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Positive:
147
Mixed:
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Negative:
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Critic Reviews
Uncle BarkyMar 28, 2018
Season 6 Review:
Frankly, a little boredom sets in at times. ... How The Americans resolves their fates will be key to whether this series is remembered as a superbly rendered morality tale or a distinct disappointment after setting its bar so high. Season 6 so far is rife with both possibilities.
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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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Mar 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 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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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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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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TV Guide MagazineMar 2, 2017
Season 5 Review:
[A] taut fifth season. [6-19 Mar 2017, p.21]
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 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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Jan 31, 2013
Season 1 Review:
It's tense, engrossing, mildly ludicrous--and worth checking out before the Cold War melts. [11 Feb 2013]
Jan 30, 2013
Season 1 Review:
While Rhys and Russell carry the domestic side of the story beautifully (with Russell having a particularly nice moment next week with the daughter), they're not, as yet, completely convincing as spies. In their defense, they're hurt in the premiere by a clumsy set of flashbacks that make you think the Soviets must have perfected an anti-aging drug that has now been lost.
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Feb 25, 2014
Season 2 Review:
Series creator Joe Weisberg--who wrote the Thomas Schlamme-directed season premiere along with Joel Fields--and company have done about as well as is possible in keeping the plates spinning while adding new ones to the act. Even so, it’s hard to escape a sense that if this series runs much beyond a second season, it’s less about serving up art than it is about bowing to the needs of old-fashioned capitalism.
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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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