Philip and Elizabeth Jennings are two KGB spies in an arranged marriage who are posing as Americans in suburban Washington, D.C., they go on to have a kids and now must protect both their identities and family at the same time.
It is a kicky, swift-moving ride that uses its double agent protagonists to explore the divided loyalties and self-delusions that plague all humans, not just extremely attractive and bad-ass Soviet spies.
I'm happy to report that The Americans is still emphatically The Americans -- a superior television series by just about every measure -- direction, storytelling, writing, plot and immaculate performance[s] by [its two] leads.
We know how the Cold War turned out, but as viewers, we're far less certain as to the fates of these characters who may lack our knowledge, but understand full well the potential cost of the games without frontiers they're playing at.
Joe Weisberg's series doesn't feel easily sustainable for years, but that's part of what's so enjoyable about it, the high wire tension it manages in keeping the Jennings in a precarious position while allowing them to stay unexposed
Rather than only offering titillating suspense about spies, undercover ruses, and (it must be said) bad wigs, The Americans provides insight into how cultural differences, misunderstood information, and paranoia can lead to overreactions and escalations.
Drives the anti-hero focus of so many superb viewer-identification series into a new frontier: nationalism. The pair's state-of-the-union is at the star-sickled, hammer-spangled heart of the show. Romances are nearly always mission-bound con-jobs.
