- FX's regularly-Emmy-nominated drama The Americans is a show about spies during the Cold War. Or, if you ask showrunners Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg, it's a show about complications with family and marriage. Uh, actually, if you ask Reddit, I think it might be a show about wigs. But at ARS, the reason this has become a slack-channel favorite is that someone on that writing staff is clearly obsessed with tech in the same way we are. And through five seasons of DC drama, The Americans has openly and often let its IT forum nerd flag fly. [upbeat retro music] Let's start with the show's bread and butter; spy tech. The Americans' writing staff is relentless about research. And they strive to depict an accurate representation of KGB, FBI, and Sleeper Cell life at the time. They do this by tracking-down declassified documents, reading all of the best non-fiction about this era, and interviewing people directly involved with that lifestyle. Heck, the show has people from the 1980s intelligence community either advising the show or working directly as staff. There's Christopher Lynch, who's got thirty years of experience in the intelligence community and specializes in KGB history. Keith Melton literally started the spy museum in DC and show runner Joe Weisberg was directly in the CIA himself. So when you see that a KGB briefcase has an advanced concealment in it or that they're using wire-recording tech that's capable of twenty-four hours plus of eavesdropping, that stuff is real. [upbeat retro music] Spy stuff on screen has long been the home to excellent stunt work. And The Americans is no exception even if its action is a little bit less over the top. Yes, yes, yes; there are parkour-like foot chases and tense auto-getaways, but the most clever bit of action on the show so far is rooted in both science and history. [upbeat retro music] Back in Season Three, an anti-apartheid activist pal of the Jennings gets his hands on a South African intelligence officer. Then, horrifically puts a tire around his neck and burns this guy alive. Now, this stuff actually happened in the 1980s down in South Africa between the anti- and pro-apartheid forces. But The Americans isn't some big-budget, Hollywood production with a ton of money able to do CGI whenever they want. How the heck do they make that look real? Two words: Zel Jel. Developed in the 1980s by a chemist named Gary Zeller, he originally envisioned this for FX work. Although it's since seeped into work places like firehouses and kitchens. Now, what Zel Jel does is allows productions to get a more realistic visual because a covered professional can last up to thirty seconds during a live burn. Previously, you would've only been able to achieve this through some clever post-production editing or by things like put a mask on a stunt dummy. [upbeat retro music] But even within the era that birthed us the Amiga and the Walkman, the true tech star of The Americans has been apparent from day one. It's the FBI mail robot. This vaguely Dalek-looking thing is essentially a set of cubbies on wheels, automatedly buzzing around the FBI offices so people can grab their mail without venturing too far from their desks. Over the course of its appearances during the show's five seasons, the mail robot has been woven into crucial plot points, it's inspired its own Twitter feed, and its genuinely generated letters of concern to the showrunners after an FBI agent may or may not have abused it a little. Mail robot, just like all the other tech on the show, is era-accurate. Weisberg told us that they came up with the idea when they read Christopher Lynch's book where he describes a FBI robot roaming around the offices during the eighties. Fields now looks at it as the perfect metaphor. "There's something perfectly beautiful about the mail robot "as an expression of the transition of technology. "There you are in the early eighties and they correctly know "that mail delivery wasn't gonna be controlled by humans "but they just had the tech backwards. "They eliminated the mail carrier instead of eliminating "the mail; how could they have known?" So if you're like us and you're dying for Season Six, you can fill some of that time in between by looking up videos of this thing on Youtube. They all closely resemble what ended up on the show. So, yes, The Americans has families and marriages. And, of course, viewers are always gonna latch on to things like that cool eighties soundtrack or the, "Wait, those actually fooled someone?" wigging costume combinations. But, behind the scenes, there are some true technophiles powering the most era-accurate tech you'll see on television. So when Season Six comes around, make sure to keep your eyes out for the gear of yesteryear. Just like we'll be doin'. [upbeat retro music]