[7.6/10] Dickie’s seemed like a bit of a dope in the past couple episodes. “Hmm, somebody’s betraying me. I wonder if it’s one of my longtime trusted associates, the woman I’m dating, or the random stranger who’s recently wormed his way into my inner circle.” Maybe he knows and is working both Pine and Jed for his own larger purposes. The director definitely includes some meaningful looks here that suggest that might be the case. But at the very least, he seems surprisingly easy to sucker and misdirect about the mole in his organization.
And yet, here we see him pull off his own brilliant misdirect with flying colors. The Night Manager sets it up nicely with his little shell game demonstration earlier in the season. The trucks seemingly full of illegal arms were, in fact, never there. Instead, since he knew the heat was on, he filled them with actual farm equipment, adding just enough firepower to do a demonstration for his buyer, while keeping the rest on the ships in Istanbul. However dopey ol’ Dickie Roper may seem about those liable to flip on him, he knows how to sucker the spooks and spies just as well.
It really hurts. This episode felt like Angela Burr’s one big chance to actually collar the guy before her whole operation fell apart. The powers that be (including the permanent secretary and Dromgoole) are squeezing out her operation by pulling funding, replacing senior positions, and making active threats. The clock is ticking and Burr pulls in every favor she can think of to try to pull the net down on Roper before the party ends. The fact that Pine’s intel, which was so risky to transmit in the first place, seems to give her the edge she needs, only for her and her cohort to come up empty, is a genuine gut punch.
That feels worse knowing how Angela’s playing the “last sane man” game here. The episode makes it personal. Dromgoole shows up to her home to give the standard villain speech about maintaining the world order. There’s an A Few Good Men-type tone to his words to her, arguing that England needs to do this type of dirty work to maintain its standing and “punch above its weight,” even if it makes people like Burr squeamish. It comes off as a pretty standard bit of bad guy oratory and self-justification, but there’s menace to it, which helps sell it.
That’s especially true when Burr comes home to find her house in shambles and her husband bleeding and hit over the head with a blunt object. She’s already risked a lot on this operation, but seeing the blowback affect someone she cares for, even if she doesn’t love him, brings the danger home, both literally and figuratively. She trade-off for this is supposed to be bringing down the worst man in the world in exchange for some professional costs, not watching Roper wriggle out of her snare while her husband pays the price.
Episode 5 reinforces Roper’s moral stain. We learn more about what The Haven really is: a kingdom, full of mercenaries at his beck call, with enough weaponry and expertise to change world affairs to suit his liking. We see the way he masks such dirty dealings under the guise of U.N. humanitarian aid, rubbing salt in the wound. And we see how he and his people deal with the refugees unable to evacuate before his war crime weapons were tested, with a callousness and brutality that shows whatever Roper’s clever bon mots and genial demeanor, he’s a monster. Unfortunately, the episode does better at making hay of two sides of an international intelligence apparatus working against one another and a well-heeled warlord slipping from their grasp in the crossfire than it does at The Night Manager’s central premise. Pine’s business here is either dumb or implausible.
On the dumb side, I have no idea why he tells Jed who he really is. I get that it’s supposed to be love and that he’s channeling his feelings for Sophie. But even if he’s trying to protect Jed, giving her knowledge of key information that she can no longer claim to be ignorant of is not freaking helpful. It would be one thing if Pine simply said, “I’m someone who wants to get you out of here, and I work with good people who can make that happen and stop Roper at the same time.” But he just spills the whole tin of beans to someone who has been, at best, less than steady throughout this.
More to the point, his ability to mess with generators to get the opportunity, jot down license plates with no one seeing, sneak out of camp and get a very agreeable cab driver to do his bidding, and kill Corkoran with minimal blowback all begins to strain credulity. Again, maybe the big reveal in episode 6 will be that Roper knew all along and was letting things play out to his own benefit, perhaps to be able to isolate trouble spots in the CIA and MI6. But all of this seems way too easy for Pine to pull off, to where these events feel plot-mandated rather than natural.
There is, at least, some tension from Roper essentially laying out a list of suspects and then gathering all of them in his hideout in Southern Turkey. Who’s on his shit list and who’s clean seems to change by the day, so his gathering all of the potential culprits in one spot produces an emotional tinderbox for everyone. Pine’s undercover game is just starting to become overstretched the more alternate possibilities Roper appears to be considering.
That said, the terrifying highlight of the episode may be Roper’s “demonstration” of the weapons he’s amassed for a mysterious “consortium.” We’ve already seen requisition forms for mustard gas and sarin, and now we see cluster bombs used. The visuals are thrilling, with the kind of explosions Tom Hiddleston’s in front of more often in his Marvel movie outings. (Hello Iron Man 1 fans, by the way!) But seeing the sheer terrifying force at Roper’s command, willing to be handed over to the highest bidder, regardless of the human and civilian costs, rightfully casts Roper as a horrifying, evil man of the highest order.
Even as he’s escaped from the trap laid out for him by Burr and Pine, there’s still more tension and excitement to be had. It’s a little cheesy, but a return to the Nefertiti Hotel in Cairo is also poetic for Pine. Honestly, the poetry of it is part of what makes me suspect Roper’s in the know. Nevertheless, Pine playing the game of having to hope he’s not recognized by the staff of the hotel where he used to work, or by Freddy Hamid, the man who killed Sophie, or otherwise found out by his current employer in a place laden with meaning for him is promising.
Overall, the plot mechanics and character choices of her require a little extra suspension of disbelief, especially for a show that seems to want to traffic in realism. But the big set pieces, particularly Burr’s devastating miss and Roper’s great triumph, add spark and tragedy to the show’s penultimate episode.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2021-08-15T23:15:01Z
[7.6/10] Dickie’s seemed like a bit of a dope in the past couple episodes. “Hmm, somebody’s betraying me. I wonder if it’s one of my longtime trusted associates, the woman I’m dating, or the random stranger who’s recently wormed his way into my inner circle.” Maybe he knows and is working both Pine and Jed for his own larger purposes. The director definitely includes some meaningful looks here that suggest that might be the case. But at the very least, he seems surprisingly easy to sucker and misdirect about the mole in his organization.
And yet, here we see him pull off his own brilliant misdirect with flying colors. The Night Manager sets it up nicely with his little shell game demonstration earlier in the season. The trucks seemingly full of illegal arms were, in fact, never there. Instead, since he knew the heat was on, he filled them with actual farm equipment, adding just enough firepower to do a demonstration for his buyer, while keeping the rest on the ships in Istanbul. However dopey ol’ Dickie Roper may seem about those liable to flip on him, he knows how to sucker the spooks and spies just as well.
It really hurts. This episode felt like Angela Burr’s one big chance to actually collar the guy before her whole operation fell apart. The powers that be (including the permanent secretary and Dromgoole) are squeezing out her operation by pulling funding, replacing senior positions, and making active threats. The clock is ticking and Burr pulls in every favor she can think of to try to pull the net down on Roper before the party ends. The fact that Pine’s intel, which was so risky to transmit in the first place, seems to give her the edge she needs, only for her and her cohort to come up empty, is a genuine gut punch.
That feels worse knowing how Angela’s playing the “last sane man” game here. The episode makes it personal. Dromgoole shows up to her home to give the standard villain speech about maintaining the world order. There’s an A Few Good Men-type tone to his words to her, arguing that England needs to do this type of dirty work to maintain its standing and “punch above its weight,” even if it makes people like Burr squeamish. It comes off as a pretty standard bit of bad guy oratory and self-justification, but there’s menace to it, which helps sell it.
That’s especially true when Burr comes home to find her house in shambles and her husband bleeding and hit over the head with a blunt object. She’s already risked a lot on this operation, but seeing the blowback affect someone she cares for, even if she doesn’t love him, brings the danger home, both literally and figuratively. She trade-off for this is supposed to be bringing down the worst man in the world in exchange for some professional costs, not watching Roper wriggle out of her snare while her husband pays the price.
Episode 5 reinforces Roper’s moral stain. We learn more about what The Haven really is: a kingdom, full of mercenaries at his beck call, with enough weaponry and expertise to change world affairs to suit his liking. We see the way he masks such dirty dealings under the guise of U.N. humanitarian aid, rubbing salt in the wound. And we see how he and his people deal with the refugees unable to evacuate before his war crime weapons were tested, with a callousness and brutality that shows whatever Roper’s clever bon mots and genial demeanor, he’s a monster.
Unfortunately, the episode does better at making hay of two sides of an international intelligence apparatus working against one another and a well-heeled warlord slipping from their grasp in the crossfire than it does at The Night Manager’s central premise. Pine’s business here is either dumb or implausible.
On the dumb side, I have no idea why he tells Jed who he really is. I get that it’s supposed to be love and that he’s channeling his feelings for Sophie. But even if he’s trying to protect Jed, giving her knowledge of key information that she can no longer claim to be ignorant of is not freaking helpful. It would be one thing if Pine simply said, “I’m someone who wants to get you out of here, and I work with good people who can make that happen and stop Roper at the same time.” But he just spills the whole tin of beans to someone who has been, at best, less than steady throughout this.
More to the point, his ability to mess with generators to get the opportunity, jot down license plates with no one seeing, sneak out of camp and get a very agreeable cab driver to do his bidding, and kill Corkoran with minimal blowback all begins to strain credulity. Again, maybe the big reveal in episode 6 will be that Roper knew all along and was letting things play out to his own benefit, perhaps to be able to isolate trouble spots in the CIA and MI6. But all of this seems way too easy for Pine to pull off, to where these events feel plot-mandated rather than natural.
There is, at least, some tension from Roper essentially laying out a list of suspects and then gathering all of them in his hideout in Southern Turkey. Who’s on his shit list and who’s clean seems to change by the day, so his gathering all of the potential culprits in one spot produces an emotional tinderbox for everyone. Pine’s undercover game is just starting to become overstretched the more alternate possibilities Roper appears to be considering.
That said, the terrifying highlight of the episode may be Roper’s “demonstration” of the weapons he’s amassed for a mysterious “consortium.” We’ve already seen requisition forms for mustard gas and sarin, and now we see cluster bombs used. The visuals are thrilling, with the kind of explosions Tom Hiddleston’s in front of more often in his Marvel movie outings. (Hello Iron Man 1 fans, by the way!) But seeing the sheer terrifying force at Roper’s command, willing to be handed over to the highest bidder, regardless of the human and civilian costs, rightfully casts Roper as a horrifying, evil man of the highest order.
Even as he’s escaped from the trap laid out for him by Burr and Pine, there’s still more tension and excitement to be had. It’s a little cheesy, but a return to the Nefertiti Hotel in Cairo is also poetic for Pine. Honestly, the poetry of it is part of what makes me suspect Roper’s in the know. Nevertheless, Pine playing the game of having to hope he’s not recognized by the staff of the hotel where he used to work, or by Freddy Hamid, the man who killed Sophie, or otherwise found out by his current employer in a place laden with meaning for him is promising.
Overall, the plot mechanics and character choices of her require a little extra suspension of disbelief, especially for a show that seems to want to traffic in realism. But the big set pieces, particularly Burr’s devastating miss and Roper’s great triumph, add spark and tragedy to the show’s penultimate episode.