On Wednesday (June 8), Season 4 of “The Americans” came to a cliffhanger close with an extended episode entitled, “Persona Non Grata.” Will the Jennings be leaving their post as undercover Russian spies? For most people, an opportunity to walk away from a life in espionage as a decorated — yet, undetected in America — hero would be a home run situation. Yet, not for Philip (Matthew Rhys) and Elizabeth (Keri Russell).
The idea of early retirement for them is more scary than being captured as a spy. If they are not involved in multiple nail-biting, life-threatening situations at once, what will they do … be actual travel agents and play homemaker all night? While that once seemed like a beautiful endgame, the reality of living a boring inconsequential life for the rest of their years actually terrifies both of them more than being on the FBI’s hit list.
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This season of “The Americans” was unfortunately its weakest yet. The FX drama is still good, but was weighed down by a few storylines that carried out way too long. Zap2it created a report card for Season 4, grading the show on where it thrived, the aspects in which it failed and highlighting how it can improve come Season 5.
Elizabeth Jenkins — A+
How Russell is not earning every award for her portrayal as tough a Russian spy, American mother and the zillion other alter egos she transforms into on this show is mind-numbing. Obvious beauty aside, the amount of emotion she can portray through the tiniest nuance — like with a single raise of an eyebrow, or a slight shift in her posture — makes her captivating to watch.
Elizabeth is tougher than her husband, always willing to do the dirty work he can’t. Her character can stuff a dead woman’s body into a suitcase, disregard the sounds of bones snapping to fit the corpse inside said carry-on, then somehow go on with her day as if it was nothing.
However, Russell lets audiences see Elizabeth shoving down her true emotions when no one’s looking. Where are Russell’s Emmys? She should be stacking those on top of her Golden Globes.
Paige’s emotional roller coaster ride — B
Paige (Holly Taylor) earns the high B because of the conflicting, and understandably complicated emotions she causes for Elizabeth and Philip. The flip flop of feelings regarding Paige’s impending recruitment to their anger towards her after the Pastor Tim confession — please let this be the end of the Pastor Tim situation — to their surprising dismay when Paige starts doing everything they’ve asked her to do, was an intense rollercoaster for the viewers to be on.
Paige’s speedy recovery after watching her mom kill an assailant in less than five seconds didn’t exactly flow with the usual purposefully slow pace of the show. However, a steely-eyed Paige who makes out with her FBI neighbor’s son is a much more fun Paige to watch. Hopefully we’ll get more of that than the whiney religious zealot Paige of season’s past.
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Historical references — B+
Each time the show includes a nugget of real life history from the Cold War years, everything seems that much more real. It makes viewers wonder where they were and what they were doing when David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear, how much they loved “General Hospital”s’ Luke and Laura in their heyday and remember The Challenger’s first space mission. All these rich details make 1983 seem all the more present, and the Jennings’ double-agent life oh so frighteningly real.
Martha’s jealousy — C-
The only reason we’re not giving this an F is because there’s definitely fans out there who took kindly to Martha Hanson’s (Alison Wright) storyline. In all honesty, she was never more than a nuisance. The feelings Philip felt towards her were clearly out of protective guilt, not love, thus making Elizabeth’s nervous feelings of jealousy not only out of character, but completely unnecessary.
However, if that was the point — and a way to humanize Elizabeth, fine — but there are better ways to discover Elizabeth’s weak spot (just ask her about her mother!). Maybe if the show relocates to Russia, and we meet Martha as a new confident bilingual woman, she’ll be a lot more interesting and a lot less annoying.
The Russians — D
Between the death of Nina (Annett Mahendru) — which happened way too late and then was carried out in a way that felt simply meaningless — and the attempt to make viewer’s care about Oleg Burov’s (Costa Ronin) dead brother — a character for which we’ve never met — every time the English translation text pop up on the screen, our attention checked out.
What’s that about Arkady Zotov (Lev Gorn)? Don’t care. All this new backstory feels forced. It feels like they are trying to make up for the excessive screen time Nina received. All this feels like last-minute preparation in order to get audiences ready for the possibility of a home base to move to Russia in case the Jennings do defect.
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Henry … who? Exactly — F
The show chose to delve so hard into Paige’s life and completely ignore the Jennings’ only son Henry (Keidrich Sellati) and we truly feel that was an odd and distracting choice. He has more screen time in the season finale than he has had in the past 4 seasons combined. That’s not to say it wasn’t a welcome surprise.
Hopefully, Henry will soon become illuminated to his true upbringing because his involvement would make “The Americans” into a full family affair akin to “The Incredibles,” which would be awesome.
