The Diplomat Recap: What Did Basil Ever Do to You?

The Diplomat
Phony Negroni
Season 4 Episode 7
Editor’s Rating ★★★★
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I’m no longer worried about Grace Penn and the maybe-PTSD that seems to be exacerbating her worst qualities. I have set aside all tattered remains of concerns or doubts I’ve been harboring about her fitness to serve as President and Commander-in-Chief, and I wish I’d done it sooner. Grace Penn is now coming into what I suspect is her final form as a pure, uncut, pharmaceutical-grade villain. She doesn’t deserve whatever shreds of benefit of the doubt or leeway provided by respect for the office. She’s leveraging norms against her staff (and possibly the world?!), and at the rate she’s going, I won’t be the least bit surprised if she goes full Henry II during the season finale and shouts “Who will rid me of this troublesome ambassador?” leading to Kate getting shanked in her Tuscan villa.

“Phony Negroni” drives home something I had been starting to suspect over the course of the season: Grace may well have PTSD following her attempted assassination, but she’s also devolved into a missing stair. A missing stair is a person in a given community (family, friendship group, workplace) whose behavior consistently violates norms, and for whom everyone adjusts or pre-plans their behavior around so as not to rock the boat. (The metaphor seems to have originated in the BDSM and kink community in response to the presence of a rapist in a specific social circle, but has been in broader use, including psychotherapy, for at least a decade.)

Kate’s painstaking approach (she later describes it as strategic) to Hal to get him to pitch her corpse-retrieval plan to Grace? Seems like a bit of a double missing stair situation to me. Hal and Kate discussing whether to approach Grace before or after dinner and gaming out potential outcomes? Missing stair. Todd doing everything he can not to tell Grace that Kate left him out of her meeting with Vaughn? You guessed it: missing stair. Kate even tells Stuart and Eidra that the reason she lied about having delivered the ultimatum to Vaughn was that she saw Grace nearly tear Gannon’s head off for asking a very reasonable question. She chose to take a fireable-for-cause action rather than inform the President that she exercised her own judgment to tailor her message to Vaughn. Lying to Grace bought Kate some time, sure, but the cost is vertiginously steep. It’s a wonder anything in this administration actually gets done, given how much time and thought everyone puts into managing the President’s mercurial moods and mitigating the effects of her imperious behavior.

Cozied up in their Tuscan villa for the G7 Summit, Grace wants Todd to do as he had been doing in previous episodes, and furnish her with juicy gossip from his job (which is also hugely consequential for statecraft and the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom, no big deal). Her repeated attempts go from flirty to sincere to demanding, forcing her husband (who is also her employee! cool!) to reveal the shameful truth that Kate left him out of her latest meeting with Vaughn. At this point, both believe that Kate delivered both the request half and the ultimatum half of Grace’s message about the welcome that Russian salvage vessels would receive in British waters, so Todd’s repeated demurrals are not about protecting Kate, but are focused on protecting his own ego and forestalling a huge mood shift from Grace. Naturally, Todd’s worry turns out to be merited when Grace crowbars the truth out of him; she’s like a dog with a bone, wanting to summon Kate and have it out immediately, because she thinks this is a managerial problem. Todd finally — finally! — does what I’ve been imploring him through the screen to do, telling Grace that actually, the problem is not Kate, nor himself, but her. Her behavior has been weird, he says. Her decision-making, too. In the way of loving veteran spouses, he’s incredibly kind about it, making allowances for the effect of the shooting and the pressures of the job. As Todd wends his way towards sharing this analysis, he and Grace go a few rounds in which she belittles his diplomatic knowledge and experience and describes her own reckless behavior as having “decided to jump to the [step on the diplomatic ladder] that works.” 

Meanwhile, Kate and Hal are mostly enjoying an interlude that Hal thinks is purely romantic, with a bit of work stuff sprinkled on top, and which Kate has designed as more of a half-and-half experience. She’s orchestrated a state-of-the-relationship conversation in which it becomes clear to Hal for the first time (the first time, how????) that Kate has been thinking he hated her default mode prior to the shift in their relationship that’s been playing out over the season. He’s aghast and deeply apologetic, which is correct, but also: he really did seem, often, to want to punish that version of his wife. He behaved as though he thought she was a real drag and shrewish when she confronted or questioned him. This conversation feels like one they would have had years ago, but it seems helpful and sincere on both sides, and I believe Kate when she later says the substance is real and the timing was strategic. 

All of this pillow talk smooths Kate’s path to selling Hal on her idea of extracting the bodies from the Russian sub. He’d have gone for it even without a leisurely, sexy afternoon as an apéritif, because he gets on board right away. The only flaw he highlights is that, having issued an ultimatum to Vaughn, it’ll cost Grace some pride to back off and offer an alternate plan. It only takes Kate’s coming clean with the good news/bad news to throw all their progress out the window, not least because Hal thinks that once Grace finds out about Kate’s lie, it’ll cost both of them their jobs. He can’t bear to lose the access and the role he’s got now, and hates that Kate hits the nail on the head by asking if he’s angry she lied or that his position as Vice President is now in jeopardy. It’s too late to do much about it, though, as they’re about to have dinner with the Penns. 

Grace is in full-on shark mode, taking Kate with her to the greenhouse to fetch some basil for the negronis Todd is whipping up (basil is not actually a garnish for a negroni, but nobody is going to say that to Grace). She sets Kate up for a spectacular fall by apologizing for foisting Todd off on her and being fake-disbelieving of all of Kate’s compliments, then asking, well, if Todd is such an asset, why didn’t you take him with you to meet the prime minister? 

Things only get worse from here. Grace demands counsel and observation from her innermost circle, then is angry and punitive when they’re honest about their concerns. Hal choosing this moment to pitch Grace on the body-extraction proposal is a bit of a head-scratcher, but by this point everyone is just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks. Nothing is effective. Not sincere, caring concern, and not questions about the legality or morality of Grace’s ultimatum. Not even Kate’s last-ditch approach works. Her gentlest possible framing of Grace’s increasing tolerance for international relations risk and threats to human life has come to threaten the collapse of the U.S. and U.K.’s special relationship lands like a lead balloon. She coldly dismisses Kate for the night, saying her increasingly expeditious decision-making is not the result of the shooting, but of her belief that she has a responsibility to the world to move more quickly and decisively. Hal gets barely a minute longer at the table before she sends him away while Billie rummages in her bag for copies of her North Sea situation update materials. 

They all should have seen this coming, is the thing. Grace has been leaving an entire loaf’s worth of breadcrumbs all along. Maybe the shooting shook something loose in her and has amplified her worst tendencies. Many of the troubling moments and decisions we’ve seen — biting a staffer’s head off about receiving what turned out to be the correct daily briefing memo; telling Todd to sleep in another room; gleefully congratulating Kate on maneuvering Trowbridge out of office; announcing the Chinese legacy chip ban — could be rationalized or softened just a bit, especially by people who want to believe the best of her. In the aggregate, though, a picture of a very astute leader with an encyclopedic grasp of the rules, an iron grip on the levers of power, and seemingly free from restraint, well on her way to being a ruthless, abusive dictator emerges all too clearly. Most dreadful of all, it seems as if nobody has the rhetorical stamina to argue Grace into a corner and keep her there. She keeps wriggling out of it because they are all operating in good faith that she will do the same, so she keeps turning that against them. 

Intrigue and Crumpets

• I have to start with the comic relief of the episode, because the jokes are good and deserve some love. First, Grace hurling the remaining (and wholly superfluous!) basil on the ground, because after all that rigamarole, she doesn’t want any basil in her negroni, because she doesn’t like the smell. The whole thing was a power move, with shades of Logan Roy woven in. 

• The poor, sweet, innocent angel of a chef, who was so proud to be able to share his menu with his world leader guests, only for Grace to stalk away mid-recitation? I hope someone hugs and reassures him that none of this was his fault. 

• Stuart wielding his State Department-honed delay tactics and feigned incompetence against Billie is funny, and, I was glad to see, ultimately leads to them having the conversation they’ve needed to have since last season when she cautioned him against lawyering up. Who knows if their friendship will survive, but at least the air is clear between them, and she’s heard him say out loud that she bears some responsibility for the mess they’re all in. 

• I keep trying not to think this, but Grace’s ability to get away with everything, repeatedly, reminds me ever so slightly of someone else.