Sergei Kourdakov | The Americans

When the award winning drama series, The Americans, aired on television in 2013, I couldn’t watch it.  I even blogged about it in my October 14, 2014 post.  After six years I caved in.  To understand my change of heart I’ll go back to the beginning.

No, there wasn’t anything wrong with my TV when The Americans series started.  It was the fact that I knew the story line was about two Soviet KGB spies posing as an American married couple living in the suburbs of Washington DC.  That was why I didn’t want to watch it.  The show was way too close to home.  And not because the fictional Russian couple in the series lived in a home in Falls Church, Virginia—a few miles from where I used to live.

The Americans show was too close for comfort because of my own true story about dating Soviet KGB defector, Sergei Kourdakov.  I was also in the middle of writing a book about Sergei when the show came out.  And honestly, I was pretty sure there would be scenes in The Americans that I really didn’t want to know about.

The show ended in 2018 and I held fast to my plan.  Not going there, I told myself so many times.  You can probably see where this is heading…so fast forward to the part where I recently caved in and ended up watching the entire series.  All 75 episodes.

The reason for my change of heart?  Whenever I talked publicly about my book, A Rose for Sergei, people commented that it sounded like something out of The Americans.  Then they wanted to know what I thought of the show.  I didn’t have an answer, but I now understand what they were talking about.  Yes, it is an amazing show, and it definitely holds your attention.

After watching The Americans I had a few sleepless nights, and there were some scenes where my heart raced.  Sergei Kourdakov often told me we were being watched and followed.  Sergei spotted it, but now I understand how I wouldn’t notice that.  The Russians/KGB were good at their tradecraft.

I tried to encourage my sister, Karen, to watch The Americans…even just a few episodes.  She had met Sergei and I thought she would find the show interesting.  Her answer, “I’m not going to watch that show, it’s too scary.”