The Americans

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So I've been enjoying the television show The Americans about a pair of deep cover KGB agents in Northern Virginia in the 1980's. It makes good television; the acting and writing is well done, and the set-up appeals to the same part of us that like gangster or crime dramas - with greed replaced by a morality and patriotism, but to another country. Great character development, plotting, meta plotting, and originality.

I recommend it, but story reading now if you are interested - spoiler alert!

After watching the season finale, I was struck by the story within the story. On the surface it was a classic season ender with the husband and wife team coming close to being caught by the FBI yet managing to not only survive to face a new season, but also finding solace in each other...very moving and very trope.

What I like was the four or so Easter Eggs hidden in the stories of the supporting and in many ways "extra" characters. The agents handler, played by the amazing Margo Martindale, concludes an arc in which the agents original handler was retired early in the season and then later assassinated by the CIA (maybe) in Moscow. Martidale's character gets revenge, but not in a horrible over the top dramatic way - perhaps though all the more disturbing.

The best to me though was the similarities and character development hard choices made by two "extras" one an African American housekeeper who had been coerced by the agents into bugging the US Secretary of Defense's home, and the other a Soviet Embassy secretary who had been blackmailed into spying on her bosses for the FBI. In the finale episode, both of these sideline characters face their own conscience and have to balance self-preservation against patriotism and the moral right thing to do. Both chose self sacrifice, highlighting the best similarities among us all.

The final surprise was the quiet development through the season, culminating in this episode, of Arkady. Starting out as a practically faceless assistant to the KGB head in DC, he evolved in this episode to several cases of inventiveness and decisiveness that you do not tend to see often in a sideline character.

All-in-all good stuff.

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