This isn't the last time I'm going to say this on this list, but I think the great advantage that TV has is that its allowed to take its time. Long form storytelling has the ability to capture the changes of its characters' lives in real time, and there are few shows that I've seen nail this better than The Americans. Honestly a lot of what I said yesterday about Mad Men can be applied to this show too: there's still the deliberate pacing, ace period details and fraught familial bonds, but this show has the added bonus of intense Cold War paranoia to make everything that little bit more stressful. If the show just followed two Soviet sleeper agents living in suburban America, that would make for some pretty good viewing, but move them in beside an FBI agent, explore the crises their oblivious, all-American kids are facing and put a microscope on their ideological differences and clashing ideas of patriotism and you've got all the ingredients for some barnstorming television
Even so, The Americans is still one of the most uniquely arresting shows that's come out in the last decade, mostly because it's so unbearably slow. There's a sense of impending doom in The Americans, like watching an explosion in slow motion, unfolding so incrementally that none of the characters can see it coming. This is made all the more literal when the show throws actual doomsday devices into the mix, and the sheer paranoia rockets off the charts. The nearly glacial pacing might seem like a bad thing, but the constant fear that everything's going to go to shit is laid on so strong that when it does, it's frequently devastating. It's a pressure cooker, slowly developing each of its plot points till it bleeds with gorgeous, often incredibly worrying ambiguity. And if the fifth season feels a little too deliberate in its pacing, then it's still immensely satisfying to see how everything comes together in that victory lap of a finale
It's one of the best political thrillers of the last decade and that's not even the most compelling thing about it. Sure, the way creator Joe Weisberg picks at Cold War tensions is fascinating and consistently exciting, but for me the show really excels as a study of marriage, family and identity. What's real and what's part of the lie? How far do you go until you've crossed the line and lost who you were? When there's real love and happiness involved, does it even matter that it's all fake? These are difficult questions that Philip and Elizabeth have to keep answering as the show goes on, and the way these tensions are uncorked and the family dynamic changes immensely is a huge part of why it's one of my favourites
It's slow, but there's something admirable about that. In an age where shows frontload their thrills with flashy season enders, there really is something to be said about how The Americans goes for the quieter option but always makes it sting. Invest in the show and you'll be rewarded with unbearable, electric tension that starts to match most horror movies for tie-a-knot-in-your-stomach intensity. This is perhaps most felt in Paige's arc, which is undoubtedly my favourite in the show. The gradual distrust and disillusionment that infects Paige's relationship with her parents forms the most complicated, nuanced, and emotionally affecting dynamic in the show. Again, there's a horror to that, where the real danger is closer than you'd ever have imagined it, and the show just keeps finding new ways to raise the stakes and deepen the emotional divides that keep the Jennings family trapped in the fallout of their falsehoods
It's also got a quality I hugely admire in TV: a dedication to giving it's audience what they need instead of what they necessarily want or expect. This is especially apparent in its ending, and although I'm keeping all of these entries entirely spoiler free, I can't get through this without talking about how incredible START is. It's maybe more minimal of ending than this kind of show would usually go for, but it's a tense, quietly heartbreaking hour of television that features one of the all time great TV needledrops. It forgoes the flash in favour of the truth that The Americans was always dedicated to delivering. Any show that can turn a man's quiet reflection on his future while standing in a MacDonald's into an absolute gut punch has to be doing something right
It's just one of the most purely rewarding shows in terms of what you get out of investing in it that I've ever seen. By the end, I really came to care about each of these characters and every shade of grey they operate in, and The Americans knows exactly how to use that level of investment to make every storytelling decision feel that little bit more satisfying and even haunting from how long they linger after the episode has ended. And when you lay the whole thing out in one glorious saga, you've got a show that fuses complicated political turmoil and emotionally exhausting family drama into an understated epic that once again proves that it's the slowest burns that glow the brightest
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