I put this one off for years, because I feared it would be some unoriginal show about how great the Americans are (were) and how evil the Russians. I know: where on earth did I get that idea?
Out of boredom, I eventually gave an episode a try... and four weeks later, I have watched all six seasons. That doesn't happen very often to me, because I'm hard to convince to spare some 40-100 hours of my life just to watch the last episode of something. The last time I did that was with Lost... yup... now you know why I don't do that anymore ;-)
Admittedly, this is not a perfect show. There are plotholes (minor ones), sometimes the characters do stuff, that you don't 100% understand etc. But that's really minor, if you don't look closely, could be that you miss it altogether. What threw me off more that I would have thought though, is Kerri Russels "smoking". She doesn't inhale, i.e. She puffs. While I totally get, that smoking is extremely unhealthy and should be avoided at all cost, there are so many (esp. In the later episodes) scenes and closeups, where her character is smoking, and it looks like a kid imitating and adult each and every time. I wonder, if there couldn't have been a better solution with this. CGI-smoke, cutting away, just something that wouldn't break the immersion like a supposedly chain-smoking, tough-as-nails Russian spy puffing cigarettes like a 12-year-old.
But that might be just something that bugs me. Otherwise, this show is nothing short of awesome. There is nod "bad Russians" vs "lovely Americans" going on here. It's too clever for cliches like that. This show is about a lot of things. Family, marriage, political systems, blind patriotism, obedience, sacrifice, moraility, difficult choices etc. The thing I liked most about it was that it leaves you with the feeling that both ways of life, Capitalist and Communist have their appeal. There is no judgement in the way of "Communism failed, the USSR failed, we won, because we were better". It even leaves you with the question if this life we live right now, with 25 different coffee brands in the supermarket and a new cellphone every 18 months really makes us happy.
Bottom line: not perfect, but most highly recommended!!!
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