The Americans (Full Series, Spoilers)

I reviewed Season One of The Americans on June 19th and almost exactly four months later was finally able to finish the sixth and final season, so this has been one heck of a 75-episode marathon. But let me tell you, it was sure as hell worth it.

As I've covered previously, The Americans is on its surface about the Cold War, spies, and 1980s politics, but more than anything else, it's a show about marriage, family, and how the choices we make in the world affect both. Season One sets up the contrast between Philip (Matthew Rhys) and Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell). Philip enjoys American life and repeatedly questions the morality of their work as KGB spies. Elizabeth is the unflinching loyal solider (I often referred to her as SovietBot while watching the show), able to carry out heinous deeds for her homeland and allow the greater principles for which she's fighting to supersede the awful things she does to people. Yet, despite their differences, they need each other and have a unique love unlike any I've seen on television.

The pair ruin and/or murder approximately one life of a mostly innocent person per episode (I'll have to check the math there, but that feels right). Philip often cannot see how the ends justify the terrible means, often to the bewilderment of Elizabeth. We're meant to identify and sympathize with Philip, but the show does a good job of conveying motivation and it's far more nuanced than "Americans Good, Soviets Bad" (to wit, the show's most likable character is Oleg Burov (Costa Ronin), who turns out to be so much more than the entitled womanizer he appears to be at first). Elizabeth does have some pure ideals, it's just that these convictions lead her to unquestioningly carry out any deed requested by handlers Claudia (Esteemed Character Actress Margo Martindale) and Gabriel (an absolutely terrific Frank Langella).

It isn't until near the end of the series that doubts begin to creep in for Elizabeth that Claudia, Gabriel, and the mysterious Centre are truly fighting the good fight. In the fantastic sixth season, Philip quits the KGB and actually winds up being asked to spy on his wife by Arkady Zotov (Lev Gorn) and Oleg. Philip questioned the KGB's motives for years, but it took an outright betrayal of Elizabeth to get her to truly contemplate the merits of her actions.

In-between, there's no shortage of excellent storylines, including:

• Neighbor and FBI agent Stan Beeman's (Noah Emmerich) extremely slow realization of who his next door neighbors really are
• Daughter Paige's (Holly Taylor) somewhat quicker discovery of the same, though she has it spelled out for her after confronting her parents
• The frenemy relationship between Stan and Oleg
• Philip's relationship with, and eventual marriage to Martha, an FBI secretary, whose life becomes completely unraveled
• The outstanding Season Four arc involving bitter biological weapons agent William Crandall (Dylan Baker)
• Philip and Elizabeth dealing with the KGB's wishes to develop Paige as an agent

There were a couple less successful subplots mixed in. I didn't particularly care for the Nina Krilova (Annet Mahendru) story in Seasons Three and Four. She was so disconnected from the rest of the plot that her arc didn't seem to serve much purpose, other than showing the brutality of Soviet "correctional" facilities. Perhaps in recognition of this, the show killed her off in Season Four, but it was about a season and a half too late. Oleg's investigation into the Soviet food supply in Season Five didn't work for me for similar reasons.

These were but mild disappointments, however. The Americans kept the action flowing and there was rarely a dull episode during its run. However, that non-stop excitement meant that a large number of unfortunate souls wound up in the Jennings' destructive path, and the show needed to really fight itself to avoid collapsing into pure misery porn. This is a damning comparison, but the grim mood and minimal humor in the show (the funniest "character" is a primitive mail robot that doesn't do anything but move and beep) occasionally made me think it was like Ozark but with a brighter color palette. 

Of course, that does The Americans absolutely no justice. Elizabeth and Philip Jennings are two of the best characters that TV has ever seen, and the acting by Russell and Rhys could have justified multiple Emmy awards (thankfully, Rhys took home the hardware this year to prevent the pair from completely blanking). Keri Russell played fierce, terrifying, disarmingly friendly, and sexy (often multiple at the same time) throughout the series, and nailed every beat. Her scenes with disguises were particularly great, because no matter which character she played, her dangerous eyes made her nothing short of menacing to the audience, even if her mark was none the wiser.

Rhys was also splendid, but in a much different way. His face carried the pain of the horrible deeds that he and Elizabeth carried out throughout the series, perhaps never more effectively than late in Season Six. He rejoins Elizabeth for a mission that goes awry and has to use an axe to chop off the limbs of a fallen comrade. The sheer anguish that comes through his eyes without him making a sound was probably the best of Rhys' many excellent moments. I flip-flopped throughout the series on who was better between Russell and Rhys and in the end it's a toss-up.

Here's my rankings of the six seasons of the show:

1) Season Four. The biological warfare storyline was the best of the spy plots, and this season had the resolution of the Martha arc along with a maximal allotment of Frank Langella

2) Season Six: The surprising dynamic of Philip and Elizabeth working against one another, plus the excellent finale, plus Oleg being successfully re-integrated into the main plot are just a few reasons that Season Six was great.

3) Season One: The first season accomplished the difficult task of diving straight into the action while setting up the show's dynamics, and the pilot episode is one of the best series premieres I've seen.

4) Season Three: Highlights of this season include Elizabeth and Philip revealing their secret lives to Paige and the outstanding episode in which Elizabeth slowly kills the elderly bookkeeper with pills while Philip bugs the mail robot. Lowlights include literally everything involving Nina.

5) Season Five: The best part of this season is the gutting reveal that Agri-Corp is trying to develop pest-resistant wheat rather than use bugs as a weapon against the Soviet food supply, as it means the Jennings killed yet another innocent person. It's the first of several awful moments in this season that lead to Philip calling it quits.

6) Season Two: A perfectly above-average season of television that had fewer standout moments than the rest.

I'll close with some notes on the finale. The scene in which Stan finally confronts Elizabeth, Philip, and Paige is the pinnacle of the show, as six seasons worth of relationship-building and tension finally come to a head. For lack of a better word, it's perfect. Noah Emmerich brings out Stan's equal feelings of anger, betrayal, and sadness in a wonderful bit of acting. It's cathartic to watch the Jennings finally be truthful (well, mostly) with their closest friend and neighbor after all of these years, and Stan's inability to bring himself to actually stop them from leaving (or shoot them) is crushing, because it renders worthless the chase he's been on since 1980.

Worse still, on the way out, Philip suggests his girlfriend Renee is a Soviet spy. The show makes the excellent choice to never confirm whether that's true or not. The truth is, it doesn't matter. Either way, it completes the destruction of Stan's life because he'll never be able to trust her again. It's just one more life ruined by the Jennings on their way out. The only solace is that Stan still has his relationship with Henry, the boy to whom he was more of a father than Philip ever was.

It's fitting that both children wind up staying behind in America, as its the only life they ever known. Henry's never really had parents, and he's better off in a familiar place. Paige had a relationship built on lies for years, and while she was eventually integrated into aspects of Soviet life, Elizabeth's repeated dishonesty with her and the horrible things she finally realizes her parents had done are what I think led to her hopping off that train.

In this era of Peak TV, it seems like there's no shortage of excellent content everywhere (to wit, just see the high grades I've been handing out all over the place in 2018). I really do believe, though, that The Americans is an all-timer, a show that stands up well to some of the best the creative minds of this medium have ever produced. The Wire still stands tall above the rest, but I'll soon be debating where this stands among the other greatest shows I've ever seen.

Series Grade: A