I haven't watched it yet, but feel free to start without me

GO!

I do like this episode as it's quite unique but I think it loses it's way a little in the second half. I do wonder though why everyone in this episode seems to be wearing grey?

- I liked the fact that Harry was more central to the main plot. I thought it was good of Tom to give Harry a chance to clear his name particularly since they have not been getting on too well. I thought Zoe was a little harsh and the way she spoke to Harry throughout the episode was very disrespectful. Even when Ruth told Harry in the meeting room that he had to own up, she still spoke to him with respect; she didnt judge him, just pointed out what needed to be done now.
- I loved Sam in this episdoe. It was so funny the way she was flirting with Jean-Luc. She was obviously tasked to help distract him but I think she loved it.
- I didnt like the way Zoe treated Harry. Considering it took her a week to report Tessa to Harry, she really has a short memory. I also didnt like the way she shoved her finger in his face towards the end.
- I felt very sorry for JJ. His home life had shaped his life and even when Tom tried to give him a way out of his life, he didnt want it. He didnt think he was really worth anything to anyone. Nothing was going to change his mind. He was probably resigned to spending the rest of his life in prison. A victim of circumstance.
- I liked the scene where JJ was viewing the route on the computer screens. Very clever.
- Why was Christine in this episode. Did they have a few minutes of screen time to fill? I thought she looked horrible at the Opera. Tom is blind.

That's all.
TL

It's not one of my favourite episodes but it does pose some interesting questions. We see the darker side of the Service, Harry and Tom in this episode with all of them doing the morally questionable in using a kid to do their dirty work. Harry is first to see the potential and goes about achieving their aim quite ruthlessly - the only time we really see some emotion from him is when Zoe yells at him at the end of the episode. There are more flashes throughout the episode of Tom realising what a terrible thing it is to do, yet he does Harry's bidding without questioning it once, and is also the one keeping the other officers in line when they balk at using the kid. So at this stage Tom clearly still subscribes to the motto that the end justifies the means.

That Jean-Luc guy was pretty annoying, and not very attractive to me at all. I can't see what Zoe and Sam were swooning about. I quite liked Ruth's reaction to this whole little scene, she seemed not to find him all that hot either.

Zoe was a little over the top with her protestations about using the kid throughout the episode, and I found her bordering on bitchy on a few occasions. Whilst all the others seemed to realise that it was their only option, she continued to throw her toys out of the cot at every opportunity. I also think she was wrong when she said that Harry would noot have given any of them a chance to save their careers if they had been in his shoes - he seems to be protective of his officers as long as their actions do not border on the traitorous. For instance, he did give Danny a second chance over his credit card fraud in season 1.

I agree with you Tea Lady that it was much weaker in the second half.
I personally do not like this episode because I think Harry is totally wrong for using JJ and for taking the codes home , and I usually agree with Harry. I would side with Zoe in this episode. I just feel sorry for JJ the whole episode and the fact Tom paid him £1500 for the codes, he could have given more money as JJ did not want anything else.
MI5 should not have used such a young person in this way, especially as they had no plan to get him out.

What I have noticed in the rewatch is that Zoe's character is like the most negative and she always seem to have a bad attitude to everything, admittedly she had a valid reason with JJ and before that with the videotape but even Tom seems to be more willing to cooperate with the rest than her.. I think it started with the episode she had to be a teacher and I'd never really noticed it in her before.

I thought they were really harsh with Harry, Zoe in particular but I find it hard to belief that someone as experienced and senior as Harry would do something as stupid as that in the first place.

I loved JJ haha, at the end I just wanted to yell at him, you are being played man, take more money!! I thought it was nice the way his brother knew he had to let him go to reach his potential.

I thought the Christine scenes were a good addition in this episode. The marked difference between her reaction to being stood up by Tom and Vicky highlighted how much better and stronger Christine and Tom's relationship is (plus I loved her top Rarely does that happen in the earlier series lol why are the clothes so plain??? ). And when he used her to get the information about the Chinese even though she was just calling him socially showed the potential conflicts the relationships has with the line between professional and personal.

I happen to agree with Zoe on this one too, although I do think Harry does try to protect people on his team. I don't care if she came across as bitchy - I liked that JJ had someone to advocate for him. I'm not being sentimental just because he was a kid, but rather because when they are, in part, a victim as well as a culprit, there should be someone there speaking on their behalf when they can't.

For me, this is as ruthless as Harry gets on the show. Mainly because it's about him saving his own neck and then putting a kid's on the line. It's interesting to think about at what age would it have been inappropriate for them to send JJ in there. 12? 10? Given the 'set of skills' (as Silktie so succinctly put it on the Harry thread) that JJ brings, you'd think that it wouldn't matter how young he was theoretically. It's about his judgement and perception that this moral argument is centred upon. To put it another way: at what point can you ask someone to put their life on the line for their country?

This is not one of the stronger eps and I agree, as said earlier, that it seems to have lost its way. I think the problem is that the whole structure of the ep is off-kilter. Once the decision is made to use JJ as the clean skin, the point of the ep is revealed but that happens way too early. Harry's line "Terrorists aren't the only one to manipulate youth. It's all part of the game," should have come in the last 10 mins of the ep, not the first 10. So the rest of the ep is pretty much playing "catch up," trying to justify the moral dilemma posed, and it lacks dramatic tension, imo, especially when compared with the earlier ep of the child suicide bomber (2.2).

There were a couple of good Ruth moments -- when she says "Well if that isn't illegal, it's very, very naughty" (only Ruth would put it that way) and when she says to Harry, "You have to tell them," earning her one of H's death stares!

In the scene where JJ is working with the computer simulation, the juxtaposition of the all-white, well schooled, highly trained MI5 officers and the young, black, street hustler savant who was going to save them was such a cliched image, I couldn't believe it. Bad, bad directorial choice, imo.

The character I thought most morally unambiguous was, interestingly enough, Denton. He loved JJ but also recognized he had nothing to offer the boy, so he gives him to MI5 hoping they could change his life and thereby his future. A heroic act, I think.

Ooh yeah I forgot about the very very naughty line lol it made me laugh soo much

I dont think there was anything wrong with the story per se but perhaps poor direction and editing didnt help.

I would like to have seen Tom give JJ more than £1500 at the end. If they had not taken advantage of JJ already, then they certainly were then.

Yes, loved the Ruth "naughty" line. So Ruth.

But with JJ you have to think, what if he had excepted Tom's offer, then got sent to some posh expensive private school, he probably wouldn't have been happy - its a completely different world. So in a way, he was happy with his £1,500 and could then go back to his normal life.