Episode 7 Discussion [rewatch]

[A Cousin]

I work with security standards all day long. Lucky me. I am a business manager and not a technician, but I think that the concept of the G&J code, while kind of true in advent, is a grossly simplified version of the current uses of electronic encryption codes. Many business' have several different types of codes securing data. Or rather they should. I guess this is the point being made with the something a simple and basic as a password. "Password" - Hysterical! One code that will bring the financial world down? No. However, I suspended my disbelief for the larger theme of this episode.

Which is, I think this episode successfully grapples with the idea of balancing individual human-ness with the professional requirements placed on the characters. Danny and Ruth factor quite largely, of course. However, Adam/Fiona factor in as does Harry.

The reason Danny is so uninvolved with the professional is his personal state at the time re: Zoe/Will. Will challenges him with his humanity right off the bat, and Danny refuses to give into it. Still fighting it, Danny takes it out on Ruth b/c she extends the invitation to connect on a human level. It is brought to a head in the conversation with Harry about Will's request to be told where Zoe is.

D: They were going to get married. She trusts him.
H: Its a human failing she'll have to overcome.

Danny takes it out on the kid who doesn't leave the computer quickly enough during the raid b/c he doesn't know where the line is anymore. But when it needs to be called on, to find Ruth, his human-ness saves her.

Harry is the antithesis of Danny for most of the episode - completely a spy, less a human.

I think that no one realizes that there is anything really wrong with Ruth b/c they keep being tugged back into the professional from the personal. Danny is the only one fully in touch with it at that time.

And one of my favorite Peter Firth (Actor Extrordinaire!) moments occurs in this episode. In the scene when Andrew is introduced, when Harry realizes that there is "history" between Ruth and Andrew, he goes through about 6 different emotions in the course of one line of exposition. God! He's good!

And then there is the Adam and Fiona plot line which is an example of the perfect balance between being an individual and being a spy.

I don't care how James Bond it is, I want one of those RC helicopters!