I'm rewatching The Americans. I really liked this show on the first run it had when it premiered in 2013.
Widely hailed as one of the greatest television series of all time, FX’s The Americans is far more than a standard spy thriller. Created by Joe Weisberg, this period drama ran for six seasons (2013–2018) and swept the awards circuit, earning Peabodys, a Golden Globe, and Primetime Emmys for its writing and lead actor Matthew Rhys.
Set against the high-stakes backdrop of the 1980s Cold War, the series explores the lives of two KGB officers posing as an average American couple in the suburbs of D.C., blending white-knuckle espionage with a profound exploration of marriage and identity.
On the surface, The Americans is a show about the FBI vs. the KGB in the 1980s; at its core, however, it is a complex portrait of a marriage. Created by Joe Weisberg, the acclaimed FX drama follows Philip and Elizabeth Jennings (Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell), two Soviet intelligence officers hiding in plain sight as a married couple with children in Falls Church, Virginia.
Over six seasons, the series masterfully used the Cold War as a metaphor for the conflicts of matrimony and parenthood, creating a tension that was heightened by their neighbor...an FBI counterintelligence agent.
I'm on the final sixth season, episode one, there is a scene where one of them, the wife, meets with a Soviet general in Mexico. He tells her that they have created a system wherein if the Soviet leadership is disabled, this project, "Dead Hand" will finalize the launch of missiles destroying America if they had attacked.
At that moment, she should have executed him for such a project. But that wouldn't have cut out the cancer in their system. That kind of thing was after all, part of her job, to acquire or eliminate enemies of the Soviet Union.
He then explains that if Gorbachev attempts to negotiate away this doomsday system in exchange for Reagan’s Star Wars program, elements within the Soviet military would be prepared to remove him from power. In other words, they were willing to overthrow their own legally installed leader simply to preserve their grip on a failing system.
Execution or coup, the method of removal is left unspoken. History would soon prove that such threats were not empty. A failed coup attempt came only a few years later, accelerating the collapse of the Soviet Union and setting the stage for Vladimir Putin to take power in 1999, eventually becoming the despotic, aggressively imperial leader we see today.
She should have executed the general in that moment. He is after all, describing himself and his cohorts as criminal. For the fictional world of the USSR in that time period, it would have been the best course of action, and arguably in the interest of humanity. But history and human behavior rarely align with what might be morally necessary.
She did not execute the General. Instead, the scene slowly allows the music to overpower the Russian dialogue, while the English subtitles keep revealing the message. It becomes clear that Elizabeth Jennings (Russian name, "Nadezhda", played by
Kari Russell) understands exactly what she is hearing. She absorbs the full weight of it.
Yet rather than act for a greater human good, of that of the Soviet, she accepts the general’s orders as a good soldier and chooses loyalty to the system over responsibility to the world. In the series, it is implied by the nature of the series at that stage, that the role of responsibility to a greater good will likely fall to her husband, Philip Jennings (Russian name, "Mischa", played by
Matthew Rhys), who has always leaned that direction. Thus, setting up the heightened dramatic conflict between the primary characters, throughout the season's series finale.
Why do I mention all this? Because I really like this show. But further, because it points out a flaw in our system.
Donald Trump. When we realized he was a threat to this country, and others, that should have been enough to end his rise. And yet, it not only did not stop it, it fueled it. When it later time and time again because apparent and paramount that he be stopped or removed, he continued to rise.
Two impeachments, being fired as POTUS45, convicted of 34 felonies, all did not stop him from becoming yet again, an American president as POTUS47. Both are top rated worst presidents in history.
Yet he remains at this time, so far, president of the United States of America, in a country thoroughly inappropriate for such a man.
So what am I saying here? I'm not making a call to action. Certainly nothing immoral or illegal, or even unconstitutional.
THAT'S how we GOT here in the first place.
What The Americans dramatizes so brilliantly is not simply ideology or geopolitics, but failure.
The failure to recognize danger when it presents itself. The failure to confront rot when it spreads. The failure of people and systems to act when acting still matters. That is not a Soviet flaw. That is a human flaw. And it is one we, as Americans, have now lived through in real time.
Donald Trump did not rise in a vacuum. He did not endure because of one man’s will alone. He endured because far too many of us underestimated the danger, excused it, normalized it, or convinced ourselves that our institutions were strong enough to absorb anything. They were not. We were not. Inappropriate application of pressure at just the right pressure points and an autocracy rises to near fruition.
And the price of that collective failure is the reality we are living through now.
I am not advocating violence.
I am not calling for revenge.
I am not arguing for anything outside the moral and legal framework of a civilized society. What I am saying, and what this show helped crystallize for me, is that democracies do not crumble simply because something dark appears. They crumble because people hesitate, rationalize, and allow that darkness to keep breathing. Or they simply "follow orders" (See, Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals).
Also check out two very good podcasts: Burn Order and Bag Man. Both make it very clear we've seen this all, before.
But the story does not have to end this way.
If The Americans teaches anything beyond espionage and tragedy, it is that systems can change, people can awaken, and moral clarity, even if it arrives late, still matters. Our responsibility now is not to wallow in despair or pretend none of this happened. It is to be honest about where we failed. It is to refuse complacency.
It is to reclaim the basic expectations we once held of leadership, truth, and civic responsibility.
That is why I am writing this. Not only because The Americans is great television, but because it reminds us that the line between fiction and history is far thinner than we like to admit.
Recognizing our part in that story is the first step toward writing a better one.
And despite everything, I still believe we can.
We are evolving…politically, culturally, socially. The Right is changing. The Left is changing. Government and citizens alike are being forced to confront pluralism not as something distant or theoretical, but as a lived reality. It is here, now.
Multiple paradigm shifts compressed into just a few years have created strain and fracture: a Digital–Information Shift, an Economic and Class Shift, a Cultural and Identity Shift, an Institutional Trust Shift, a Technology and Reality Shift.
That strain is real. But fractures do not have to become permanent breaks. We can resolve this…if we choose to do it together. To heal together.
The greatest danger comes from those who want us divided, who refuse to accept a pluralistic America and cling to rigid hierarchy, fear, and a romanticized past instead of a shared future.
They do not define our destiny unless we let them. Our strength has always come from expanding who “we” are.
We are E Pluribus Unum…From Many, One.
We have been pushed to forget that.
It is time to remember.
Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!
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