"The Americans" doing a good job of not whitewashing the ruskies -- the honey trap catches its prey

This week's episode of "The Americans" was sobering. Scenes in the episode titled, The Day After, from the made for TV movie "The Day After" brought back memories of how startling that movie was at the time, and some of the characters in "The Americans" did fret about nuclear annihilation. However, that was not the highlight of the episode, because the character Elizabeth took some giant strides toward earning the Cruella De Vil award for on screen villainy, small screen category.

The scenes in which Elizabeth pulled a honey trap on Don, the devoted husband and father in a Korean-American family, were very distressing. Elizabeth had been playing up to Don's wife for several episodes, but it appears as though Don was the target all along. Elizabeth was getting nowhere with the wife, so she tricked Don into giving her a ride home. Then once home, she persuaded him to come in and move a chest for her.

Then, oh, while you're here, sample this expensive wine and tell me what you think. In went the mysterious, apparently tasteless, little pill. After drinking a glass, poor Don was unconscious on the floor.

Elizabeth put him in the bed, stripped him naked, stripped herself, crawled in bed next to him, lubed his penis, and waited for him to awaken.

What a shock for him to wake up nude next to a nude female who was supposed to be his wife's friend.

We don't know whether Elizabeth is going to work him for spy stuff in future episodes or whether that's all we'll see of him. But it certainly was a good demo of what must have happened to a lot of otherwise innocent Americans who ended up providing information to the Russians during the cold war.

No doubt spies from every regime are still working that technique with good effect these days. Maybe our own spies do it.

In any event, "The Americans" often makes the main characters sympathetic even though they are Russian spies. But they killed enough people and betrayed enough trust to dispel any notion that they are really just nice people with rotten jobs. They're bad. But, it's just a TV show, and often villains can exhibit the most interesting behavior.

So what did we learn from this? Beware the honey trap.