A review of the final season of FX's 'The Americans" and why its female characters are so great.

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This article contains spoilers for season six, episode three
of The Americans.
Not much really happened last season on The
Americans, the Cold War–era spy drama on FX about
a Russian husband and wife duo living undercover in
the US. A lot of the spying had to do with agriculture…
which, let’s be honest, isn’t why people love the show.
I was like, Give us more crazy disguises! Give us more
dead bodies stuffed into luggage! But three episodes into
the final season, things are already off to a roiling start.
For Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell) especially.
The women in The Americans are tough as nails.
This season underscores it. One of the outstanding
performances on the show has always been Russell’s
Elizabeth, partly because the character really
resonates—she’s petite, and people often underestimate
her. But there’s something fierce, almost feral, about
Elizabeth when something she loves is threatened. She
isn’t afraid to go in for the kill.
So far in season six, Elizabeth has stabbed a dude in the
jugular, wound up with some general’s brains on her
face, and flown to Mexico to receive orders to meddle in
nuclear negotiations between the US and USSR. In case
of failure, she got a cyanide tablet inside a locket to wear
around her neck. We’ve watched her seduce a stranger
then shower off in a strange hotel room, kill a dopey guy
who could have blown her cover, and lots of other rough
spy stuff.
This is partly due to where we’re at in the narrative.
At the end of season five, Elizabeth’s husband, Philip,
wanted out. He retired from espionage to run the family
travel agency—their front—and for what it’s worth, it
doesn’t seem like he’s doing great at that.
But Elizabeth has always been the stronger one in their
relationship. She’s bearing the brunt of the spy work,
because she couldn’t stand to quit knowing the value
of the intelligence she could offer her country. And
because she loves Philip, she couldn’t watch the work
destroy his soul. So she’s going it alone, doing it all,
attempting the impossible—being a high-stakes secret
agent and keeping her family intact.
The way Elizabeth balances it all (though she’s clearly
fraying at the edges) is admirable. It’s an exaggeration of
the way women everywhere balance the myriad roles of
provider, mother, lover, warrior in everyday life.
There’s a great scene in the episode “Urban Transport
The Best Part of The Americans Is
Its Brutally Strong Women
“Untitled” by Katherine Saunders is license under CC By 2.0
By Kara Weisenstein

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Planning” where Elizabeth, her daughter Paige, and her
handler Claudia are cooking a Russian stew. Teaching
Paige about the Motherland is part of Claudia and
Elizabeth’s second-generation recruitment efforts. It’s
such a tender scene. If you didn’t know better, you’d
think it was a grandmother handing down family
recipes to her granddaughter. But the moment Paige
leaves, Claudia snaps into business mode and assigns
Elizabeth a new target. It’s an amazing example of how
fluidly these women juggle their roles.
After a bumpy start, Paige is finally exhibiting some
real grit this season, too. She and Elizabeth are certainly
closer than they’ve ever been. But Paige wrestles with
the same demons Philip does. She wants to be good at
spying, and she wants Elizabeth to be proud of her. But
she’s definitely conflicted about the morality of it all. It’s
a doubt that’s driven home when a mission goes wrong,
and Paige sees Elizabeth covered in a dead guy’s blood
and guts. She’s understandably upset. Not only is she
worried about losing her mom, she’s grappling with
the knowledge that accumulating a bodycount is an
inevitable casualty of the job.
When Paige voices this, Elizabeth shuts it down. For her,
making sacrifices to serve her country has never been
a question. Partly, it’s a mode of survival. She’s trying
to protect her daughter, by making her understand that
the best way to stay alive and avoid blowing her cover is
by never wavering, even when it means repressing your
emotions.
It’s screwed up, but some of the most tender
scenes between the two are when Elizabeth gives
Paige clandestine fight lessons in their garage.
For Elizabeth, teaching her daughter how to protect
herself is the ultimate expression of love. During one
of these lessons last season, Elizabeth accidentally
split Paige’s lip. Philip tries to make a fuss, but you can
see Paige is proud of her new merit badge. It’s kind
of funny; she’s showing us she’s tougher than we all
thought.
Though no longer on the show, Nina Krilova—a double,
sometimes triple, agent in the early seasons of The
Americans who was killed off in season four—was also
a woman to contend with. The character got a nod from
FBI agent Stan Beeman and former KGB operative
Oleg Burov in “Urban Transport Planning.” Nina was a
victim of circumstance, pulled into the spy game when
Stan blackmailed her for selling American goods on the
Russian black market. But she was also a savvy fighter
every step of the way. She never stopped outsmarting
those around her and trying to do what she thought was
right.
You could say the same about Martha, the FBI secretary
Philip seduced and recruited early on in the series.
Martha’s timidity was grating at times, but she betrayed
her country because she thought Philip was the love of
her life, and in Martha’s mind, loyalty to the people she
loves comes first. Thanks to that agonizing choice, she’s
living out her days in exile in the USSR.
Part of what makes The Americans so good is
its examination of why people make the choices
they do. The central conflict is between love of country
versus love for family, and throughout the series,
Elizabeth and Philip are on opposing sides of this
debate. The final episodes will be fascinating, as we see
how their marriage plays out through the waning days
of the Cold War, with plenty of sex and death to fuel the
intrigue.
But it’s Elizabeth and the other women on the
show who we should watch the closest. Their
strength makes them the most complex. Elizabeth
still doesn’t know how to reconcile her loyalty to the
USSR, which involves making insane sacrifices, with
her love for her family, who we sense she’ll do anything
to protect. It’ll be a showdown that’ll be captivating to
watch.
Photo by Rochelle Brown on Unsplash