I thought the show was watchable slop for the first couple seasons but the more they felt the need to depict/include Russian characters the worse it got. I know The Americans wasn’t perfect but it seems like a master class of balance and characterization by comparison.
I feel like the pilot episode sets the tone for how the show portrays the Russians.
It didn’t show the Soviets as the good guys, but it also showed that they were genuinely spooked by Reagan (“the Americans had elected a mad man as their president”) and reacting to what the Americans might do to them.
the Russian stuff in The Americans is (mostly) considerably less cringe - it feels like they at least made an effort to give all the principal Russian characters some interiority and not just be cold operators or whatever, and iirc they worked with Russian translators and a decent number of Russian actors to make their dialogue relatively credible. the show was created by an ex-CIA guy who now writes books like this which should tell you a lot about the politics of the show (in short “both sides bad but also both sides rational”). in general it’s wittier and better written than FAM by a lot mainly cause it can’t coast on cool space shit. also, wigs.
I thought the show was watchable slop for the first couple seasons but the more they felt the need to depict/include Russian characters the worse it got. I know The Americans wasn’t perfect but it seems like a master class of balance and characterization by comparison.
Is The Americans watchable if I like cold war propaganda cringe?
I feel like the pilot episode sets the tone for how the show portrays the Russians.
It didn’t show the Soviets as the good guys, but it also showed that they were genuinely spooked by Reagan (“the Americans had elected a mad man as their president”) and reacting to what the Americans might do to them.
the Russian stuff in The Americans is (mostly) considerably less cringe - it feels like they at least made an effort to give all the principal Russian characters some interiority and not just be cold operators or whatever, and iirc they worked with Russian translators and a decent number of Russian actors to make their dialogue relatively credible. the show was created by an ex-CIA guy who now writes books like this which should tell you a lot about the politics of the show (in short “both sides bad but also both sides rational”). in general it’s wittier and better written than FAM by a lot mainly cause it can’t coast on cool space shit. also, wigs.