I just finished watching the first season of FX’s The Americans. If you didn’t watch it, stop reading, block out 13 hours, then find it on demand or online. The blog will still be here when you’re done. As usual, there are spoilers.
* * *
I was a government major in college. I went to school in Washington, D.C. Espionage, while not something I wanted to devote my career to, has always intrigued me. So when I heard about The Americans – a series about a married couple living in suburban Washington in the early 1980s who were actually KGB agents – well, sign me up. I caught a couple early episodes and was hooked. Unfortunately, with work and Quizzo, I wasn’t able to watch on Wednesday nights. So I had kind of “binge watch” and catch up. I finished it a couple days ago and holy crap, I can’t wait for it to come back.
Keri Russell is fantastic as Elizabeth Jennings, wife of Philip, mother of Paige and Henry, and daughter of Mother Russia. I had never seen her in anything before, but from what everyone else is saying, this is her best work, so I guess that’s a good thing. Matthew Rhys, who plays Philip, is also great, and he makes Philip incredibly likeable.
Which is kind of interesting, isn’t it? I mean, here is a couple that is living in the United States solely for the purpose of destroying the United States. And yet, I found myself rooting for them. They’re “antiheroes,” I think, but at the same time, you exhale with relief when they escape from a potentially life-altering (or ending) situation. That is a credit to the writing, of course, but the performances by the actors are all superb. I can’t think of one single character of any importance that wasn’t any good.
I never watched The Sopranos, but I imagine if you did, you were rooting for Tony, even though he was a criminal. I feel like the Jenningses are in a different place, though. They’re technically criminals, yes, but they’re not doing it for profit; they’re doing it for love of country. Put it this way: we think of Russian mobsters in Russia as criminals, but do we think of American spies in Russia as criminals? I feel like there’s a difference, at least in my mind, and it affects how I view and think about the show.
Of course, The Americans has also drawn some comparisons to Homeland. It seems like every new drama does these days, especially ones involving international relations, intelligence, or terrorism. I listened to a couple Grantland podcasts on the show, and one of them raised a very interesting point: the first season of Homeland was defined by the question of whether or not Nick Brody was a terrorist. You had to wait half a season to find out the answer. On the flip side, you know who Philip and Elizabeth are before the opening credits roll. When you do that, the suspense has to come from smaller elements of the plot, and the folks running The Americans did a fantastic job with that.
The series is set in the early 1980s, just after Ronald Reagan is elected President of the United States and the Cold War escalates. There are a number of ways to make it clear to the viewer “when” the actions are happening – clothing and hair styles, television news broadcasts of noteworthy events in the background, putting “Washington, 1981” on the screen – and one of them is music. And it’s not just the music the characters hear in the show, but the music that plays over pivotal scenes. It’s almost always from the time period of the show, and while it rarely takes away from what’s going on, sometimes it elevates a scene to a whole other level.
For instance, the opening scene of the pilot episode features Philip and a fellow “Directorate S” agent chasing down a defector while Elizabeth meets them with the car to transport him to a freighter to be returned to the Soviet Union. Their colleague, Rob, ends up getting stabbed, and their detour to drop him off near a hospital leads to them missing the boat.
During the scene, a version of Fleetwood Mac’s “Tusk” plays. If you’re familiar with the song, think of it in your head while you picture three guys running through the streets in a life-or-death chase. It fits, doesn’t it? As soon as I saw it, I had one of those, “aw, crap, now I’m stuck” moments.
Later in the episode, Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” gets some play over a scene where the couple dumps the aforementioned defector in the Potomac River. There is no dialog, just Phil, and it’s another great scene.
But the one that takes the cake, the one that stuck with me enough to make me write this post, was the very last scene of the season. Elizabeth has been shot during a chase by FBI agent Stan Beeman, who doubles as her neighbor (he doesn’t know Elizabeth is a KGB agent, and doesn’t know the couple he was shooting at was the one that lives across the street). As she is tended to at the KGB’s empty building-turned-medical ward, Philip calls the Beemans and asks them to look after their kids for a couple days. Imagine; he’s asking the man who shot his wife to watch his children as part of their cover story.
As Philip leaves the phone booth, we hear the opening strains of Peter Gabriel’s “Games Without Frontiers.” The song has references to different figures related to war and international tension, which would make it perfectly applicable on that point alone. But more than that, there’s a certain tension throughout the track that underscores the tension in the scene. Elizabeth lies on a bed, a bullet just removed from her abdomen. Philip waits silently by her side. Meanwhile, their daughter, who seems to have grown suspicious of her mother, starts snooping around in the basement. Nothing seems out of the ordinary, but right at the end, she turns and looks at…something. What it is, we don’t know. Does she see something? Is she merely looking around? What is she thinking? We don’t know. As the musical tension builds up, and the scene reaches a potential crescendo, it’s over.
Oh, it was so well done. The song’s been in my head for two days. I’ve watched the scene three times. So good. So, so good.
The Americans won’t be back until the winter of 2014. When it comes back, there will almost assuredly be a buzz about it that dwarfs any anticipation that preceded the first season. I promise you, it’s worth it.
A Revolution From My Bed 