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The Americans: The Best, Most Subversively Conservative Show on Television
(Author’s note: Though this review discusses some elements from the show, it is spoiler-free and makes no reference to specific plot points.)
The year is 1981. Philip and Elizabeth Jennings (Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell) live in Falls Church, Virginia, just outside the District of Columbia. They are the owners of the DuPont Circle Travel Agency and have two children, Paige and Henry. They’re also KGB agents — but not just any KGB spies — deep cover operatives. Though born in Russia, they’ve lived most of their lives in the United States, were assigned to usurp the identities of American children who died young, and pose as loyal and faithful citizens while carrying out espionage. That is the premise of the FX Network’s series The Americans.
It’s hard to say whether the writers of the show have intended for this to be the message, but what consistently strikes me is how unambiguously good the life in the United States is depicted as in comparison to that in the Soviet Union. The writers put this on display repeatedly through the tensions that develop between the show’s titular couple.
On the one hand is Elizabeth, a true believer, who’s internalized the Soviet propaganda she was raised with. You can hear her frequently mouthing platitudes about the poor and about “the struggle” for international socialism that sound like something Bernie Sanders might say. This is her justification for the dirt she dishes out. She is largely indifferent to the material prosperity she sees around her, focused instead on the inequality she observes, even though her own upbringing was demonstrably more impoverished than that of even the poorest Americans.
Elizabeth’s husband, Philip — who has been seduced by the promise of America and by its creature comforts — is an entirely other story. “The food’s pretty good and the electricity stays on,” he says in response to Elizabeth’s outrage at the display of inequality in America. Philip has serious doubts about the morality of the actions he and Elizabeth undertake, but his loyalty to his birth nation has become secondary to the loyalty he has developed to his wife and the family they have made while following orders.
In some ways, the show is reminiscent of Breaking Bad and Walter White in that you root for the show’s main characters, but you simultaneously want them to fail, but the subtlety of the messaging is impressive. The right ideals tend to be rewarded: openness within your family, solidarity, love, loyalty and selflessness. Dissent from those ideals tends to be punished.
There is, however, some moral ambiguity. The Jennings are spies living within our society, and carry out acts of espionage against this nation. They kill opponents of their cause, lie ruthlessly and sacrifice those whom they draw or threaten into the service of the USSR and its ideals. That’s part of the point: that, on that side of the ledger, the ends utterly justify any means.
The Jennings are caught within a war; a secret war, to be sure, and the people who keep this nation’s secrets have vulnerabilities, and those vulnerabilities can be exploited through a variety of means, including betrayal. The show presents a clear difference in moral culpability between those who are simply “doing their job” and the betrayers, and the Jennings’ job comes with immense risk.
But in the end, The Americans leaves no doubt that the Evil Empire richly earned its title. The Jennings’ KGB masters place onerous demands upon them, lie to them, and insist that doing so is for the good of all. The Jennings and their family are nothing but pieces in a game; pieces that can be sacrificed and manipulated in service of the Soviet endgame.
That in itself is the most conservative question the show asks: What would you do in service of your ideals, and do the ends truly justify how you achieve them?
The Americans is rated TV-MA. It contains language, violence, adult situations and drug use.
Published in General
Agreed. I really like how they’re able to humanize the Soviet agents without minimizing the evil of the Soviet ideology/system. The episode where Elizabeth forces the office worker to commit suicide by taking an overdose of pills was a great example. She’s sympathetic, but at the same time it’s clear that she never actually questions the morality of the act.
It’s not just Elizabeth and Philip either. The men and women who work at the Soviet embassy are also portrayed as fully-fleshed, complex humans working within an evil system. Even the head of the KGB Residentura has his soft side, trying to protect his staff from the most egregious decisions of “The Center”.
It’s a good analogy. While Breaking Bad goes to great lengths to maintain that Walter is fully human, as well as a loving husband and father, it never minimizes the evil of his business.
I think Hannah Arendt would have appreciated these shows. They illustrate the banality of evil rather well.
I agree with your take, and (attempting to avoid spoilers), we also are shown that the USSR was obsessed with “Star Wars,” giving credence to the view that Reagan’s plan had merit, if only as a head fake. This is not an article of faith with liberals by any means.
The real costs to our side of the shadow war are dealt with spectacularly as well. Beeman experiences firsthand the fallout from operating outside of the rules. His family suffers both for his loyalty and his disloyalty.
I recently watched the very first episode (Amazon Prime) – and I agree with you that it’s very well done. I have chosen to not watch any additional episodes, though, because I believe that after three episodes of watching Elizabeth-as-true-believer I would end up so frustrated that I would throw my Kindle Fire across the room – and I don’t want to do that. (Too bad I don’t trust my impulse control)
She isn’t nearly as overt in the vast majority of the episodes.
Philip and Stan are the real highlights of the show in my estimation because they show the strain of doubt and the tough decisions that people who don’t have the fire of the committed have to make.
When she does pop up with some of these statements, it almost becomes comical because she is in deep, deep denial about what she’s doing. As the show goes on, the signs that she gets just keep on pointing ever more loudly in the direction that she ought to be going, but she’s stubborn.
Another aspect of this which makes it fascinating is their relationship with their kids and the fact that this relationship is strained because of their lies and shady behavior.
I like the show a lot for that stuff.
Another good show at least first season was Falling Skies. The first season of the show was probably one of the most conservative I have seen of anything in a long while. Later seasons not so much.
Another standout character is Claudia, played to perfection by Margo Martindale. Indeed, the secondary characters really make the show work. Martha, Agent Gaad, Oleg, Nina. They all add layers of complexity to the plots, and each one if fully drawn.
Everybody is right on these topics. The acting and writing is truly top-notch.
The Frank Langella character is evil, yet never raises his voice, let alone commit a violent act.
From a style standpoint, I get the impression they used a SD camera then up-sampled to a HD quality to achieve the grainy 80s tech look to it.
The show is astonishingly good at getting the little things right. One character was apparently asked to re-read his lines because the language people on set wanted him to do a different Russian accent. (And yes, all the actors playing embassy personnel are native Russian speakers. Novel idea!)
It shouldn’t surprise that a show offering a hat tip to Solzhenitsyn (an episode title starting “A Day in the Life of…”) practices the Rule of the Final Inch. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_First_Circle
If you are a fan of excellent TV (Breaking Bad, Fargo, The Knick, Better Call Saul, etc.), I can’t recommend this show highly enough.
We couldn’t wait for the new season to start! Great accompanying music too.
I tried the show and didn’t get past the first episode. I’ll have to revisit it.
I avoided the show because I couldn’t abide the idea of KGB agents being portrayed as the good guys. Sounds like my first impression might have been wrong.
Now that I’ve finally got Prime I’ve wondered if I should give it a try. I think you’ve convinced me. If they really immerse the viewer into the time period it will put it on the very top of my list.
Agree with everything. I love books and shows depicting the era (Gorky Park comes to mind).
I like how they went with depicting the Russian characters in the show. They aren’t so much whiskered bomb throwers as they are banal bureaucrats in service to an awful regime. The storyline of the daughter finding religion is fascinating too.
There’s no-one to like in this series. Watched for two seasons. Lefty characatures of the FBI. Doubt I’ll go back.
Further evidence that I need to watch this.
The first I heard of the show was Rush Limbaugh expressing his disgust that its producer was quoted as saying, “we’re going to try to make Americans root for the KGB.”
But no-one (except pro-Communist types – and maybe not even they) who watches the show will be tempted to root for these ruthless agents or for the system they labor for. Their brutality in the service of evil is not disguised or soft-pedaled in any way. I now suspect the producer was hoping to get a negative reaction from Rush as publicity for the new show.
I’d be very interested to see how the show handles the fall of the Berlin wall, if it gets that far. Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal, whose opinion I greatly respect, wrote a great review of the series about a year ago.
[Actually there was one time that I cheered for the Mathew Rhys character – when he dispensed some vigilante justice to the punk he and his daughter encountered in the department store (first season I think)].
My favorite show. And I disagree vehemently that there’s no one to like in the show. For one, Martha is about the most humane tv character ever created. But even the characters you’re not supposed to like are, at times, empathetic and likable. Great characters are great because of how conflicted they can make you feel. Not one character on “The Americans” is uninteresting… even the kids are compelling and not annoying, and that’s saying something. At its heart, this show is an examination of personal relationships that just so happens to have some kick-butt spy plots as a backdrop. Fantastically entertaining.
Amen, brother! We’re about to watch episode 1 of season 4 tonight.
She’s been a big fan of all four seasons.
For all those worried about the KGB being given the white hats… there are a lot of gray hats (on both sides). Good people can do bad things, and vice versa. And there’s a pretty funny scene early on where one of the leads has to cover -surreptitiously, of course- for the shortcomings of the Soviet space program.
Two possible caveats, neither of which is the show’s perceived politics:
The series is indeed faithful to its setting – not just the (well-chosen) music, but also the way it weaves in news events big & small (incl. some Reagan video), etc.
Maj, I haven’t seen it. I don’t watch much TV at all. But this is where my spider-sense is tingling: every time a conservative journal or pundit tells us how deeply conservative this movie or that TV show or that album really is, word seems to get back to the producers of such content, and the inevitable reply always seems to be “Well, those knuckle dragging right wingers just can’t see that we’re deconstructing racist/sexist/homophobic/etc, etc society”. Or in the case of the show 24, after it was pointed out how “right wing” the show was, they gleefully spent the last season or two making it as explicitly left wing as possible, so much so that no one could miss it. A deliberate poke in the eye to the fans of the show’s previous slant.
Long story short, one of the reasons I largely gave up pop culture was being tired of the inevitable sucker punch.
I’ll definitely have to check it out, as I’m on Prime, and might not be renewing. I got into Fargo last fall, and wish I didn’t have to wait until October for the next season of that.
I’ve watched the first few episodes. The stories are good, but the show is not very immersive into the time. It doesn’t feel like the ’80s.
I also love the show, and I agree that it is conservative (Oliver North is a consultant on some of the episodes). The backwards Soviet economy is constantly shown, in that the only way they can keep up is to steal and copy technology..
There’s a lot of sex in the show, but then again, I’m a prude. However, for the less puritanical, Keri Russell is not exactly difficult on the eyes.
There is no doubt that the Soviet Union is evil on the show with how they treated Anton and Nina.
I love this show. Definitely one of my favorite running shows. Every season is so strong and underrated.
Honestly, I never really thought it’s conservative or some particular ideology-leaning. It’s probably because I tend to avoid thinking about this. If a show is or becomes obnoxiously liberal, then I stop watching it. There are tons of great shows out there. No reason in watching one that has some noticeable ideology or agenda.
We’ve watched the fist two seasons I agree with all the partitive this noted above and enjoy the show very much. I find it not so much conservative as honest or true to life about the Soviet system. The violence and sex bother Mrs OS more than me so it is harder for her to enjoy the show, still I think she sees value on watching it. We have recently been sidetracked by discovering blue bloods, way behind, I know, and are trying to catch up on that series before our prime membership is up as we don’t intend to renew it but we’ll switch to Netflix I think. We are cord cheers and still find more to watch than time to watch shows we consider worth watching. The Americans is definitely worth a go IMHO.
I don’t know why we call this conservative. Perhaps if it had been popular in the 50s or 60s when liberals denied pervasive Soviet influence and many did not see it as evil, but now that’s its part of history, the anti Soviet thing isn’t an important part of being conservative. Their successors are right here in the Democratic party, freed of the embarrassment of support from the evil empire.
I have enjoyed the show since the beginning and agree with many comments – even the contradictory ones – particularly about liking the characters, who are very well developed. This is a valid and clarifying comparison of American vs. Soviet worldview and tactics of the time.
An interesting fact is the occasional and passing response of our KGB protagonists to the thought that their children might follow in their footsteps. The fact that they viscerally oppose the idea is, I believe, telling.