This one critic from the Times had a pizza delivered to my house, and after I ate the pizza I saw that he’d written, “Accepting this pizza obligates you to view no fewer than three episodes of ‘The Americans’ ” on the inside of the box. When I talked to my lawyer, she pointed out that the contract only would have been enforceable if the critic had written it on the outside of the box, so I’m off the hook.
Emily Nussbaum sent me one of those greeting cards where you record your own audio message, and when I opened it the message she recorded was all about how “The Americans” is a thrilling exploration of the ways in which intimacy can be as dangerous as it is redemptive. My girlfriend wasn’t too thrilled that I got a card from another woman discussing intimacy, and we got into a huge fight and broke up. Plus, the card arrived on my birthday, and Nussbaum didn't mention that at all.
David Bianculli hired a skywriter to transcribe his review of the fifth-season première of “The Americans” across the sky above my house, but the pilot ran out of gas halfway through and had to make an emergency landing in the middle of my street. It took so long to tow the plane out of the road that I was late to work and got written up.
Some writer from the A.V. Club matched with me on Tinder. We made a date, and enjoyed tapas and lively conversation. After dinner, we went for a long walk on the beach. I said to her, “I really feel like I can be myself around you, and that’s super rare for me.” And she said, “Yeah, I feel like we’ve got a very similar chemistry to Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys on ‘The Americans,’ ” and then insisted that we watch an episode together on her phone, right there, standing on the shore. Luckily, she was out of data for the month.
Alan Sepinwall showed up at my grandfather’s funeral. I started crying, listening to my cousin deliver his eulogy, and Sepinwall handed me a handkerchief with “The depiction of Cold War paranoia in ‘The Americans’ is more relevant that ever.” embroidered on it. The embroidery was technically impressive, but still inappropriate.
A critic from Slate stood in the parking lot outside of my office with an acoustic guitar and sang that Lou Reed song “Perfect Day,” but with new lyrics about the show. He got as far as “It’s such a perfect day / to combine suspenseful espionage with family drama” before security chased him off.
I got a phone call from someone claiming to be my twin brother, and saying that we’d been separated at birth. He said that he wanted to meet, but that I should watch every episode of “The Americans” first so that we’d have something to talk about. I almost fell for that one, but then I looked at Twitter and saw Matt Zoller Seitz bragging about how he’d fooled me. Nice try, Zoller Seitz!
Three different critics broke into my house over the past two weeks dressed like ghosts, with the idea that they’d pull a Scrooge and scare me into watching the show by saying it was the only way to turn my life around. But two years ago a critic from the Washington Post tricked me into watching “Rectify” that way, and now I know better.
