Escapist Routes #33

Another week, another change in thumbnail style. Branding is hard, and people who do it professionally deserve nothing but respect, but ALSO consistency is overrated and sometimes a girl just wants to play in Canva while she listens to a podcast.

Onto the television!

The Americans, season 1

I actually haven’t quite finished my rewatch of the first season of The Americans, but I couldn’t pass up the chance to discuss it alongside The Diplomat, which also stars Keri Russell as its female lead.

I feel like Russell is one of those actors who is, very quietly, a generational talent — she started out as a Mouseketeer alongside kids like Britney Spears and Ryan Gosling, and grew up to become an actor who is nearly always working, sometimes with considerable success, and about once a decade, she has a new defining lead role.

Here, she plays Elizabeth Jennings, a suburban mother, business owner and deep cover KGB agent. She and her husband, Philip (played by Matthew Rhys, who became and remains Russell’s husband in real life) were assigned these roles by the USSR in the 1960s; twenty years later, Reagan is in power, their new neighbour is an FBI agent, and the Cold War is starting to get a bit heated.

I was not impressed by the first episode of the series when I watched it, and honestly, I still think it’s … rough. All the elements that make the show successful are there — the chemistry between the leads, the lies and truths, the blatant use of the “arranged marriage but what if we fell in love” trope — but the first couple of episodes are sexually explicit and exploitative in ways I don’t enjoy. Not that the series ever stops being explicit, but I feel like these first episodes were going for shock value rather than storytelling.

(I was like, “My dad’s an old cold warrior, he’d probably enjoy this show,” before I remembered how much sex there is and realised he can never learn about it from me. And then I recalled that he’s an academic whose work covers serious stuff like genocide, and his favourite TV shows are things like Torchwood and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. You know, escapism. Whereas I have an unimportant and undemanding job, which leaves me with energy to invest in more complex entertainment.)

What I appreciate on this rewatch is how deeply the Jenningses are being manipulated by their handler, Claudia, the magnificent and terrifying Margo Martindale. The second they agree to make their marriage real, Claudia begins finding ways to drive them apart, because the last thing the KGB needs is two agents whose loyalty is potentially to each other rather than the state. When I was watching week to week, it felt like the Jennings were on a rollercoaster of unity and discord; watching in more of a binge format*, it’s clearer they’re not in control.

(* My attention span tolerates roughly two hours of TV a night, and I have a variable number of free nights to watch stuff without my flatmate, so, you know. It’s faster than watching week to week, but not really a binge in any meaningful sense.)

I’m overall less interested in the FBI side of the plot, largely because Stan Beeman is a less interesting character than the Jennings, and honestly, a lot of the guys in that office are annoying. Only Martha and Mail Robot are worth saving, and Mail Robot hasn’t been introduced yet. But honestly, this is close to a perfect season of television, and a useful reminder that sometimes, TV can be great.

Task, season 1, episode 7

It was embarrassing enough to think that last week’s episode was the finale before this actual finale dropped. Now, I feel like a massive goofus, and possibly unqualified to watch television.

(I also thought that it was the fentanyl that Maeve received at the end of the penultimate episode, not a bag of cash. In my defence, that scene was fairly dark and American money is not colourful.)

Anyway. Now the series is actually done — and I do not expect a second season — I have totally come around from my initial lukewarm feelings. Task was really good, and I loved it.

Which is not to say it’s perfect; I think it was tonally monotonous, which was both wearing and made Lizzie — the primary source of levity — feel less like a fully fledged character. And it’s probably a sign of something when my enjoyment of a series is massively improved by the death of one of the protagonists. Also, I am still not sold on Fabien Frankel.

But otherwise? With this finale, my slow-burning affection for the characters bloomed into love — but entirely through very small moments that would have been meaningless without the build up. Stuff like Tom repurposing his vodka cup as a pot plant, and teaching Sam to garden — but also, he lets Sam go. And the people who love him actually call him out on the whole “maybe this is a replacement son?” and “are you in fact the best person to care for Sam on a permanent basis?” situation.

Instead of being a new dad, Tom becomes the best sort of foster parent to Sam — one who gives this little boy a safe space to start rebuilding his life, and who gives him the loving support he needs to move on to a permanent family. And more importantly, Tom becomes a father to Ethan again, after six episodes of ambivalence followed by shame about his ambivalence.

(Learning that Ethan killed his mother because his medication for schizophrenia was unavailable due to the pandemic feels like a piece of information that maybe should have been seeded into the story earlier, because coming this late, it feels like a Twist. Which would be tacky. But maybe I’m simply ambivalent about that because most US media pretends the pandemic didn’t happen at all.)

In terms of plot, Task comes to a fairly simple conclusion: most of the bad guys are dead; the only survivor is captured and will face consequences. Maeve has her money and a new life for her family. Tom has his own family, and maybe a kernel of faith. It’s so simple that even the Hays Office would approve, except maybe that Maeve gets to keep the proceeds of crime. But it feels earned.

The Diplomat, season 3

It’s hard to remember, but there was a time when Netflix routinely made good television. Not necessarily great television, but it was churning out stuff that was solid, occasionally excellent, and reliably watchable.

The Diplomat feels like a throwback to that era. And, with 23 episodes across its three seasons, it also feels like a throwback to the high quality network dramas of the 1990s — except that, spreading itself out over three years, it’s almost impossible to remember which dramatic plot twist is what.

IN PREVIOUS SEASONS: terrorists bombed a British aircraft carrier, and career diplomat Kate Wyler is dispatched to the UK as the new American ambassador. But Kate is not your “handing around pyramids of Ferrero Rocher” type of diplomat, she’s the “hanging out in Afghanistan wearing dirty clothes and making dirty deals” type. Her husband, Hal, is the polished, smooth talking type of diplomat, and they were on the precipice of divorce before she got a job to which he felt entitled. Kate is nevertheless a success, even if she does end up in a love triangle involving herself, her husband and the UK foreign secretary, and it slowly dawns on her that she is being groomed to replace the current Vice President of the United States. Because the current VP is responsible for the attack on the aircraft carrier. Only, season 2 ends with Kate’s husband breaking this news to the president, and he is so shocked he has a fatal heart attack … putting corrupt VP Allison Janney in charge.

This is all played so straight that the most implausible development is the fact that the UK foreign secretary is a hot, sensitive, sexy Tory. Which is The Diplomat’s gift: it threads a whole bunch of really fine needles. Kate and Hal are terrible together, but you want them to make their marriage work. Kate is personally selfish, messy and often mean, but she is also an idealist — while being surrounded by people who are selfish, messy and mean and also very cynical. Its plots are absurd, but played straight. It’s a soap opera and a political drama and a workplace drama, and this should be as messy and unpleasant as The Morning Show, but it’s all played totally straight.

It helps that there’s a lot of The West Wing in The Diplomat’s DNA; I wasn’t even slightly surprised to learn the showrunner worked on it. The Diplomat is similarly interested in processes and politics, and the nature of a workplace drama when the workplace in question is at the centre of power — but The Diplomat is also very, very cynical about the United States and its place in the world.

Season 3 leans into its Sorkinist heritage, with Bradley Whitford playing Janney’s First Gentleman. Whitford is a great actor and by all accounts a good guy who doesn’t deserve the baggage of having played Aaron Sorkin’s Gary Stu, but it was nevertheless horrific to see Whitford and Janney in bed together. I mean, it felt incestuous. By the end of the season, I was starting to think that was intentional, a way of keeping the audience off-balance.

But this show really belongs to Keri Russell. It’s very funny to watch The Diplomat alongside my rewatch of season 1 of The Americans, because Kate and Elizabeth are both hugely intelligent characters with ruthless streaks, but Kate is a hot mess while Elizabeth is a stone-cold professional.

And even if I didn’t think The Diplomat was, somehow, good, I would love it for how Kate is one of the few female characters in media who gets to have body odour and a stash of emergency clean shirts in her drawers. I look at her and I see a woman who has absolutely had to wear her underpants inside out because she was out of clean ones. She’s absolutely iconic, aside from the war crimes.

Slow Horses, season 5, episode 5

God help us, but Claude Whelan is the most stupid person in MI5 headquarters, even when Roddy Ho is in the building.

Not that Roddy is his only competition! I knew something was up when Tara was like, “My Arabic isn’t very good,” with the accent of a native Arabic speaker. Come on, guys. Get it together.

I knew there was going to be a Tara Twist from the beginning. I thought at first it would be that she really does care for Roddy, but then Flyte indulged that same theory, and I knew I had to be wrong. But I was not prepared for her to be a driving force behind the terrorist campaign. And, like, okay, this makes her various degrees of responsible for mass murder, eco-terrorism, a penguin massacre and an attempted assassination, but, like, God forbid a woman have hobbies, right?

Anyway, Tara using Whelan’s known weakness for pretty girls who need saving to bring down MI5’s surveillance network is brilliant. Setting it alongside Slough House figuring out that her dates with Roddy were, in fact, a way of researching the sites of the various attacks: fantastic. And River’s granddad knows something, though he can’t articulate it yet, because this is a series where the people least suited to saving the world are also in the best position to do so.

(Being of an age where many of my friends are starting to lose parents and deal with dementia in their families, everything with River’s granddad is intensely difficult to watch, but I appreciate that even in his diminished state, he has something to offer. Maybe more than River, who is still being a professional asshat.)

The Morning Show, season 4, episode 6

Welcome to The Morning After The Morning Show, the fake—

Do we have to do this?

Wow, Liz. This gimmick was your idea! Welcome to the couch, by the way.

Thanks, Liz. I wish I could say it’s good to be here, but I promise that my feelings have nothing to do with you — you are a total professional and I love working with you.

Thank you! I feel the same way.

My real question is, do we have to keep watching The Morning Show? We got to the end of this episode, and my flatmate sighed and said, “How much is left in this season? When will it be over.”

Ouch.

Right? And I was feeling a new hope after last week was actually good!

But it turns out that the quality of The Morning Show is directly related to how much Nicole Beharie is in it, and she was totally absent this week.

On the upside, Greta Lee is free!

THANK GOD. Run away, Greta, keep doing acclaimed work like Past Lives and, um, Tron: Ares, and leave this nonsense behind.

Chat, is it a bad sign when the new generation of acclaimed actors starts jumping ship?

I’m glad she’s out of this mess, but gosh, I hate this ending for Stella. She has always been a deeply compromised person, but it just feels so unnecessarily mean for her to be humiliated this way — not just by her own AI going rogue, but the whole subplot where she has gone all-in on AI. I know there are women of colour who have bought into the technology, but gosh, it sure feels like a mediocre white man was in the driver’s seat for that.

It’s funny when Grok is more woke than Elon; Stella’s AI announcing that DEI is fake and she’s sexist and racist is … not so fun.

Right. It feels like she was being put in her place by the narrative.

I also have to ask, is anyone really going to cheer for an AI replica of a CEO? Imagine a big Disney event promising a surprise launch, and what you get is Virtual Bob Iger, here to cut trans kids out of streaming cartoons and cancel development of a Steven Soderbergh Star Wars movie.

But speaking of actors jumping ship … is it just me, or is Reese Witherspoon kind of on the sidelines right now?

She has her own subplot!

Yeah, one that’s keeping her away from the rest of the cast, save Chip, and this week he was the one doing the JOURNALISM!!!11111

This is getting more into celebrity gossip than I like, but last season it was inescapable that Witherspoon and Juliana Margulies were filming their scenes separately. I put it down to Margulies — she has form, as anyone who watched The Good Wife will know — but then it started happening with Witherspoon and Aniston. And one of the reasons that last week’s episode popped was that, all of a sudden, Witherspoon and Aniston were interacting again.

Anyway, I don’t know if Reese has been busy with other projects, or is soft launching her exit from the series, or if she’s a nightmare to work with. I genuinely have no idea. But this series was launched on the promise of Reese Witherspoon And Jennifer Aniston, America’s Sweethearts Together At Last, and we’re not really getting that anymore.

Alex is also … not really getting to be a protagonist anymore.

No. This is a show without a single protagonist, except maybe Cory? I do not want to watch The Cory Show, guys. It feels like the cast are very checked out, and maybe so are the writers.

And before we wrap up, you mentioned sweethearts…

The sexual tension between Alex and Bro is palpable and I hate it.

The Last Frontier, season 1, episode 3

This continues to be a show which exists. And also a fine example of streaming bloat, in that every episode is over an hour but could easily lose 20 minutes of what we’ll loosely call “plot”.

This week, after far too much set up, we had a fight between a helicopter and an arctic buggy. It was rad. And I beat several levels in my favourite mobile game!