FYC: "The Americans" For Best Drama Series

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

Critics Choice TV Awards: Faceoff, Allison Janney, The Americans

Charlize giving a "Genius" award to Seth McFarlane. The title disturbs both of them. After the laziest weekend of all time in TFE HQ, we must jump right back to deep conversations on all the entertainment thingies that matter and some that don't. Who's to say which is which but you? This week I watched a lot of mindless TV as I vegged out (I have no idea why my body/mind absolutely rejected my normal blog 24/7 routine) so let's go with that first and talk about the Critics Choice TV Wins. They're the Emmy-like sibling branch of the BFCA (I am not a member of the former, just the latter). Thankfully they don't try to predict the Emmys at all the way my branch tries to predict the Oscars (sigh). They're totally willing to get behind TV shows that haven't a prayer with Emmy (note their win for The Americans which The Emmys consistently ignore) . This doesn't mean they don't still make annoying choices but at least you can tell they're voting from their hearts.

Drama
Best Drama Series: The Americans (FX)
Best Actor in a Drama Series: Bob Odenkirk, Better Call Saul (AMC)
Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series: Jonathan Banks, Better Call Saul (AMC)
Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series: Lorraine Toussaint, Orange Is the New Black (Netflix)
Best Guest Performer in a Drama Series: Sam Elliott, Justified (FX)

More winners and commentary after the jump...

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