Stan Beeman


Stan Beeman is a fictional character in the American television drama series The Americans on FX, and the supporting male character. He was created by series creator Joe Weisberg and is portrayed by Noah Emmerich. Stan is an FBI agent and a neighbor of the lead characters, Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, who are undercover Russian spies.

Character history

Season one

Stan is an FBI counter-intelligence agent and moves to Northern Virginia with his wife, Sandra and his son, Matthew across the street from Elizabeth and Philip Jennings. Stan is unaware of the fact that Philip and Elizabeth are undercover KGB agents but becomes suspicious when he learns that a car similar to Philip's is seen near the site of a Soviet defector's abduction but finds nothing when he covertly inspects Philip's trunk.
In the second episode, Stan blackmails Nina Sergeevna, a Soviet embassy clerk, to spy for the FBI. Nina feeds Stan information about a Soviet agent who was killed the night Timochev went missing. As Stan gets to know Nina, he subsequently grows further apart from Sandra due to how much he works and is not able to spend time with his family. After Stan misses a family dinner due to work, a co-worker takes him to a bar and tells him to pick out a woman to have casual sex with. Stan instead calls Nina and they sleep together, but the way Nina conducts herself leads him to believe that she is using Stan and may be a double agent. She is tasked to try and turn Stan but starts to fall in love with him instead. Agent Frank Gaad, Stan's FBI supervisor, gives him the keys to a safe house and tells him to take Nina there, which then becomes their "love nest".
On Stan's unauthorized initiative, the FBI seize Arkady's assistant Vlad, which leads Stan to return to the safe house and kill Vlad. When Nina asks about Vlad's death, Stan lies and promises her he will find out who killed him. When he gets home, Sandra asks him to quit the FBI and move. When he says no, she leaves him. He goes to Nina and attempts to end their affair, but ends up losing his resolve and sleeps with her instead. Nina does not trust what Stan is telling her about Vlad's death and after she gets promoted, she is given access to the material obtained by the Weinberger bug. She keeps the information from Stan in order to further investigate Vlad's death. Stan and Gaad continue to look for a thirty-something married couple and produce a sketch of them while Nina is sworn into Directorate S and, after a conversation with Stan, confesses her spying to Arkady and offers to become a re-doubled agent. Stan tells both Sandra and Nina that his mission will soon be over but Sandra rebuffs his attempt at reconciliation and Nina tells Arkady, who has accepted her offer in spite of Moscow's skepticism.

Season two

Nina informs Stan of a new arrival at the Rezidentura, Oleg Igorevich. Stan follows Oleg one night, only to have Oleg lead him to a port where he tells Stan that he is the only one who knows about Nina and threatens to expose her. Stan asks Nina to take a polygraph test if she wants to get exfiltrated. Arkady forces Stan's hand to steal the "Echo" program in exchange for Nina's safety. When Oleg pressures Stan more, Stan gives a surveillance log to Oleg and later promises to protect Nina. He drops a package at the agreed location, but it turns out to be only a note that says "Tell Nina I'm sorry". A heartbroken Nina leaves the Rezidentura to return to Moscow to stand trial for treason while Stan sadly watches her leave from a parked car.

Season three

Gaad informs Stan that Nina has been charged with espionage and treason. Stan tries again to reconcile with Sandra, trying to understand the EST she has been going to. He attends a session and asks Philip to go as well. Stan finds the training ridiculous and useless, much to Sandra's annoyance.
Stan greets Zinaida Preobrazhenskaya, a defector from the Institute for US and Canadian Studies after arriving in a crate shipped to the FBI. Preobrazhenskaya discusses with Stan the Institute in Moscow she worked for, where their duties were to report to Soviet leadership on all aspects of geopolitical significance regarding the U.S. and Canada. She confides in Stan that she is glad that it is over, but he assures her that it is not. Stan is later held at gunpoint by Oleg Igorevich, who blames him for Nina's arrest and upcoming execution. Stan tells him that he loved Nina and if Oleg wants to shoot him, he can shoot him in the back and then walks away and gets in his car. He goes to Sandra, who is now living with another man, and tells her that he could not think of anyone else he wanted to tell what had just happened other than her. While she does comfort him, she also tells him that she is not coming back to him.
Stan goes back to an EST meeting, only to voice his opinion of it. Instead of being met with hostility, he gets applauded. Afterwards, he is asked out on a date by a woman named Tori, also from the meeting. They have dinner at the Jennings house and, despite admitting that he still considers Sandra his wife, he and Tori have sex.

Casting

Emmerich was initially hesitant about taking a role in the series. He explained: "The truth is, from the very beginning, I thought, "I don't want to do a TV show where I carry a gun or a badge. I'm done with guns and badges. I just don't want to do that anymore." When I first read it I thought, "Yeah, it's really interesting and really good, but I don't want to be an FBI guy." His friend, Gavin O'Connor, who directed the pilot episode, convinced him to take a closer look at the role. Emmerich stated that "within 20 minutes of talking to Joe, it became abundantly clear that his interests were not procedural".

Reception

Slate called Stan "the show's most heartbreaking character," with being a victim of his own work ethic, losing a partner, losing his marriage, becoming estranged from his son, and falling in love with a double agent. Emmerich said of Beeman, "He's pretty much losing everything in his life. His extracurricular life is in a Russian prison, his wife is leaving him, his son won't talk to him. What more can go wrong? It's tough. But hopefully it's the nadir of Stan's troubles. He's about to bounce back strong and hard—that's my hope for Stan."
For his role as Beeman, Emmerich was nominated at the 2013 Critics' Choice Television Awards for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series but lost out to Michael Cudlitz.