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Thomas & Friends
Over 24 seasons, Thomas & Friends has taught young viewers important lessons about being helpful, teamwork and admitting your mistakes.
When we’re kids, we often believe that our parents only exist for us. Oh, we know they may have outside jobs and interests and a curious love of broccoli at dinner. But for the most part, we figure they’re simply around to take us to soccer practice and check our homework and make us eat broccoli. Then one day we realize that our parents are, like, real people—and come with a past that didn’t include us at all. Suddenly we look at them almost like we’re seeing them for the first time.
A good thing, right? Well, sure, unless your parents just happen to be Russian secret agents. That can make for some awkward dinner conversation, let me tell you. More broccoli, anyone?
In fairness, Katya O’Connor would like to cut her ties with the Russian government. She served the Motherland long and well in her time with the KGB (now the SVR), but when she fell in love with one of her marks (named Mark, appropriately), she wanted out of the biz. When you’re a spy, though, you don’t turn in your two weeks’ notice and that’s that. So Katya and Mark made a deal—a little more service for a chance to finally quit. It wasn’t the best of bargains, certainly. Mark was made to betray his native America, and their eldest daughter, Natalie, wound up being a spy, too. But it seemed to work. Katya and Mark have been living pretty normal lives for a while, and they successfully kept their two other kids—aimless high schooler Sarah and the spectacularly gifted Alex—away from Russian interference.
Or, they did until Alex started working for the CIA. Now, with the official family genius being an official U.S. spook, suddenly Moscow has renewed its interest in the O’Connors.
NBC’s Allegiance takes the conceit of FX’s The Americans and gives it what almost every broadcast drama needs to be greenlit these days: a freakishly smart, socially stunted protagonist. Alex fleshes out the formula well, spending his mornings looking flustered, his afternoons looking brilliant and his nights looking over power plant schematics (memorizing them instantly, of course). And even though the family-of-spies premise is kind of outlandish, this cloak-and-dagger drama will keep viewers chewing their fingernails without causing near the level of collateral damage The Americans does.
Which is not to mean that Allegiance isn’t jarringly, sometimes bloodily violent. It’s just maybe a tad bit sneakier about how that kind of stuff gets shown.
“Pilot”
A man is slowly fed, feet-first, into a power plant furnace and burned alive in the show’s opening minutes. Flames engulf his legs as he screams. The gruesome scene inspires a Russian agent to defect, and it’s Alex’s analysis that convinces CIA bigwigs she’s telling the truth. That draws the interest of SVR bigwigs, who renew contact with Katya and Mark and demand they turn their son into a Russian spy. They resist that order but agree to spy on Alex themselves—which will, they say, accomplish the same thing.
A woman is hit and killed by a car: We see her body fly into another car’s windshield, dark blood oozing from her forehead and nose. An SUV swerves in traffic, causing a crash.
References are made to hell, and we’re told the man in the furnace shouted “Jesus lives!” in Russian before he died. (It’s a code phrase of sorts.) Katya cooks a Christian Orthodox dish, joking with her high school daughter that, “you wouldn’t know about [it] because you’re an atheist and you have rejected your heritage.” A female Russian agent slaps a male spy across the face, after which the two passionately kiss. There’s talk of drinking and getting a woman into bed. We hear “d–n” once and “h—” three times.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
Over 24 seasons, Thomas & Friends has taught young viewers important lessons about being helpful, teamwork and admitting your mistakes.
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