The Americans Season 4 Review

We know that Earth will keep on spinning well past the March 9th, 1983 date season 4 opens on, which is why the show’s increasing focus on its own world, not period geopolitics, makes sense. That’s become a mighty large world of its own, though, and it poses a bigger threat to The Americans than any pathogen or stealth plane.

There are few new additions to the cast this year, the most notable being Dylan Baker as a prickish Directorate S undercover, and Ruthie Ann Miles as the latest asset one of the Jennings has to cozy up to. Miles provides a welcome dose of cheer to such morose surroundings, even if the operation she’s at the centre of is one that’s grown overly familiar.

The show’s blind spot lays not in execution, but resolution. The Americans has always been comfortable with leaving ambiguous loose ends, yet it can be frustrating when a riveting thread, like Philip’s ulcer-inspiring relationship with young Kimberly last year, disappears entirely. Conversely, the show’s commitment to one vestigial subplot does offer season 4 an obvious weak link.

You can’t blame anyone for wanting to keep actress Annet Mahendru on their show, but even her dependably stellar performance isn’t enough to justify Nina’s continued place in the series at times. There’s so much going on with just Philip, Elizabeth, and Paige that other terrific performances and characters, like Alison Wright as Martha or Frank Langella as spy handler Gabriel, are sometimes lost in the mix.

It’s a good problem to have, though, reflecting the creative staff’s deep understanding of – and appreciation for – these characters. The first two seasons of The Americans often utilized an “Operation of the Week” format around which to build memorable action setpieces. Now, the show is usually at its very best when the performers, writers, directors, and production team are working in service of blindingly powerful emotional fireworks. Episode 4 is a humdinger of peril and deadly consequences, but its most skillful sequence is a montage of confession and treachery, set to Dorothy Moore’s “Misty Blue” – one for the show’s history books.

The plate-spinning managed by this show’s writers is still awe-inspiring, and The Americans‘ direction remains understatedly excellent, like so much else in the series. The leads, though, are the show’s brightest red star. For as phenomenal as Russell continues to be as the more iron-willed of the Jennings parents (and she’s only getting better as that status changes), Rhys is on his way to closing out one of the most astonishing dramatic roles TV has seen in decades. Philip’s a good atheist Russian, but the severity of his mental self-flagellation and the burden of sin haunting those raccoon eyes are almost biblical; his is a soul riven more sharply than any weaponized atom, and Rhys makes you ache with him.

All told, Weisberg and Fields are offering more of the same in The Americans‘ fourth season, and that is a very good thing. They make an early seasonal motif out of oven dials being cranked up, a knowingly apt image that’s appropriate for a show where things only get more hazardous for characters the more self-aware they become. “You would be living in a burning house,” Gabriel says of an important decision made at the end of episode 4. “What’s new?” Philip replies resignedly. The Americans is going to keep turning up the heat on the Jennings – and that’s just the way it should be.