We Like Spies Like Us

The spy game of the 80s is great in retrospect. But in the decade itself, our undercover heros were as cheesy as the music and the fashion. Roger Moore was the worst James Bond, and Crockett & Tubbs were hopelessly slick in Miami Vice.

But when we look back, the infiltrators seem so much cooler. Donnie Brasco is in my all-time Top 5 movies, and the new FX series The Americans kicks the genre's ass - at least after one episode.

***CAUTION-SPOILERS***

So much tension and background information came out right out of the box that I'm hooked. But we'll get into the substance in a second. The style rocked.

The 80s music actually kicked ass, with Quarterflash's Harden My Heart and its distinctive sax riff preceding the first word of dialogue (and first blow-job) in the series. That was followed by an epic pulsating chase scene set set to Fleetwood Mac's Tusk. I still haven't gotten the Tusk beat out of my head. Also great in the shopping mall scene was Juice Newton's Playin' With The Queen Of Hearts.

Keri Russell fills out he mom jeans nicely, and the '77 Olds getaway car reminded me of The French Connection.

So high marks for nailing the audio/visuals of the era. But the story itself is pretty well-conceived.

There's the tension of the family dynamic and the mission. "Phillip" has adapted to the American family lifestyle, and can live it out for the right price. He longs to feel the love of his "wife" who is an agent first and a wife and mom second.

"Elizabeth" is the hard-ass officer, the presumed higher-ranking member of the sleeper team. Her loyalty is to the homeland, Mother Russia, for reasons we haven't yet been exposed to. She should have plenty of reason to hate the KGB, but evidently doesn't.

There's also the series-long cat and mouse game with the FBI guy across the street, which sort of reminds me of the dynamic with Walt and Hank in Breaking Bad. The superspies are one step ahead of the FBI at every turn and we don't know who to root for.

There were a couple of eye-rolls in the 90-minute premiere. There was the melee in the garage with the KGB defector who raped Elizabeth back when she was a cadet, with a ton of noise that didn't wake the kids or the neighbors. And the flashback sequences to Russia and the early days in the states made very little effort to make the characters seem 15-20 years younger.

But the show really moved. There's plenty of intrigue and a lot of sex. But the big hook is that the characters are believable and the husband and wife play non-traditional roles, especially for 1981. And anti-heros are big these days.

If we can embrace Tony Soprano and Walter White, then a couple of "Americans" shouldn't be so hard.

Broken Man

We know why the show is called Breaking Bad. It goes back to the very first episode when cancer-afflicted, unfulfilled middle-aged high school science teacher Walter White decides to get into the meth business.

His former student, Jesse Pinkman, becomes a partner in the scheme but fails to understand, "Some straight guy like you, giant stick up his ass, age what - 60? He's just gonna break bad?"

Walt first retorts that he's only 50. He then says, "I am awake."

So we don't know the old Walt (except for a handful of flashbacks), but the current Walt is not only beyond repair, he is beyond belief.

Is it that the character is broken, or have the show's creators made him that way? It's an important distinction. If Walt's behavior is unbelievable to the show's fanatic audience, then maybe the show has jumped the shark.

****CAUTION-SPOILED****

In Season 5 Episode 6, "Buyout," it all comes the closest to full circle that the show has ever been. It's done through talk - which I don't like, but it's done with Jesse in Walt's living room of all places where his wife could walk in at any moment - which she eventually does.

The scene where Walt pulls a James Bond/MacGyver to escape handcuffed detainment is more believable than the scene where he reaches into his darkened soul to tell Jesse his reasoning behind the refusal of a $5 Million buyout.

It doesn't explain why Walt has decided to live at home while Skyler won't allow the kids to live in the same house, rather than living in the place he had originally moved out to and already owns. Except that we are expected to believe that he is stubbornly going to turn her.

And the same logic applies to Walt's dogged determination to press Jesse and Mike to continue their operation, rather than simply sell out for millions each.

As much as we love the series, we are begging Walt to be sensible. But he's just as obstinate with us.

Jesse references their conversation from the Season 2 premiere "Seven Thirty Seven," when Walt had figured out the math that $737K was all the money he needed, before the cancer killed him, to set up his family.

Jesse asks Walt if they're in the meth business or the money business. Walt seethes that he's in the "empire business." Jesse asks if that's really something to be proud of.

Walt rants about the one time he sold out in his past, trading in his stake in "Gray Matter" for a few months rent, while his partners Elliott and Gretchen Schwartz built a multi-billion dollar business.

So in just a year's time (theoretically), Walt's motivation changed from his family's security to being king. It's an unrealistic transformation. Unless Walt had already broken bad, and the misery inside him was just looking for an excuse to express itself.

That's if the writers can make us believe that the sympathetic anti-hero we've been rooting for is actually, truly evil.