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The Americans season 1, episode 1 rewatch: Pilot

By Brittany Frederick

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Before the end of The Americans, Americans Undercover looks back at the show’s beginnings. Here’s our rewatch of season 1, episode 1.

As The Americans draws to a close, we’re going back to the start. Americans Undercover is rewatching the entire series leading up to the final season premiere, beginning with the series’ first episode.

“Pilot” introduces us to Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell) as she’s seducing a Department of Justice official who’s dumb enough to get drunk and start talking to a complete stranger in a bar. Then her husband Philip (Matthew Rhys) gets into a literal back alley fight with another mark. That sets the tone for the whole episode, and thus the whole show.

It’s interesting in hindsight to see how fast the opening sequence of The Americans moves, compared to how much more deliberate the show has been in later seasons, particularly in Season 5 which was slow to a fault at points.

This episode also has a bunch of other things that aren’t here anymore: Maximiliano Hernandez as Stan’s (Noah Emmerich) ill-fated first college Chris Amador, Michael Gaston (Blindspot) with an odd mustache playing his first boss Agent Bartholomew, and an office that looks like a high school multi-purpose room.

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But that’s why they’re pilots, because things change quite a bit in every show’s early going.

Paige (Holly Taylor) and Henry (Keidrich Sellati) look like babies in this episode, too, and their biggest problem is Henry’s missing skateboard. When you consider how prominent a part they play in later seasons, particularly Paige, it’s also strange to see an Americans where they’re side characters at best.

The show feels more taut without the domestic drama, yet you’ve also got to ask yourself, how realistic would it be if the kids had never caught on?

But what hasn’t changed is the show’s ability to weave things together so efficiently. We learn quickly that the man Philip roughed up is the one who raped Elizabeth as a young woman, and who’s also the FBI’s biggest source. The series immediately ties all of these things together and then, as became par for the course, yanks the string with a more emotional tie, having Philip kill Timoshev for hurting Elizabeth.

It’s a spy mission, but it becomes a personal one, setting up the budding relationship between our heroes.

The Americans season 1 feels so different from the current season; it’s brighter (figuratively and literally), and it has more action in it than we saw in Season 5. But you could say that this is the series before all the weight piled on, before the family was tested, before people started dying around Stan.

Could you imagine now Philip and Elizabeth having a kitchen confrontation like the one in “Pilot”? It seems alien now that he wouldn’t listen to her when she said stop, or that she’d come after him with a knife. And we know it’s alien to see Stan’s happy marriage with Sandra (Susan Misner). And how about that driving scene that’s reminiscent of the one in Miami Vice?

The first episode of the series is packed with plenty of action, and it definitely satisfies the spy thriller aspect of the show. But what we truly love the show for is just underneath the surface, albeit still developing—the marriage (still far from genuine), the relationship (so undefined), the emotional undercurrent (still intense). It’s a very different “Pilot” but the underpinnings are still the same, and we know it only gets better from here.

Next: Actors who need to be in The Americans season 6

If you want to rewatch The Americans season 1, episode 1 with us, you can find out how to catch up with past seasons here.