Show them your face!

When I heard that The Americans had been passed over for Emmy nominations in major categories, I flew into a red Stalinist rage. There are spoilers ahead for people who haven’t seen the show. If you haven’t, binge watch it. It’s amazing and fun as hell.

The premise of the show is irresistible to me: Married Soviet spies posing as American citizens in the early ‘80s. The show centers on husband and wife Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell) and Phillip Jennings (Matthew Rhys), who struggle with problems in their marriage and whether they are becoming seduced by the American lifestyle. There are all sorts of fun plays on Cold War history as we know more than the characters. After President Reagan gets shot, Elizabeth fears that there will be a coup, being so used to USSR instability that she cannot comprehend an orderly transition of power. The spies ponder whether the Star Wars missile defense program is a ploy to get the Soviet Union to spend itself into bankruptcy in a bid to keep up with the US, which we know to be true in hindsight.

Oh, and the spies also get to disguise themselves in the most fetching wigs and fashions of 1981.

So after the Emmy nominations, I was as enraged as Russell’s character in the first season’s best scene. After spy handler Claudia (Margo Martindale) takes Elizabeth hostage and plays mind games with her as a loyalty test, Elizabeth beats the living hell out of Claudia in a blind rage. Elizabeth tells Claudia she has a message for the KGB: “Show them your face!” she screams as the bloodied woman. “That’s my message to them!” It’s an electrifying scene; the kind that makes you jump out of your chair.

Russell, Rhys and Martindale give superb performances. Also great is Noah Emmerich as the FBI agent Stan, who is placid on the surface but holding back a great deal of anger and sadness at the unspecified trauma that happened during his time infiltrating the KKK. I’m also liking Nina (Annet Mahendru), a woman who works for the Soviet Embassy, who becomes a double agent for Stan but rediscovers her patriotism and betrays him.

Gregory was such a great character and it’s a shame they killed him. There was nobody else like him on TV: An African-American civil rights activist recruited into the Communist Party. His death scene was really well done but he had so much potential. They should have shipped him to Moscow and kept him as a spoiler just in case events warranted.

The spy stuff on The Americans is thrilling but the show is also powerful when it examines the tension and tough decisions in marriage. In a gut wrenching scene, the Jenningses need to decide who will go on the more risky spy mission, based on who will be better off with the kids if the other parent gets killed. There is also the elephant in the room: What will happen when the kids discover their parents are Russian spies whose marriage was a sham and that their very births were part of a long con to convince people their parents were a normal couple?

The way the first season ended was perfect: A gravely injured Elizabeth tells her estranged husband to “come home” in Russian. Given that the spies are told never to speak their native language, it’s a stunning moment. It’s also an effective bookend to the moment in the pilot when Elizabeth tells Phillip her original Russian name for the first time.

Watch The Americans. Do it now.