Via The Wrap:
FX has ordered two more seasons of its hit spy drama “The Americans,” setting its series finale for the conclusion of Season 6, the cable network announced Wednesday.
The Keri Russell-Matthew Rhys espionage thriller follows the two as Russian KGB agents who pose as married suburban couple Elizabeth and Philip Jennings in Washington, D.C.
A 13-episode fifth season will air in 2017, followed by a 10-episode sixth and final season in 2018. The show is currently in the midst of its fourth season.
This show is probably the best drama on television right now, with richly developed characters and intersecting plot lines that never become confusing or unwieldy. The show even manages to make the teenage characters worth watching, which is quite a feat. For some reason unknown to rational people, The Americans has been snubbed by the Television Academy for a Best Drama Emmy thus far but that will hopefully change soon.
Dramas that push beyond six seasons seem to get a little weird after that. Sons of Anarchy, for example, was a riveting show for six seasons and the hottest of hot messes during its seventh and final season.
Crime dramas like the Law and Order and CSI franshises can have a longer shelf life because they tend to deal with things that get wrapped up in one episode. Series with long story arcs and complex characters can only milk the viewers’ emotional investment for so long. I have an acquaintance who was on Justified, another popular FX drama which recently ended. It wrapped after the sixth season and I floated my “seventh season disaster” theory by him and he immediately replied, “You are not wrong.”
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