History Series / TheAmericans

** "The Magic of David Copperfield V: The Statue of Liberty Disappears", in Season 4. [[spoiler:Martha is exfiltrated after being exposed as the mole within the FBI. Agent Gaad is forced to retire. Lisa returns and Elizabeth kills her when she admits she plans to confess. Gabriel announces there will be no new missions, and the episode ends with a 7-month [[TimeSkip]]]].

* NotSoDifferentRemark: Elizabeth uses this angle with Pastor Tim, arguing that they both work to end nuclear threat, for justice and for equality. Pastor Tim thinks otherwise and points out the mistreatment of religious grups in the Eastern Bloc.

* DeliberateValuesDissonance: While Russia is often shown to be NotSoDifferent from America, there are moments highlighting how different life in the Soviet Union was:

* NotSoDifferent: Elizabeth uses this angle with Pastor Tim, arguing that they both work to end nuclear threat, for justice and for equality. Pastor Tim thinks otherwise and points out the mistreatment of religious grups in the Eastern Bloc.

* YouKeepTellingYourselfThat: Pastor Tim is not at all fooled by Elizabeth's NotSoDifferent speech about their work. He points out that in the Soviet Union, religious people are persecuted, bringing up not only the plight of Soviet Christians but also the Jews. Elizabeth is thus reduced to admitting her country is not perfect.

* RealityEnsues:
** Wounds suffered by the characters can be fatal (for example Robert in the series premiere) or require a long rehabilitation process.
** Highly trained agents are unable to fight their way out of sudden unexpected ambushes and are captured (in the KGB "test") or [[spoiler: the other spy couple and their daughter in their hotel room in the second season premiere]].
** Killing and other unpleasant activities take an emotional toll on the Jennings.
** Growing children are becoming more aware of their surrounding and are not oblivious.
** Nobody is above anybody when it comes to political dealings. Anton Baklanov, a Jewish refusenik himself, is traded by Mossad-the very Israelis who promised to protect him-for 1,500 more Jewish refuseniks from the USSR.
** Asking your husband to make love to you as he does to his mark makes both of you very upset and is not enjoyable or titillating.
** Your hostage has to shit. And he shits in front of you. And then you have to wipe his ass.
--->'''Mossad agent''': Mr. KGB-man! ''I need to shit.''
** It's not a good idea to go after a highly-trained Navy SEAL colonel you're specifically and explicitly forbidden from attacking. Your boss not only has to stop using him, you'll also die.
** There are no second acts in Soviet lives, and no redemption. Treason and failing the motherland are rewarded with a bullet to the brain, [[Literature/NineteenEightyFour 1984]]-style. This is made painfully explicit in [[spoiler:Nina Sergeevna's]] storyline.
** Philip suspects that Paige has grown overconfident in the fighting skills she's learned from Elizabeth, so he forces her to spar with him and casually demolishes her, forcing her to realize that attacking people twice her size is incredibly dangerous no matter how much training she receives.

* GoodAdulteryBadAdultery: Elizabeth's relationship with Gregory can be seen as the good type in-universe given that she is a fish out of water in a "marriage" that is, at the time, only a professional arrangement "in a strange country with a strange man" as she puts it and is looking for some sort of real connection. It is bad to the viewer because Philip is sympathetic, probably cared for her long before she started caring for him, and is deeply hurt.

** In the shootout between the West German bomber and Philip+Elizabeth, he ducks into the hotel bathroom. The KGB agents toss the bomb into the bathroom just as he sets it off.

** Stan and Aderholt manage to arrest William simply by checking the papers of the company he works for.

* YourCheatingHeart: All of the main characters. Elizabeth had a longtime affair with an American KGB asset, and Philip doesn't react well when he finds out in "Gregory". Then both Philip and Stan cheat on their wives in "Duty and Honor". In Season 2, Sandra actually ''tells'' Stan that she is going off on a sex weekend with her new boyfriend, and by the end of the season they've agreed to divorce.

''The Americans'' is a television drama that aired on Creator/{{FX|Networks}} from 2013 to 2018. Created by former UsefulNotes/{{CIA}} operative Joe Weisberg, Creator/KeriRussell (''Series/{{Felicity}}'') and Creator/MatthewRhys (''Series/BrothersAndSisters'') play Soviet deep cover agents masquerading as Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, a married couple living in the suburbs of northern Virginia in the early 1980s. Creator/NoahEmmerich plays Stan Beeman, an FBI counterintelligence agent hunting for Soviet spies like Mr. and Mrs. Jennings, and he's just moved in down the street.

* FallGuy: When a Soviet submarine sinks with all hands lost, the tragedy is caused by faulty propellers that were built based on plans stolen by Philip and Elizabeth. The KGB is blamed for falling for a US trick and stealing defective plans deliberately planted by the Americans. Oleg uses his connections to discover the real truth: the submarine was rushed to sea without proper testing and the propellers were never designed to work with that type of submarine. However, since the official finding was that the plans were defective, the KGB will take the blame even if it was not really its fault.

** Philip and Elizabeth gradually provide a literal example.

* WigDressAccent: The Jennings use wigs, glasses, different clothes and makeup to put on a unique appearance for each asset. Philip's "Clark" wig remains amazingly durable during numerous sex scenes with Martha. Though Martha does know it is fake and assumes that it is a toupee, which actually strengthens his cover of being in love with her.

''The Americans'' is a television drama that aired on Creator/{{FX}} from 2013 to 2018. Created by former UsefulNotes/{{CIA}} operative Joe Weisberg, Creator/KeriRussell (''Series/{{Felicity}}'') and Creator/MatthewRhys (''Series/BrothersAndSisters'') play Soviet deep cover agents masquerading as Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, a married couple living in the suburbs of northern Virginia in the early 1980s. Creator/NoahEmmerich plays Stan Beeman, an FBI counterintelligence agent hunting for Soviet spies like Mr. and Mrs. Jennings, and he's just moved in down the street.

* CovertDistressCode: In the next-to-last episode, after narrowly escaping an FBI trap, Phillip calls home and tells Elizabeth he has to work late at the office. It's a distress code, and the Jenningses flee the country immediately.

* StrictlyProfessionalRelationship: {{Invoked}}. Philip is pretending to be an FBI InternalAffairs investigator and has convinced Martha, an FBI secretary, to help him investigate the counter-intelligence division. Martha is clearly attracted to him and he makes a big show of convincing her that he reciprocates her feelings. Until his investigation is concluded, they have to maintain a strictly professional relationship. [[spoiler:However, Philip is actually a Soviet spy and has no romantic feelings for Martha whatsoever. Despite this, he eventually gets into a relationship and even marries her to keep up the op.]]

* TearsOfRemorse - Elizabeth [[Spoiler: after she forces the elderly bookkeeper to kill herself.]]

* AmusementPark: In "Comrades" a Jennings family outing to an amusement park turns bad when the other DeepCoverAgent family that Philip and Elizabeth meet are murdered.

* RememberTheNewGuy: KGB agent Gabriel, introduced in the first episode of Season 3 as an old friend. Apparently he was Phil and Liz's handler at some point before the time frame of the series.

* SwitchtoEnglish: Elizabeth and Philip always (with very few exceptions) speak English to each other ahd to their handlers, the explanation being that they want to remain in character. To its credit, apart from this concession to the American and British lead stars, the show hired a lot of Russian actors for Russian roles and was not afraid of extensive subtitled scenes.

''The Americans'' is a television drama that aired on Creator/{{FX}} from 2013 to 2018. Created by former UsefulNotes/{{CIA}} operative Joe Weisberg, Creator/KeriRussell (''Series/{{Felicity}}'') and Matthew Rhys (''Series/BrothersAndSisters'') play Soviet deep cover agents masquerading as Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, a married couple living in the suburbs of northern Virginia in the early 1980s. Creator/NoahEmmerich plays Stan Beeman, an FBI counterintelligence agent hunting for Soviet spies like Mr. and Mrs. Jennings, and he's just moved in down the street.

* MuggingTheMonster: Two ruffians intercept Elizabeth and Page on their way to the car. Elizabeth hands over her wallet as any regular person would do, but when one of the muggers keeps approaching Page with ill-intent, she fights them, killing the one who pulled a knife.

** President Reagan survives the assassination attempt. There is no military coup and World War 3 does not start. This trope is examined in-universe: the Russians assume that a military coup ''will'' occur based on their own experiences with America's ''allies''. Philip, by all accounts the Soviet character who "gets" America the best, is the only one who notices the Americans have no such expectations.

* SwitchtoEnglish: Elizabeth and Philip always (with very few exceptions) speak English to each other ahd to their handlers, the explanation being that they want to remain in character. To its credit, apart from this concession to the American lead stars, the show hired a lot of Russian actors for Russian roles and was not afraid of extensive subtitled scenes.

** President Reagan survives the assassination attempt. There is no military coup and World War 3 does not start. This trope is examined in-universe: the Russians assume that a military coup ''will'' occur based on their own experiences with America's ''allies''. Philip, by all accounts the Soviet character who 'gets' America the best, is the only one who notices the Americans have no such expectations.

* {{Fanservice}}: Sexy KGB spies Nina and Elizabeth show their comely backsides repeatedly, which is apparently the limit of how far this basic cable show can go.

* AllForNothing: The series ends with [[spoiler: Phillip and Elizabeth giving up their lives in America, losing their children and returning to Moscow...in 1987. The duo are unaware that in just four years, the USSR will collapse, the KGB will be disbanded and everything they spent a decade fighting for will be for a cause that was long lost.]]

** BureaucraticallyArrangedMarriage: It seems that the KGB sets up its agents with each other. This was averted with real life husband and wife spy teams. [[note]] In real life the KGB either selected from agents who were already married to each other or recruited the spouse of an existing agent. [[/note]]

** Beeman figures out a simple, yet effective, plan to throw suspicion off the real mole, Nina. The Rezident is [[PutOnABus put on a plane]] as a result, and all it required was a basic understanding of Soviet presumed-guilty paranoia regarding their high officials. [[note]] Not to mention some [[FrameUp planted diamonds]].[[/note]]
** The United States Government pulls off a Batman Gambit in season 2. They come up with faulty rotor designs for submarines and plant them at facilities all over the country, knowing full well that the Soviets will try to steal them. Russia obtains the plans and retrofits one of their submarines with the new rotors. The "improved" submarine has a rotor malfunction that kills the entire crew (over a hundred Soviet sailors). The US tricked Russia into stealing plans that would kill its own military personnel.
* BecomingTheMask: Philip's central problem is that he likes being a middle class American far too much for a Soviet mole. In season six [[spoiler:he actually quits spycraft for a while and focuses solely on his cover job]]..

* BrattyTeenageDaughter: Paige, who was already more or less this, gets even worse in Season 1 after Philip and Elizabeth separate and he moves out of the house. And in Season 2 she gets into Christianity, in what is clearly at least in part an effort to irritate her unchurched parents.

* ButHeSoundsHandsome: Elizabeth can't resist making offhanded remarks about how cool the Soviet Union's accomplishments are ("walking on the moon is ok, but getting into space is the real thing")

* ChekhovsGun: Chris's offhand comment early in the season about how he once dated Martha leads to Chris asking Martha out again in "Mutually Assured Destruction"--which leads to Chris seeing Martha looking in a file cabinet she shouldn't be looking in and acting all shifty, which leads to Chris getting suspicious and following Martha around.
* ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: Nina betrays every 'side' she's on. Even [[spoiler: after being imprisoned for treason in season 3, she informs on her fellow prisoners in exchange for better treatment and meals from the guards.]] Ultimately [[spoiler: the one time she refuses to betray someone and report on Anton Baklanov, she's executed because of it]].

* TheDeterminator: Stan has elements of this, particularly after [[spoiler: his partner is killed.]]

** Ronald Reagan to the Soviets. Which is TruthInTelevision - the Soviet government viewed Reagan as very dangerous.

* EvilCannotComprehendGood: When Reagan was shot, Elizabeth believes there is some sort of power play behind the scenes in the American government meant for the war hawks to take over, just like how things happen in the Soviet Union. She never considers that it was just some random psychopath. Coups don't happen in America.

* FallGuy: When a Soviet submarine sinks with all hands lost, the tragedy is caused by faulty propellers that were built based on plans stolen by Philip and Elisabeth. The KGB is blamed for falling for a US trick and stealing defective plans deliberately planted by the Americans. Oleg uses his connections to discover the real truth: the submarine was rushed to sea without proper testing and the propellers were never designed to work with that type of submarine. However, since the official finding was that the plans were defective, the KGB will take the blame even if it was not really its fault.

** "Clark" and Martha are played by attractive / average people, and they don't do anything strange, but their sex scenes still come across as off-putting.

** Claudia ("Granny") is this for Philip and Elizabeth. She and Elizabeth don't get along in the early seasons.
** In Season 2 Philip and Elizabeth get a new handler named Kate.
** At the end of Season 2, Claudia returns, ordering Phillip and Elizabeth to begin [[spoiler: preparing Paige for eventual service in the KGB]], as they had intended for [[spoiler: Jared]] to do.
** In Season 3 an older agent named Gabriel, apparently an old acquaintance of P and E, returns to work with them.

* HeelFaceMole: "Stingers" reveals [[spoiler: that Stan was right about Zinaida. She's not really a defector, and in fact is spying for the KGB.]]