Games Without Frontiers: The Americans Season Finale

The outstanding season finale of The Americans was a microcosm of the season, where misinformation and spy game scenarios rule the day. But always shining through is our heroic KGB couple on concurrent parallel tracks with each selflessly protecting the other.

There are two missions. The riskier one is to meet with the Air Force Colonel about Reagan's missile defense program, fearing that such a high-level source could very well be a setup. The secondary mission is to pick up the tape of the secretly-recorded meeting between Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and James Baker, the White House Chief of Staff. But the Weinberger/Baker meeting is the FBI sting.

"OK so you grab the tape, pick up the kids from school, wait someplace safe while I meet the Colonel."

Phillip and Elizabeth are constantly back-and-forth about who would handle the more dangerous assignment, and who takes the kids to Canada if they're caught. Phillip does the noble thing (he thinks) by assuming the risk without permission, via Dear John note.

Meanwhile, Nina, the KGB-mole-turned-double agent, has been granted a stay from the center in Moscow. Her job now is to turn FBI Agent Beeman the way he turned her, and she's off to a flying start. She gets the information that the setup is on.

The meeting with The Colonel goes down - and the information is that there's no information. The infamous "Star Wars" program is essentially that - a science fiction fantasy, intended to make the Soviets "spend themselves into oblivion, keeping up with the technology that will never pan out."

But their meeting is interrupted by the KGB Granny (fresh from finishing off CIA middle management guy in a personal vendetta), thinking that was the sting - Phillip doesn't buy it and then realizes what the actual sting is. He heroically rescues Elizabeth and wins a massive Chevy Nova car chase with law enforcement, until he realizes she's shot.

He gets her to the safe house, the FBI is foiled, and the last words of the season are from a critically-wounded Elizabeth to her husband and relentless partner, "Come Home" (in Russian).

Then there's the music video montage updating all the players to Peter Gabriel's thumping Games Without Frontiers. While the end-of-season musical assmeblage may be a little cliche in TV series at this point, it's cliche because it works. I can't remember a David Simon season-ender of The Wire or Treme' without one. And The Americans is just about at that level.

Lamenting The End Of A Season

There is always great trepidation when a routine is interrupted.

At the end of the baseball season, you wake up and think, "Who's pitching today?" The answer is nobody. The season's over. Watch college basketball.

When I was a kid I hated when summer was over because school was on the horizon. Now as a parent it's much the opposite, you dread the end of the school year as you embark on an unstructured, exhausting and HOT Savannah summer.

When a good book ends, you reach to turn to the next page and there isn't one, except for maybe some boring acknowledgments.

Now I don't want the Cold War to end. Maybe it hasn't - Mitt Romney called Russia our "Number one geopolitical foe" just last year. And maybe there are sleeper Directorate S KGB agents still spying on us now while continuing to masquerade as average Americans.

Regardless, the inside world of Cold War espionage portrayed in The Americans is provocative, delicious, and addicting, and it's hard to believe that season one ends tonight. And expect there to be cliffhanger drama that will keep us salivating for next season.

There are the constant cat-and-mouse KGB/FBI games, and the rising tension/awareness in Phillip and Elizabeth's marriage. The penultimate episode "The Oath" took on both storyline runners brilliantly.

Just when the FBI had been alerted to the bug in Caspar Weinberger's study, Phillip was able to pull off a new bug in the FBI counterintelligence office. How? By marrying the director's secretary as his alter-ego Clark Westerfeld.

Elizabeth was dubious about that possibility, "No knock on your charms there Romeo, there's no way she'll go for that." But Phillip was right, he pulled off a secretive wedding with his fellow agents and masters of disguise appearing as his family. The parents of the bride even commented on the "family resemblance."

The wedding scene was especially poignant since Phillip and Elizabeth are having their own marital impasse, even though they were never actually married in the first place.

Meanwhile the FBI's main mole, the brilliant and sexy Nina, has found herself moving up the food chain at the KGB to the point of taking an oath of her own.

She confesses her sins and throws herself at the mercy of the Rezident, claiming she wants to redeem herself in the eyes of Mother Russia. So now we have a real double agent and she will be handling Agent Beeman rather than the other way around.

The storylines are brilliant, emotional, and building. But that will all come to a halt as the season regrettably concludes this evening.

The Next Best Show On Television

After being away for a few days I had the option of which to watch first, The Americans or Justified. One show couldn't wait.

The Americans has it all: Cold War spy shit, historical plot points, clever disguises, marital tension, and the real threat of the end of the world.

Episode 4 "In Control" is a memorable one, as both the FBI and KGB operate behind the scenes in the immediate aftermath of the Reagan assassination attempt. When Secretary Of State Alexander Haig goes on camera and assumes temporary control of the US Government (VP George H. Bush was regarded about as highly as Dan Quayle three months into Reagan's term) Phillip and Elizabeth show the complete opposite thought processing.

Elizabeth is the real loyalist. She is the point person on "Operation Christopher," a pre-emptive strike on US government officials. They're forced to kill a security guy while staking out Caspar Weinberger's house.

She thinks like the Russians, that since Haig was once a general and has taken "control" of the government, that this assassination is a coup d'etat. That America is going under martial law and will no doubt blame the KGB, a justification to start World War III and wipe the Soviet Union off the planet.

Phillip is more pragmatic, he's really an American at this point. He knows that life is good and thinks the American people are generally good, "Moscow is overreacting." And he was right.

"All these years walking these streets, living with these people, you still don't really understand this place. Haig could have ten nuclear footballs, this still wouldn't be a coup."

The FBI was of course dispatched to find the Russian angle, and then determined that John Hinckley Jr. was a nut.

So much like the US history with the Soviets, the war was almost all hyperbole. Credit to both sides for not pushing the button.

Spy vs Spy: Cold War Edition

In Mad Magazine, it was the two mortal enemies throwing all their gadgets at each other to create as much destruction as possible. In The Americans, agents fight each other with their wits, trying to stay one move ahead in the Cold War.

***CAUTION - SPOILERS***

The second episode of the new series didn't have as much of the flavor or the music of 1981. "Phillip" and "Elizabeth" are much more in their day-to-day duties as KGB sleepers. They're working more as a team and the tension between them isn't as great as the pilot.

But the tension with their work is very real. Complete with sexual manipulation, cool disguises, and lots of violent acts. They are superspies.

Like poisoning the son of Caspar Weinberger's maid and leveraging the antidote just to get a bug installed in the Secretary of Defense's study.

They both understand their orders, the stakes of this assignment, the innocence of their captives, and that soon their own children could be orphaned if they stray off the tightrope.

Meanwhile, the FBI's tactics aren't that much different in identifying a Russian embassy worker they can turn.

Agent Stan Beeman masterminds this plan, while still exploring his intuition about his neighbors. He even brings some high-end Russian caviar over, seeing if it may expose something in his curious counterpart.

At the end, both opposing sides advanced their agenda. The KGB got surveillance in the Weinberger house, and the FBI got a body inside the Russian embassy. So the spy game's afoot, a much more nuanced battle than the one you'd find in Mad Magazine.