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Jul. 20th, 2016 02:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoceptionSomething else about The Americans that deserves crediting: no character seems superior to another. All are designed to give the sense of being somebody we don't fully understand, who knows things we don't, has lived through what we haven't. Probably less true in season 1, but once it got its feet that was something it was careful about. Breaking Bad was good at that. The Wire became good at it. And The Walking Dead - even the bad showrunners attempted this, they just sucked at it, but it's essential to what Gimple's trying for. (Though on that one we're always given some plausible reason to not see that those other characters have their own side to the story. It's very careful to push us into the in-group mindset of the protagonists, where actions understandable or ambiguous become opaquely hostile simply because of who's performing them. According to that Wall Street Journal Facebook analysis, WD's the 4th most popular show among Trump supporters, so maybe it does it a little too carefully...)
Yeah, The Americans eventually really did catch some of what made Breaking Bad work. Season 4 was maybe on the level of BB's S2, or often enough was. Perhaps 3 on the level of BB's 1? Mostly on the strength of Martha, if so. But each Breaking Bad season is maybe twice as masterful as the one before, so there's still not really any comparison. It's nice to see some of its lessons being picked up, though.
Kind of seems like the candy shop scene in Better Call Saul was borrowing from the computer shop one in Mr. Robot, now I think of it, so it's not like all the learning's one way.
Yeah, The Americans eventually really did catch some of what made Breaking Bad work. Season 4 was maybe on the level of BB's S2, or often enough was. Perhaps 3 on the level of BB's 1? Mostly on the strength of Martha, if so. But each Breaking Bad season is maybe twice as masterful as the one before, so there's still not really any comparison. It's nice to see some of its lessons being picked up, though.
Kind of seems like the candy shop scene in Better Call Saul was borrowing from the computer shop one in Mr. Robot, now I think of it, so it's not like all the learning's one way.
