YOUR FAVORITE LOGO TV SHOWS ARE ON PARAMOUNT+

Logo NewNowNext Award Nominee 'The Americans' is Basically Queer TV

[caption id="attachment_93755" align="aligncenter" width="601"]No completely straight show would give us this. No completely straight show would give us this.[/caption]

When I say that FX's The Americans, which you can vote for in this year's NewNextAwards, is basically a queer TV show, I don't mean that I'm expecting one of the characters to come out of the closet. I mean that almost every scene ripples with the exhilaration and confusion of living outside typical paradigms.

The lead characters may be Russian spies disguised as average Americans in Reagan-era D.C., but they are also people who live their entire lives performing identities for the benefit of a majority culture, subverting gender expectations, and battling to live authentic private lives.

Anyone who's queer has done all of those things.

Consider the fact that between the lead characters, Elizabeth (Keri Russell) is the one who's the most committed to Mother Russia while her husband Phillip (Matthew Rhys) loves the domestic comforts of American life. Even though we've seen Phillip kill and maim and act like a typical protective husband, and even though we've seen Elizabeth be vulnerable, she is still the one who does the most ass kicking in the name of Moscow. She's the one who strolls up and shoots a guy at point blank range, while Phillip is the one who keeps finding new reasons to run away to a simpler, homier life. He has a gentleness that she just doesn't have, and that's a nice inversion of what's expected. (The same is true of Stan, the FBI agent who lives across the street. He's got a fundamental sweetness, especially about a Russian agent he's running, that make him the opposite of your typical, gruff G-man.)

There's an even stronger queer energy in the way The Americans is always about the performance of identity. In one way or another, doesn't every LGBT person have to decide which wig, which drag to put on today? Don't we have decide which voice or attitude or posture to adopt, the way that Phillip and Elizabeth keep having to pass as new people? Philip and Elizabeth can't even be themselves around their children, since they're sure that revealing their true identities could ruin their kids' lives. That's the inverse of what happens with many queer people, who are terrified to come out to their parents. However, the anxiety is essentially the same. It's the anxiety of losing your family.

But like many queer people, P &E do have some kind of "family group." They have each other, and they have their fellow Russian operatives, who let them drop the act for a minute.

But what if your people betray you? That's what happened in the episode where the Russians, disguised as FBI agents, tortured P & E to see if they were moles. After she learned she was being brutally tested, Elizabeth beat the crap out of her handler (Margo Martindale), and it was a vicious attack. Because when you get betrayed by the people who aren't supposed to make you perform, it hurts even more.

Obviously, this isn't just a "queer" thing, since almost everyone has to slip on different identities throughout the day: Our work selves and home selves and school selves are typically not the same. And everyone can understand the pain of being betrayed by people you trust, especially when those people get to see the parts that you hide from the rest of the world. So maybe that means The Americans is tapping into something universal. Or maybe it means that everyone is queer---that everyone has something that puts them outside the mainstream. But either way, that spirit ripples beneath the surface of this TV show.

Oh... and The Americans gets extra queer points because Holly Taylor, who plays Elizabeth and Phillip's daughter Paige, is totally serving Jade Jolie:

[caption id="attachment_93753" align="aligncenter" width="494"]She could be Jade's sister! She could be Jade's sister![/caption]

Do you want The Americans to win a NewNowNext Award? Then vote here!

---

Mark Blankenship tweets as @IAmBlankenship, and he's pretty certain that his husband isn't a spy.

Latest News