Over the past few months, being the addictive person that I am, the television series, “The Americans”, has had me hooked- a brilliant spy versus spy plot set in the Eighties in the States during the Cold War based around the two KGB agents pretending to live the suburban dream of the every day happily married couple that is Phillip and Elizabeth Jennings and their two children. That’s one layer.
Dig deeper and this series is about espionage and counter espionage, love, sex, betrayal, twists, turns and with no glib television answers to the questions asked.
Keri Russell, who some might remember as “Felicity” in the TV series from the mid-Nineties, plays Elizabeth Jennings with no makeup, no bullshit and sexual heat not felt and unleashed since William Hurt crashed through the glass window after watching Kathleen Turner make him reach that point of no return in “Body Heat”.
Friends of mine who might have flirted with and strayed into that dark side have talked to me about the character of Elizabeth Jennings- not beautiful, or, maybe she is, but with the confidence to know she can have any man she wants, any way and anywhere she wants them, and they, on her same wavelength, knowing full well that one fleeting moment of pleasure with her might be the end of life as we know it, but willing to take that chance as life’s too short and how it will be worth exploring as opposed to living a seeming eternity of being constantly unsatisfied, but having to play the game to keep up pretences.
Elizabeth Jennings is not the woman of your dreams unless you’re some twisted soul hurtling into a relationship that you know will be a nightmare, crash-dive into recklessness knowing it was doomed from the start.
The “woman of your dreams”, or “the girl of your dreams”, you usually marry and play out the role expected by society until “death us do part”, or you take a gamble, and photo bomb the wedding album and divorce that entire episode with absolutely no remorse except for some fleeting and very selective memory recalls.
Elizabeth Jennings is every woman you’ve been with where sex has been mistaken for love, and, like some bizarre new rendition of “Love Will Keep Us Together”, lust does, even though the novelty wears off long before The Long Goodbye.
The fear of being alone has the mind make some very strange decisions to one’s heart where you either survive the consequences, or fall prey to being tangled up in blue while living dangerously and dancing on the edge without a net.
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