American Playhouse: Season 2
Season 2 Lore Primer
Key plot threads, lore context, and character stakes you need to remember before diving into this season.
- Directly follows the overarching narrative developments of American Playhouse Season 1.
- Faction dynamics and core character alliances shift under escalating external stakes.
- Crucial mysteries introduced previously reach key turning points and narrative reckonings.
- Sets up serialized story arcs that build directly toward the climactic season finale.
Episode Guide
Season 2 Progress Shield
The Skin of Our Teeth
Jan 18, 1983 · 113 min
The Antrobus family and their housekeeper Lilly Sabina face various global disasters, including a new ice age, a great flood, and a devastating war.
Miss Lonelyhearts
Jan 25, 1983 · 60 min
A young Depression-era reporter is assigned to write his newspaper's advice column on the insistence of his mocking editor. Unhappy in the demeaning assignment, he begins to take a
Family Business
Feb 1, 1983 · 50 min
Isaiah Stern is a wealthy, but dying, toy manufacturer. Once more, Stern has gathered his grown sons to revise his will. Three of the four are used to these idiosyncratic changes,
Keeping On
Feb 8, 1983 · 75 min
A low-key drama exploring the struggles of an impoverished sharecropping family in the rural South with themes of Southern identity, morality, and family.
The File on Jill Hatch (1)
Feb 15, 1983 · 58 min
A decade-spanning look at marriage of a Black American soldier and a white British woman.
The File on Jill Hatch (2)
Feb 22, 1983 · 58 min
A decade-spanning look at marriage of a Black American soldier and a white British woman.
The File on Jill Hatch (3)
Mar 1, 1983 · 58 min
A decade-spanning look at marriage of a Black American soldier and a white British woman.
For Us, the Living: The Medgar Evers Story
Mar 22, 1983 · 90 min
During the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi, Medgar Evers rose from insurance agent to one of the most integral activists of the era. From boycotting white merchants in the mid
Verse Person Singular
Mar 29, 1983 · 60 min
Actor Richard Kiley takes on the personae of thirteen different characters as he reads his favorite poems written in the first-person.
Until She Talks
Apr 5, 1983 · 60 min
The story of a young woman imprisoned for declining to testify before a grand jury; comprised from real courtroom transcripts and based on the experiences of individuals jailed for
Wings
Apr 26, 1983 · 60 min
Former aviatrix Emily Stilson suffers a stroke and is plunged into a world of disorientation and grief. Memories flood in between painful attempts to re-learn the basic functions o
The Rothko Conspiracy
May 3, 1983 · 60 min
A dramatization of the fight over the estate of artist Mark Rothko, who killed himself in 1970.