The Americans

The audience knows the truth, but The Americans’s showrunner, Joe Weisberg, mines exquisite drama from the intricacies of each lie being told, as all of the show’s alliances continue to teeter on the brink of disaster.

The Americans is one of TV's best drama series, if not the best, and it's also one of the most challenging. There are details to remember, nuances to catch and morality to ponder.

This is a television show at the very peak of its powers, confident and controlled. The cast and crew have done their part--your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is simply to tune in. You won’t regret it.

Season four is shot through with some of The Americans' most plaintively touching moments yet.

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.

Killing and sanctioned philandering aside, The Americans’ depiction of marriage is as profound as ever. Other developments augur more potential shift.

As FX’s gripping, magnificent Cold War drama The Americans jumps into its fourth season Wednesday night with its usual hypertension, its makers are always quick to remind us that their show is first and foremost about a marriage.

The Americans in my view is the best TV drama of this season. It excels to even greater degrees on levels large and small, with the intimate details of human interaction mixing with the humanity-at-stake, cloak and dagger goings-on that keep Philip and Elizabeth tenuously on point.

It’s long been in the top tier of TV dramas, and this year, it looks set to stay there.

The Americans itself has never been better.

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.

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.

A season that, of course, is on the equally stellar level of its predecessors (as if there was ever a doubt).

They are father, mother, friend, co-worker, husband, wife—as well as being spy and killer. It is that depth of character and nuance in the writing that elevates The Americans, along with its willingness to offer stunning narrative developments.

If the fourth season reminds viewers of anything, it’s that The Americans has a masterful control of tone, doling out horror and slow-burn dread like very few of its contemporaries.

The Americans remains as sick, and as seductive, as its secrets.

A season startling in its intensity and its endless probing intelligence--not to mention the raw suspense that hangs over every moment of every scene.... There is nothing that is the equal of The Americans on TV screens now.

The Americans stands tall in a crowded field of quality dramas. It keeps getting stronger and stronger, a realization underscored by the arrival of the fourth season.

It’s heartbreaking, provoking literal nausea, with a psychic hangover unlike any other show. Believe it or not, that’s a recommendation.

The Americans does an awfully good job of juggling its numerous subplots.... If there’s a weak spot in the series, it’s that the subplot involving Nina (Annet Mahendru), the Russian KGB agent now in a Soviet prison, seems increasingly extraneous to the show.

The Americans has created a crowded bulletin board of characters and subplots, and this new season struggles to pin the yarn to connect them all. But each resonates with the others, like movements in a melancholy symphony.

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?

The plate-spinning managed by this how’s writers is still awe-inspiring, and The Americans‘ direction remains understatedly excellent, like so much else in the series.

Russell and Rhys are such superbly articulate and specific performers that it's hard not to empathize with their characters.

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.

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.