‘American Hostage’: Why Fred’s Most Personal Moment With Tony Comes at a Cost

American Hostage‘s newest episode turns the hostage crisis into something much bigger than Tony Kiritsis’ fight with Meridian Mortgage. As Tony (Giovanni Ribisi) becomes a folk hero to frustrated working-class Indianapolis residents, Fred Heckman (Jon Hamm) is forced to confront his own increasingly complicated place in the story. Warning: Spoilers ahead for American Hostage Episode 4.

Directed by Adam Arkin, the episode opens inside Dick Hall’s (Kristoffer Polaha) head. After shaving, Dick finds himself at a bar straight out of The Shining, with Fred serving as bartender while his brothers mock him. “What kind of man lets himself get taken hostage?” they ask. Dick wakes beside the bathroom, still very much trapped inside Tony’s apartment.

At WIBC, Fred learns from FBI profiler Cormac McNally (Jonathan Tucker) that authorities have contacted Tony’s brother Jimmie (Fred Ewanuick). They’re also considering using Dick’s wife to remind Tony that his hostage is a husband and father while lawyers work toward an immunity deal.

Meanwhile, the station is dealing with the fallout from killing Ginny’s (June Laporte) story about Tony’s sister out of fear it could put Dick in danger. Ratings are through the roof, but the newsroom isn’t celebrating.

Then Tony calls. He wants to speak directly to the people listening and take calls from them. Station chief Jerry Morris (Job Cobden) agrees to put him on the 9 o’clock hour, with Fred making one request: Try to keep the profanity under control. “I’ll try my best,” Tony promises.

The calls reveal just how much public sentiment has shifted in Tony’s favor. An old friend tells him to get what he is owed. Another caller accuses Meridian of boarding up his home after he fell behind on payments and refusing to repair it after the debt was settled. “They say they are a family company, but they are crooks, Tony. Crooks! That’s all.” A woman whose husband suffered a nervous breakdown even offers to start a legal fund for him.

At this point, Tony isn’t just the man holding Dick hostage. He’s becoming a folk hero for people who feel like they’ve been pushed around by the same systems he is railing against. And while the story takes place in 1977, cocreator Eileen Myers says that reaction doesn’t feel limited to the era.

“I don’t think it would be limited to that era. I mean, as we were turning in the script, the issue with Luigi Mangione happened, and Sean [Ryan] and I started texting each other because right away he was actually being embraced by the public,” explained Myers. “So I think when a public is feeling disenfranchised, or if they’re feeling that a system is rigged, and then there is a figure who fights, who does some sort of outrageous and sometimes illegal or sometimes shocking thing to push back against that system that people in their daily lives are feeling is in some way corrupt or crushing them? They rally around that figure. So, I feel like the echoes were playing out in 2025 as we were — or rather, it was 2022 when this happened, as we were writing the script, so it feels very relevant. It feels very timely.”

“This is, to me, one of the complicated parts of Tony Carinsis. For me, one of the things that I really loved about him was that he was somebody who had values, that valued friendship and family, and that does resonate with me in my 50 years,” star Giovanni Ribisi told TV Insider. “I think that part of that sort of symbolizes to me as being somebody who liked to sort of host parties. He wanted to open a restaurant. He wanted to have people and bring people together.”

Behind the scenes, Tony’s lawyers are pushing for immunity, while Fred worries about what that would mean. Tony hasn’t killed anyone, but letting him walk away could send the message that taking a hostage and wiring an apartment with explosives has no consequences.

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That position puts Fred at odds with Ben Hairston (William Jackson Harper), who increasingly believes his boss has lost his objectivity. “If you are not a journalist, you are a source,” Ben tells him.

A flashback to August 1970 shows how differently their relationship began. During Ben’s job interview, Fred tells him that a great reporter questions authority and refuses to take no for an answer. Fred initially thinks Ben is overqualified, but when Ben walks in already carrying a lead on a student protest, Fred hires him immediately.

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Seven years later, that same instinct comes back on Fred. Ben and the staff ask Fred to temporarily step down as news director, arguing he can no longer be a neutral observer. He can remain an anchor, but they believe someone else needs to run the newsroom. Fred reluctantly leaves his office and removes the “Kill” sign outside.

At the Crestwood Apartments, Tony’s brother arrives with homemade food. Tony initially begins dismantling his traps to let Jimmie inside, but changes his mind. He tells him to give the food to the officers downstairs and insists he isn’t coming out until he gets what he is owed.

Outside, the scene has become a circus, complete with reporters, shrines, and people selling Tony shirts. When a reporter confronts Jimmie about Tony’s sister, Jimmie defends his brother as a good man who was pushed too far.

But privately, Jimmie is worried. He tells Fred that Tony is “getting cloudy,” his term for when his brother becomes dark, sad, and withdrawn.

Fred gets Tony back on the air: “I thought if people heard what this man and his family did to me, if only they knew…” Tony says. “But I was wrong.”

Tony believes he will be a marked man forever and that people are simply waiting to watch him die. Fred urges him to hold on to hope, prompting Tony to reveal that he was 20 when he watched his mother, Magdalena, die. Her name, Fred realizes, is also the name Tony planned to give his dream steakhouse.

Then Fred shares something deeply personal of his own. He tells Tony that he and his wife lost a daughter. Barbara (Mireille Enos) knitted a blanket for the baby throughout the pregnancy, only for them to bury their daughter in it. Fred stopped going to church and struggled with his faith, but continued talking to his daughter. Eventually, he came to believe she had led him back to God.

Frank Ockenfels 3/MGM+

“You don’t abandon hope without hope abandoning you first,” Fred tells Tony. He knows what it is like to “feel so cold you will never feel warm again.” For perhaps the first time, Fred and Tony aren’t reporter and hostage-taker. They’re two grieving men talking to each other. “Let’s work together on this,” Fred says.

It’s a moment that connects two men whose lives and families have fractured in very different ways, something Giovanni Ribisi told TV Insider is central to what American Hostage is exploring. “We are living in fractured times. We live in a world that has never been more connected, and yet we have never felt more alone, more disconnected, more sort of splintered,” said Ribisi. “We’re jumping into a time and place in the ’70s when community mattered. Fred Heckman was the voice of a community, localized radio news programs. You would see the guy on TV at the grocery store, at the restaurant, and community mattered. Family mattered.”

But that honesty comes at a cost. When Fred returns home, Barbara is devastated that he shared something they have barely been able to discuss privately.

“We don’t talk about her,” she tells him. “We have never talked about her, Fred. And now you have. To an entire city.”

Fred later embraces his teen son, who was running all night amok, while back at the apartment, Dick retreats into another vision of the Gold Bar. This time, someone tells him, “Your ride is here.”

Dick boards a red plane.

American Hostage, Sundays, 9/8c, MGM+