The diplomat

The Ides of March

Season 2

Episode 3

Editor’s note

3 stars

***

Photo: Alex Bailey/Netflix

Stuart Haywood and Hal Wyler are both recovering physically and psychologically from their brushes with death, and while it may seem like each of them is dealing with it in very different ways, both of their approaches are fundamentally Kate-centered.

Hal wants Kate to recognize that if she replaces the current vice president, she will have a second important career ahead of her as a very high-ranking elected official, and she would strongly prefer not to do that. Who knows? Perhaps she intends to take on this role as a noble interim measure, something she can say in good faith, that she accepted because the president asked her to, and once this term finished, she plans to return to what she does best. at the State Department. But if you’re anyone other than Kate Wyler, and especially if you’re her possibly reconciled husband/rapacious political animal Hal Wyler, you’re thinking about the future. You wisely leverage your role as Ambassador Wife to offer him useful opportunities, making the upcoming July 4th party a launching pad to build his election war chest by getting really cozy with a million dollar energy company to pay for it. the party’s entire $300,000. Invoice.

And really, is it too much to ask that Kate bring along said zillionaire (Brad, who hails from Maine, and whose Scrooge McDuck-sized contribution to the festivities will extend to providing lobster rolls for 2,000 guests or more) for a short excursion through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs? Since she is going there anyway, having been summoned by Dennison, who she is sure is based on Prime Minister Trowbridge’s appearance on national television to announce the unfortunate and 100% accidental death of Will Lenkov be withdrawn from her recognition as US ambassador during her attempted arrest by British special forces and French law enforcement? A bridge too far for this busy morning? Hmm. All right.

Hal’s impulse to make his obligations double makes sense, of course; Kate went pretty quickly from refusing the idea of ​​even thinking about the vice presidency to accepting it. There is therefore every reason to believe that once she is well established in this role, she will eventually agree to run for office. She’ll need a war chest for that, and Hal wants to pave the way for a smooth transition to what’s likely to come next. This is practical foresight, not at all manipulative! He is sure that Kate will later see the wisdom of these steps and will undoubtedly thank him for it.

What Kate won’t thank him for is being a big grumpy baby about his relationship with Dennison. Raise your hand if you remember that Hal actively encouraged Kate to continue flirting with Dennison last season! Now, raise your hand if you noticed his stinking, jealous face upon seeing a photo of them together on the embassy website, or his fake questioning of Kate (at Grove’s funeral, no less) for whether she and Dennison had slept together or not. Again. For the record, this is not the case; she would like to but won’t. Probably. So it shouldn’t matter at all that Kate is describing Dennison – who didn’t summon Kate to his offices for any denunciation, because he successfully orchestrated Trowbridge’s ouster and is unlikely to succeeds him as Prime Minister – as “the best person I have ever known in politics.” Seeing an unadulterated good guy not finish last in his field is an unexpected pleasure, isn’t it, Hal? We might believe everything is fine on this overall score if it weren’t for Hal’s inability to stop making snide remarks about what a decent, stand-up guy Dennison is.

At first, everyone welcomes the news of Trowbridge’s fall, and if the deal were concluded, that would be the end of it until it was publicly announced. But the cracks and complications begin to appear almost immediately; Stuart points out that simply publicizing Lenkov won’t be enough – he wants the entire scandal and Trowbridge’s role in it revealed as soon as possible and doubts Kate’s assurances that everything will eventually come to light. After reviewing an RSVP list for the party, Hal notices that one of Dennison’s fellow conspirators has canceled his attendance. Additionally, Pensy, Kate’s very nice and quite posh assistant, asks her to pass it on to the Prime Minister for sending “that horrible man”; for her, Lenkov’s death “feels like a little piece of justice” for Ronnie, for the sailors who died on the Courageous, for Hal and Stuart as well. That’s about 180 degrees from the answer Kate thought she’d hear about the surgery. Has the mood irrevocably changed? Has there ever been a mood among British citizens?

With such unexpected and conflicting messages bombarding her, Kate continues as planned so she can honor Dennison’s request to use the Winfield Greenhouse as a quiet place to show Trowbridge the door, but wants to be very sure the plan is kosher . What does Billie think? Is her dissatisfaction with the idea a resounding no, or just something she’s not passionate about?

This is where the whole Stuart situation starts to go off the rails. So far, he’s done his job extremely well – he’s probably incapable of doing anything else, and it’s very calming to have one area of ​​predictable accomplishment in your life when everything else is hurting both literally and figuratively. . He and Kate clearly want to move past their earlier confrontation and return to the imperfect but promising relationship they established earlier, but the thoughts of the bombing, Ronnie, and her own injuries are real because Kate doesn’t didn’t follow his advice about avoiding Margaret Roylin embarrassment.

All this leads to Stuart acting strangely on the phone with Billie, who puts his foot down as Marine One lands on the White House lawn, demanding to know what’s eating him. A volatile combination of frustration, grief, anger, and conscience leads Stuart to blurt out that Billie and the President should leave Kate as the vice presidential candidate. Her deep breathing is followed by a litany of potentially disqualifying criticism: Kate is “undisciplined and unfocused, and can’t take her eyes off the Foreign Secretary long enough to get through a day’s work.” That’s not even the real problem, because in reality, they’re not involved, but “she’s foaming at the mouth thinking about the Ides of March being played out at her picnic!” That’s damning enough, but if Trowbridge’s ouster is a done deal and there’s no real scandal to scandalize, what’s the problem? Billie sums up her bewilderment by asking the question we all want answered: “Stewie, what the hell are you doing?”

As usual, Stuart is right to be concerned, and if he had stopped at “undisciplined and unfocused” with an eager side to the Ides of March in July, his case would have been difficult to refute. However, the slow burn story between Kate and Dennison makes him seem like an unhinged gossip, and it’s hard to tell whether his priority is righting the ship or forcing compensation.

Speaking of payoff, Hal was right to point out Dennison’s co-conspirator’s removal from the party, as this guy appears to have been the canary in the coal mine. Support for Dennison’s plan is crumbling before his eyes, so he immediately turns to noble (metaphorical) self-immolation. He can live without ridding the country of Trowbridge as Prime Minister, but not without his many sins being exposed: he will take his suspicions to the press, let them lead the investigation and drop the stakes of his career policy. they can. Kate seems to convince him not to rush, which is impressive considering that in the 24 hours she convinced him to wait to start his investigation, Lenkov’s assassination took place.

For his part, Trowbridge walks through the party without a care in the world, clearly relishing the spotlight and the congratulations pouring in from all sides. Perhaps he was aware of how close he was to being expelled, but he behaves as if such a possibility had never occurred to him, slapping himself on the back and loudly inviting Kate and Hal at a summit in Scotland with their Prime Minister. Who knows what it is? No idea, since Trowbridge “fell asleep while she was describing it.” Hal would rather eat a glass bag for his mid-afternoon snack and wash it down with a refreshing helping of sulfuric acid, but refusing Nicol, the folk hero, seems impossible at the moment.

The episode ends with Hal and Stuart resisting the party’s fireworks. Stuart narrowly escapes the magnificent spectacle that looks a lot like exploding bombs without having a full flashback, trying to convince a pretty party girl to share his car at her house after the valets lose her car keys, while Kate drags Hal away through deep breathing exercises, assuring him that he is okay. For now, they are both doing well.

• Margaret Roylin’s situation is somewhat in the background. She wants to leave the hideout and isn’t detained, but Eidra won’t let her roam free either. What a fun moral and legal gray area that certainly won’t blow up in anyone’s face!

• It’s fun to think about the unusual jobs people can have. For example, it fell to an illustrator to create the gif of Trowbridge as Saint George slaying the dragon Lenkov. This was likely an iterative process and may have even required discussion in meetings! I hope Rory Kinnear has a framed photo of it, enlarged to a very large format and hanging somewhere in his house in a gilded frame.

• The apple variety conversation between Stuart and a conservative councilor named Julian (Rupert Vansittart), subverting expectations by playing a perfectly nice guy rather than an insufferable upper-class braggart as he has done so well in films like Four weddings and a funeraland the 1995 adaptation of Pride and prejudice) is my favorite little moment of the episode. I know the Bramleys are real, but Knobbly Russets makes me angry. I’m convinced that this is just one of many apple variety names that Vansittart invented for this scene in an attempt to make Ato Essandoh fall for him.