Reds in the bed
IN June 2010, the lives of Richard and Cynthia Murphy came to a screeching halt. The couple lived in a nice doublestorey house in suburban New Jersey with their two daughters. Cynthia had a career in finance, while Richard was a stay-at-home dad. On weekends, they would hold barbecues with the neighbours. Cynthia sometimes baked cookies in the shape of the Statue of Liberty.
Just a regular, all-American family. Except they weren’t, at all. Richard and Cynthia Murphy were actually Vladimir and Lidiya Guryev: spies planted by Russia to pose as ordinary Americans over the course of years. Though it’s believed the children were really theirs, the marriage was an operational partnership planned by Moscow.
“They can’t be spies,” one of their neighbours told the Daily Mail while FBI agents surrounded the house. “Look at what she did with the hydrangeas!”
The 2010 FBI raid netted 10 “illegals” living around America. Another of those apprehended was Mikhail Semenko. Semenko’s job at a Washington travel agency offered the perfect cover for his command of multiple languages.
In making The Americans, a spy thriller which has just concluded its third season, creator Joe Weisberg — himself a former CIA officer — has clearly drawn inspiration from the real-life stories of undercover Russian spies like these. The Americans tells the story of Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, an unremarkable married couple working at a Washington travel agency, who happen to be undercover KGB officers.
Like the real-life Murphys, Elizabeth and Philip Jennings were paired by Moscow, and now have two American children who have no idea that their parents are Russian spies. To add to the drama of their life of subterfuge, new neighbours have just moved in next door — and the dad happens to be an FBI officer.
What’s not to like? For one thing, the show stars Keri Russell, aka Felicity from Felicity . Remember Felicity? A show about a university student who was constantly dictating letters into a tape recorder to send to her friend back home? Felicity may be one of the only TV shows in history in which the star’s change of hairstyle ruined everything. When the actress cut her hair, ratings tanked. I call this the “Samson effect”. Other noteworthy victims in pop culture include singer Michael Bolton.
In The Americans, Russell is fortunately back to having long hair, otherwise they probably wouldn’t have risked it. Her character’s spying work requires her to wear a lot of different disguises, however. There’s also the fact that the show is set in the ’80s, during the Cold War, so there’s some authentically ugly styling going on at times.
If you’re a fan of action and car chases, there’s more than enough to keep you busy as the Jenningses carry out their secretive tasks for the Kremlin. The really intriguing part of the show, though, is the relationship between Elizabeth and Philip. Both of them are required to use their bodies in whatever way necessary to gain information. Philip, in fact, is in a sham marriage with another woman on the side, in order to win access to her boss’s papers.
It’s not that which causes the tension. It’s that Philip is clearly more than a little seduced by the capitalist perks of the US. He loves the cars, the music, the beer and hotdogs. Elizabeth, despite her girlnext-door American appearance, remains a stern Soviet ideologue beneath it. The only thing worth dying for is the Motherland.