Stealth

I was rather late getting into the videogame scene. Despite time spent at friends’ houses playing Sonic and Donkey Kong Country on their Mega Drive and SNES, it wasn’t until much later – when the PlayStation was well and truly established – that I finally got on board. Games like Crash Bandicoot and Tomb Raider were great fun, and helped reinforce the all-important playground notion that twelve-year-old-me had picked the ‘right’ console (‘N64 still uses cartridges and can’t get proper FMV!’ we chanted).

For all the fantastic work The Americans and its performers do with theme and character, The Americans most underrated asset is its ability to develop intricate, layered storytelling without completely losing its audience. It makes episodes like “Stealth” – which mostly exists in between the actions of the past and future – so much more rewarding to watch, an hour that rapidly begins pulling season-long story threads together in rapid fashion.

Stealth as a video game genre was a pretty hard sell in the 90’s. In a time period when the medium was barely outgrowing its infancy, the idea of giving the player less action instead of more seemed ludicrous.