The Americans

The Americans has always been great at balance: balancing attention between its two main characters, balancing the intelligence and effectiveness of both American and Russian operations, and fantastic at keeping proceedings from becoming too outlandish, soapy, or preachy. That careful construction is what makes an enjoyable episode like “Yousaf” feel a bit off: as season two continues to focus more and more on Philip’s breakdown, “Yousaf” goes a bit into left field, transforming Larrick into a Super Villian, and bringing back an unfamiliar face from season one to draw parallels to Elizabeth, who is sidelined for most of the hour (left to deal with Paige and her new Bible-loving ways).

There’s no moment more significant in “Martial Eagle” than the opening sequence, which sees Philip murder three military employees on a top-secret base in the dark of night. All he wanted to do was take some pictures, and it ends with three people’s (four if you count the man Philip ‘spared’, who died in the cold anyway) deaths, yet another in a long line of “wrong place, wrong time” murders of Philip’s tenure with the KGB. As the season’s carried on, however, this seemingly endless stream of violence has weighed more and more on the mind of Philip – who slowly begins to crack under the strain during the events of “Martial Eagle”.

It’s death, death, and more death on the schedule for the Jennings as the second season of The Americans continues: “New Car” doesn’t just force Elizabeth to face (literally) the death of her protege Lucia, but makes all of the KGB face an ideological truth when information the Jennings stole turned out to be fake, leading to the death of 160 young sailors of the coast of the motherland. And as the bodies continue to pile up, Elizabeth and Philip are growing more and more on edge, an anxious fragility that’s underlined every scene this season with a new sense of urgency – and more importantly, ambiguity, as the spy world becomes as confusing and nonsensical as the many lives they’re both trying to maintain.

Lies, lies, lies…. can’t any of these people just be honest with each other?!! I’m kidding, of course – but “Arpanet” seems to go out of its way to throw shade over every character, from the increasingly creepy Laric, to quietly conspicuous Kate and the ever-facetious Oleg. There isn’t a lot of coherent evidence as to what these people are up to (or more importantly, where their alliances lie) – and because of that, “Arpanet” is a tough egg to crack, especially with six hours left for these motivations and grand plans to come to light.

For a season that opened with a family being brutally murdered in their hotel room, “Behind the Red Door” reaches new levels of darkness for The Americans, a display of just how ugly things can get when love is involved (and when its in the dangerous minefield of espionage, multiply that potential ugliness by about a thousand). Openly dramatic but also intensely intimate, “Behind the Red Door” is not only one of the best episodes of The Americans this season, but in the series.

The Americans continues a strong second season with one of the show’s more ambitious thematic episodes.

The Americans continues its intense focus on Elizabeth in another standout episode.

Paige takes a trip and Elizabeth considers delivering a letter in a low-key, character-building episode of The Americans.

The weight of last week’s events weigh heavy on the Jennings family in another terrific hour.

The Americans is back – and as awesome as ever.

10. The Good Wife (CBS) This year, The Good Wife did the unthinkable. Five seasons (and almost 100 episodes) in, it blew up the show. The original premise, that the publically shamed wife of a crooked politician begins her life anew at a former flame’s law firm, is gone, replaced by a baroque melodrama of …

The beginning of the year had a wealth of TV riches, a trend that continued through the spring. Here’s part two of Kate Kulzick, Simon Howell, Ricky D, and Randy Dankievitch’s list of 2013’s best TV episodes.

2013 is only halfway done, but there’s a fair chance that, in a television context, it might well be looked back upon as the year any and all accepted rules of “quality television” became utterly meaningless and the promise of great things arrived in all shapes and sizes, from all directions. Consider Netflix’s House of …

Espionage is an interesting world to think about. Could you imagine inhabiting an entirely different identity and life for years at a time – or be forced to be many people at once? I’d have trouble just wearing the right wig with the right informant, in all honesty.

There have been a lot of loose ends spread throughout the first season of The Americans, and many of them come back into play in ‘The Oath’. It’s a little jarring at first, seeing all these elements from earlier episodes suddenly come back into frame again – but it does so in such a fascinating way, it manages to utilize all those unresolved plots to ramp up the tension of the episode, a crescendo that continues until it’s at a deafening level by the final scene.

Inherent in the idea of ‘war’ is community; people can’t fight wars by themselves, whether it’s on the front battle lines or deep covert operations. Unfortunately, the stress of war (covert or not) tends to make individuals isolate themselves, withdrawing from the people around them as they struggle with the things they’ve seen and done. These kinds of individuals are all over the place in The Americans, and in ‘Covert War’ we see how hard it is to stay sane in their world alone.

In a surprising move, The Americans shows us its hand halfway through ‘Only You’, an episode focused solely around the FBI’s hunt for Chris Amador’s murderer. In a scene near the episode’s midpoint Phillip and Elizabeth – now living in separate quarters – go to meet Granny, who tells them that it’s time to move Gregory out of the country. He’ll be rewarded she tells them, but she wonders if he’ll be able to adjust to life in the Soviet Union.

In film, spy work is often glossy, explosion-filled affairs where instincts and good cheekbones make for a perfect hero, a man who always makes the right decision – and even when he doesn’t, is usually let off the hook, only having to face a minor setback before saving the day yet again. The Americans has often played the antithesis of that, and takes it to a new level in ‘Safe House’, a fantastic episode where everyone’s instincts are as wrong as they can be.

The Americans Season 1, Episode 8 ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ Directed by Bill Johnson Written by Joel Fields & Joe Weisberg Airs Wednesdays at 10pm ET on FX ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ is an opportunity for The Americans to breathe a little as it sets up its smaller plot arcs to close out the season. While doing so, it struggles to …

The Americans Season 1, Episode 7 ‘Duty and Honor’ Directed by Alex Chapple Written by Joshua Brand airs Wednesday nights at 10pm ET on FX   “You Americans think everything is white and black; for us, it is all gray.” – Nina On the surface, duty and honor seem like very simple concepts – but as …

The Americans Season 1, Episode 6 ‘Trust Me’ Directed by Dan Sackheim Written by Sneha Koorse Airs Wednesdays at 10pm (EST) on FX   An hour absent of the usual dose of espionage, ‘Trust Me’ puts all of the show’s characters – major and minor – into reaction mode after the events of ‘COMINT’, as …

The Americans Season 1, Episode 5 ‘COMINT’ Directed by Holly Dale Written by Melissa James Gibson Airs Wednesday nights at 10 ET on FX For a show in its fifth hour, ‘COMINT’ is a fairly bold episode that takes a stark look at how gender plays into the spy games of The Americans with an hour full of …

The Americans Season 1, Episode 4 ‘In Control’ Directed by Jean de Segonzac Written by Joel Fields & Joe Weisberg Airs Wednesday nights at 10pm ET on FX Back when The Americans was announced, I wondered how much of  ‘historical’ drama it would desire to be. Specifically, I was curious if the show was going to tackle the …