The Americans recap: You are what you eat

The season five premiere of the FX series isn't about obligations, self-fulfillment, or even lies. It's about hunger.

Russell and Rhys in The Americans.
(Image credit: Patrick Harbron/FX)

The fifth season of FX's The Americans — a show that has never been quite as eerily relevant as it is this season — opens by making the contrasts between Russia and America explicit.

Joe Weisberg's show about Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, KGB sleeper agents who embedded in America and started a typical American family, has always investigated the overlap between the personal and the political, and the ways the story you keep telling about yourself starts to become a second truth. In past seasons, Philip struggled with America's temptations in ways that Elizabeth never did. He longs to give their children something like a normal life and has taken to attending meetings at EST, where he talks unhappily about obligations and self-fulfillment.

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Lili Loofbourow is the culture critic at TheWeek.com. She's also a special correspondent for the Los Angeles Review of Books and an editor for Beyond Criticism, a Bloomsbury Academic series dedicated to formally experimental criticism. Her writing has appeared in a variety of venues including The Guardian, Salon, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, and Slate.