Or perhaps they would just grimly nod " da." I wonder if the Soviets of yesterday would smirk at the irony that, today, America's youth rails against capitalists while their country continues an endless war against a nihilist enemy that was partly midwifed into existence by Reagan-era policies designed to help Afghans fight the Soviets during their own endless war. Is it really better that all the reds are dead? Even the Earth itself seems to finally be sick of our shit.īut in the '80s, it was just Us vs. The Middle East is a post-colonial post-apocalypse of resource-rich warlords and terrorists with global ambitions.
The world economy is a cruel pyramid scheme. America is the apex predator of nations, and yet she has no rival that poses an existential threat like the former "Evil Empire." Threats abound, though. They hated money, they loved workers, and if things went pear-shaped, geopolitically speaking, they could incinerate our country with thousands of nuclear-armed ICBMs.
The Americans makes me miss the Soviets they were villains that made sense. No one who ever commits atrocities ever thinks, "I'm history's greatest monster." Humans rationalize. But the most subversive message of The Americans may be that our enemies, even the most bitter, are human beings: messy, flawed, doing what they think is right. In a way, their mission forces the viewer to reflect on the fate of our own teetering civilization. Philip and Elizabeth are fantastic characters torn between their mission and humanity, secret warriors sent by a failing empire to save their way of life. But no one knew that then in the '80s-especially not the Soviets and the CIA. The main characters, Philip and Elizabeth (played by Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell, respectively), have been bred since youth to infiltrate the evil, consumerist America and then seduce and kill whomever they have to in order to help their country win a war that is becoming increasingly unwinnable. It's a show about the melancholy price of uncompromising ideology and how a patriot is sometimes just a person who makes a sacrifice for their country-even when they know their country is wrong. But like the very best pop art, The Americans is about more than the traditional trappings of its genre. The show is a cracking good hour of shadowy murders, secret meetings, and Cold War intrigue.
Now in its fourth season, these assassins behind enemy lines are subtly beginning to doubt their orders, but they still perform their function even while wondering if they're doing the right thing. The gripping FX Cold War drama The Americans demands modern audiences have sympathy for a distinctly '80s devil: a pair of deep-cover Soviet spies masquerading as Virginia suburbanites.