Black pigeons

The cost of it

Season 1

Episode 5

Editor’s Rating

4 stars

****

Photo: Ludovic Robert/Netflix

Well, things were bound to get more and more chaotic on the way to a solution, right? After gathering at Williams’ apartment in the previous episode, everyone must now flee a massive shootout with the Clarks, who are still after Kai-Ming and the ever-elusive pinhole camera. At the end of the fourth episode, Sam and Helen realized that they would be sending Cole not to an anonymous life of fabulous wealth, but to an uncertain fate at the hands of the Chinese government – what Also wants answers about Ambassador Chen’s death, as well as the camera and footage – and needs to literally escape after getting stuck in terrible traffic. Even Dani has a bad day at the office, spectacularly misjudging the mark in her attempt to seduce Wallace and ending up getting her ass kicked by Helen. Phew!

In the middle of it all is poor, sensible civilian Michael, trying to process Sam showing up on his doorstep with half of London’s most wanted people, and just wants everyone to keep their voices down so as not to wake four-year-old Ruby in the early hours of the morning . Michael is easily the MVP of this episode. This shouldn’t be the case, and it’s outrageous that he’s even involved because Sam botched his assignment in 2017. But without Michael and his willingness to listen to Sam, everyone else would be dead.

The Clarks’ attack on Williams’ apartment is about what Cole expected us to experience; They rely on overwhelming firepower and ruthlessness even when planning a simple home invasion, double murder, and kidnapping. I commend Williams and Eleanor for doing it just as well as they can do it on their own until Sam shows up and manages to get Williams out. At least they had Eleanor’s mini rocket launcher to add to their arsenal, and Kai-Ming’s sense of self-preservation caused her to lie down in the bathtub. Sam is pushed into some heroics and acts of loyalty in this episode, running upstairs to Williams’ apartment, which is ablaze when they arrive, and carrying an injured Williams out and into the taxi he commandeered earlier.

This is a very ultimatum-intensive episode. The new Chinese ambassador insists on reparations for Chen’s death in the form of military contracts or blood donation. CIA station chief Porter demands the return of Cole Atwood, incorrectly assuming he was removed from the embassy by Chinese agents. The Prime Minister calls…an unidentified person and demands the recording device. The Clarks demand the recording device from Helen and Sam so that they don’t kill Eleanor and Kai-Ming “in such an absurdly cruel way that the manner of their deaths will haunt you until the day you die.” This guy Really loves a quick twist. Reed instructs Sam to kill Alex Clark (and hand over Cole to her). I just want to point out that the governments of three major world powers, who have very sophisticated and well-funded intelligence apparatuses, have their hands full in the pursuit of this technology, relying on the unpaid services of a handful of exhausted individual practitioners, most of whom aren’t even spies. Seems like a management skills issue to me!

Luckily for Helen, Sam and Cole, they manage to hatch something of a plan. Cole gets to work trying to tell Trent that they know where Kai-Ming is. As soon as Trent shows up, they can lure his mother outside. Helen and Sam are working to retrace Maggie and Phillip’s trail, as they have actually seen the footage and will have hidden it and/or the device somewhere safe. Or they would work on it, but Helen was called home by her nanny Marie. In all the excitement she lost track of time, Wallace is still at number 10 and Marie has stayed well past the end of her usual hours. Work-life balance is a real problem in Helen’s job, and she and Wallace aren’t exactly the best when it comes to work and emergencies.

What comes next is one of my favorite beats in the story, mostly because it’s somewhat ambiguous. Wallace pretty much rejected Dani, but she also crossed his mind a bit. He half-quotes her in front of Helen, musing out loud about disappointing her and how no one ever knows 100% about another person’s inner feelings. Something changes in his perception of her again when Agent Perryman comes by to briefly confirm that Helen is present at the US Embassy that evening. Perryman doesn’t seem to have the slightest idea that she was there for any reason other than having coffee with Vanessa, but a mixture of confusion, suspicion, and perhaps a tiny bit of admiration for Helen crosses his face. It’s the look of a man who has a big, important job, whose wife takes care of all the details that make their life run smoothly, so he hasn’t had a chance to pay attention to them until now, and now it will he realized how much he hadn’t seen because he wasn’t looking for it.

Instead of going into the details of what makes him wonder about Helen and everything she’s up to, he chooses a more oblique angle with an unexpectedly poignant declaration of love. He has loved her since the day they met; He’s eternally grateful that she wants to have anything to do with him, especially since he’s just a pretty easy-going guy who loves her and the life they’ve built together. His top priority is to protect and fight for her and her because as mentioned, he loves her.

I don’t think Helen has fully understood until now how deep Wallace’s love is – he sees her. Whoever Helen is, the person she has created from this and that over the years, he loves her. We know this is a bit tricky, considering how betrayed Wallace would feel if he knew she was a spy who caused the revelations the CIA station chief mentioned in his meeting with the Prime Minister.

On a purely personal level, Wallace’s sense of betrayal would likely bear a strong resemblance to Michael’s reaction to the sudden appearance of Sam in the previous episode. Perhaps, like Michael, he will be able to unearth happy memories untainted by betrayal and murder, which will keep alive the idea that a renewal of their former relationship is possible. Maybe, like Michael, he’s more afraid of his partner than the people who came to kill him. Helen tells Sam that it didn’t bother Jason, so the revelation that Helen steals state secrets and occasionally commits murder may not worry Wallace as much as Helen imagines.

Jason, who Reed has the audacity to claim isn’t worth avenging, does another good deed for Helen from the afterlife. The bracelet he gave her? It comes from the store where Maggie Jones worked, and there the recorder sits quietly in the office safe. If Dani hadn’t appeared terribly smug, Helen could have gone on with her morning and done her part to prevent war. Instead, we first see a knife fight scene that has a hint of that Kill Bill about it and ends with Helen realizing that she would rather be magnanimous. Instead of strangling Dani with a double pearl necklace or cutting her into pieces, she tells her defeated rival, “I won’t kill you, because I’m still Helen Webb, and Helen Webb doesn’t stab girls in jewelry stores on Christmas Eve.” A bold stance that I hope will pay off in both the short and long term!

Helen’s review of the long-sought footage reveals quite a twist. After all the shooting and explosions we’ve seen, it turns out that Ambassador Chen’s death was just an accident and that the perpetrator isn’t a professional assassin or secret agent, but rather the “trust fund baby idiot” Trent Clark. In a panic, Trent calls his mother for help, Police Commissioner Yarrick shows up and that’s it. Everyone assumes that this week-long bloodbath was instigated by one of those sophisticated intelligence apparatuses we were talking about earlier, but it was all the fallout from a failson doing what he does best (or worst, as the case may be). , how to interpret the events).

• Williams gets two runners-up for the best line of the episode. She is strangely light-hearted about having a gunshot wound, reasoning: “I don’t like making a fuss!” Her encouragement to pray to the non-religious Kai-Ming: “Maybe now is a good time with your “Chatting with the man upstairs” also got me worked up.

• Of course, Reed turns out to be Santa’s Girl; I should have known she had a penchant for adding cloves to oranges to make a pomander ball!

• Officer Perryman is played by Adam Best, who recently appeared as Joe Lynskey in a few episodes of Don’t say anything.