How The Americans built one of the best-ever final seasons

Vox

"The Americans has constructed a remarkable final season not by trying to become something other than itself," says Todd VanDerWerff. "Instead, it has refocused on the three questions that made it so good in the first place, questions ably expressed by the scenes I saw being filmed: What is your home? Who is your family? And what do they matter?" He adds that "as the final season has gone on, it hasn’t done any of the things you’d expect from a final season, like killing off lots of viewers’ favorite characters or showing Philip and Elizabeth on the run from those who know their secret. But it has maintained almost all the emotional devastation you’d expect from a final season, and much of that has to do with its ingenious idea of pitting Philip and Elizabeth against each other."

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