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Positive:
147
Mixed:
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Negative:
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Critic Reviews
ColliderMar 27, 2018
Season 6 Review:
Russell is exceptional in these early episodes as Elizabeth tries to juggle so many jobs that she’s swigging coffee and popping pills to keep herself awake, all while holding onto an incredibly dark secret. But even though their stories aren’t yet as dynamic as that, Rhys, Taylor, and others continue to be emotionally compelling pieces of this grounded (though sometimes a little overly complicated, especially in early episodes) final season.
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ColliderMar 16, 2016
Season 4 Review:
That’s the beautiful thing about The Americans; its exploration of identity and loyalty is unmatched, because of how it focuses on the human element so eloquently. Yes the spycraft can be fun and tense and exciting, but it’s the emotional conflicts that set the show a cut above.
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Mar 22, 2018
Season 6 Review:
There’s a feeling in the first three episodes of final-act hyperbole that left me a bit dizzy. After a slow-paced fifth season, the final year begins with a parade of bloody deaths. ... But The Americans gets more patient when it examines the widening cracks in the Jennings marriage.
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Jan 18, 2013
Season 1 Review:
[An] absorbing spy thriller. [25 Jan/1 Feb 2013, p.113]
IndieWireMar 28, 2018
Season 6 Review:
The stakes are high, and the rewards are plenty. It’s why The Americans has been and remains one of the best programs on television: It challenges viewers for all the right reasons. It pushes back on expectations to make you dwell on many fleeting moments that build who you are overall.
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Feb 27, 2014
Season 2 Review:
Elizabeth and Philip react with the appropriate amount of fear for and protectiveness of Paige and Henry. No doubt, this will further widen the cracks already forming in their political/professional resolve, but there is no going back: The Americans puts the kids front and center.
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Mar 28, 2018
Season 6 Review:
If watching a TV show is like being in a relationship, The Americans is the closest thing to a domestic partnership that modern TV drama has ever given us. ... The actors simply do whatever their characters would do in that situation, and the camera watches them. Not a single shot calls attention to itself. ... But you can’t exactly claim that things were left unsaid, because you read this couple’s faces like words on a page.
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Mar 7, 2017
Season 5 Review:
As always, The Americans does complex work that never calls attention to its complexity. The associations and connections are there if you care to make them, but the show maintains plausible deniability as a good spy should, walking briskly from scene to scene as if it’s just here to get the job done and get out.
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Mar 15, 2016
Season 4 Review:
It has a knack for creating metaphorically or symbolically rich situations that never strut about announcing themselves as such. It’s all there if you care to delve into it, but it’s never in the foreground and affixed with a tag; often you catch it hiding behind, or within, the characterizations and plot twists, as spies hide in plain sight.
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Feb 26, 2014
Season 2 Review:
It's these deeper questions [Deciding to live the day-to-day performance of an ideal, a belief, an emotion, a set of principles, a faith?] that give the action and melodrama a bit of existential heft, and redirect our vicarious enjoyment away from fantasy and back towards reality.
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Mar 26, 2018Mar 15, 2016
Season 4 Review:
The Americans remains a superior American drama and--admittedly, without having a working knowledge on the subject--possibly one of the best Russian TV dramas, too.... These four [episodes] also feel weighted and forlorn, as the chain of lies loop around and around the ankles of Paige and Martha, or those others unlucky enough to know Philip and Elizabeth, with an anchor just waiting to be tossed overboard.
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Feb 21, 2014
Season 2 Review:
[It] promises to be a dizzyingly clever season 2. [3 Mar 2014, p.39]
Jan 31, 2013
Season 1 Review:
It's tense, engrossing, mildly ludicrous--and worth checking out before the Cold War melts. [11 Feb 2013]
Mar 22, 2018
Season 6 Review:
The body count is high in early episodes and Philip gets pulled back into spying, just not in the exact way as before. This new avenue threatens to upend his family, which, of course, lays the groundwork for one of the show’s psychologically intense Philip-Elizabeth relationship-defining scenes early in the season’s third episode.
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Mar 6, 2017
Season 5 Review:
Episode one spends an awful lot of time on digging a huge hole in the ground with fairly predictable results. And in episode two there’s a lot of wandering around a greenhouse buzzing with insects that’s supposed to be ominous but instead comes off like a homage to “The X-Files.” ... The third episode moves all the stories forward at a better clip.
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Mar 11, 2016
Season 4 Review:
Through the first four episodes of the new season, the ever-excellent spy thriller explores the parent-child dynamic, introduces the concept of biological weapons and plays on the suspicions of FBI neighbor Stan (Noah Emmerich). The Americans is mostly adept at surprising viewers by not tacking in expected directions, although one plot results in a dead end that left me to wonder, why did the writers spend so much time on that?
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Feb 21, 2014
Season 2 Review:
FX's The Americans does the near-impossible of making viewers cheer for Russian spies in America and at the same time for the American FBI agents who are trying to unmask those Russians living in suburbia. It's an incredibly deft balancing act that's accomplished through strong character development all around.
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RogerEbert.comMar 7, 2017
Season 5 Review:
By now, it feels like we know Philip and Elizabeth, but there are shades to these characters that the writers and actors are still exploring, still developing, and still revealing to viewers. They are two of the richest characters not just on TV now, but in the history of the medium. And they still have more stories to tell.
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RogerEbert.comMar 14, 2016
RogerEbert.comJan 29, 2015
Mar 4, 2016
Season 4 Review:
The fourth season of FX’s Cold War spy drama is a bit of a step down, especially from the near-perfect second and third seasons.... But noting that The Americans is showing some signs of wear isn’t to say that the show is no longer stylish, delightfully off-kilter, panic-attack-inducing entertainment.
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Feb 24, 2014
Season 2 Review:
Watching, it is almost impossible not to root for these two Communists as they do any and everything they can to undermine America. In this regard, The Americans works its American audience as effectively as its heroes work their marks: It makes double agents of us all.
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Feb 24, 2014
Season 2 Review:
The series is at its most potent when it reframes the everyday in the context of the Cold War, like Philip comparing notes on home life with a Mossad operative or Elizabeth displaying a flash of vulnerability in front of a government-contracted dupe. (And then betraying that parental bond by turning it into a threat.) Other aspects of the show would do well to find this middle ground; they’re getting there in season two.
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The Daily BeastFeb 26, 2014
Season 2 Review:
The Americans is already reinventing itself. Why? Because it has the confidence to know that it's about more than the relationship between two specific characters. Rather it's about the idea of relationships in general, in all their intricacy and weirdness--the secrecy they require, the comfort they create, the confusion they entail, the danger they can unleash. And that never gets old.
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Mar 6, 2017
Season 5 Review:
The Americans, through the three episodes of season 5 that FX made available to critics, continues along the same ground it always has: It's extremely well-constructed, with slow-burning storylines that are paying off in superb dramatic depth; it boasts consistently top-tier acting from stars Keri Russell, Mathew Rhys, Noah Emmerich, Holly Taylor and more; it has artfully crafted visuals that emphasize the mundane work of everyday spies while simultaneously revealing things about the characters.
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Mar 15, 2016
Season 4 Review:
It’s a good thing that viewers can’t immediately binge-watch FX’s The Americans, arguably the best ongoing series on television, because there are moments in the first four episodes where it feels like there’s a vice tightening on your chest. And there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for that feeling: The first four episodes (that’s how many were made available to critics) are among the best the series has ever done.
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Mar 27, 2018
Season 6 Review:
The drama picks back up with a strong trio of opening episodes. ... The actors simply do whatever their characters would do in that situation, and the camera watches them. Not a single shot calls attention to itself (even a surprising angle on Philip looking down through the open sunroof of his car has a tossed-off feeling), and the editing is unobtrusive, carrying us from point to point.
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