Season 5 of the acclaimed FX Series The Americans has returned after a 9-month hiatus, and it might be hard to follow if you start at this point. I’ve watched religiously over the past four seasons, and I found the new episode hard to understand, at least for the first half hour or so. Nonetheless, despite the violence, tension, and sometimes confusing scenes, it is comforting to have The Americans again to look forward to each week.
The story revolves around Elizabeth and Philip Jennings who live in 1980s suburban Washington, DC with their two teenaged children. They lead dual lives as middle-class travel agents and deep cover “illegal” Russian spies – so deep that they have false U.S. citizenship, and their children have no idea that their parents are Russian. The story follows their personal and espionage exploits during the height of the Cold War nuclear stand-off and the dying days of the Soviet Union.
Soviet and Russian intelligence has always held a special reverence for their “illegals” program. Begun shortly following the 1917 Revolution, the new Soviet State deployed spies under cover in Soviet Embassies, but it also built a separate cadre that could remain in place and carry out espionage and sabotage efforts if the official Russians were under heavy surveillance or kicked out – a strategic reserve. Over the decades, the KGB and its successors developed a small army of operatives with false identities and non-Russian citizenship. As with the Jennings couple in The Americans, even their children often did not know their true allegiance. The recent Tom Hanks movie Bridge of Spies and the arrest of Rudolf Abel is another window into this murky but very real world.
For those who have followed the show, it appears that the writers will again keep us on the edge of our seats. The first episode of the new season introduced a series of new storylines and continued a few old favorites. A central narrative surrounds orders from Moscow for the couple to spill the beans to their unwitting daughter Paige and attempt to bring her into the fold as a new generation spy (with the handy benefit of American citizenship and upbringing). The effort has not always gone well, especially after Paige decided to tell her Pastor that her parents were Soviet spies. This season starts with Paige learning self-defense after witnessing her mother easily and unemotionally kill a mugger at the end of the last season. It is not yet clear to the viewership that Paige is the right material for the KGB, and she remains an existential threat to her parents and their superiors.
Another danger to the couple stems from their decision to remain in Washington despite the arrest of fellow Soviet illegal William Crandall. Crandall, another Soviet spy has been working inside the U.S. biological weapons establishment, sending information and samples to Moscow. He was caught by the FBI at the end of season 4, and we do not know if he provided any clues to identities of our main protagonists. We find out in the new episode that Crandall exposed himself to a deadly toxin and died soon after being arrested as a spy by the FBI. The Jennings’ neighbor, FBI spy-catcher Stan Beeman, realizes there is at least one other uncaught Soviet illegal who was supporting Crandall’s work. One of the show’s most sympathetic characters, KGB officer Oleg Burov, leaves Washington for Moscow and settles into a new job with a police unit investigating corruption, potentially pitting him against his father, a senior Communist Party official.
We also learn that Philip’s Russian son with his former wife is, unbeknownst to Philip, making his way to America. This too has potential to threaten the couple’s cover and aid FBI efforts to uncover their activities.
For those of us who are old enough to remember, The Americans provides a nostalgic look at Cold War Moscow and Washington. Portraits of President Konstantin Chernenko and ‘80s scenes from Moscow’s decrepit Sheremetyevo Airport brought back both good and bad memories.
Whereas The Americans is based on very real Soviet efforts to place sleeper spies in the U.S., the portrayal is by no means wholly accurate. Mike Sulick, the former Head of CIA’s clandestine service previously called out in The Cipher Brief some of the aspects of the show which don’t ring true. The most obvious flaw is that a sensitive deep cover team would never have been allowed to remain in place following so many close calls risking their arrest. In the real-world, they would have been sent home long ago and wouldn’t have had a choice in the matter. Also, the constant violence is unrealistic. The spy vs. spy world of the Cold War was both delicate and dangerous, but Russian spies did not murder people on the streets of Washington. I’m glad though that the fictional KGB’s risk-gain calculus is way off, and that they are being reckless. It insures at least one more season.
While it a pleasure to again have The Americans to look forward to every week, you might want to DVR the episodes. That way you can also go back and try to make sense of the multiple and varied plotlines.
