Anyone get the feeling that Nessa is some kind of trained agent? I mean she pretty much arranged for her bodyguard to get killed after first trying to seduce him. She’s no innocent.
I would be flabbergasted if anything like that turned out to be the case… particularly given the insane stupidity that led to her kidnapping.
Can someone explain the bit about tracing the money and the bodyguard getting killed?
One more episode , I am so totally confused. Huge body count this week.
The first few episodes seemed OK, but it just didn’t grab me. I’ve given up.
I’ll finish it , maybe I’ll understand it after it’s done. Probably not…
I’m sooooo confused now.
So going into this week’s episode, I thought that the bad guys were Americans, who had killed the guy way back at the beginning because if he got the new contract, his company would discover the listening device, and a valuable source of illicit American intelligence would be compromised.
But now the Americans are clearly working with Monica Chatwin, who is working with scar-faced guy, who is working with the kidnappers, who are blackmailing Nessa into the new contract with the new Arab guy. So… what is motivating the Americans/Chatwin/Dutch guy/Scarfaced guy?
Yeah:confused:
I think they want control of Nessa’s company, but why the Americans would back their play is a mystery, unless she’s a double agent for Palestine.
So: is Nessa really dead, or will this be a surprise reveal in the finale?
I’ve only stuck with this show because I invested so much time in the damn thing, thinking that there would be more clarity as time went by. But it’s just a mess of plot and subplot, and way too dense and obscure as to motive. They seem to be trying for a Le Carre type of intrigue, but I could never make sense of his books, either.
They went to so much trouble to establish her distance from the blast, that it’s hard to believe they’d then turn around and say 'she died anyway.’ And of course the shot looked like a million “hero just makes it out of the blast range” shots from a million Michael Bay-and-Michael Bay-ish films.
But with this writer, who knows?
Well, I like Le Carre; intricate plotting or not, I don’t think he was ever guilty of the levels of implausibility we’ve seen in The Honorable Woman. But I’m with you on sticking with the show because of the investment of time. I’m not optimistic about the finale, but I’ll watch it anyway.
To quote Krusty the Klown… What the hell was that?
Anyone have a cohesive explanation for the entire plot? In particular, how Monica Chatwin stood to gain from whatever was going on? And why precisely Samir Meshel was killed? And what those timers he was setting were?
My conclusion is: it was either such a brilliantly done series that it was way over my head, or so muddled and disjointed that it made no fucking sense. I’m going with the latter.
+1
We finished the series earlier this week. Watched the first episode early. Meh. But decided to go ahead and watch the rest as out “nightly 9 o’clock drama” semi-binge watch.
Even watching most of the shows in succession didn’t help with the multitudes of confusion.
I expect some “mystery” in a drama with a lot of spies and such as to who-is-doing-what-for-who-for-what purpose but e-freakin-gad. They just piled it on to no end.
In addition, the hard to remember names, roles, hard to hear dialogue. (Whispering with accents while noisy stuff is going on was a common problem.)
Took quite a few episodes to realize that Hugh’s ex and his boss that he slept with were different people.
While MG is a fine actress, her character was just too worthless to the point of annoyance. It was basically a “just eat Gilligan” situation.
The main saving grace was Stephen Rea. Almost every moment Hugh was doing his little bit was a gem. Want more of that.
The brother was also an idiot. The first rule of being compromised by an intelligence operator is to understand that you were set up from the beginning. They don’t have time to wait around and “discover” you did something bad. They work it so you will do something bad when, where and how they want you too. This means that you have something on them as well. It changes the dynamics of the relationship and motives.
And Rachel, the always pregnant sister-in-law. She knows he’s nailing the “nanny” but still feels very fond of him to the end. Nope. No way.
Lots of stuff they got flat out wrong. E.g., the State Department press conferences. For one thing, no asst to the Secy. of any sort will do a press conference. That’s what Dept. Spokesfolk are for. Not the same role. Second, the background and podium won’t have “The White House” plastered on them. The State Department has its own briefing room. (Here’s the old backdrop. The new one has a video display.)
Inconsistencies?
Regarding the guy with the burned face.
[spoiler]1. When he calls Nessa, she says he’s the guy whose face she burned. But later, in the flashback, it’s Atika that did it.
- He took some pills, raped Nessa. There’s a scandal about this. He is exiled by his own father. But then it turns out his father ordered him to do it. What? There might be an explanation for this, but the show doesn’t give it.[/spoiler]
And so, so much. In the finale, there’s a weird object Atika shows Nessa. How on Earth are we supposed to know what that is and why it has any significance at all? I am one of those annoying error-spotting viewers who pays attention to a lot of detail, but I was lost with this one.
Way too many idiots. Ness, Efram, Monica. The bodyguard that walked into an incredibly obvious trap. The US woman who pretended to have had a relationship with the dead guy but didn’t know squat. Why even bother going to the UK to be interviewed if you are so poorly prepared? Just walk in, tell the Brits you are phony and walk out to your doom. Save everybody some time.
In retrospect, I should have realized that when they have to show MG gushing about how good the show is during every single episode, it’s probably a gilded turd.
Ha! One I can answer! It was a piece of shrapnel with “Stein” painted on it, presumably a bomb fragment from the bomb that killed Atika’s family.
Actually, one of the few parts of the finale that I thought worked out at all was Atika’s basic character and motivation. I’m sure if you went back and watched everything she did over the whole series it would fall right back part again, but the basic idea that she had been basically pretending to be on Nessa’s side from the beginning, that she was motivated by the Palestinian “cause” as opposed to pure revenge, and at least some of why, did come through fairly clearly.
I’m wondering if somebody who is well-versed in Middle Eastern politics and culture would make better sense of the show. The rapist’s father’s soliloquy in the final ep was all about the West’s failure to understand what motivates the people in that region.
Oh, and a continuity nitpick. At the end we see the MI6 dude nearly get hit by a truck. He drops his briefcase. He never picks it up again, but walks off into the sunset with his ex.
I kept thinking the final shot was going to be the briefcase exploding. Or something. Was the purpose of the shot of the briefcase–emphasizing that he leaves it in the road–to show that he’d given up being a workaholic? Wouldn’t such irresponsibility undermine the character-as-established? He was supposed to be the one intelligent person in the story. The briefcase thing makes no sense.
This show is frustrating because it squandered its considerable assets.
Supposedly creator/writer Hugo Blick has a sterling reputation, but it’s difficult to understand why. The final episode revealed that the main characters had never been anything but polemical cardboard cutouts. What a disappointment!