'The Americans' Recap: Season 1 Finale 'The Colonel'

The Americans capped off its inaugural season with “The Colonel,” a tense but uneven episode. The episode in no way diminishes the excellent quality of the first season of The Americans but it also didn’t add much. “The Colonel” felt a little too by-the-book at times and did not capitalize on some story opportunities that could have left the show in a much more exciting place.

“The Colonel” set out to finish what last week’s “The Oath” started. Elizabeth and Phillip were still on a collision course with what seemed to be a set up mission where Elizabeth was supposed to meet Sanford’s contact, a colonel who has intelligence on the USA’s missile defense program. Unfortunately for Elizabeth and Phillip, their informant had been arrested for not paying alimony and was being investigated by Stan, who was going to let the informant, Sanford, sweat in the interrogation room for a while. Despite the KGB knowing Sanford had been caught the mission was still a go.

Elizabeth met Grannie to find any more information on the meet with the colonel. Apparently Elizabeth filled out a report to get Grannie removed from her assignment of handling Phillip and Elizabeth. This was new information for the audience and it seems Elizabeth was trying to make good on her threat from a couple weeks back. It seemed a tad tame for Elizabeth to try this route but she is KGB to the core so going through the proper channels to rid herself of Grannie made sense.

After the meeting Elizabeth lets Phillip know that the meeting with the colonel is still on and that he must pick up a bugged recording from the Secretary of Defense’s room. Little did they know that this was the set up that was being perpetrated by the FBI as they had discovered the protocol for picking up recordings. Phillip tries his best to convince Elizabeth to switch assignments with him, thinking that his would be the safer of the two, but she refuses and orders him to go to flee to Canada with the kids if Elizabeth was captured. Why Elizabeth was so ardent that she take the meeting with the colonel is unclear, the best explanation would be because she wanted the best chance for her request to reassign Grannie to go through but since that was only introduced in this episode it didn’t feel nearly as important as it should have.

The way Elizabeth handled the Grannie situation ended up being a huge disappointment. Throughout the entirety of the season the tension between her and Grannie was building. Taking that tension and coupling it with the fact that Elizabeth and Phillip were so opposed to the meet with the colonel seemed like a perfect opportunity for Phillip to convince Elizabeth to disobey orders. It seemed like the season had been building up to that moment all along but, alas, it was not meant to be this season.

With the FBI’s plan about to commence an excited Stan goes to visit Nina at the safe house apartment. He tells her that her exfiltration could happen within the next couple hours once they capture the KGB agent who was picking up the taped recordings. Nina, however, had just been granted a second chance and wish by Arkady to be able to redeem herself in the eyes of the Soviet Union by working Stan. Somewhat disappointingly, however, it doesn’t seem as though she actually considers this an actual option. From when she first heard the news she was always going to go back to Arkady to tell him about the “big mission” that was about to go down.

Before the climatic scene Arkady and Grannie meet about her reassignment. It seems Elizabeth’s request was granted. Grannie takes it in stride though and, at the very least, cares about losing another two agents if the meet with the colonel is a set up. While she doesn’t really seem too emotional about Elizabeth and Phillip she does want to make sure they aren’t wasted like, apparently, so many agents before them had been. In fact, Grannie’s character was explored as much as it has ever been throughout the season. To couple with her conversation with Arkady she calmly tricks, the CIA Director who ordered the assassination of Zhukov, into letting her into his home only to taze him. In a very cold move, Grannie ends up slicing his neck in a spot where he would bleed out, because he couldn’t move after the tazing, but not so quickly that she didn’t have time to tell him what Zhukov meant to her. Who knew Grannie could be so vengeful?

Phillip ends up going to the meeting anyway against Elizabeth’s wishes, informing her by note, while Elizabeth goes to pick up the tape. Phillip finds out from the colonel that the missile defense system is hogwash and wouldn’t be ready for at least another 50 years. During the meeting a car with a spray painted abort sign drives past Grannie, who is overseeing the meeting, and she immediately breaks it up but everyone is surprised that the FBI isn’t there. This causes Phillip to race to Elizabeth in hopes of getting her in time.

Elizabeth approaches the car as Stan and the FBI are staking it out. Phillip screeches around the corner and makes Elizabeth get in forcing Stan to open fire and a car chase to break out. At the end of the chase, once Phillip and Elizabeth switch cars and escape easily, it is revealed Elizabeth was hit with one of Stan’s bullets. Phillip takes her to an abandoned warehouse to be operated on and refuses to leave his wife to go to his kids when Grannie suggests it. Instead he gets Stan to look over them. At the end of the episode Elizabeth wakes up and in a touching moment asks Phillip to come home in Russian.

The action sequence and car chase were fairly disappointing. Much of the tension that had been built up throughout the episode was not realized in the car chase. They are on a TV budget so it isn’t going to be as epic as a Michael Bay car chase but the opening chase in the pilot episode was tenser than this one. Even though Elizabeth was shot at the end it never seemed like she or Phillip were in real danger. And if all tension hadn’t dissipated by the end of the car chase it certainly was ruined by the awful song used during the ending montage. (Wow, what was that monstrosity?)

The Americans, while not ending on its best episode, still had a great first season. It is by far the best new show that debuted in the 2012-2013 TV season and it will be coming back for a second. It should be interesting to see how the show transforms between the seasons with more time and more money at their disposal.