SummaryElizabeth (Keri Russell) and Philip Jennings (Matthew Rhys) are KGB agents posing as married Americans just outside of Washington D.C. during the 1980s.
SummaryElizabeth (Keri Russell) and Philip Jennings (Matthew Rhys) are KGB agents posing as married Americans just outside of Washington D.C. during the 1980s.
Happily, the show has evolved in how it deals with its central concerns. ... Even at its less-well-loved moments, The Americans is still better than practically anything else around.
The stakes are high, and the rewards are plenty. It’s why The Americans has been and remains one of the best programs on television: It challenges viewers for all the right reasons. It pushes back on expectations to make you dwell on many fleeting moments that build who you are overall.
Season 6 was the incredibly good. First two seasons were just ok. I didn't really want to watch but continued because I didn't want to look for something new. The show got progressively better when you overlook all the plot holes. The last two season were good and the ending was great.
The context of the show has shifted from a trip down memory lane to a fraught part of our contemporary saga. All this new relevance gives The Americans extra bite--but, to be clear, the show was already quite good on its own.
Fans of the show’s intrigue will immediately notice an uptick in tension and momentum from last season that feels like a comeback. And fans of the complex love story between the show’s married pretenders, Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, will pick up on a new layer of iciness that may never thaw.
There’s a feeling in the first three episodes of final-act hyperbole that left me a bit dizzy. After a slow-paced fifth season, the final year begins with a parade of bloody deaths. ... But The Americans gets more patient when it examines the widening cracks in the Jennings marriage.
The body count is high in early episodes and Philip gets pulled back into spying, just not in the exact way as before. This new avenue threatens to upend his family, which, of course, lays the groundwork for one of the show’s psychologically intense Philip-Elizabeth relationship-defining scenes early in the season’s third episode.
Legendary series on par imo with "The Sopranos" that subverted all expectations while somehow managing to surpass them all. Great direction, acting, music, and it remained tense and unexpected up until it's amazing ending.
In the interests of completeness, I've stuck with the Americans through all 6 seasons even though to be perfectly honest the novelty and originality of the concept passed around season 3 never to return. Still one never likes to leave a book unfinished especially if you’ve enjoyed the first few chapters.
Season 6 was adequate if overlong. The believability factor was quite low with Elizabeth now a superwoman and Paige's transformation into a Kgb agent from a born again Christian. The finale was a tad unsatisfying, to say the least. Production values are still great but they went two seasons too long with this show.
First, disregard the 10-ratings, they're shills, this season is a 6 or 7 at best. To me, this was a disappointing final season, not an outright fail, but disappointing, so it gets a 4 and that's generous (for me). All season was plagued by ridiculous implausibilities. When did Elizabeth become an expert assassin? Just killing people left and right with no consequence? And the fact that Henry is totally oblivious to his father, mother, and now sister and engaged in this second life of espionage, stupid. And Holly Taylor's portrayal of Paige just hasn't improved throughout the entire run. Her acting is so banal it defies logic how she was permitted to continue. The finale episode was full of disappointment and implausibles. Elizabeth fesses up to Claudia and Claudia basically issues a full on condemnation which should've by all rights ended in Elizabeth's death right then and there, but she walks, inexplicably. And Beaman getting mentally stunned by Philip is so ridic. It's just one idiocy after another, poor concepts, poor writing, poor directing, poor journey to the end, and poor ending. Ok, yeh, that's a 3 for the season then.
Is it because I'm European and went behind the iron curtain many times, lived in Moscow later that I find the last two seasons completely preposterous?
The depiction of the "love of the Motherland", the selflessness portending the actions or the belief in communism that seems to be motivating the spies (esp. Keri Russel character and her handlers) and the nomenklatura is so risible if it were not a symptom of the current lack of moral compass that has befell America and the West in general.
Likewise Philipp seems such a snowflake , having mid-life existential crises that are just not in the Russian character, and even less that of a spy. Just ridiculous.
Besides the Russians, East Germans or Poles all knew that the regimes were hypocritical, ruthless to the point of bestiality and totally devoid of belief. I doubt the Russian spies in America were that motivated in furthering the communist Internationale but rather trying to justify keeping their position in the land of milk and honey.
That American critics pour such praise on a show that projects the current inner fears and decadence of America on another culture and period says much about their lack of a world outlook, and experience of other cultures.
Funny that this season of Homeland is way may more compelling that the Americans.