How the Americans Really Should Have Ended

(Safe house.  Claudia is meeting with Elizabeth and Phillip)

Americans #4 season 4: Chlor-and-trash-it-all

Presented as a public service to any Americans fans who may be browsing (spoiler alert if you haven't watched last week's show yet):

The Americans #3 Season 4....the experimental prototype spy family of tomorrow.

OK, OK, I know Episode 4 has already aired, and I am way late in posting this, but hey, I have a day job OK?  Alright, well, in my case, a night job.  And I don't want to dash off a piece of dribble each week, I want to think about it a little bit.  Not that anyone's reading this anyway.

The Americans: Run Away! Run Away!

This could apply to Pastor Tim, who gives this episode its name, who is now in Elizabeth's crosshairs; or to Phillip and Elizabeth themselves, because of the knowledge Tim now has about them and its threat to their cover.

Aaaaaand here we go again....

...with America's favorite KGB agents and their pals, that is. 

The Americans—Mission # 4, Episode 1

FX 22:00  3/16/2016

That includes ambivalent teen daughter Paige (or as her grandmother calls her, Pie-AGE) and oblivious tween son Henry (who names their kid Henry? That should have been a tip off to the FBI.) ( But then again, the FBI agent living closest to the Jennings' is Stan the Man, who is barely aware of anything besides his own navel.)

Why I'm Avoiding Writing About the Americans

I really did want to catch up with this season and review each episode of "The Americans."  I also would like to write that parallel show I would call "The Russians" and maybe a reunion show for 5 years from now called, "The Americans and Russians...in Hawaii!"

But there's a growing allergy I have to the show, which became evident last year when it became clear that Jared killed his family, and the Jennings' handlers wanted their daughter Paige to be the next Jared.

And as the time period in which the show takes place reflects more and more of my own Cold War memories, I'm disappointed by the moral relativism embodied by the show.

The Americans: At Last!

Sorry for my delay in reviewing the latest "The Americans" season


First, a review of the major premises of the series:

Former Mickey Mouse Club-ette and "Felicity" star Keri Russell, and Welsh actor Matthew Rhys, play 2 KGB agents from the Soviet Union pretending to be a plain ol' American mom and dad with nary a Russian (or Welsh) accent between them---named Elizabeth and Phillip Jennings.  They have 2 children who never have been outside the US, Paige and Henry.  Paige and Henry are clueless about their parents' origin, which Elizabeth and Phillips hide pretty well despite giving their children horrible names


Elizabeth and Phillip have a neighbor....depending on whether the neighbor got the house after his divorce; I haven't been able to determine that yet.  He is a (wait for it......) FBI agent.  Stan.  And no, neither Stan nor the Jennings' children have figured it out yet that Elizabeth and Phillip are from the Cheka.  On Stan's part that isn't too surprising.

  Phillip and Stan...

From Russia With a 2 Kid, 1 Car Family, 2 of whom are Soviet Spies, a Clueless FBI AGent who Lives Next Door, and a Promise of Sympathy Distortion

Those are my words, those last two, and sympathy distortion is something the fan of FX's "The Americans" must learn to live with.  Or stop watching it.

The KGB family brings brownies for the FBI agent under whose nose they reside

If you don't watch much TV, then you, like I before a friend told me about it, may not know about this show. It's a little difficult to explain unless you are a Cold War nerd like myself, but basically, the "stars" are a couple (marriage arranged by the KGB) from the Soviet Union, their accents somehow magically erased, living in a cushy split level in 1980s Washington, DC, next door to a clueless FBI agent; amusing themselves with kidnapping, forced repatriation of the odd Russian intelligentsia, a fake marriage (the husband's), meeting cool people and killing them, and by magically keeping their kids from knowing they are KGB spies from the Soviet Union (don't these kids wonder why they never meet their grandmas?)  While all this is going on, the clueless FBI agent not only misses the KGB agents under his nose, but has fallen desperately in love with the woman he believes is his KGB informant, but who used him to get her way back into the good with her "Soviet ambassador" boss, and who may have been in love with him, but is now sleeping with another sort of free-agent agent who is extorting FBI information from the FBI agent by threatening the life of his KGB "informant"/triple agent informant/lover.  All in the context of wives, children, and innocent bystanders who are flicked away like so much acceptable collateral damage.

Are you getting all this?