The Americans – Premise
1981.
To outsiders, Elizabeth (Keri Russell) and Philip (Matthew Rhys) are a typical, young American couple with 2 kids, Henry (10) and Paige (13). They try to raise their kids the best they can while they run a travel agency together.
In reality, they are two highly trained KGB agents, partnered up to get married and pose as an American couple while they get their missions done. While they love their kids, their feelings for each other are a bit more complicated and difficult to define.
Their latest mission, however, brings back horrible memories from Elizabeth’s past, and how they deal with it brings them a lot closer.
And as if their jobs, their new relationship dynamic, and raising two kids who don’t have a clue what their parents are up to weren’t hard enough, the father of the new family next door is a good FBI agent (Noah Emmerich), whose mission is mainly about catching KGB agents…
Review: Slight Spoilers
The Americans is a solid spy drama/thriller with its own brand of comic relief. I don’t know about you, but it is truly entertaining to me to watch a married couple dispose of a body (or some other dangerous mission/setback of the sort) and then prepare breakfast for their kids in the next scene.
The relationship of our couple is also one of the most original and intriguing I have seen so far. There is always the feeling that Philip has always been into Elizabeth, though she seems to be just falling for him. It’s fun to watch two partner agents falling in love after about 15 years of marriage, 2 kids (and working together).
And them falling in love complicates the hell out of things, because Elizabeth is no Sydney, and Philip is no Vaughn. And no the difference isn’t just that Syd and Vaughn weren’t married and worked for the CIA.
Sydney and Vaughn, despite a whole lot of obstacles they had to overcome to be together, never crossed certain lines. Like they never killed a relatively innocent person to not to be exposed. Or Sydney never had sex with someone for a mission. She’d tease and flirt, but then she’d use her fighting skills to get the rest done. And Vaughn, though he spent less time on the field than her, never slept with someone for a mission either.
Then there are the exes who came before Liz, and Liz’s feelings for Philip. And they have two kids, an actual company to run, deadly missions to compete, pasts to confront… Man, their life is hard…
It’s also an almost constant battle of wills as Philip is the more cautious one, while Liz is more reactive and passionate. It’s family vs. country, love vs. duty, honesty vs. deception and their emerging feelings make things riskier and more dangerous each episode.
Sure, Alias will always be my favorite agent-themed series and I’d rather do Sydney’s job if I absolutely had to (it’s more about the lines she crosses and lines she doesn’t cross), and I’d rather date Vaughn (I mean knowing my husband has to seduce/date/marry/have sex with other women is just…. not for me.)….
There’s a lot of grey since there are barely any completely moral characters apart from the kids, and probably FBI agent’s wife.
And I could probably do without the cliché of the agent’s extra-marital activities of the agent (she’s pretty, we get it, but things would have been more original if he could have kept it in his pants.)
I’d also rather have more action than drama, less screen time with the Russian spy chick (after the affair starts) and less flashbacks on Liz’ past.
But despite its flaws, The Americans has a certain flavor of its own and I have a lot of fun watching it. The cast is great, and it’s interesting to root for one character during one scene and totally hate her/him in the next.
Oh, and the soundtrack rocks.
I’m looking forward to season two, though I prefer the first half of the season. And the pilot is one of my favorite episodes.
