Critical Condition: The Americans (S6)

The Americans | SoHo, 9.30 Thursday

➢ “The hardest thing in all of television is making a great series season after season. And as The Americans begins its sixth and final season, the first three episodes sent by FX to critics elicited that kind of admiration, that confidence that, at least in the early going, the enormous weight of expectations hadn’t crippled the show but given it a certain exhilaration as it began its end game.” — The Hollywood Reporter.

➢ “Fans of the show’s intrigue will immediately notice an uptick in tension and momentum from last season that feels like a comeback. And fans of the complex love story between the show’s married pretenders, Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, will pick up on a new layer of iciness that may never thaw.” — The Washington Post.

➢ “There should not be a seventh year; the fifth occasionally lacked the forward momentum to power through all 13 episodes. The fact that the Jennings’ story is ending gives this season much of its dramatic heft and importance, as characters who haven’t seen each other in ages come together again, and as each choice in each personal and political maze carries more finality.” — Variety.

➢ “The Americans is overstretching itself, trending toward wild dramatics. There’s a feeling in the first three episodes of final-act hyperbole that left me a bit dizzy … The magnitude of the espionage feels unconvincing, and the murder-happy early episodes suggest that they learned the wrong lesson from last year’s too-slow burn.” — Entertainment Weekly.

➢ “The series, which has taken on added relevance thanks to multiplying Russian-directed assassinations in the U.K. and elsewhere, has now moved on to the era of Gorbachev and the prospect of change in the U.S.S.R. … It comes as no surprise that one of the greatest drama series in television history should come to its end as powerful as ever.” — Wall Street Journal.