Rewatching "The Americans": Season 2

Because of my Covid-induced torpor, I was not able to do much but lay back on the couch and binge stuff. There was nothing of interest on, and I had toyed with the idea of rewatching "The Americans" anyhow, so off I went and watched three seasons in five days. Hooray for Covid. I want to talk about the experience, but it comes with a spoiler warning.

There are some series that experience a marked uptick in quality in their later seasons. It does not happen in cases where the fundamentals are rotten, but when there is promise, it can happen. "Halt and Catch Fire" is my favorite example, but "The Americans" comes in a close second. The first season is a solidly "okay", entertaining spy thriller. It's in the second season where things improve, although we're not yet at the great stuff. My colleague Sean T. Collins made the comparison to "Breaking Bad" or "The Sopranos", which also arrived at their peak only in season 3, and I think it's apt. 

 

In season 2 of "The Americans", most of the issues of plot and pacing are resolved. Instead of the already tired "crisis of the week"-formula with its incredibly high stakes, where the fate of everything hang in the balance all the time - and therefore, none of the time -, this season spaces its plot out over most of the 13 episode running time. Said plot is also markedly lower stakes, while being more grounded in the characters than much of the stuff in season 1. 

 

The series also profits from Ronin Costa, who plays Oleg Burov, the biggest addition to the cast. While his character is relatively one-note this season, Costa brings everything he has to it and makes him very memorable, a foundation on which the showrunners will be able to build later. His introduction also makes the Rezidentura sideplot more interesting, where Nina now has a frenemy to contend with.

Center stage is taken, however, by the overarching enemy of the season, Navy Seal Andrew Larrick, who is a formidable and unpredictably dangerous opponent to the couple. His explicit mission is to find and kill KGB illegals. At the same time, Paige gets into the spotlight and provides an emotional anchor to the Jennings that was sorely missing in season 1. 

 

The ingenious construction of the season is the existence of a second couple of illegals with kids who get murdered - aside from their son. It seems like Larrick is responsible, making this into a cat-and-mouse game since the Center also wants Larrick developed further as a source. 

 

However, as the tragic twist at the end of the season reveals, he didn't kill them after all. Rather, it was the surviving son, who wanted to become an agent in its own right and got it in his head that this was the way to go. Since the Center also wants the Jennings to develop Paige into an agent, this provides a real moral and ethical dilemma with a clear cautionary tale. 

 

However, not everything works quite as well. One main problem of the show largely remains, which is that it's still too much in love with its main characters and wants us to find them and their exploits enjoyable. While it excels in showing that our characters themselves find no joy in their work and are basically always miserable - something that will be made much more explicit in season 3 onwards -, what it shows is something different than it tells. 

 

As a case in point of the show trying to have its cake and eat it, too, take the forced repatriation of Anton Baklanov. While he sobs on the backseat and accuses Philipp of being a monster - an absolutely true statement if there ever was one - Oleg Burov is leading the FBI on a merry chase. The staging is thrilling, creating a huge suspense: will the FBI find Philipp and the defector? Of course they don't, and the scene is used to give Oleg Burov his first big, splashy win and a stand-off with Stan Beeman to boot, but this climax undercuts the whole mood of the suffering of Baklanov and Philipp. 

 

Such "double takes" abound. Even when they finally take out Larrick, it's build up as a huge and unequivocal success. He was, after all, a ruthless killer, sadist and also a bit of a white supremacist, checking all villain boxes. It will be the last time "The Americans" will face such a bad guy and that the spy world will be black and white like this. 

 

So, in the end, season 2 manages to be a marked improvement in quality over season 1, but it's still not in "great" territory, held back by over-caution in order to pander to audiences and to make itself into a thrilling, enjoyable and suspenseful experience. One can do that, of course, and escapism like that is welcome, but then, you can't do the heavy, meaningful stuff. And that is what "The Americans" will do from this point on.