Cold War spy drama? U.S.-Soviet tensions? Really? That’s so past-tense.
At least, that’s what I thought when I first found out about The Americans and its basic premise.
I was a little boy — younger than the son of Philip and Elizabeth Jennings — at the start of the Reagan presidency, when the story in the FX drama begins. I lived through the final decade of the Cold War. It was and is a time America needed to get past. The same went for Russia as well, regardless of what you might think about Vladimir Putin.
The Cold War provided an old model, an antiquated framework through which to view the world. We should all be happy this period in human history is gone… so why did there have to be a TV show about it? I wasn’t prepared to watch.
A friend kept telling me after watching each episode of season one: “I’m tellin’ ya, you’re missing out on great television. Don’t let your Cold War blinders prevent you from seeing this.”
At the start of season two, I began watching.
Even without knowing what happened in season one, I could tell: My friend was right.
This is the beginning of our story.
In a new golden age of television — when the medium has surpassed movies and plays as a storytelling vehicle — The Americans, created by Joe Weisberg, stands with the other great dramas you’ll see on various channels.
Is it better than Breaking Bad? Is it more memorable than The Sopranos? No… and it doesn’t have to be. Simply being one of the better shows of a great TV era is, and should be, more than enough.
As season three arrives, though, the main question for this FX drama is as follows: “Are Americans willing to continue to be unsettled by The Americans?” Are viewers going to want to watch this show and the particular tension points it has to offer?
(Gosh, I hope so. Tell your friends who don’t watch The Americans to make it a part of their TV menu.)
If you’ve been along for the ride over these first two seasons (yes, I went back and watched the first season), you’ll probably find something of value in this series overview before the season three premiere, but this is meant mostly for those who carried a view similar to the one I had at the outset: Why care about a Cold War period drama?
The short answer: Great television is its own reward.
The longer answer: Great storytelling doesn’t create easy, neat or tidy plot resolutions.
Truly enriching drama is chock-full of complexities and contradictions, all sorts of layers you, as a viewer, are forced to wrestle with. The characters and shows that live on well after a TV series ends are endlessly nuanced. They can make us feel a wide range of emotions, often at the same time. The Americans’ central characters do this in just about every episode. The result is emotionally searing, dramatically riveting entertainment that leaves you wanting to watch the next episode as soon as the current one is over.
The fact that the subject matter is uncomfortable should not keep you from tuning in each Wednesday night on FX at 10 p.m.
Yes, if you haven’t yet taken the plunge with Keri Russell (Elizabeth Jennings) and Matthew Rhys (Philip Jennings), the spy couple trying to stay alive more than anything else, please realize that rooting for them might not come easily, depending on your worldview.
Elizabeth and Philip, our central protagonists, are ostensibly servants of a great and noble cause — Mother Russia, the homeland, enemy of America and all its worst qualities. Elizabeth, a Russian-born woman whose father fought the Nazis in World War II, has always been a true believer, while Philip has wavered at times. However, devotion to country as spies under deep cover is not the only source of tension for this couple. Where Elizabeth wobbles and doubts herself is in her relationship with Philip. In season one, while Philip expresses much more comfort with the Jennings’ two kids, Paige (the daughter and the older sibling) and Henry (the son), Elizabeth is torn inside by the notion that her marriage to Philip isn’t real, a point underscored late in the season when it’s revealed that the two never exchanged actual vows.
Philip also embraced the idea of living in America far more readily than Elizabeth ever did. Philip could live in the United States for the rest of his life if he needed to. Elizabeth, on the other hand, has a heart that’s still in the Soviet Union. The location of her heart is precisely why it’s much more often a struggle to think that her relationship with Philip is substantive and nourishing.
Philip isn’t 100 percent sure about his mission and cause. Elizabeth isn’t 100 percent sure about herself and Philip. The different but equally powerful internal splits for each character pull each individual together and apart in varying degrees and measures.
On their worst days, Philip and Elizabeth seem doomed. On their best days, they manage to fully integrate spying, killing, having dinner ready for their kids while also educating them, and engaging in meaningful lovemaking. Most of the time, of course, that ideal balance (such as it is) can’t be attained — the idea of a fully integrated life seems like a cruel tease.
This is the life of Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, and it forms the basis of an emotionally rich drama which rarely comes off as simplistic or predictably formulaic. The Americans is a dark show, but one that shines, precisely because it’s not willing to give viewers the easy feel-good conclusion or the MacGyver-ish “everything-falls-into-place” solution for bewildering sets of problems. More than that, it’s not willing to give a viewer a convenient way in which to align various beliefs and leanings, and this is what I’m most interested in exploring as a fellow viewer in season three.
What is, at heart, the great conflict at work as season three of the show begins? It’s very clear: The KGB (or “The Center,” as it is referred to in the dialogue used on the show) wants Paige, the Jennings’ daughter, to be groomed for a life as a spy in service to the Soviet Union. Philip and Elizabeth — knowing how emotionally fractured and situationally dangerous their lives have become — are adamant about shielding Paige (and Henry, for that matter) from such a path. Something’s gotta give.
Yet, that’s only the beginning of the intrigue.
There’s a deeper and fuller conflict in the Jennings household. Paige, as shown in episode nine of season two (“Martial Eagle”), is embracing Christian faith through Bible study and participation in youth groups at a church community. Yes, her pursuit is partly a way of feeling connected in ways she can’t experience in a fractured home with her “often-removed-from-everything” parents (given that they’re trying to hunt down the person who murdered a fellow spy couple, among various other assignments for their country). However, in the present tense, Paige really does see some intrinsic value in Christianity.
The worldview of a communist activist would strongly clash with such a tendency, and the Jenningses are understandably upset Paige would not only embrace religious faith, but spend $600 in accumulated savings to go on a trip with a church group. In that same ninth episode of season two, Philip confronts Paige’s church pastor in the pastor’s office. He closes the door to the office with two gloved hands, and the audience is led to expect — certainly for at least a few seconds — that Philip is going to kill the pastor. However, when Philip asks the pastor, point-blank, if he really believes what he says about Jesus offering peace and forgiveness, the pastor’s calm and reassuring “yes” causes Philip to doubt what he’s doing. His aggressive manner and belligerent tone vanish, and he leaves the room.
That scene, in which Philip leaves shaken, is — for him — a parallel with what happened to Elizabeth in season one, episode 11 (“Covert War”).
After having abducted a CIA official that her handler, Claudia, claimed was responsible for leading an operation which led to the assassination of her beloved mentor, General Victor Zhukov, Elizabeth blindfolds and ties up the CIA official in an isolated room. On the verge of putting a bullet into his brain, however, Elizabeth is wracked with doubt and immense psychological pain when the official asks her if there’s anyone she loves or anything she believes in. She doesn’t kill the officer. She actually lets him go.
In The Americans, we get to see Philip and Elizabeth in their own separate worlds — worlds in which they’re all alone, no matter how physically close they might be to each other — confront demons that own a fascinating mixture of characteristics. In one sense, they’re both fighting a tension between the global and the personal, the political and the intimate. On the other hand, they’re trying to decide — they have to do it when they wake up every day — if their life arrangement is a hollow architecture bereft of meaning, or if it’s the very substance that ought to animate their lives and the decisions they make.
It’s immensely entertaining to see this exquisite battle unfold each week on FX. This is why the show is such an impressive creation, a well-above-average part of the TV landscape.
In order to understand the doubt and anxiety washing over Elizabeth late in season one, it’s necessary to duck in a brief word about one smaller character.
Claudia (played by Margo Martindale), the aforementioned handler for both Philip and Elizabeth, never got off to a good start with the spies she was assigned to manage. A leak within the Soviet “Rezidentura” near Washington, D.C. forced the KGB to thoroughly vet and investigate everyone. Claudia had Philip and Elizabeth captured, with Philip taking a beating before Claudia stepped in and brought the proceedings to a halt. The damage was already done, however, in terms of souring the relationship between handler and operatives. (Side note: This is a separate and, on its own, quite delicious source of excitement for the show.)
It is therefore all the more fascinating that in season one, episode eight (“Mutually Assured Destruction”), Elizabeth actually absorbs what Claudia has to say to her in one of their many clandestine meetings. Claudia, speaking about relationships among undercover spies, flatly tells Elizabeth, “If you start to think of your marriage as real, it doesn’t work.”
For Claudia — and other old-time veterans of the spy business — the only fundamental attachment (or marriage, you could say) is to the work itself, the cause. Since Elizabeth has always believed in the cause (it’s how she’s very much like Claudia, though she’s not willing to admit it), she allows herself to believe and think in accordance with Claudia’s statement… until she realizes that she has to live with Philip (and Paige and Henry) every day.
Elizabeth and Philip have saved each other’s lives many times as spies, working (physically and emotionally) together for almost two decades in the Beltway area (Northern Virginia/Southern Maryland/Washington, D.C.). The idea that her relationship with Philip lacks intimacy is something which makes intellectual sense to Elizabeth, but it’s not really sustainable… not if Elizabeth wants to preserve a sense of sanity and live a life that includes some pleasure and release amidst withering pressures. The architecture of her mind runs up against the realization of daily self-preservation, not to mention the two children she’s trying to raise, connected to her by the powerful bonds of biology a mother cannot easily suppress.
This, in short, is what makes The Americans such riveting television: In order to serve country and ideology, spies such as Philip and Elizabeth have to perform all sorts of actions as a means to an end. So many actions and movements in the show — not just from Philip and Elizabeth, but also from the American spies trying to counter the Russians — occur as part of a disguise, as theater meant to distract, deceive, or both.
Sex (lots of it).
Going out for girls’ night (Elizabeth with female neighbors and friends) or guys’ night (Philip with FBI agent and neighbor Stan Beeman).
Engaging in relationships on the side to establish a deeper layer of cover (Philip’s relationship with Martha, who works in the FBI office).
Attending various family functions to keep the kids happy and under the illusion that everything’s reasonably normal.
These actions are undertaken without complete sincerity in most instances. Only the appearance of sincerity is a constant. Faking honesty, not honesty itself, is a necessary skill for the life Philip and Elizabeth Jennings have chosen.
So, as season three begins, just exactly what will happen when these godless communists — godless communists who have a lot of hot sex and conduct modern relational lifestyles a lot of viewers could relate to, even wish for — confront the emptiness of their souls, something both Philip and Elizabeth have done in front of the camera in seasons one and two? What will happen when Paige’s embrace of Christianity, something deeper and transcendent, rubs up against the falsity of a spy life in which deception is the heart of one’s identity?
http://youtu.be/PSu2dpWBjfQ
The questions I’m most interested in:
Will some viewers who can’t stand communism and communists root for Paige to steer Philip and Elizabeth to a spiritual awakening?
Will viewers who can’t stand organized religion hope that Paige’s “Jesus kick” loses steam and enables Philip and Elizabeth to become more sexually and relationally liberated?
Just how will godless communism and God; rigid ideological atheism and the uninhibited mindset of promiscuity; practical survival skills and soulfully earnest beliefs; and various other parts of a distorted world collide and re-shape each other in the lives of Philip and Elizabeth Jennings? Just as urgently, how will their children process all of this?
There are no easy answers, and as you should be able to see at this point, if you decide to watch The Americans — whether from season one or the about-to-start season three — it’s not going to be a comfortable journey for you.
It will, however, be quite entertaining and worth your time — not in spite of the discomfort you might feel, but precisely because of it.