Pop Culture Corner

Of Spies and Soccer Practice:The Double Life Drama Strikes AgainWhat is FX’s The Americans all about? Season one debuted last January without much buzz. Mid-winter shows generally start with a trickle, anyways. Most pilots set up their chess pieces slowly, and by the time they want to make a move, the network yanks the show (see AMC’s The Killing and Fox’s Alcatraz). But in the first ten minutes of The Americans’ 70-minute pilot is a hell of a ride, complete with not-so-implicit sex, wigs, disguises, a chase, a kidnapping, a stabbing, then arriving home to tuck in the kids. Yes, that’s all before the credits.FX, after big hits like Damages and the newest game-changer The Bridge, has turned back the clock to the 1980s, in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Keri Russell (of Felicity fame) and Matthew Rhys (Brothers & Sisters) play KGB agents posing as a married couple and executives at a small local travel agency. The pressure cooker is turned on high when a super-clever FBI agent, Stan (Noah Emmerich, who was in Super 8...yeah!), moves across the street. The two main characters go through a conveyor belt of wigs and disguises, exploiting their sexuality and throwing punches while reporting to Claudia, the informant to Moscow. On the FBI side of the series / street, Stan manages to insert a mole in the Russian Embassy, and gets the inside scoop on everything from Reagan’s attempted assassination to a kidnapped KGB operative. It is only fate that Stan discovers who lives across the street, when the unstoppable force meets an immovable object.It’s okay if you’re skeptical, because I definitely was. In the past decade, we’ve been overwhelmed with duplicitous protagonists. Dexter had a blood splatter analyst doubling as a serial killer. Weeds had the suburban mom / marijuana dealer. And, oh yeah, Breaking Bad, with the friendly, unemployed chem teacher doubling as a meth kingpin. I thought that Bad took this genre and shattered it for any other network who would attempt to mimic it. But alas, FX dares to start a new series the same year Bad ends, but with a bit more conventional spin. Spy drama. With the nerve to give us two anti-hero protagonists that are not only murders, but they also want to bring down our entire society. That’s daring. It moves away from era of Bond and Powers and moves into a more modern setting, the scary, stifling, recent Cold War. For all 333 scholars, the show covers modern events we know too well. It even uses real news footage. This is just part of an overall believability, that the show’s fiber is quite genuine. Perhaps this can be attributed to the mind of creator Joe Weisberg (a former CIA agent) and a series of veteran FX writers. Nothing ever feels campy. The violence is graphic and startling, the sex scenes are a bit strong and the stressful moments are a-plenty.The cast, most importantly, is brilliant. Nina, the “little girl,” is brilliant as the mole, who sleeps with the elderly Russian Embassy leader to obtain information to siphon to Stan. We are the character we fear for the most, sneaking around, taking folders, stuffing them in her blazer. She moves around the streets with cigarette in shaking hand, always looking behind her back. Her smallness seems heightened in the environment of male espionage. Stan, over the course of eight episodes, has evolved from the good-guy, work-hard antagonist into a dynamic force to be reckoned with. I won’t give anything away, but let’s just say he’s not as ethical as you would initially paint him. And of course, Russell and Rhys are superb, milking every angle of their dilemma: loyalty, self-preservation, honesty, love and morality. The world of The Americans is a sprawl of dark corners. No one knows when the conflict will end. No one knows what will be the moment when one side pulls the trigger. It’s thrilling. And terrifying.So far, I haven’t seen the same flashes of genius / writing tricks as I have seen in previous FX shows (like Damages or Nip/Tuck), but I have not reached the end of the season yet. I have heard that the finale packs a wild punch. So, rejoice, all, the spy drama is back! Grade: B+ (Tune in next week for a review of Arcade Fire’s Reflektor. I’m screaming with excitement.) ~K