BuzzFeed: "The Americans Season 2 Arrives Just As U.S.–Russian Relations Turn Icy"

After Sochi, the wolf, the bitter protests, and human rights violations, the second season of the FX Cold War drama arrives at the perfect time to look back at failed Soviet ambitions. Minor spoilers ahead.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "The Americans Season 2 Arrives Just As U.S.–Russian Relations Turn Icy," in which I review the second season of FX's The Americans.

With the closing of the Sochi Olympics earlier this week, Russia is on our collective minds once more: FX has rather cannily picked the perfect time to launch the second season of its gripping Cold War drama The Americans, which revolves around a set of married Soviet sleeper agents, Elizabeth (Keri Russell) and Philip Jennings (Matthew Rhys), in suburban 1980s Washington, D.C.

Yes, The Americans has car chases and street brawls, silly wigs and costume changes (not to mention one scene in particular that pushes the boundaries of basic cable depictions of sexuality), but these elements are window dressing for what lies at the true heart of the series: an exploration of national and personal identity. While the show might depict the high-stakes Cold War skirmishes and battles between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, there is a canny investigation of ideology, loyalty, and self-identity unfolding within these characters, even as the collateral damage they create in their wake mounts.

The risky missions and the tradecraft that the Jenningses embrace — dead drops, legends, and sleeper cell mentalities — become emblematic for thwarted Soviet ambition. Until the Sochi Olympics, this intracountry strife and its secret wars seemed so far removed from our daily life, but The Americans arrives at a time when Russia is once more at the forefront of the news cycle. The futility of these spies’ operations is a tacit reminder of the fluidity of the international stage and the shortness of memory of its participants.

In the show’s first season, the audience quickly learned the stakes for the Jenningses. They live on a seemingly placid street across from Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich), who, coincidentally, is the FBI agent tasked with tracking down undercover KBG officers. And the duo is also in constant fear both of being unmasked and of having their children — Paige (Holly Taylor) and Henry (Keidrich Sellati), who initially have no idea what their parents are doing — taken from them.


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BuzzFeed: "13 Returning TV Shows To Get Excited About"

Girls is back on Sunday and the onslaught of returning shows is just beginning. Set your DVRs now!

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "13 Returning TV Shows To Get Excited About," in which I run down 13 returning television series worth watching this winter. (And, yes, I know that Game of Thrones isn't on there: We still don't have an airdate.)

1. Justified (FX)

Season 5 of Justified finds Timothy Olyphant’s Raylan Givens tangling with some Florida lowlifes, relatives of Dewey Crowe (Damon Herriman), one of Harlan County’s sleaziest denizens. Plus, Boyd (Walton Goggins) tries to find a way to get Ava (Joelle Carter) out of prison… and he exacts a bloody revenge against those who put her there in the first place. Along the way, wisecracks are exchanged, along with gunfire.

Season 5 premieres on Tuesday, Jan. 7 at 10 p.m.

2. Girls (HBO)

The stellar third season of HBO’s Girls finds the quartet struggling with new challenges and the first two episodes — which air back to back as a one-hour premiere — reintroduce new realities for these characters. (The brilliant second half of the premiere is a precise and gorgeous tone poem about a road trip.) While Hannah (Lena Dunham) has settled into a life of domestic bliss (relatively) with Adam (Adam Driver), Marnie (Allison Williams) is in a perpetual state of free fall, reeling from her breakup with Charlie (Christopher Abbott). Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) is trying to find her wild side, while Jessa (Jemima Kirke) continues to create chaos in her wake. Change both big and small is on the horizon for these women, and the first few episodes of the season capture the pain and humor of self-transformation. Not to be missed under any circumstances.

Season 3 premieres Sunday, Jan. 12 at 10 p.m.

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BuzzFeed: "The 16 Best New Television Shows Of 2013"

Yes, returning shows like Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The Good Wife, Borgen, Parenthood, and others were aces this year. But this is all about the newcomers.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "The 16 Best New Television Shows Of 2013," in which I offer up my picks for the best new shows of the year, including Rectify, Orange Is the New Black, The Returned, Masters of Sex, Broadchurch, and Orphan Black, to name a few.

16. Bates Motel (A&E)

The story of Norman Bates — recounted in Alfred Hitchcock’s jangling Psycho — is only too familiar to most people. But under the watchful eye of executive producers Kerry Ehrin and Carlton Cuse, the Twin Peaks-esque Bates Motel offers a fresh look at Norman’s formative years (despite the fact that the series is set in the present day and in a different location), including his relationship with his overbearing, quixotic mother, Norma (a stellar Vera Farmiga) after they purchase a run-down motel on the Oregon coastline and discover that their new sleepy town holds all manner of deadly secrets. As Norman and Norma, Freddie Highmore and Farmiga are riveting to watch, their damaged psyches threatening to erupt into violence at any moment. The result is an eerie and off-kilter drama about the things that bind us.

15. The Bletchley Circle (PBS)

This three-episode British import — about a quartet of women who worked as codebreakers at Bletchley Park during World War II and reunite years later in order to entrap a serial killer when his pattern emerges — was a taut, thrilling chase as well as a nuanced portrait of the changing role of women in the 1950s, as each of the ladies struggles with a life of mundanity after playing such a pivotal role in the war. No surprise that another go-around is on tap for the amateur sleuths; The Bletchley Circle was downright gripping.

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BuzzFeed: "12 Objects That Defined The Year In Television"

From Breaking Bad’s stevia packet to Girls’ Q-tip, here are some of the pivotal objects that sum up scripted television in 2013. SPOILER ALERT for a ton of shows if you’re not caught up. You’ve been warned.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "12 Objects That Defined The Year In Television," in which I look at the 12 objects that roughly define 2013 in scripted television, from a Q-tip on Girls and a Sharpie on Homeland to an automobile on Downton Abbey and that Cytron card on Scandal.

1. This Q-tip.

Where It Appeared: Girls
What It Was: A seemingly innocuous Q-Tip, used repeatedly by Hannah (Lena Dunham), whose OCD was quickly spiraling out of control, to clean out her ears. But she inserted it too deeply into her inner ear canal.
What It Did: It punctured her eardrum (“I heard hissing,” she later said), leading Hannah to seek medical attention at the hospital.
What It Meant: That Hannah had truly hit rock bottom with her psychological condition and that she had seemingly lost control of her life and mental state. It was an excruciating scene to watch, not just because of the physical discomfort it manifested, but for the emotional fallout it wrought: At the end of the episode, she inserted a Q-Tip into her other ear and started counting once more.

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The Daily Beast: "Keri Russell On The Americans, Sleeper Agents, Motherhood & More"

On FX’s The Americans, which begins Wednesday, Keri Russell plays a Soviet sleeper agent in 1980s suburban D.C. I talk with the former Felicity star about Russian spies, secret lives, and being a mom.

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Keri Russell On The Americans, Sleeper Agents, Motherhood, and More," in which I sit down with Keri Russell to talk about FX Networks's new 1980s espionage drama The Americans (and why it's perhaps the anti-Felicity), motherhood, and more.

In the opening scene of The Americans, Joe Weisberg’s tense new 1980s spy drama, Soviet sleeper agent Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell) flirts with a middle-aged stranger in a Washington, D.C., bar.

Donning a blond Pretty Woman-style wig and a short dress, Russell is nearly unrecognizable, convincingly transformed into a barfly who pretends to be turned on by a G-man’s security clearance. Elizabeth and her mark head to a hotel room, where she proceeds to seduce him in order to elicit top-secret information, engaging in a range of sexual contact that’s all recorded and later listened to by Elizabeth’s husband, Phillip (Matthew Rhys).

In other words, this is the anti-Felicity.

“Oh, yeah, blow jobs and push-up bras and wigs,” says Russell, laughing. “It’s certainly a far cry.”

It’s January, and Russell sits demurely on a couch at the Langham Hotel in Pasadena. The 36-year-old actress is animated and excited, prone to waving her hands and pounding her fists emphatically on her knees while talking. It’s impossible to believe that it’s been more than 10 years since Russell played Felicity Porter on The WB’s beloved coming-of-age drama Felicity between 1998 and 2002. In the time since Felicity wrapped, Russell segued into a movie career, starring in the late Adrienne Shelly’s 2007 Sundance favorite Waitress, Mission: Impossible 3 (which reunited Russell with Felicity co-creator J.J. Abrams), and a slew of others. (A brief return to television, as the female lead opposite Will Arnett in Mitch Hurwitz’s 2010 Fox comedy Running Wilde, was short-lived.)

In person, Russell is warm and open, nothing like the character she plays on The Americans, which begins Wednesday night on FX. While she’s all high-waisted jeans and smiles on the surface—the perfect portrait of 1980s suburban motherhood who brings over home-baked brownies to her new neighbors—Elizabeth is, underneath, a brutal and unflinching killer who believes in the mission given to her and her “husband” by their Russian overseers.

It’s a bit ironic that Russell is now playing a spy. After Felicity, Abrams went on to create the Jennifer Garner-led ABC espionage thriller Alias, the idea for which grew out of a writers’ room discussion about what it would be like if Felicity became a spy. (Alias would make a star out of former Felicity guest star Garner and become an international hit.) But while Alias featured a spy who was one of the good guys, The Americans’ Elizabeth is anything but on the side of the angels.

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The Daily Beast: "18 Shows to Watch This Winter"

Stay cozy this New Year: I find the 18 new and returning television shows that will keep you warm this winter, from Girls and Justified to The Staircase, The Americans, and House of Cards.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "18 Shows to Watch This Winter," in which I round up 18 new and returning noteworthy shows that you should be watching between January and March. Some you're looking forward to, some you may not have heard of, and there are a few that you've already drawn a big red circle on the calendar on the day that they return...

Yes, Downton Abbey is back: the beloved British period drama returns to PBS’s Masterpiece for a third season beginning on Jan. 6, but it’s not the only new or noteworthy show heading to television this winter.

Indeed, some of the most intriguing, dynamic, or plain interesting shows are launching in midseason this year, from Fox’s serial killer drama The Following and Sundance Channel’s Jane Campion-created murder mystery Top of the Lake to FX’s Soviet spy period drama The Americans (starring Keri Russell!), Netflix's American remake of political potboiler House of Cards, and the return of both NBC’s subversive comedy Community and HBO’s Girls.

Jace Lacob rounds up 18 new and returning television shows that will help keep you warm during these chilly winter months, from the intriguing to the sensational.

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