The Review Show

Episode 332. This is our final episode of The Review Show (we'll still be doing the same thing next year under a newly formatted feed) and we're looking back on over 300 episodes with lists! Lots and lots of lists! We talk about our favorite movies, shows, comics, and audio dramas, biggest surprises, best villains, opening credits, needledrops, robots, stunts, and celebrities playing themselves. We talk about "small weirds," obscure streaming shows that seemingly no one has ever watched except us, a sexy pinup calendar of The Tick, a talking motorcycle, and what if Netflix spent their entire budget on just one new season of Mindhunter.

Episode 331. In our final regular episode of The Review Show, we talk about the haunting final season of The Americans. Philip has left espionage behind to focus on the legitimate family business to disastrous results, Elizabeth is in over her head with more demanding assignments, and Stan is finally realizing the spies he's been looking for may be his own neighbors. We discuss the pattern of broken connections between fathers and sons, Elizabeth's art studies restoring a missing part of her humanity, if any characters actually make it out of this show with a positive future, and whether we'd want to see a sequel series following the Jennings family years later.

Episode 330. Season 5 of The Americans sees Philip and Elizabeth juggling multiple cover stories, while Paige willingly turns towards espionage and Henry tries to stand on his own -- at the worst time possible. We discuss the great tragic comedy of Henry turning out to be the ideal American boy while his parents weren't looking, the wildcard Mischa storyline, the wedding, if anyone could ever truly love Stan without it being suspicious, and we have an argument about how many sets of pajamas Elizabeth owns.

• (00:00) - Intro
• (00:04) - Welcome and banter
• (03:49) - Non-spoiler thoughts on The Americans s5
• (16:45) - Housekeeping
• (23:10) - Spoilers for The Americans s4
• (01:44:14) - Review Show Bingo
• (01:45:34) - Recommendations
• (01:46:27) - What we are discussing next episode
• (01:46:45) - Outro

Episode 329. We're back to our ongoing coverage of The Americans, talking about season 4. Philip and Elizabeth have to make choices that will devastate the lives of their unwitting informants, while Paige struggles under the pressure of keeping her pastor from revealing the family's secrets. We theorize about what the show will do with Henry and how he'll finally learn about his family's double lives, dignity for Martha, sudden and random deaths, how the show uses '80s pop culture sparingly and carefully, and past storylines coming back with unforeseen consequences.

Episode 328. This year's Halloween episode is on Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, a British comedy series from 2004. In this show within a show, Garth Marenghi is a horror author who writes and stars in a series about a cursed hospital, trying to deliver spine-tingling tales on a shoestring budget. We discuss the structure of the hospital drama intercut with fake interviews with the fictional creators of the show, how skilled the show is at being bad on purpose, the unnerving absence of any settings outside of the hospital, the musical number, and the bug boy.