River Cartwright is a seemingly capable agent, arguably the prize sheep in Lamb’s misfit flock. He wouldn’t even be at Slough House if he hadn’t been sabotaged during a field test, and his résumé is boosted further by his grandfather David, whose time as a senior intelligence officer paved the nepotistic path that River was supposed to follow. And yet, for the second time in four seasons, River has gone off alone to a small town where his presence is so conspicuous that it immediately sets off alarm bells among the people he’s seeking. He spent much of the second season in the tiny Gloucestershire town of Upshott investigating the “cicada†theory of Russian sleeper agents laying low in British society, awaiting instructions to strike. He survived the ordeal, obviously, but his adversaries had the drop on him before he could sort out enemy from friend.
And so now, we must ask again: What is River’s plan, exactly? In the opening scenes to another terrific episode — nitpicks about investigative strategy aside, the show is hitting on all cylinders so far — we get clarification on what actually happened at David’s house and which River lookalike was shot in the face in his bathroom. Though Lamb speculates that David may be exaggerating his dementia, it would appear that he had enough clarity of thinking at the moment to realize that the man who announced himself as River and immediately went upstairs to draw a bath was not his grandson. As David tells River, one giveaway is that the stranger called him “Gramps,†which River never does. When the actual River turns up to assess the situation, he’s pleased to find a bundle of clues to the intruder’s identity and previous whereabouts, including a passport and the receipt to a café in Lavande, France. And so he just, well, goes there.
As Brian Grubb wrote for Vulture earlier last week, “He is very handsome and means well and is also maybe the dumbest man who has ever lived.â€
Granted, it’s his grandpa’s fault for putting him in this spot. Not only does David have a shaky account of the shooting that the Park could exploit, but he’s also pressed a big red button to alert them, leaving River with little time to act. So he takes dramatic action by shooting the dead man in the face to sustain the assumption that it’s him for as long as possible. In the meantime, he tucks his grandfather away with Standish and heads to Lavande, a town that’s so thoroughly off-putting that his cab driver notes that tourists don’t visit. Yet here, River has spent 95 Euros on a cab ride to this bleak backwater, where the first two locals he meets won’t talk to him, and a vicious guard dog accosts him. Still, he manages to get the address for a bar/café called Blanc Rousse, and straight-up ask the barkeep if he’s seen a guy who looks like him. He doesn’t even drink the latte he pretends to want.
From there, River marches off to stick his face in the fan — and, no surprise gets a bit lopped up by the blades. It’s hard to know exactly the number and shape of his adversaries, but one of the men who confronts him is played by Hugo Weaving, who’s still formidable 25 years after his turn as Agent Smith in The Matrix. We can see that River is monitored by multiple parties throughout the town and even back in London, where an operative casually approaches a cop outside of David’s house, gets some information out of him, and leaves behind a surveillance device. (Ineptitude is not limited to Slough House on this show.) River ends the episode by getting knocked unconscious by a man he assumes is rescuing him. It seems a fair fate, given his level of preparation for this impromptu boondoggle.
As Lamb and company hustle to sort through River’s situation from afar — Lamb insists he’s “a Joe in the field, and you don’t blow a Joe’s cover†— the other major development from last week’s premiere, the bombing at Westacres, is getting scrutinized by the Park. An enterprising agent named Giti Rahman (Kiran Sonia Sawar) alerts Taverner that she ran the passport of alleged bomber Robert Winters and discovered that it was legitimately renewed multiple times over the years but had been issued from the old Park headquarters 28 years ago. Kristen Scott Thomas, as Taverner, takes in this catastrophic piece of information with her usual cool aplomb and immediately formulates a plan to bury it. She flatters Giti by putting her on this Very Special Project, on which she’s to report only to her. This leads to a hilarious scene where Flyte, working well below her pay grade, is playing Giti’s babysitter. She even makes her an omelet.
Though Taverner dutifully reports the situation to Claude, her superior in title only, she has to finesse the whole bury-the-information-in-a-pit strategy because Claude sees himself ushering in a new era of transparency at the agency. Taverner does everything but roll her eyes at his prepared speech to that effect, but it’s her philosophy, after so much experience on the job, that opacity and secrecy are critical at MI5. For self-evident reasons, it will not look good for the agency to have possible ties to the terrorist bombing of a shopping mall. So she tricks Claude into signing off on the destruction of incriminating documents related to Robert Winters, just one of the fires she puts out “every bloody day.†The investigation will have to take a more wayward track.
No doubt that track will lead through Slough House, and damned if the place is going to look clean and orderly when it does. In the episode’s funniest subplot, an interim office administrator attempts to tidy up Lamb’s filth-caked hovel, and he smiles through gritted teeth, offering the woman a trip to lunch on him. On the way out, he whispers to his people, “I can’t fucking be in there with it like that. Put it back how it was.†You can’t have Pigpen without his cloud.
Shots
• To what degree, if any, is David Cartwright exaggerating his dementia? He was keen enough to suspect he was being watched and also keen enough to shoot the right guy despite his resemblance to his grandson. But his confusion and his tears tell a more straightforward story. As the past connection between David and Lavande comes into focus, surely we’ll learn more.
• Lamb knows exactly what River has done before anyone else, of course. He also seems to have some appreciation for his moxie, even if he calls it “arguably a batshit move.â€
• Marcus has returned to gambling again, chatting excitedly about parlaying the proceeds from a gun sale into a “sure thing†in order to pay off a debt that’s well into five figures. “A relapse is a good sign,†he assures Shirley. All part of the process.
• A good zinger from Lamb to the new office administrator at lunch when she laughs at the “reprobates†she’ll have to manage at Slough House: “You don’t think that the company you find yourself in now reflects badly on you?â€