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Why I Didn't Like The Finale of The Americans (SPOILERS)

posted 6 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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I liked The Americans as a series...but that finale really felt painfully wrong to me.

Having now read some of the glowing finale reviews and -- more importantly perhaps -- a fair number of fan comments very much in favor of the ending -- though whether some of them are FX plants, or some are trolls out to trigger angry responses, I'll never know --I think about The Americans finale with some rancor....and a certain amount of distaste for how it was handled, and how the show ignored the monstrousness of the characters it created.

The "non-ending ending" of the Sopranos will be eternally debated(though I say: great movies have ENDINGS)...but anyway you cut it, we never saw Tony Soprano pay for all his murders(of best friends, favorite cousins, nice young women...). We didn't see him die or go to prison. Some of us invested a LOT of time waiting to see Tony get his and at the end of the series...he didn't.

...and all of this "lack of resolution" edges into the finale of The Americans, I think. Along with the peculiar pride of the Sopranos showrunner that he never told us what happened to the rapist of Dr. Melfi or the Russian who disappeared.

Having read some interviews with the showrunners of The Americans now, I can see that they felt guided by "the invisible hand of David Chase"(the Sopranos showrunner), in leaving a lot of things open-ended. Is Stan's wife really KGB?(Easily found out, I suppose, but still...) And what will the four Jennings family members do(I'm ok with that being open ended as reality...but its not the ending I desired.)

But worse than the series ending "open ended," I think The Americans definitely -- and wrongly -- followed the Sopranos playbook of "making sure the audience DIDN'T get what it was expecting." There seemed to be a puffed-up pride on the part of the showrunners that Philip and Elizabeth WEREN'T killed or arrested, that there WASN'T a final shoot em' up showdown between Stan Beeman and the FBI versus the Jennings.

I think my anger centers very closely on the fact that in the final season of The Americans, we saw the cold-blooded "patriot" Elizabeth Jennings, in episode after episode, "up close and personal" kill INNOCENT PEOPLE with almost pornographic detail:

Stab a young Navy cop in the throat.
Strangle an innocent young man who worked at the "sensor making" factory. (This one felt the worst, and the saddest, in the watching)
Stab ANOTHER young man(Russian) in the throat(and up through the roof of his mouth and into his brain) and then stab and slash the throat of the man's wife...near their child(who Elizabeth CONSIDERED killing)
Kill various guards at the sensor factory.
Get entangled in a fight with a renegade general who may have killed himself but...left Elizabeth bloody
...and "mercy kill" a cancer patient but as brutally as possible.

This last season seemed to view Elizabeth as "a psychopath out of control," failing at her spy missions and killing people indiscriminately...smoking away with darkened eyes of exhaustion and rage as a clue to her disintegration. She was a monster starting to lose it.

...and yet...at series end: Elizabeth was not captured. not killed. And believed(by Stan, quite the dummy, selling out his FBI colleagues at the end) lying through her teeth to him AND to her daughter("We never killed anyone.")

Reading the reviews and the comments we are told that Elizabeth(let's leave Philip out of it for a moment) suffered the ultimate loss: of her children. And yet she(and Philip) paid so little attention to Henry that Stan became Henry's "surrogate father," and Elizabeth was interested in her daughter mainly and only to train her to become a Soviet spy, too(had Paige ultimately rejected this role...would Elizabeth have been that understanding?)

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Not that it should matter too much(ratings and box office are often big for mediocre works), but I was somewhat satisfied to read that The Americans never had very good ratings, and was kept afloat by management because of respect for its quality.

Those "never very good ratings" reflected, I suspect, American audiences having little heart to watch Philip and especially Elizabeth stab, strangle, shoot, poison and dismember ....Americans(often innocents)...in the name of a country that few Americans favor as a model of political life.

I thought it was clinched that Elizabeth would eventually die or get captured, when Elizabeth made the kind old lady take all her pills and die while saying "I'm trying to make a better world" while the lady responded "Evil people always say that to justifiy what they do."

The Americans ended in support of evil people. Unforgiveable....

[–] MonStar (12916) 6 years ago

I agree with you completely. They could have had a season finale with Elizabeth and Philip arrested and another season as the FBI put the pieces together to pin one murder after another on them. This would have been highly satisfying, as the audience would be reminded as to how evil they were. They could have shown pressure, using the kids, to get one of the parents to confess. Would one or both kids provide evidence needed to convict them, knowingly or unknowingly? The show could have had a subplot about trading them for American spies being held in Russia, with heated internal arguments about whether they could let murderers go.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I agree with you completely.

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Well, its nice to find someone who does. Thanks.

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They could have had a season finale with Elizabeth and Philip arrested and another season as the FBI put the pieces together to pin one murder after another on them. This would have been highly satisfying, as the audience would be reminded as to how evil they were.

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There was a very excruciating scene where the FBI interviewed the adult son of the nice old lady who was so cruelly killed by Elizabeth at the Mail Robot office. The agent discussed with the son his mother's death. The son noted that his mother was ill and that he had no suspicions about her death. Then the son said "Should I?" as if to open the door to even considering that his mother met foul play. But the FBI agent dropped it, and the son dropped it.

I guess we can figure that the FBI(even without the dumb Stan's help) will figure out that the Jennings killed the woman, so we can HOPE the son will learn the truth. But no justice...

In that additional season you speak of, maybe they could have found it.

--- They could have shown pressure, using the kids, to get one of the parents to confess. Would one or both kids provide evidence needed to convict them, knowingly or unknowingly? The show could have had a subplot about trading them for American spies being held in Russia, with heated internal arguments about whether they could let murderers go.

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Those are lots of good ideas that I hadn't thought of. In the main, though, I just wanted to see them punished for who they killed. They weren't just spies...they were hit people(sometimes asked by their handlers, simply, to kill people.) They killed a few soliders "in battle," but mainly they killed innocents. And I just don't see the loss of the children as that bad for them. They'd given up Henry already, Paige was meant to be a fellow soldier by Elizabeth, nothing else.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

BTW, I do wonder...Henry can be raised and paid for by Stan(he spoke to Philip of his cushy government pay and pension), but what of Paige? She was left with no money to continue college, or even to live. I suppose she will look up Henry and Stan, and try to get on that gravy train.

There is also this: ostensibly, we were to believe that the Cold War was over, the USSR had lost, all that Philip and Elizabeth had done was in vain...they failed. But in the short term, Elizabeth supported the Gorbachev side(because it was "the Communist Party side" -- the Centre were Old School Radicals), so she was on the winning side IN Russia. And, as we have seen, it took decades but Russia pretty much got its old political structure back. Putin is a KGB man from way back.

[–] Batty67 (358) 6 years ago

I think Henry and Stan genuinely care for each other, with Stan acting like a favorite Uncle. As for Stan's cushy job. I don't think so. I thought him staying in that big house after divorce was very far-fetched.

As for Renee being a spy. It was deliciously kept plausible throughout and not tipping the hat on that made sense.

Of the all, Paige was in the worst position. She could not finish her degree, probably does not have that much money, and while she's got a lot of training, she's not really in a position to disappear off the grid easily.

[–] kenburke (2372) 2 years ago

Towards the end, Elizabeth started to soften (she didn't kill the kid who discovered she was going to plant a bug somewhere) and actually killed a KGB agent. The only problem I had was her returning with Phillip to Russia. I think the KGB would be a little, how do you say, "annoyed" with her.