FYC: "The Americans" For Best Drama Series
Saturday, June 6, 2015 at 12:10PM Team Experience is sharing their personal Emmy dream picks daily around noon. Here's Lynn Lee...
Even after three brilliant seasons, FX's “The Americans” remains criminally ignored by both the Emmys and the viewing public, and I for the life of me can’t figure out why. Set in Reagan-era D.C., the series about undercover KGB agents posing as the ideal American family-next-door works like gangbusters as a pure espionage thriller, brimming with nailbiting old-school spycraft, graphic close-quarters fight sequences, titillating sex scenes, doomed romances, double agents, and an endless supply of amazing costumes and wigs.
But it’s even more effective as a psychological portrait of relationships in which truth and lies, work and love, family and country, are inextricably intertwined. At the center of this web are super agents Philip and Elizabeth Jennings (Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell, both spectacular), whose fake marriage has only recently evolved into a real attachment. It’s this bond that moves us to root for them even as they do terrible things for a cause that we know will end up on the wrong side of history. It also, however, complicates their already-complicated attitudes towards their mission.
Season 3 ratchets this emotional tension up to an even higher level and takes the show into some of the darkest territory it's ever explored, as Philip and Elizabeth are forced not only to push their moral boundaries to the breaking point but to confront the growing suspicions of their teenage daughter, Paige. That’s a storyline that could have gone wrong in so many ways, yet “The Americans” succeeds where a show like “Homeland” failed, in making Paige not an annoying distraction but a particularly poignant embodiment of the show’s central dilemma: can you sustain the trust that’s required to keep a family, a marriage, any meaningful relationship, together when the very foundation is built on lies?
Related
The Americans is not quite entirely ignored. It recently won Best Drama Series at the "Critics Choice Awards" after 12 nominations (3rd consecutive for drama series). It has won no other prizes from that group.
Previously on our FYC series
Lisa Kudrow, Best Actress | Jon Hamm, Best Actor | 20+ Contenders in Supporting Actress in a Drama Series
Emmy, FYC, The Americans
Reader Comments (9)
Man, 'The Americans' is so criminally underrated. What a fantastic season this was. Everything surrounding the Paige situation was so intriguing and riveting. Deserves much more Emmy love than it gets.
Well put. Easily my favorite show on television. Gripping, well-acted and beautifully written.
Masterful AND consistent. Very hard combination to find on television. Don't think any other current drama that I watch comes even close to being as good as this. Although I'll disagree with you on the wigs - some are not so great lol.
The most incredible show on television, yet I am still highly doubtful that the Emmy's will even acknowledge it this year.
The snub that will forever haunt and enrage me for this show is the lack of attention for Annet Mahendru last year in season 2, because I just don't see how she gets a full season's worth of material on that level ever again, on this or any other show. The conflicted emotions, the ambiguity of motivation, the sheer hypnotic unknowability she brought was astounding, and done with such skill that I think she stands on ground shared only with Tang Wei in Lust,Caution.
This year, Allison Wright and Holly Taylor stepped up to join her on the supporting actressess absolutely killing it on The Americans front, and I'm sure this time next year I'll be enraged at the lack of awards attention for them as well.
Patrick, I totally agree about Annet Mahendru. I would have given her all of the awards last year. Alison Wright gave my favorite supporting performance this year, but it's to the show's credit that they recognized what a complex, emotionally charged character Martha could be - so many lesser programs would have just played that character for laughs.
In my top 5 dramas three years running.
(And any show that gives a nod to Oz by casting Lee Tergesen as a closeted naval officer would already have a leg up with me.)
yes, alison wright and holly taylor should be getting some attention. (there's not only that 'fashion' kid on "mad men", internet!)
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