The Americans

Has anyone else been watching this new series?

I have to say, I'm kind of loving it. Sure, it's a spy story, set around 1980 that could quickly devolve into repetitive missions and near misses of being caught... But I think the reason it's working so far is that, at it's core, it's a marriage of convenience romance.

And that's such a hard trope to pull off in a contemporary (or near contemporary) setting. But here it works. It's plausible.

The set up/backstory is that the two main characters, a man and a woman, join the KGB when they are in their teens. Both are separately trained to speak and act like Americans and trained to be spies. Then, when they are in their early 20's they are introduced to each other for the first time, given cover stories and moved to the US to start their missions, working undercover as spies while posing as a married couple.

Neither is allowed to tell the other anything about their real pasts -- not even their real names. They are never allowed to ever speak Russian, even to each other. They only know each other by their fake American names and only know each other's cover stories. They live together and, to be more plausible as a couple, they have two children together. But having sex to conceive is merely part of their jobs. Then about 14 years later, (as the series begins), their relationship remains purely professional, even though they are living together and raising two children.

Both often have to have sex with other people as part of their jobs. Both have to pretend to be in love with other people to gather intelligence. We find out that he had a love in his past whom he had to leave behind in Russia. We find out that she found love with a man in the US (whom she also recruited and turned into a KGB informant), but the they are only posing as a couple. They don't love each other. Or even fully trust each other. In fact, we get the impression that she, in particular, (the harder-edged of the pair), barely tolerates her husband. He's just the dude she has to work with as part of her job--something she really believes in. And he's a big risk to her if he turns.

And then something happens. Someone appears in their lives whom the Keri Russell character knew back in Russia. Someone who hurt her. And when her husband/partner finds out that this man hurt her in the past--hurt a woman whose real name he doesn't even know,  effectively hurt a woman who no longer exists--she (and we) instantly see by his reaction that he loves her. In spite of how tough and cold she is, he has fallen in love with his wife of 14 years. And then as the series progresses we get to see her fall for him too.

It's kind of awesome.

Speaking of awesome. Did anyone else see the Bates Motel premiere? Wow. Rape and multiple murders in episode one. And Vera Farmiga is pretty amazing. I honestly don't know where they go from there. But I'm excited to find out. Poor Norman.