“A real Bible, you know, the one written by Jesus!”
I liked how Stuart sent the guy out to find a bible and a judge’s robe. He comes back with a hotel bible and starts to tell him about the robe and Stuart stops him, “I don’t want to know.”
Plausible deniability, in case the robe actually did come from a Harry Potter store!
Another thought I had. Maybe it’s due to current politics, but Diplomat is dealing with the same issue over three seasons. At least six months have passed in the show’s timeline. I don’t remember what was happening, politically, six months ago. Seeing them talk about the same thing might be getting old. Something else should have happened by now.
I’m also curious how much Kate has been right about things? When they followed her ideas, things worked out? Hal as well. How often has he been right? How often have others been right? It’s the Worf Effect.
Thanks for the discussion!
Well, we had our Health Secretary canoodling a staffer on CCTV during the pandemic.
And I ain’t giving a free pass to no Health Secretaries, either.
Having just finished S3, I kinda wanna go back now and watch the first couple episodes of S1 again. Things were moving pretty fast with Kate’s appointment to the UK ambassador position, and I remember talk about vetting her for replacing the VP. It would be interesting to see if the story then lines up with what we know now.
There was also Felix Boch, the DCM (#2 officer) in Vienna, who was caught in the classic honeypot scheme by Russian operatives back in the '80s. I was part of a team that had to dismantle his office and sweep the embassy for bugs.
However, @ZonexandScout is basically correct. Any senior diplomat who values their career will avoid that sort of situation. However, rank and file diplomats strike up relationships with other diplomats all the time. When you’re attached to an embassy or consulate, the pickings can be slim for safe companionship.
After watching episode 6. Oh what a tangled web we weave.
Someone please refresh me here. It was at the end of last season when we learned the attack on the ship that killed British seamen was VP Grace Penn’s idea. When confronted by Kate, she said it was regrettable but she did it to save lives. Lots of them. I can’t recall how or by what permutation of logic this was a reasonable thing to do. I have a “no rewatch” stricture in place. It would have been nice if the show had written in a reminder of Grace’s thinking, but it didn’t.
I think it had to do with the submarine base in Scotland that the US was worried about losing access to if Scotland separated from the UK, since there weren’t any other bases in the area. Grace needed Scotland to realize that they needed to remain a part of the UK, so that the US could continue to use that sub base, which would continue to keep the world safe. Or something like that.
I’ve only watched the first ep of S3 (my wife lost interest is S2) and have read on to decide if it is worth continuing, but up to this point, (having just seen someone downing pills after Hal assessed how she’d come around) have there been any major items either of them have on the money about?
S1 I found the characters and relationships interesting and circumstances plausible. S2 got eye rolling. From the overall sense of posts here, if I didn’t like ep1 of S3 and see these main characters now as uninteresting hubristic doofuses but not in an amusing way, I am unlikely to enjoy the rest more, correct?
I do not disagree with you. As I’ve mentioned a couple times in this and other posts, this season is more like a bad Lifetime movie where (presumably responsible) people are discovering themselves and their authenticity (i.e., “I’ll boink anyone anywhere I feel the urge”).
Yes.
The first season was an interesting political situation with an experienced diplomat, for a very different region of the world, being named to the UK. I think the issue was more that Kate shouldn’t have accepted the posting, not having any contacts or understanding of what it was to be the ambassador to the UK. In part, it felt like explaining the viewer what was happening as she learned it. Then, there were hints at things, chemistry between Kate and the Foreign Secretary. It was a very interesting contrast when they showed the diplomacy done in the middle east compared to UK.
I wonder when they knew they were getting a second season because s2 starts wobbling on the rails. It’s not off them and might right itself but it’s wobbling. It ends up being a mystery of who caused the incident? It also showed how irrational the PM was and could act. He went for any win, no matter how small and petty. He wanted a certain image and when the incident was seen as a way to give him a certain image, he kept interfering. In the middle of that, there is a twist. At the end, there is a big twist.
In s3, by contrast, everyone has forgotten what came before. No one should trust the PM with any information that he could use or spin for his own good, but they do. Several times. Kate and Dennison look like something might happen but then a time jump in the middle of the season drops that entire thread. Kate is with someone after the time jump and that took me by surprise. Her attractions to Dennison was shown building up in s1, hurt in s2 but coming back. Seeing her with someone, who ends up being political useful, goes against what I saw of her in the first two seasons. The whole thing between Kate and Dennison is dropped. Dennison is now married, so unlikely that he would do anything. Oh and by the way, there is politics happening as they try and cover up something but now it’s all done around the affairs instead of the focus of the show.
I still binged it. I was amused but there was definitely a tonal shift.
Thanks for the discussion!
We bailed on this mid-S2 because the personal side of the plotlines got sillier and less interesting, particularly around her husband.
Finished the last episode. The dinner sequence sticks in my mind. How to behave as civilized folks while seething mistrust roils beneath the surface.
Who’s worse, us or them? Honestly, my scorecard has been amended so many times, it’s no longer legible.
Oh, so some of you are bored or disappointed because a series on television contains elements that are not always credible as things real people would do. Fair point, but I can forgive characters who sometimes misbehave if they do it with panache. More fun that way. Maybe it’s because I watched The Diplomat by myself, so there’s nobody to roll my eyes at.
Big trouble ahead. Or maybe the ending (which I shan’t reveal) was just a bad reading on the geiger counters. Well, still better than Cocaine Bear, now how d’you suppose Kate would’ve diplomatted her out of that one?
I’d have to rewatch from the beginning to see but I have a suspicion that she has not been very helpful or successful at all. However, this is based on knowing that this show shares DNA with Homeland, where Claire Danes’ Carrie was in charge of Making Things Worse and she was really good at that job. Kate has a lot in common with Carrie minus the mental illness. But she’s equally rude and pushy and has the same habit of annoying people into helping her. Same habit of inappropriate work relationships too now that I think about it. All in all, if I had to assess Kate’s performance I’d give her an A for effort but a C- for results.
Did the sex scene between the Prime Minister and his wife remind anyone else of a Monty Python sketch?
“Vigorous”
Nothing like looking at two middle-age British people go at it.
Hey here’s a fun fact I just discovered about the bonking couple - Mrs Trowbridge, the Prime Minister’s wife, is played by Pandora Colin, and is Rory Kinnear’s actual wife, not just pretending on the TV. If that’s not method, I don’t know what is.
I subscribed to Netflix a week ago, mostly so I could watch the new Frankenstein film and since have been bingeing other stuff, like this show. I’m currently halfway through the third season. It became obvious early in the third season that the plan to force out Vice President Penn, supposedly because of a contracting scandal involving her husband, was in reality because she orchestrated the false flag operation.