The previous geopolitical thriller starring Keri Russell was one of the best series of this century. At FX The AmericansRussell played a Russian spy in the suburbs of Washington during the twilight of the Cold War. The series was about the nations' maneuvers against each other, but it was also about the spy game that takes place in Russell's character's house. Russell's Elizabeth Jennings conducted espionage onscreen alongside Matthew Rhys' Philip, but the two secret agents didn't just monitor U.S. officials and kill Soviet dissidents. Everyone was suspicious of the other half of their sham marriage, and they grew apart as Russell's character realized Rhys was losing his passion for the gruesome spy work.

It was a role that earned Russell multiple Emmy and Golden Globe nominations – though disappointingly no wins – and a slew of new fans who admired her ability to portray a principled but murderous spy who also held a nuclear family together and as Female spy served fake travel agency by day. (Women who work, right?) When The diplomatRussell's next big TV role, premiered on Netflix five years later The Americans Finally, the similarities seemed immediately obvious: Here was Russell again in a political drama, working to advance her country's interests on the global stage. Only this time, instead of a Russian spy, Russell played an American ambassador – not a huge leap, since the point is to watch Russell weave his way in and out of trouble on screen. fans of The Americans were delighted to have been given another vehicle for one of television's finest actresses to put on a riveting show of dealings and machinations outside of her home, while indoors she was engaged in a heated dance with her partner.

The first season of The diplomat was a rollicking, entertaining mess. As a document about how foreign policy is conducted, it bordered and sometimes crossed the line between drama and nonsense. But as a chance for Russell to flex some muscle as an actor, it was great. Her character, Ambassador Kate Wyler, was a skilled diplomat who navigated the corridors of power with precision and grace. It was as if the showrunners had swapped out her old character's disguises and weapons for pantsuits and pencils. The series wasn't particularly about questioning America's behavior as a superpower, and Kate was easily enthused in a way that Russell was American It wasn't spy-like. She was a do-gooder in a big job.

The diplomatThe newly released second season follows Kate as she searches for the truth about a false flag attack on a British warship. Russell is still a powerful foreign affairs agent, and she is still in a messy marital relationship, this time with former ambassador Hal Wyler, played by Rufus Sewell. Hal remembers Rhys' character The Americans as a source of stability and a potential undermining force for Russell's character. Together, Kate and Hal are a diplomatic but dysfunctional power couple, reshaping the rest of the world while their own world falls apart.

But in this six-episode run, Russell gets to do what she rarely managed to do in her most famous role: act like a normal person. Make mistakes at work. Let smarter players outsmart you. Show the kind of emotions that Elizabeth Jennings either never had or had squeezed out of her during her brutal, abusive upbringing in the KGB. This is the second series in which Russell attempts to save the world. It's the first film where she almost blows it up – not literally, although her mistakes this season do refer to the US's nuclear vulnerabilities.

There's still plenty of statesmanship and craftsmanship this season: Kate takes a key witness to safe houses and facilitates an interrogation. It confuses and misleads British intelligence officers. She becomes embroiled in a potentially disastrous (for US-British relations) plot to remove a prime minister. She carries out a surveillance attack against a head of state. But where Russell has room to stretch her wings in Season 2 is in how she can take a character in directions she couldn't in the first season The diplomat or any of the six seasons of The Americans in which she played a spy. After all, an American ambassador to the United Kingdom has different levers of power than a Soviet agent to the United States. Elizabeth Jennings had no major scruples at all. She was mission-driven and a spy, and those two facts justified everything. “Do you have children?” A secretary memorably invites her in The Americans' third season, as she is about to die from the poison Elizabeth has just forced her to take. Elizabeth says yes, and the doomed woman asks her why she kills innocent people then. “To make the world a better place,” Russell’s character tells her. When asked how killing this woman would make the world a better place, she doesn't budge an inch.

Kate has the same North Star The diplomatbut understandably, US ambassadors would have a hard time going around murdering people and stuffing limbs into suitcases himself. Their battlefields are meeting rooms and ornate hallways. The solution when faced with an opponent in the British government is not to execute that person. (Presumably this would result in an ambassador being recalled.) Constrained by both her moral compass and the nature of the job, Kate must survey an entire global chessboard rather than tackle one mission at a time.

In Season 1, Russell's ambassador behaved about as seriously as her secret agent counterpart The Americans. But the events of season two lend themselves well to Russell showing a tender side of Kate that seems novel. A car bombing that nearly killed her husband at the end of the first season leaves her in a state of immediate vulnerability. She gushes when she learns of an office romance between the CIA agent in her office and her deputy chief of mission at the embassy. (“That's the sweetest fucking thing I've ever heard,” she tells her CIA boyfriend, blessing the potentially awkward workplace relationship.) Kate is also sloppy about her own inclinations and displays undeniable sexual chemistry with Austin Dennison, the British foreign secretary played by David Gyasi. One of the best moments of the season comes when Hal convinces the reluctant Dennison to do the American delegation a favor. He seals the deal by reminding Dennison that he was close to having sex with Hal's wife, the American ambassador, before Hal himself was blown up on the streets of London. Dennison agrees; Some men still have honor. Whether it is ultimately productive for the ambassador to have such a relationship is a question the show explores.

It's a little jarring to watch Russell play a character who makes such glaring mistakes. She wasn't an antihero The Americansand she wasn't exactly one of them either The diplomat'S first season. We're used to watching her solve problems, not cause them. But the fun of the latest episodes isn't that they help you understand world events, nor that the mystery the series raises is so compelling – rather, it's the second season of The diplomat works because it throws the genre's best possible actress into a different kind of battle than the one she so often fought in her most famous role. Russell still uses deception and manipulation to achieve her goals in this series, as she did as a Soviet spy, but her current character finds that work more difficult. Maybe it's because everyone knows that an ambassador is trying to take advantage of them, while people don't know that a good spy is a spy. And if a prime minister or vice president sees through her moves, she will have to find a more complex solution than feeding them Poison.