The notion of Keri Russell, still fixed in the minds of so many as the namesake star of small screen college drama Felicity, playing a deep-cover Russian operative in a period piece spy drama like The Americans always seemed like something of a stretch. But, opposite costar Matthew Rhys, Russell reliably helps anchor FX’s chess-game serial, returning this month for its second season.
Created by Joe Weisberg, an ex-CIA agent of four years and the brother of Slate Group editor-in-chief Jacob Weisberg, The Americans is a meat-and-potatoes show whose classic conflict set-up and intriguing explorations of moored (and unmoored) personal identity amidst chronic, ingrained deceit win out over some occasionally soapier instincts. As such, it seems poised to build on the gains of its debut run, and perhaps inherit some viewers who’ve over the last couple years fallen in love with AMC’s hearty fare.
The series unfolds in 1980s Washington, D.C., where Ronald Reagan‘s inauguration has pricked the sensitive ears of Moscow, and quietly escalated long-simmering Cold War tensions. With two kids and a house in a sleepy Alexandria, Virginia cul-de-sac, Philip and Elizabeth Jennings (Rhys and Russell) seem like ordinary suburbanites, but they’re actually sleeper-cell KGB operatives who have established American identities as part of a long-term plot to not only monitor actions of the United States government but steal secrets and bring it down. Complicating matters are their new neighbors from across the street — Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich), a FBI agent working in counter-intelligence, and his wife Sandra (Susan Misner).
In short order, The Americans turns into a roundelay of coerced sources, overlapping operations and cat-and-mouse intrigue. Stan catches a young Soviet embassy employee, Nina (Annet Mahendru), in a compromising position, and turns her into an asset. Meanwhile, Philip and Elizabeth have also taken lovers of their own, who they use as pawns in their attempts to meet directives they alternately receive in late-night encoded dead-drops and from their new KGB handler, Claudia (Margo Martindale). Philip, in another guise, carries on a relationship with Martha Hanson (Alison Wright), a secretary for Stan’s boss who works in the same FBI office; Elizabeth, meanwhile, has revealed her true identity to Gregory Thomas (Derek Luke), a young African-American radical who uses ties to unwitting low-level criminal types to run interference for her.
For better or worse, The Americans seems poised between programmatic procedural and something occasionally a bit artier and more ambitious. The basic set-up — law-breakers living a secret life against a fairly quiet domestic backdrop, under the nose of a law enforcement officer who is both a close friend and tasked with direct investigation into the area of their transgressions — definitely feels like it owes something to Breaking Bad. Well… it owes a lot to Breaking Bad, really. But some of its subplots (an arc with Gregory, for instance, who becomes a compromised asset) aren’t quite as fascinating or successfully interwoven as its writers believe them to be.
What gives the series some elevation and an additional layer of psychological involvement is Philip and Elizabeth’s backstory, and differing relationships they have with the United States. The two were thrown into this arranged marriage as part of their cover, never having met previously (there are plenty of flashbacks, but it’s not abused as a device), and Elizabeth remains a hardcore idealogue and ardent patriot to her homeland. Philip, on the other hand, is slightly more of a pragmatist, and concerned with what the future holds for their children (ages 13 and 7), who know nothing of their double lives. This leads him to make an offhand comment about potentially defecting, which throws even more turmoil and suspicion onto his relationship with Elizabeth.
Since, in the long run, the Cold War is history, The Americans is at its best when milking tension from the untenable positions that Philip and Elizabeth often find themselves in, and rooting down into the general stew of distrust in which its necessarily duplicitous characters all live and operate. Even if some of these situations are a bit ridiculous (tracking down an assassin tasked with killing American scientists after Russia has a change of heart but is unable to contact their contract killer), they help connect Philip and Elizabeth to geopolitical events in an interesting and even gripping way.
This is most embodied in the first season’s best episode, which finds Philip and Elizabeth desperately utilizing a variety of resources in an effort to get real-time information after John Hinckley, Jr.’s shooting of President Reagan. At first the Jennings’ KGB handlers are paranoid about Russia being framed for the attempted assassination, but they also ponder it as an exploitable moment. Then, when Secretary of State Alexander Haig makes comments about being “in control here” at a television news briefing, there’s even a momentary belief that a full-scale coup is underway.
The Americans is also an interesting study of marriage as a partnership, since Philip and Elizabeth’s relationship goes from cold and unblinking to amorous and back again (and again) over the course of the first season. “It never really happened for us, but I feel like it’s happening now,” says Elizabeth at one point. A couple episodes later she catches Philip in an inconsequential lie, and their clock resets anew. It’s a maddening dance, but one that catches and holds a viewer’s interest.
Where the series struggles a bit is in sometimes believably integrating Philip and Elizabeth’s kids into the proceedings (there’s an inane bit in one episode in which the kids don’t get picked up from the mall, hitch-hike home and fall in with a would-be rapist), and also in making Beeman a more worthy adversary. The FBI agent is good at his job, and he and especially his hard-charging boss (Richard Thomas) give The Americans a potentially strong, complementary “American” point-of-view, to counterbalance its Russian subjects. But Weisberg and the writers seem obsessed with making Beeman “flawed” in corresponding fashion. While they press Beeman’s professional doggedness, it would be interesting to further exploit, on an institutional level, the gap between public voice and private reality in this silent war of considerable subterfuge. Also, while I realize that sexual trading and the exploitation of libidinal pressure points is part of true-life spycraft, some of it here feels like little more than highlighted metaphor. A little of this goes a long way, and it comes off as overplayed. Still, one gets the feeling that there’s plenty of interesting future grist for the mill with The Americans, if only House of Cards fanatics can make room for another (slightly bloodier) political drama in their lives.
The Americans comes to DVD and Blu-ray in advance of the second season’s bow on FX next week, and is presented in the latter format across three 50GB dual layer disc
s. The colors in its 1.78:1 widescreen transfer and 1080p treatment are consistent, but with a flushed-out palette and more muted hues that eschew loud primary colors (a marker of later in the decade) and underscore the suburban ennui, which in turn stands in stark contrast to the high stakes of its spy games. The DTS-HD master audio 5.1 track that anchors the Blu-ray release is solid in its tone and breadth, but honestly seems mixed a bit low across the board. There aren’t any wild spikes during action sequences, but you’ll likely have to play it back two to four clicks higher than your normal volume in order to register dialogue cleanly. Spanish, French and English SDH subtitle options are also available.
As for bonus features, a collection of deleted scenes is spread out over each of the discs relevant to the episodes they contain, which is fine, though I know some folks prefer a more curated approach. These dwindle (in both number and significance) as the episodes wear on, though there’s a weird strand with Sandra having broken her leg. There’s also a commentary track with Weisberg, Emmerich and producer Joel Fields on the episode “The Colonel,” plus three separate featurettes which cover a surprising amount of ground. They have monikers which indicate a nominal partitioning, but honestly there’s a lot of crossover between creative decision-making and production information within the pieces.
The nicest thing is that these featurettes, running six to 16 minutes apiece, are all edited smartly, avoiding the sort of repetitive, desultory clip-fests that too many supplemental short-form pieces utilize. Weisberg talks about the show’s roots in the odd 2010 outing and deportation of a Russian spy ring, and also shares some of his own work experience at the CIA. Interviews with Russell, Rhys, Emmerich and others, meanwhile, are artfully interwoven into segments that examine everything from the fighting style used in the series (krav maga, with some cheating) to its production design and old-school technology. Fields and a couple other behind-the-camera talents get screen time, too, like producer-director Adam Arkin, which is cool, but a bit of input from some of the more interesting “hired hand” directors (like John Dahl) would have been a nice bonus. (Maybe for next season’s set, one hopes.) Wrapping things up is a three-and-a-half-minute gag reel. In addition to the expected line flubs, some cheeky editor puts faux-binoculars around a bunch of dancing and goofing off; there’s also a good number of food-related screw-ups of takes, and a bus taking out a signpost during an establishing shot. To purchase the Blu-ray set via Half, click here; to purchase via Amazon, click here. B- (Show) B+ (Disc)
