SPOILER ALERT: The following contains spoilers for American Hostage Season 1, Episode 8.
The ending of American Hostage is not a typical TV season finale, and that may throw some MGM+ viewers off. Audiences are used to fast-paced and exciting finales, especially after two relatively slow episodes, and “Break the Bank” is not that. But it is an ending that’s worth the wait.
The titular hostage crisis only lasts about another 20 minutes, although they’re a dynamic 20 minutes. Tony Kiritsis takes what’s set up to feel like a victory lap, emerging from his apartment with Dick Hall still at gunpoint, walking through a crowd of onlookers and cops, stopping to take in the attention. He scythes his way through another mob of reporters so he can give a speech to national television cameras, and this sequence is the best in the whole hour. Audiences watch Tony stumble through what should be his big moment, Dick nearly get strangled by the wire multiple times, and Fred Heckman imagining the cops shooting Tony in the head. After that, the episode is more of a legal drama.
Trying to save Tony’s life, Fred convinces him to go with him into a back office, and American Hostage parcels out pieces of what happens next, when the situation is at its simplest: just Fred, Tony and a captive Dick. What viewers know at the moment is that Dick fires off the shotgun—forcing the police to storm the office and arrest him. They claim he violated his (fake) immunity agreement by coming down with the gun, and the rest of “Break the Bank” tracks the legal proceedings that follow, while Fred attempts to prove that Tony was set up all along. The audience is waiting for something else to happen, and it never does.
For two-thirds of the episode, American Hostage largely focuses on Fred, Ben and Ginny as they continue trying to prove the existence of a wiretap on Tony’s phone and collusion between his lawyers and the police. Jon Hamm plays Fred as a man exhausted and then defeated, with the script taking glimpses into his mind similar to those inside Tony’s head from the previous hour. (Perhaps that’s why Episode 7 took that route.) There’s only one more burst of real energy, and it’s when Fred pleads with Tony—now acting as his own attorney—to question him under oath about a specific topic so he can talk about the wiretap. Giovanni Ribisi and Hamm once again play well off one another, but in a totally different way than they first did, and it shows how much the characters have changed.
Otherwise, the American Hostage Season 1 finale is largely an exercise in futility. The finale fakes the audience out by presenting one possible ending and then reveals it’s just in Fred’s mind. When Fred’s response to this is to give up, destroying the one piece of evidence he does have, it’s a letdown and that’s what the audience is meant to feel. There’s a disappointment at the bad guys winning and nothing really changing after all of this. Does that make for satisfying TV? Maybe not for everyone, but it keeps with the real story and it’s interesting to see the energy slowly sucked out of Hamm’s performance.
Like most “based on a true story” projects, American Hostage ends by giving the audience details on what happened to everyone afterward. One of the finale’s missed opportunities is that it utilizes footage of the real-life Tony Kiritsis, but not anyone else. It’s awkward to do that just for Tony. The creative team probably couldn’t find video of everyone involved, but seeing Tony makes the audience want to at least see the real Fred. Even that would be appreciated. And this is no fault of the creative team, but it’s always a little clunky to end on a giant info dump, even in the voice of Jon Hamm. (Amusingly, the most interesting update is about Dick: that he and Ibby divorced, but he stayed sober and outlived the whole rest of his family. The guy who got lost in the shuffle turns out to be the last one standing.)
As the credits roll, it’s worth once again discussing the apparent plan for American Hostage to continue with Season 2. Since the show is based on a podcast, there’s obviously more material. But can the creative team find a good enough story and even more importantly, another cast of this caliber to make it happen? Hamm, Ribisi, Kristoffer Polaha and Mireille Enos were all so consistently good that it’s hard to imagine anyone following in their footsteps. Plus new scripts would have to have the same personality that this season did, even if it slowed down in the end. Unless there’s a truly great lineup for Season 2, perhaps it’s best to look at American Hostage as a one-season success—a unique telling of Tony Kiritsis’ story that beat all the ones that came before.
American Hostage airs Sundays at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on MGM+. Photo Credit: Steven Ackerman/Courtesy of MGM+/Sony Pictures Television.
Article content is (c)2020-2026 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.
