Episode 4 Discussion [rewatch]

[lwhite53]

I've been thinking there's a distinct "Harry arc" in series 3 and this ep falls right in with that supposition. Harry in s2 was such a strange character, like they needed to keep trying out different personalities and different ways he could/should fit into the show. In s3 (thus far), it's almost as if the decision was made that Harry would become the core of the group and he's moved from the periphery to center stage. He's become a much stronger, more fleshed-out character and his background and beliefs, which you got hints of previously, now seem to have coalesced into a fully-formed, realistic personality. This ep moves that "character maturation" process along in that we finally learn something about H's personal life.

This isn't the strongest ep in the spooks canon, but it does unearth some of the characters' background stories and we do learn a great deal about their personal and emotional lives. From Harry's, "Always best to keep personal felings out of these matters" (right before he tells Danny to spy on his daughter) to Catherine's, "My dad's dead . . . or he might as well be anyway," to Adam's, "I have an idea but it requires a woman who's ruthless, immoral, vicious and utterly lacking in human sympathy . . . my wife," we get more intimate character knowledge in 55 minutes that we have in the 2 1/2 series that went before.

Most of the memorable scenes in this ep are also those that focus on the personal: Harry looking at childhood pics of Catherine, Will asking Zoe to marry him, Adam and Fiona's kiss after they set up Swift, Danny discovering Will has a key to the flat, Ashworth and his boyfriend in the campaign office at the end, Harry and Catherine's meeting in the park, Harry in his office in the last shot. The ep is so unspooks-like, such an anomoly, that it's hard to reconcile how it fits in, but somehow it does.

Loved Corin Redgrave as David Swift, even more so because Swift's politics were absolutely antithetical to Redgrave's -- an amazing job of acting your enemy!

Also loved Harry's, "Something else . . . that's your bloody middle name." And Ruth's taking the brunt of H's temper in stride.

Found the last scene, Harry alone in his office reciting the end of the poem, wholly anticlimactic. IMO, ep should have ended with Catherine driving away -- everything that needed to be said, vocally, visually and symbolically, had been by then.