's not on like band reunions where the initial spike of, they're playing cold show! And then it kind of like, I was like, oh, are the replacement still touring? That's pretty cool, you know? Right.

But that being said, 18 million people tuned in to watch two episodes of Friggin' Rosanne on a Wednesday or Tuesday night and I watched it. Do you watch both? I watched both. Me too.

We had Lori Metcalfe in here. It was late last year? In this room late last year. Yeah, to talk about Lady Bird and she was talking to us about how it was like putting on an old outfit. Like just like everybody just like clicked immediately. Everyone was so happy to be there. It was remarkable how much everything just sort of slid into place.

And you know, I think that I would, there's a couple of different ways to approach this. the conversation around Rosanne is I think it's quickly become one that I don't necessarily want to participate in too actively but it is fascinating in some ways because you're talking a lot about what the politics of the author mean to the politics of the art

or the text so when the ranch does Red State culture it has a layer, even though that we've been told by people on the ranch that it's who made the ranch. And obviously the ranch has its own set of problems with Danny

Masterson. But in terms of like the show's politics and it's like lots of Obama jokes and don't touch my guns and this and that and the other thing, you have to, you imagine that Ashton Coucher, Silicon Valley gadfly, you know, that 70 show star

is not like he's not like a Trump guy probably, right? You mean IRL? Yeah. Like they that there's a degree to which it's like trying something on for like, you know, and servicing a part of a demographic that maybe doesn't feel like they get like their own Netflix sitcoms or whatever. That's not the case for Roseanne. She's pretty explicitly a Trump supporter. That might be, that is a problem for some people, you know.

And it's, that debate and that issue is foregrounded in these first two episodes. Mostly the first episode. Mostly the first episode. But I think it lingers over the show a little bit. Possibly, yeah. So I found myself debating that a lot, and I found myself thinking a lot about that while I was watching that first episode

and watching the confrontation between Lauren back Kat's Jackie character and Roseanne's Roseanne character. I guess I'd ask you whether that matter to you at all, and also what your major takeaway was from the show. Let's start big and macro here. Watching the show, watching it on ABC, reminded me how and why TV works and the old ways that it used to work

and that how despite all the innovations and the different types of shows we're talking about, we're still often, when we say TV, we're talking about an old-fashioned box, not the literal one that's now hanging on our walls, but watching a multicam sitcom like Roseanne on a broadcast network like ABC, it made me think that, you know,

we have this vintage car and we keep trying to pour like wheatgrass into the fuel tank. Look what happens when you pour sweet, unleaded, bad for you gasoline into it. It purrs like a kitten. Yeah. This felt right.

This was really enjoyable. I really liked the show. I had a great time watching the two episodes. Excited to watch more. So honestly, my first reaction to it was just a feeling of deep familiarity, of course, because I watched the show religiously for many years when it was on in its original run. nice to have them back, but also that it just still worked.

It still worked. And it is a similar feeling to watching one day at a time, which is unwittingly, and I would imagine unwillingly being inserted into this conversation as the,

it's okay to like this one but not okay to like this one slash think progress.org. Right. I understand. Believe me. Anyone who knows me in the real world. Just check his Twitter.

No. that I do not have any time for people who prop up this despicable regime. Yes. That is how I spend most of my life thinking and feeling. Right. I cannot fathom Roseanne's personal, actual, off-screen politics, how she justifies it with who she was, who she is, what she thinks. The character that she plays in other aspects of this show, including the second episode.

But the show is good. And I want to start there because this is a TV show. And its goal is to make us laugh and make us feel other things and be entertaining. And it's good. She's good. The writing is good. I mean, John Goodman and Sarah Gilbert, who are doing a lot of the heavy lifting and Lori McHath because they're, I mean, I don't even need to be charitable. They are always, and they are the better actors.

Yeah. They're doing great work here. And it's strange to go from where Roseanne was, when did it go off the air, like 20 years ago? 21 years ago, almost to the month, 97. 21 years ago, and since the, in the 21 years since, Big Lobowski, you know, Lady Bird, all these things that they have done since then, to see them on that set. Yeah.

In those clothes. Yeah, on that couch. And to see Lori Metcalf walk in the door like Kramer, it's kind of, it's almost like now what used to be so ordinary is because, come extraordinary. Yes. To see John Goodman get up in bed with a sleep apnea machine on, you're just like, is this happening?

But also, unlike other revivals, let's say, I mean, ones that won't happen, like Friends or Seinfeld, I mean, never say never at this point. But if you see 18 million people watch Roseanne, you've got to be thinking that somebody made a Cheers phone call today. For sure. Yeah. But this was always about a family. And it makes perfect sense in as much as we care about things like making sense.

that they would still be driving each other crazy under that same roof. It's actually interesting. The conversation and the scene in the first episode with the prescription medicine, that is exactly the type of scene that would have been on Roseanne and would have felt really revolutionary on television 25 years ago. And it's absolutely correct and great that it's on there again. You add to that an element of multicam sitcoms that I think a large swath of the prestige viewership has forgotten. Maybe they've relearned it a little bit by watching Big Bang.

theory or, you know, maybe they, of course, they kept watching, um, did I say Big Bang Theory? Yeah. Maybe they watch Big Bang Theory. Maybe they watch one day at a time, and they still get some of that. Sure. But one of the pleasures of this medium has always been the theatrical element of it. And what you see on Roseanne right from the beginning is John Goodman is fucking fucking thrilled to be there.

Sure. He's a great actor who's busy. Lori Metcab is busy. They don't have to do this. Yeah. They're here because they like each other and it's fun. Do you think DJ was busy? It's a great call, and I'm trying to be respectful of some of the fringier parts of the show.

You must have some episodes coming, you know, like some more looks. Maybe, but, you know, this, I'm sure he's a lovely guy. Like, acting, kid acting is one thing. I'm not trying. I'm not trying to, like, make fun of your guy. Look, he's not my guy. Look, I was always a Darlene head. And seeing Sarah Gilbert play that part, the way they put the part, the way they've advanced the character back into the house.

Yeah. I mean, it's also kind of profound because when you watch that show as kids as we were, I think there was some identifying with the kids in that house and as kids in the audience. being like, well, boy, they always couldn't wait to get out. And you have to feel like as kids living with your parents, even if our parents weren't as broadly drawn as Roseanne and Dan, we kind of couldn't wait to get out either. Then there's this crushing reality of like, oh, they just became their parents. They just became adults. They never got away.

Adds another level of pathos to it. Darlene's kids, interesting addition as well. And I think that it's also you can't talk about the relatively shrill introduction of the politics in the first episode, which really is to get attention. It's really to say, like, this is what the show is going to be in 2018, and then it's going to recede and live within the lived experience of the show, like almost every other hot-button issue. You can't talk about that without talking about the second episode, which was intentionally broadcast with it.

Yes. In which Rosanne and the rest of the family embrace Darlene's son, who wears a skirt at the end of the episode, he wears what I guess you could call stereotypically feminine clothing. They asked him at one point. One of the characters asked him, Roseanne asked him, if he identifies as being a boy and he says he does, it was well handled.

It was funny. And it was handled in a way that only an old-fashioned sitcom machine like this could handle it. Where we know Dan, we know he's a quote, good guy. Yeah. But he needs to go out into the garage and like process it for a second. There's something legitimate about that. And for all the attention being paid to, oh, this glamorizes, this fiction that Trump voters were just had working class anxieties when in fact they're all racist. Look, many things can be true at the same time.

And working class anxieties are real. and people who need a minute to adjust to things are real. But more importantly, I think the power and beauty of this show, as it returns, is reminding people of something that is still true in America, despite the ruined pre-fall state we're in, which is people are very different when things about their own families than they are about the larger world in politics. Is that fair? Is that right? Is that unfortunate?

Let's have a different conversation on a different podcast about it. But it's true. And when you see an individual reacting to an individual, individual, it can be moving and it can be powerful and it can be instructive. So I think the show worked as a show, but I also think that politically it is more interesting than people who are ready to throw it in the garbage, give it credit for it. I wanted to just point out one quick thing that you sort of touched on, which was the importance of it being on ABC and just like you talking about like the centrality of the place that

television can take in our lives. I do think that there is something to the heavy hitters behind the scenes. I think that there was something about like Wanda Sykes, Norm MacDonald, and especially Whitney Cummings being involved in the show. And Morgan Murphy. People who obviously probably grew up or came of age watching Rose. Norm wrote on it, I think. Yeah, right.

And a lot of this thing had was spit shined. Like there were a couple of dead, like weird, awkward moments. But for the most part, you're watching a group of people delivering lines, waiting for the, they'll have to die down just enough to hit the next line. And when you watch Roseanne on Kimmel, she's all over the place. Like, it's not, like, it's not, like, super funny. It's not, like, a cool hang.

But they are able to figure out the best way to use what it is she does. And I think it's, like, a testament to, like, professionalism. I completely agree. And I also think the getting things going again is always the hardest part. And the premiere was bumpier. It wasn't as funny. It was just got by a lot on, the warmth of seeing these people again

and the sort of hot button nature to it. I mean, you can look at it and you can make the argument that in the writing, Roseanne comes off a little bit better than Jackie, who's a little bit more shrill. But maybe I'm a softie. Maybe I'm another mark.

Well, we'll see where we are next week. But they hugged at the end of it, and they were family going forward. And I think that really is what matters for the show. It's bizarre that it's back, but it feels really normal and fine. And I can't believe how much I enjoyed it. All right, we're going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsor. Then we'll be back.

Andy will be talking with Allison Herman about the final season of the Americans. And then that's a show. Then you have a nice weekend, my friends. But we've got a lot more to talk about next week and some interviews as well. Okay. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Google Assistant. Did you know you can complete over a million actions on your phone in your car and around the house with a Google assistant. For example, just say, Hey, Google, add chips and salsa to my shopping list. Okay, I've added

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and Uprox calls the most addictive show on television. New episodes of Billions, Sundays at 10, 9 Central, only on Showtime. Our listeners can get an extended 30-day free trial of Showtime to catch up on the first two seasons of billions by entering code the watch at getshotime.com. This offer expires April 15th. Now is a very happy time on the watch because I finally got rid of Chris Ryan

whose intransigence about FX as the Americans has just reached Cold War levels and now finally we can have a perestroika a glassnost if you will by welcoming the ringers Alison Herman onto the show

to talk about a show that she has watched. I have watched it but I do have a confession which is that I'm going to be forced to play the Chris Ryan in the situation because possibly my greatest failing

as a TV critic is that I am not fully on board the Americans train. Have you, just to establish this here, so tell me about your train journey with the show? I watched the first couple, I gave it a couple seasons. I think I watched it basically in binge because it's on Amazon Prime.

And I couldn't quite figure out what it was that wasn't grabbing me. It's not a, I'm actively criticizing the show. I can appreciate it. I can admire it. You're Chris Ryan Plant is what you're saying. You're here to undermine the segment. Oh yeah.

I'm here to stand in for him. But basically, it just never clicked for me in the way that I saw it being hyped up by other critics, many of whom think this is the best show in television. I think to be clear, this is not a full like Sean Fennacy leftovers. This is a crock of shit. Everyone is blind situation. An all-time bad take by Sean Fennacy. I think we can both agree on that.

If we're here to drag Sean, then this is going to be a great podcast. We can go a few angles further. But yeah, I just, it just never grabbed me. And I think as I was catching up and preparing for this very appearance, I finally realized why, which is that I just don't think any other element of the show, possibly with the exception of Allison Wright, and of course, character actress Margaret Martindale, has ever quite lived up to me to the central relationship. I think Matthew Reese and Carrie Russell are so good. And the premise of their careers and marriages and marriage and subterfuge all combined into this one. mess that they can't ever quite figure out but are stuck with is just such a good hook that every time we go to hang out in the Russian embassy or with Stan Beeman, I just automatically

checked out a few degrees. And therefore, it's never clicked together as a show for me. Well, I think what you're speaking to is going to, in large part, that fuels this entire conversation about where we are with the show. So we're talking now having the first episode of the sixth and final season has aired. We're recording this early, but, you're recording this early, but this podcast will post on Thursday after people have seen it. And it's a very interesting time for this show. I am one of the true believers who for many years. Well, this is what I'm getting to you.

For four seasons, I was proud to say this was, I think, the best drama on television. I was completely riveted, completely rocked by it. I thought that the emotional stakes that it played with were unprecedented. I really admired the way the show just took what appeared to be Stillwater's and just kept diving, kept diving deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper into the psychology of these very troubled characters. Season five was challenging, and I've talked about this in the podcast before, but I imagine even for people who weren't entirely sure about where they stood on it, that season five was a more difficult watch. And some of the main reasons were the secondary characters, right? I mean, the Martha relationship played by Allison Wright, the character played by Allison Wright, was removed in very dramatic.

fashion from the show and the show didn't recover. The Nina relationship was removed and the show didn't recover. And more than that, what I began to realize was that things that I had long championed as features started to look more like bugs. And this is what making this sixth season so nerve-wracking for me because obviously the wonderful seasons of the show exist. But I really want something as in this last season as rich as what I experienced in the first few seasons. And when I speak about those features turning out to be bugs, I always admired how much the show downplayed traditional dramatic structure in a lot of ways, that it didn't build up to the explosive moment, that it kind of always punted, kind of like conflict often happens in

real life. And then we have things like Phillips, the son that he doesn't even know exists, travels from multiple episodes to America, at great expense, personal, emotional, and financial to see his father, meets Frank Langela and is told to go home. Yeah, good stuff. That's not satisfying.

Purely, that is not satisfying. And it struck me that maybe Joel and Joe, who have been very kind to this podcast and to me and are always willing to talk about this stuff, and I hope they will come on again at the end of the season, believe so strongly in their negation of what people want that they ceased giving us anything that we want at a certain point. There was a really interesting oral history of the show and variety

that they ran to preview this final season. And they had a quote in it that I thought was really interesting that was basically saying after the first season, if you go back and rewatch it now, it's a lot more episodic. It's a lot more, here's the spy mission. Mission of the week. Yeah. In this episode.

And they said they realized after that, no one was actually telling them that they had to do that and it freed them up to tell longer and more serialized stories and just prioritize the central relationship over the specific things these two people were being asked to do by their superiors, which I read that and I think, yes, but also I think there's been a lot of conversation in TV criticism generally about the usefulness of episodic structure and how you balance that with longer serialized arcs and season long or even series long in the case of the Americans conflicts. And sometimes that can get out of whack. I think mostly we talk about it in the case of streaming because there's not even act breaks to guide them.

But I do think it sometimes happens on shows like this that are on FX that do have a lot of creative latitude that someone making a show for ABC might not have. And sometimes structures and expectations can be good things and playing against them. And playing against them can create great art or great television at least. I'm not going to say I don't like doing this because back when I was a critic, I love doing this and I still love doing this. I love reading things on the screen as Meta Psychological Cries for Help from the Writers' Room. Season 5 began with the characters digging a hole for what felt like 20 minutes, I believe it was more like 10 minutes, all to re-burry or to first unearth and then re-barry a body that had been dealt with this previous year. It was, to me, an entire season that basically tread water. The last beats of it, which I know, and I've heard them talk about it, and when they talk about their intentions for the characters, sounds compelling.

but it just didn't play that way to me because it ended with them saying, I don't really want to do this anymore. And they've been saying that for so long that it just felt unsatisfied. Well, maybe we could use this as a transition into the actual season because one of the richest,

most promising things about the premiere, apart from being a very Philip and Elizabeth in their relationship-heavy episode, is that it starts with both the biggest time jump that the show has ever taken and an actual significant substantive change in the status quo. Which is we come back, Philip is no longer actively engaged with spywork, and he is instead gone from the frying pan to the fire,

one doomed enterprise to the other. He has left the Soviet Union and has thrown himself into being a travel agent. Yes, what a great choice for the long-term viability of his career. He also, and I have to think that this was entirely for me because I'm incredibly egocentric, finally line dancing again in his cowboy boots. and in my muted criticisms of seasons two, three, and four, the only thing that I wished for was a little more Philip having fun. And obviously he was not enjoying himself,

and that was the main thrust of the show. So it was nice to see him happy. Matthew Reese plays happy very well. It did feel like in those opening moments, some great music cues, some momentum, that what another critic, Alan Seppenwall had voiced last year may have proved to be true, which is that when you get two more season final orders,

creators often kind of tread water for the first one and then because they're saving everything for that last season it felt a little bit like that might be plausible. I have to say, I think they yada yada did a lot of interesting stuff here. In the premiere? In the premiere. A three-year time jump is always interesting.

Seeing Paige where she is now was helpful because I didn't really want to see Paige Baby Spy. I'm happy that, okay, so she's doing this now? Okay, that helps the story they want to tell about parents and children. But the whole idea of Gorbachev coming to power and of the formerly Cold War starting to melt, that really, I think, would have played well into the dynamics of Philip and Elizabeth's relationship as which one is American, which one is still Soviet, what do they think of their homeland, what are they doing this for? And I really miss some of that, because instead we're

just thrust right into an entirely new world that is going to end their story and the series. I think I interpreted a lot of the Gorbachev hints as more of a set up to a longer conflict. One of the things I actually really appreciated is that it sets up is not just, it's not just Americans versus Russians. It's not just capitalism versus communism. There is also very real, very significant, and very impactful debate within Russia about what this country means and what its path forward is. And I like the idea that it offers something to Philip beyond, you know, go full capitalist shill. he can also hold on to his patriotism and have that be a motivation, but it's a different kind of patriotism from Elizabeth's.

Speaking of yada yada's, one thing that this really skipped over was, I want to know what that first peek back in the wig closet was like when he gets drawn back into the spy work. Yes, he hadn't been there forever. I mean, what kind of mothballs were hitting him in the face? Why didn't we get that moment of like, well, we got to do this again? And then opening that drawer, that's safe. I think that's a great call.

I thought you were going to say one of the biggest yada yadaadas of all times. is Burroughs wife and kid? I mean, what a scene for that wife? What storytelling lifting had to be accomplished in their one scene before we will almost definitely never see her again? I also thought there was some really, one of the more interesting tidbits from that oral history was that they said it was very important to them from the beginning to have Elizabeth be the more conventional anti-hero. She is physically and emotionally more tough. She plays kind of the stereotypical male role. And having Philip exits the spiral, the spy game all together.

sets the stage for this amazing final scene where he's literally staying up late at the kitchen table after doing accounting and being like, this is destroying you in our family. And she's like, shut up. I, you know, I'm tired of your speeches, which I could have been watching Skyler White calling out Walter. It literally puts him in the role of the concerned, wet blanket wife, which I thought was such a great twist on that relationship and is a really great new dynamic that is introduced. I think that's a great point. I want to ask your thoughts on placing the show into the larger canon and the larger business of television. One thing that definitely was clear as a show went on is that they struggled with, I don't know if this was budgetary or just decision making.

Some characters that they wanted to be a part of the show clearly could not be and thus affected the storytelling. They created an overall framework where it made sense. They had a lot of things going on. Philip and Elizabeth had a lot of missions going on at any time. so maybe we're just not seeing every mission they're running. But in the case of, as you mentioned, noted character actress Margo Martindale, they had her at the beginning, they lost her, she always made another appearance, they have her again for this last season, which I think is a good thing. As Paige's surrogate grandma, which who among us is not fantasized about having character actress Margo Martindale as the matriarch in your family? What a warm, warm hug she appears to give.

Sometimes some teeth in those hugs from past matriarchal performances. I mean, I'm concerned, but for the moment, I'm happy for Paige. Other ones, though, Julia Garner, who I think is one of the great young actors on television, she's on Ozark now, is going to be on Maniac in the Fall. She had a great turn on the Americans in a very complicated relationship with Philip. She made another appearance last year. They simply didn't have her under contract, so they couldn't assume that she was going to be back. It's a bummer, you know.

And because we've spent a lot of time with her in that relationship, and it felt like something was going to pay off there because maybe this is old television thinking. It simply didn't. Meanwhile, Burrov, a great actor, great character, was just checking out the grain stores for a year only to be brought back to finally interact with the star of the show who he had never met before.

I can't tell if I am criticizing the storytelling of the Americans, which is an uncomfortable position for me to be in, or if I'm merely observing the way modern television works now with people working a ton and keeping people under contract being more difficult. Well, I almost feel like it's a flashback to old TV. Like, we are so used to watching shows now where money is just zero object and the crown can just recreate Buckingham Palace to the detail. And I well, I guess that's not quite accurate because apparently they couldn't spare a few extra million to pay clarify what she deserved. Well, that's why they could do it.

They save money where it mattered. Possibly, but where it mattered. But, you know, we're so used to television that has unlimited resources and therefore can give us the most fully realized fantasy that, we could possibly expect all a Game of Thrones, which can just hop scotch around Iceland and Morocco and Italy and Croatia and whatnot. And in the Americans, you can actually see resources being scarce and them having to not quite take shortcuts, but just cover for the existing realities of, okay, well, this person isn't under contract. Let's kill them. It's a classic television thing that you just have to put up with. And watching them kind of chafe against that is a really

interesting reminder. I mean, for me, it occurred to me when Elizabeth hops down to Mexico City and we've both been to Mexico City, and that was very clearly park slope masquerading as Mexico City. Listen, God bless. They filmed the Americans blocks from where I lived for 17 years, and what a great job transforming what are generally not the most exciting city streets in New York into D.C. and many other places, including Mexico. I mean, they work with what they have, and I do think they do a great job. I just think in this age of, you know, where McMafia just casually films on 14 different continents, which don't even exist, it's very rare to come do a show and be like, oh, okay, they're maneuvering around an actual pragmatic reality where we're so used to TV without any material limits. This is another point I have to make about the Americans in this final season is that it feels very old-fashioned in a way now. And then when the show premiered six years ago, which is hard to believe, it seemed to fit a lot of the forward-thinking tenets of TV at the time, where prestige drama was king, but we were already moving towards the one-sheet era of television.

And what I mean by that is you can't make a movie unless you can sell it on the poster. So we have game night and tag or whatever these other, you know, I understand what that is, so maybe I'll see the movie. At the time, it was, okay, they're married and they have difficulties. but they're Russian spies. And so you're asking these enormous, difficult, backbreaking questions right at the beginning and then watching writers, talented writers, try to unscramble that for a series. Now the show is ending in an era where just getting a drama about people on the air feels incredibly difficult unless those people are the Gettys and Danny Boyle's directing it,

and we have 10 episodes. FX, which has been at the front lines of every major movement of prestige TV of the the last five to ten years, has, much like all the other places, struggled with figuring out, okay, what's next in drama? I mean, it's signature show now, those that aren't made by Ryan Murphy, who they're about to lose, is Atlanta. The Americans, with its focus on, well, here are these people. Yes, they're Russian spies, but this is what merit, it's about marriage.

And no one would ever accuse the Americans of looking visually dynamic. It is an incredibly visually flat show, which again, used to think it was a feature, starting to worry as a bug. it doesn't feel, it never caught on, obviously, to a large degree, but it's bizarre to me that it feels like a relic despite just being six years old. I mean, it's funny, the entire format of serialized drama, this is really one of the last one's standings. I mean, I cannot believe it was this long ago now, but my end of your piece for 2016 was literally all the shows that are coming up are either half hour or dramatic anthologies because people realize the possibilities in an extended narrative, but also a limited one that they can move around and move past. didn't realize this, but apparently trust is going to be an anthology series. Yeah, three or four seasons.

I had no idea, which also fills me with a little bit of exhaustion, but that's a whole separate. If you see a colon in a title, it's an anthology series. I just saw the word trust. I was trusting them. I thought it was going to be over. If you look closely at the ads, it says trust, colon, day of the soldado. And so you know there's going to be another day still to come. This is true.

I wonder who's the Benicio del Toro of trust. Of the trust expanded universe? Brennan Fraser? It's Frazier, yeah. Yeah, shouldn't have asked. But, you know, at the time that I wrote that piece, Leftovers was heading into its amazing final season. Yes.

Halt and Catch Fire, a show that reminds me of the Americans in a lot of ways and also began its final season with a dramatic three-year time jump. Great call. Also underappreciated in its time. Absolutely. But all these shows are kind of heading into their twilight, and it's fascinating to see, I think, the greatest potential of these kinds of dramas and that they can really make you feel the passage of time in their character's lives.

So that was always my story. our lives. My favorite thing about MAMN. Yes, absolutely. That was kind of my favorite thing about Halt and Catch Fire, which managed in just four seasons to take us so far in these characters' emotional experiences. And I think that's what's happening with the Americans. I do think maybe the problem is maybe such an enormous shift in the lay of the land as Philip outright quitting,

which is something that has maybe been in the offing since the very beginning of the series. It's always been the dynamic. Maybe they shouldn't have waited until the very last. sequence of episodes to maybe have a few episodes of him fully being out of the spy game before he's pulled back in and therefore you could feel the impact of him being reluctantly taken

back in. It's such a great point because for a show that prides itself on having ripples not title waves, why did we hide the title wave? Like when you're ready to give us one, give it to us. And I think that worked with the Martha episode, which didn't end the way many people expected, to its credit, you know, but still felt momentous

and huge and emotionally devastating. Yeah, they yada yodded something that I think we really needed. Yeah, and I still, I'm optimistic about the final season. For one thing, we're finally going to learn how the Cold War ends. I can't wait for the reveal. I know. I have a good feeling about Russia.

I think, you know, even if they don't win in the series, I think they're going to come back strong. I think, we haven't heard the last of those guys. They seem to be gaming that summit pretty well. They're doing stuff well. They're playing the long game. I'm optimistic about people having the runway to plan out their conclusion. I do think maybe one of my favorite developments. elements of the last few years of TV is, I kind of call it the renewalation, but the whole idea of, okay, we're not going to abruptly cancel you. You were going to give you the final order. We are willing to spend the money so that we have a good choreographed, planned out ending in perpetuity to just put in our archives.

Exactly. It is partially they're being kind and they like these shows, but really, to your point, it's to have something, a complete something in your content library for future IP mining. And they won't get shamed for eternity in that they didn't give Damon Lindelaw. for Joe and Joel, the opportunity to actually tell their story in full the way they wanted to tell it. So I think I trust that they have something in mind for these characters. I mean, I don't quite trigger reservations because, like I mentioned, I've never been so in on this show that I can be crushed by a down season. But also, one of the things we both love about television is that they can recalibrate. That's the greatest thing. But I think it is worth noting in general, but particularly in the context of this conversation, that I think a lot of people still,

think purely by dint of having so many choices that we are still living through a kind of 1970s American cinema moment on television when in fact we are well into the 80s blockbuster era and you simply could not get Halt and Catch Fire or the Americans made today. I don't think you could. There was a moment when it seemed like everybody was desperate for content and everyone was chasing that AMC model of like let's just pick up the best scripts we can and get noticed, get on the map. this isn't to say that places like FX aren't still obsessed with quality or exacting about quality

but I just think that the arms race spurred by Amazon and Netflix and then Apple and then the course correction where Amazon's like maybe we don't need to pay for two distinct F. Scott Fitzgerald properties at the same time. In fact, should spend a quarter billion dollars on Lord of the Rings. There's a ripple effect there.

And I say this not just to contextualize where we are in TV, but to hope hopefully ask people to appreciate the final moments of what I think is one of the great shows of this in-between era, the sort of post-golden age. I mean, they're not going to write in difficult men too, more difficulter. I don't think there's going to be chapters about the Americans necessarily. I don't think it's on that rush more. But this was a really interesting, serious-minded show about the emotional cost of marriage.

And its highs were higher than just about anything else I watched over the last few years. I realized I sounded more negative about it, but only because I was very disappointed in the last season. And I'm just nervous. I'm nervous like a fan, not like a critic, but in this, I am nervous like a fan that I just want, I want to capture that feeling one more time on the way out. I can understand. And as the passionate or the dispassionate, disengaged, neutral referee of all the quality of this entire series, I will be watching patiently as well. I'm very, I'm excited to, I'm curious, I'm excited to see how it pans out. I do feel for the last, you know, that final season, oh my God, what's going to happen feeling?

I definitely remember it with the leftovers and that whole, it's funny because I think the whole miracle of the leftovers was that you didn't know what to expect. And to bring Halt and Catch Fire back in, I think there's also an interesting component of fatalism to both of them in that the last season of Halt and Catch Fire saw every single major character essentially race. to invent Google. None of these people are named Larry or Sergey. They were never going to do it. That's just a foregone conclusion. And that kind of gives this whole cast of tragedy, but it also allows them to make this really powerful case for these stories matter, even if these people aren't the victors of history. And obviously, we know that, you know, there's a hard deadline on these people's jobs that's coming very soon. But I think the fact that the Americans has managed to convince people to invest in this despite that and to have us be invested in what happens in this final

season beyond the major geopolitical events is a real testament to the show. I think that's incredibly right. I think it's an incredibly smart connection to make. When we talk about shows like Waco or even trust, you know, Wikipedia can be our enemy because where's the dramatic stakes is something that we already all know the ending of? What you're saying and what these shows have done is take advantage of it. knowing can add this incredible level of tragedy to it, of melancholy to all of it,

because all the effort, all the bodies for what? Yeah, I wrote this thing, actually that Westworld called where I talked about something that I called the Wikipedia test, where it's, you know, if I can go to Wikipedia, read the plot description for a show, and then all of my curiosity about what actually happens in the show is just gone because I was only ever interested in it for the raw A, then B, then C plot of it, then that show has failed. But if a show manages to convince me to care because I actually am more interested in things like in Game of Thrones, you know, I read the books. I knew what was coming, but I still just loved watching.

I haven't read them. I never said that on a microphone before, but go on. I think you'll survive. But, you know, I was in it for just watching Niklai Costa Waldo and, oh my God, I'm Gwendolyn Christie, just sit in a hot tub and talk to each other because they're such great actors. And, you know, I know that the end of the Soviet Union is nigh, but I think Matthew Reese and Kerry Russell do such an incredible job that I'm excited to watch them just sit in a room and hash out their issues, even though I know the big picture. Because Westworld fails that test, right? Oh, absolutely. I love it.

Okay, now we're back on the same page. Also, it's interesting to watch this final season of the Americans knowing that one member of the Jennings family invented Cambridge Analytica. That's the long game. That's the real tragedy. It's not that the Soviet Union is going to collapse. No, the Russia actually wins, guys. That's actually the long game they were playing. Alison Herman, thank you so much for taking the time to talk about a show that you don't love as much as I do.

On the microphone, you are a far better conversationalist about the show than Chris. That's going at the top of my CV. Seriously, though. And please read Allison's work on The Ringer. You can catch her there most days talking about most shows because there's a lot. There's a lot of TV. There's a lot. That's all I got to say about it anymore.

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