It's a Trap!

Even before it aired I was ready to love The Americans. It was the first show Graham Yost created after Justified, the best show on television. Then you add in Keri Russell as a Russian spy which sounded like it would be Homeland: The Reagan Years but seem from the opposition. Sure we know how the story turns out (SPOILER ALERT: the Russians lose) but Yost is a master storyteller and with the premiere set against Reagan’s election, they are still eight years away from the fall of the Berlin Wall and a full decade away from the dissolution of USSR. Not that I would mind if The Americans lasted long enough to see The Jennings adjust to the end of The Cold War.

As great as the premise, the season relied on too many television tropes. Of course the guy who just moved across the street is the newest counter-intelligence agent in the CIA who routinely is investigation The Jennings activities but never actually crosses paths with them except in the finale but did not get a good look at them in their disguises. The biggest disappointment of the first season was how uninteresting Margo Martindale. Yost brought her in after she deservedly won an Emmy for her role of Mags Bennett on Justified but her character just did not add anything as the Jennings’ handler except the time she bruised Elizabeth’s fists with her face.

But these complaints really are due to unfair comparisons to Justified and Homeland, two of my favorite shows. On its own, The Americans was still an edge of your seat cat and mouse game between the Jennings and Stan as they join each other for cookouts on their time off from spying. And where I thought from the beginning that The Jennings would eventually get turned and become double agents for the CIA at some point in the series (I always go back to the offer the turncoat KGB agent they captured offered them), the most fascinating part of the finale was when Nina’s boss made it a top priority that she try and turn Stan. Now going forward it may be a question of who turns both. Of course if this were Homeland, they probably would both turn on their country and be shocked when they run into each other at a CIA or KGB meeting.


Still, it was hard not to be disappointed by the finale. In the end nothing changed. The Jennings did not get caught and Stan and the rest of the CIA are no closer to catching than they were at the beginning of the season. I thought for sure Nina would not make it out of the season alive, or at the very least be resigned to a life in Siberia, but she is still around as a double agent, her alliances just switch back. Maybe I was just conditioned by Homeland to expect one mind blowing game changer per week (for better or worse) I was expecting The Americans would have at least one in a season. With the last scene, I thought,, okay, at least the daughter will learn of her parents double lives, but even that just ended on a cliffhanger. Did she find her parent's stash? Does it even matter? Is the son more worthless and Bobby Draper and Chris Brody combined? I guess we have to wait until next season for the answers.

The Americans 1.x gets a on my Terror Alert Scale. You can download The Americans on iTunes.