After seeing endless hype about how the FX series The Americans is one of the best shows on television, I decided to dive in despite my reservations about the premise. The show, for those unaware, is about Soviet spies posing as an American couple. It takes place in the early 1980s, with the Reagan-era prosecution of the Cold War front-and-center. Elizabeth and Phillip Jennings live in the D.C. area with their preteen-teenage son and daughter. By day, they run a family-owned travel agency, but much of their time (and much of the show) is taken up with stealing classified information, spying on American intelligence and counter-intelligence agencies, undermining American actions pertaining to the Soviet Union and its interests, and the like. They are very well trained, very good at what they do, and supported by a robust network both within the Soviet embassy and lurking in the shadows.

The show drew me in, and I recently finished binge-watching the first three seasons on Amazon Prime. With Season 5 about to be broadcast, I will make time to catch up on Season 4 before turning to my DVR to keep me current. Suffice to say – the show is good.

My initial reservations were rooted in the expectation that the show would whitewash the main characters’ activities and create a fantasy about how Mother Russia was not what Reagan called the “evil empire” but instead merely a misunderstood non-enemy that cared for her people more than America cared for hers. The show does offer some of that, but it does so from the perspective of the Jennings couple, and this narrative is necessary to explain their devotion to their “job” despite living two decades in the comfort of America.

Before delving into particulars that would qualify as spoilers, let me offer praise for the show’s writing, pacing, and acting. It’s well-crafted, and despite the “slow burn” nature of spy craft, rarely seems to drag. It also does a fair job of humanizing the various characters, showing them as real people with real non-work lives and concerns, and goes well beyond being a series of spy vignettes.

However, the show doesn’t quite deserve the sheaf of 10/10 adulations that pepper the internet. It has its flaws, and it has its biases.

*** The obligatory spoiler alert ***

I cannot say what the typical viewer’s empathies are towards the main characters – whether people find themselves rooting for the Jennings to succeed. I, for one, have yet to feel any thrill or happiness when they succeed in a “mission.” The fact is, the main characters are soulless exploiters and stone cold murderers, and not just of “the enemy” i.e. spies and law enforcement on the American side. They manipulate everyday people, via blackmail, sex and emotion, and kill at the drop of a hat when they deem it necessary to protect their secret. The show makes efforts to portray emotional turmoil, and there is a slow-build of guilt and self-assessment in one of the characters, but they, as far as I’m concerned, have been beyond redemption since the get-go. They are Bad People, doing Bad Things in support of a repressive and murderous regime. The occasional mentions of how they’re fighting for “freedom” for people around the world and anti-capitalist pap about how Americans put too much emphasis on “want” and not enough on “need” might show us what drives Elizabeth, but do nothing to justify her actions. In one particular bit, some classified plans they stole turned out to be fakes deliberately offered up by the Americans, and the Soviets suffered a catastrophic loss. The Jennings were over-the-top outraged by the deaths of some of their countrymen, as if they were entitled to steal those plans in order to maintain military parity, even as they went about murdering Americans.

All this is not necessarily a problem, since it’s a reality that such a mindset would be necessary for them to do as they do and to avoid detection across years. The problem lies in a number of excesses. I understand that an episodic show needs to keep the viewer interested, but the body count, the number of “wrong place wrong time, sucks to be you” killings (that somehow never draw the attention of the police), the idea that a skinny 5′ 4″ woman can routinely beat down 200+ pound men, that someone can be trained in a matter of a few hours to successfully lie to an interrogator or beat a polygraph, and that the American counterintelligence system is bumbling and incompetent enough to be routinely outsmarted by a couple who also run a small business and raise two children right under their noses is a bit much.

The show manages to counterweigh these flaws well enough to keep me (and, obviously, others), interested and coming back for more. It shows us, in a way that only serialized television can, the tradecraft of spies, how people are subverted, how bugs are planted, how data is gathered, how secrets are stolen. It shows, as much as it can, the long-term toil and drudgery that is far closer to reality than the almost commonplace murders.

Years back, when I was a young lad working in the defense industry during the Reagan years, I heard that fully half of Soviet military technology was stolen from America. I came to understand how that could be, and this show does a good job of depicting the complex spy machine that accomplished all that theft. As I noted, it’s over-the-top in a number of ways, and as the show runs its course (it’s scheduled to go six seasons), there’s a risk that they’ll keep escalating what’s already excessive in order to keep viewers interested. They run the risk of losing viewers like me if they do that, but TV is ultimately a numbers game, and it may very well be that viewers want the over-the-top more than they want attachment to reality.

I am curious to see how the story progresses. Obviously, the Jennings must avoid detection and capture throughout the series run – if they’re ever busted, the show will be over. And, it is a fact that the good guys don’t always win, and that bad guys sometimes get away. Still, if the show attempts to reach its conclusion with a “redemption” of the Jennings after all they’ve done, it will join the list of shows (e.g. Dexter, Lost) that failed their viewers in the end.

• About the Author

About Peter Venetoklis

I am twice-retired, a former rocket engineer and a former small business owner. At the very least, it makes for interesting party conversation. I'm also a life-long libertarian, I engage in an expanse of entertainments, and I squabble for sport.

Nowadays, I spend a good bit of my time arguing politics and editing this website.

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