Series 10 - Episode 3 Discussion

[Silktie]

I really enjoyed the episode. Not quite as edge-of-the-seat as last week’s, but still pretty good.

It was great to see Dimitri get the main story, and I thought MB did a good job in portraying Dimitri’s ambivalence in having to honeytrap Nathali. And I think that ambivalence is also why he misread the brother’s intentions – his sense of guilt at what he was doing to the poor woman blinded him to the lies of her brother. He probably wanted something good to come out of his actions, and saw proving the brother innocent as that chance. I wonder if his dilemma was meant to mirror what Harry is going through to some extent?

I loved Calum from the start, and was happy to see him challenge Harry about Tariq. Well done, young man. Re the CCTV footage, I thought the footage found by Calum stopped short of the bit that showed suspected Elena take delivery of the briefcase – so that part was probably corrupted when Tariq’s system went haywire last week. I believe this means it was not necessarily the CIA that killed Tariq, but the Russians to prevent MI5 from finding out about their involvement. But Jim Coaver is the impostor, and the CIA did plot the assassination attempt on Gavrik – remember, it was meant to fail. And the CIA did steal the laptop, but why would they give it to the Russians after that? Perhaps the CIA and the Russians are secretly working together? I’m stumped.

Ruth got some strong scenes this episode. While I fully understand why she is beginning to think about leaving, I have a very hard time accepting she would want to go and work for a politician. She’s seen, through her many years at MI5, just how untrustworthy they are after all. The scene between her and Elena was fantastic, so much going on underneath with both these women.

And Harry. Definitely not his finest hour, this. He seems lost, unsure who to trust, apart from Ruth, that is. PF killed that scene where Harry says goodbye to Sasha. Harry seems to be losing everyone at the moment, it is evident in the scenes Harry and Ruth shared that neither of them has the slightest idea how to get through this, and they’re drifting apart. Also, it seems that he had a close working relationship with Jim Coaver back in the day, and that they were even friends. It must be a hard pill to swallow to think that that friend could have ordered Tariq’s death. I think that is what lies behind him asking Ruth to tell the team everything at the end, not that that’s an excuse. I agree with others he should have done that himself. Like Ruth said last episode, he is emotionally compromised by this whole situation, and not handling it very well at the moment. If Ruth decides to leave, will this worsen further?

On a side note, I think all these faults of Harry is necessary to motivate Ruth’s possible leaving – if Harry was Mr Perfect and did everything right this season, Ruth would have had less reason to leave. But I hope Harry pulls it together and kicks some ass before the end.