Remember how J.J. Abrams would always say that the idea for Alias grew out of "What if Felicity were secretly a spy?" I'm kind of glad that Keri Russell finally gets to live that pitch a little bit. Meet Phillip and Elizabeth Jennings. They're KGB agents under deep cover for a division called Directorate S. This particular brand of deep cover -- twenty years in the states, married and raising two children despite not being a genuine couple, complete immersion, forbidden from speaking Russian in private, forbidden from even telling each other their own real histories -- is so intensive that folks at the FBI think it's an urban legend. But there they are, tracking down a KGB defector in D.C., in preparation for a drop-off that they miss because Phillip (the more softhearted of the two) stops to make sure their mortally wounded cohort gets to a hospital (he dies anyway). So they take the defector -- Timoshev -- home and keep him bound and gagged in the trunk of their car until they figure out what to do with him. Elizabeth (the more hardcore-as-fuck of the two) is harboring a secret: Back in KGB training twenty years ago, Timoshev raped her. So she's like extra motivated to choose the "cut him up into small pieces and dump him somewhere" option. The other option is pitched by Timoshev himself: he tells Phillip that he and Elizabeth should defect like he did. He got a cool $3 million for his trouble, so maybe they could too. Phillip's considering the option because his deep, dark secret is that he kind of loves America.
Living next door to the Jenningses is Stan, played by Noah Emmerich, who just so happens to be a FBI agent. There are a lot of "Is Stan really suspicious of them or is the show faking us out?" scenes, primarily one where Stan asks to borrow jumper cables and Phillip has to retrieve them without letting Stan see the tied-up KGB agent in his trunk.
The knowledge that a FBI agent just moved next door freaks Phillip and Elizabeth out significantly. He presents her with the defection option. She says absolutely not, partially because she's loyal to the motherland, partially because she's maniacally focused on their job, but also partly because she can't bear the thought of their children finding out the truth about them. Still, Phillip is resolute and he plans to defect on his own -- which effectively makes Elizabeth's decision for her -- and he retrieves Timoshev from the trunk to bring him in. But when Timoshev tries to apologize to Elizabeth for that whole raping incident, its news to Phillip, and his husbandly rage takes over. He snaps Timoshev's neck, and Elizabeth's moved/impressed enough that they do it in the car after disposing of the body.
Oh, and it turns out that Stan really is suspicious of the Jenningses, since he sneaks into the garage at night to inspect the car trunk. It's clean, but Phillip was hiding in the shadows ready to kill his ass if he found anything.
Oh, and also, Phillip has a wig drawer that he uses to craft disguises that allow him to, among other things, impersonate a CIA analyst and beat down a local statutory rapist. This show's going to be junky, but hopefully fun-junky.