Analyzing The Americans' garage scene, the most haunting aspect of the series finale

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http://www.vulture.com/2018/05/the-a...age-scene.html

There were many aspects to series finale's intense garage scene, which featured filmmaking that allowed it to operate as an "artful dance of loyalty and revelations among the actors," says Angelica Jade Bastién. She adds: "The Americans is a series primed to elude expectations, trading the typical thrills associated with espionage dramas for insightful explorations into marriage and the mutable nature of identity. What makes the garage scene the most haunting aspect of the finale is ultimately what made the series a uniquely bruising experience over the course of its six seasons: It deeply considers the price and power of true intimacy. The scene also distills the most intriguing aspects of the show: tension that bites, a clever use of silence and sound design, delicately fine-tuned performances, directorial choices that privilege the subtle gestures of the actors, and an astute understanding of the weight of history both personal and global. All of these traits — especially the raw, nerved vulnerability that defines the performances by (Matthew) Rhys and (Noah) Emmerich — work in concert to plumb the murky depths of male vulnerability, loyalty, and the price of intimacy itself."

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Why The Americans' use of a Dire Straits song was perfect for the series finale
The song "Brothers in Arms" is an "elegiac slow burn, of the kind you might expect to close an episode rather than carry its middle section," says Sam Adams. "(Indeed, that’s exactly how it was used in The West Wing’s 'Two Cathedrals,' which found President Jed Bartlet facing storms both literal and metaphorical with a smile on his face.) But The Americans’ home stretch was a tribute to the power, and sometimes the frustration, of taking it slow, letting conflicts simmer like the unresolved organ chords and thundering rumbles that fade in on the soundtrack as Philip, Elizabeth, and Paige face what is left of the rest of their lives. Although it was released at a time when the threat of nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union—as chronicled in Season 4’s 'The Day After'—still seemed acute, 'Brothers in Arms' is steeped in sorrow instead of anxiety, sung from the perspective of an old soldier who’s come to the end of a war he wishes he’d never had to fight."

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The Americans series finale was one of TV's best, with its shift from theater to silent cinema

"The subdued finale, says Matt Zoller Seitz, "is one of the best that I’ve seen, a terrific example of an ending that summarizes what the series was about while putting a new frame around it. 'START' pulverizes any idea of a script for these role-players to 'play' and forces them to work off-script. The privilege (or excuse) of needing to stick to the script, rain or shine, has allowed Philip and Elizabeth to break every last one of the Ten Commandments in the name of a higher ideal: the destruction of America and capitalism. It has also allowed Stan, the beer-drinking, flag-saluting Yankee, to feel patriotic even after hacksawing huge ethical corners, including falling in love with a double agent (later triple-agent) and straight-up murdering a Soviet operative in retaliation for the KGB killing his partner. (Philip did that deed, but thankfully Stan never found out.) Everybody’s gone off-script now, and the series goes off-script with them. And so The Americans, a series that has never shied away from its TV-ness, goes in a startling new direction in its final chapter, envisioning its two most important sequences as, respectively, a stage play produced without costumes or sets in a parking garage, and a Russian silent movie that carries much of its meaning through images, confining dialogue to a few sentences so tight-lipped that they could fit on old-fashioned title cards."

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