Scene after scene transpires as a discussion about togetherness—as eternal ideal and currency.
The Americans is the rolling stone that gathers no moss.
Maybe the ultimate project of The Americans is to recognize its characters’ collective disillusionment.
Throughout its runtime, the episode remarkably threads together the impressions of shared torment.
The episode feels less like a continuation of this season’s efforts up to this point than a tangent.
Another week, another episode of The Americans that’s notable for its pervasive lack of hurry.
The producers of The Americans are more than aware that they’re playing a very, very long game with their audience.
The latest episode of The Americans is practically a treatise on the psychodynamic theory of guilt.
The episode thrillingly and daringly comes close to completely pressing down on the reset button.
The episode is unique in the canon of the series for the sterling self-reflexivity of its sense of humor.
The attention to behavioral detail that goes into any given episode of The Americans is unlike that of any other show.
The latest episode of The Americans thrillingly plants the seeds of a whirlwind of emotional reckonings.
“Amber Waves” is an immediate reminder that The Americans is an edifice brilliantly constructed of contrasts.
The series proves once again that action need not be explosive to be effective.
The real danger in the world of The Americans is that one fails to notice they’re being crushed.
The episode frames its constituent parts as opposing forces, but in the end each element contributes to a coherent, if half-hidden, whole.
Having been told so many lies, Paige has now become the teller, her parents’ child after all.
The episode reexamines the distinctions we draw between offense and defense, between the necessary evil and the greater good.
The notion that one can simply pick up the pieces and move on is the season’s central illusion.
The episode is, in one sense, a portrait of a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.