Season One of FX’s The Americans ended with KGB Agents Philip and Elizabeth Jennings played by respectively by Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell narrowly escaping the clutches of FBI Agent Stan Beeman, played by Noah Emmerich and with Elizabeth suffering a gunshot wound during that particular melee’. Elizabeth’s wound and subsequent recovery period actually serves to strengthen the couple’s marriage that was becoming less stable due to the stress of keeping their real identities as spies a secret from everyone except some of the folks over at the Soviet Embassy.
On Elizabeth’s first day back home from her gunshot recuperation, she and Philip work together to shake down a defense contractor and her part is of a sexual nature that she’s used before in Season One.
The rest of the main cast are back for Season Two; sexy KGB mole “Nina” played by Annet Mahendru, “Special Agent Gaad” played by Richard Thomas and FBI mole “Martha Hanson” played by Alison Wright and there’s a new young male KGB Agent joining the fun too, “Arkady Ivanovich” is played by Lev Gorn who’s likely to be a romantic interest for Nina. And then there are the Jennings kids.
Eleven year old “Henry” is played by Keidrich Sellati and “Paige” played by Holly Taylor is fourteen now and growing more and more suspicious of what parents are up to when they sometimes leave for a lengthy amount of time with little warning. Paige does manage to catch mom and dad in a compromising position in the new episode but, it turns out to be of the marital variety rather than one of national security. Look for the kids to be an even bigger part of this season’s episode’s than last year’s. The Jennings fear for their children’s and their own lives when, late in the episode, another set of married KGB agents and their daughter are killed by someone that could be from either side of the Cold War fence.
The cast is one of the best ever assembled for television as far as I’m concerned and they work together like a well oiled machine no matter what the newest plot twist happens to be. There are some parts of the storyline that stretch credulity more than a little like the FBI Agent who just happens to be assigned the task of tracking down the KGB Agents who just happen to be his neighbor whose strange comings and goings seem to somehow escape his attention because he’s spending a lot of his time having an affair with a KGB double agent. Well, it is television after all and it’s pretty entertaining television too.
It’s going to be a set of shows.
