Too much too fast and too unbelievable is my current judgment on this new series, after watching the latest installment from March 6th.
Sure, it's often a fair criticism of TV series that they develop their ongoing story lines too SLOWLY but The Americans seems to have the reverse problem. Things are happening too fast. For example, check out the most recent episode: The FBI agent is working with the female mole at the Russian embassy who fears for her life because she has heard from the "Resident" at the embassy that the Russians suspect a mole has penetrated their HQ. She confides her fears to the agent and within MINUTES of "TV time" he gets diamonds planted in the Resident's purchase of tea and manages in no time to get the KGB suspicions planted onto the Resident, who is caught with the planted diamonds and then immediately shuffled onto a plane back to "Mother Russia" where presumably a bullet to the back of the head awaits him. Problem solved and mole now safe! Re "unrealism": at the same time the KGB, worrying about the leak, kidnaps its own agents, the couple who are the "heroes" of this series, pretending to be FBI agents and subject them to "torture" (pounding with a phone book, dunking head in water---rather mild tortures by supposed KGB standards) in order to test their loyalty. After a few minutes of this torture, their KGB handler steps in to stop the test, but herself gets beaten up with an inch of her life by Keri Russell, who can't abide having their loyalty suspected---although she herself knows full well that her husband has already confided a desire to defect. Does anyone really believe the KGB would have handled this situation this way, OR would have tolerated their agents attacking and beating up their handlers in response? Worth watching because of the show's total unpredictability but please nobody should pretend that The Americans is in any way a realistic portrayal of the way "spy versus spy" worked back in Reagan Cold War America. If the Russians had been this dumb we would have won the Cold War in the 1950s...
Sure, it's often a fair criticism of TV series that they develop their ongoing story lines too SLOWLY but The Americans seems to have the reverse problem. Things are happening too fast. For example, check out the most recent episode: The FBI agent is working with the female mole at the Russian embassy who fears for her life because she has heard from the "Resident" at the embassy that the Russians suspect a mole has penetrated their HQ. She confides her fears to the agent and within MINUTES of "TV time" he gets diamonds planted in the Resident's purchase of tea and manages in no time to get the KGB suspicions planted onto the Resident, who is caught with the planted diamonds and then immediately shuffled onto a plane back to "Mother Russia" where presumably a bullet to the back of the head awaits him. Problem solved and mole now safe! Re "unrealism": at the same time the KGB, worrying about the leak, kidnaps its own agents, the couple who are the "heroes" of this series, pretending to be FBI agents and subject them to "torture" (pounding with a phone book, dunking head in water---rather mild tortures by supposed KGB standards) in order to test their loyalty. After a few minutes of this torture, their KGB handler steps in to stop the test, but herself gets beaten up with an inch of her life by Keri Russell, who can't abide having their loyalty suspected---although she herself knows full well that her husband has already confided a desire to defect. Does anyone really believe the KGB would have handled this situation this way, OR would have tolerated their agents attacking and beating up their handlers in response? Worth watching because of the show's total unpredictability but please nobody should pretend that The Americans is in any way a realistic portrayal of the way "spy versus spy" worked back in Reagan Cold War America. If the Russians had been this dumb we would have won the Cold War in the 1950s...