The Diplomat Recap: Trying on the Presidency for Size

The Diplomat
Redcoats
Season 4 Episode 2
Editor’s Rating ★★★★
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“I am the squeaky wheel in the chain, but I stay in the chain. You should eat something.”

This is exactly the kind of metaphor mixing a real person makes in an argument with the most important person in their life. It’s also the kind of pivot to caring that happens in one of those arguments. Hal is being a dick, Kate is pissed off, and also she can see that he needs to eat something. Him being hangry with her is bad enough and leads to their ugliest exchange yet as Hal revisits how much it stings him that Kate chose her ambassadorship over being Second Lady but would reconsider if she were the First Lady. His persistent needling leads to her yelling, “You had me for a decade and a half, and you missed it!” But if he doesn’t get his blood sugar and mood regulated, his hangriness could have dire global consequences. And nobody can read him like she can. It’s a skill Kate draws on all the time, but it’s particularly striking in “Redcoats,” which picks up in the seconds after Grace has been shot and everyone hurls themselves on the ground. 

There’s nothing like a crisis for illustrating who’s put in the work to develop strong muscle memory and habits of mind. In the first moments after the shooting, we see Grace, Todd, and Billie being swooped into an armored limo and whisked away to a nearby U.S. Navy aircraft carrier so she can undergo surgery. Simultaneously, Hal, Kate, and their staff are encased in scrums of Secret Service agents that move them swiftly indoors, while the Windsor Castle guardsmen on hand leap into action to return fire at the gunman and provide cover for everyone’s escape. 

The briskness is a key theme of the episode, with an added bonus of getting us in short order to the heart of it all. At Windsor, Kate coordinates with Stuart at Winfield House while Hal is on the line with Grace as she’s about to go into surgery. The president’s grittiness is on full display here, as she calmly instructs Hal to draft remarks to deliver in the event of her death and cautions him not to appoint all of his strongest allies to Cabinet positions. She only stops because the surgeon is making his “I need to operate now, ma’am!” face and Todd is beside himself hearing his wife talk about her potential death as if it were a minor scheduling inconvenience. 

Outside Windsor, word has traveled fast to Whitehall, and you know what that means: Rory Kinnear is back as Prime Minister Nicol Trowbridge. He’s woven some real heart and viperous self-preservation into echoes of Boris Johnson’s blustery, posh nincompoopery in his performance, and this episode gives us two delicious moments with him in all of Trowbridge’s internal contradictions. First, we get him wittering on about how working-class women don’t really want to have work lives because “they know better than anyone that unloved, undisciplined children are most likely to grow up to mug their grannies on the street,” and having to pivot very sharply when his assistant comes over to whisper in his ear that Grace has been shot. It feels like The Diplomat’s riff on George W. Bush’s oft-meme’d reaction to being informed of the 9/11 attacks. On the phone with Kate, Trowbridge summons all of his modest reserves of sincerity as he apologizes and assures her that all of Britain’s law enforcement and defense resources will be at their disposal to find the shooter.

Shortly afterward, Trowbridge repeats the same message to Tom Libby, the head of the London Police, and another adviser, but this time it comes from the other Trowbridge. Vexed, petulant, impatient, and focused on No. 1, because having been shot, Grace is “a martyr, and until you find the perpetrator, I am the one the world will blame.” There he is! That’s our guy! I hope they do send the Eton College choir to participate in the manhunt; actually, I’m sure a bunch of lads with perfect pitch, sporting tails and top hats, would bring a little something extra to the search. 

On the more concretely helpful side, we’ve got transport department staffer Robyn Palmer approaching Stuart to offer access to the 9,000-plus cameras with sophisticated facial recognition software and collaboration with the Electronic Travel Authorization Team to help locate American citizens in the U.K. I love when a bureaucracy and its staff function as intended, and this episode dramatizes one shining example after another. 

At this point, the pacing downshifts a bit to make room for its true heart, an extended scene between Kate and Hal where they continue the fractious conversation they were having in “Windsor.” Now that he’s the acting president, Kate is in the unusual situation of being Hal’s employee as well as his wife and First Lady. It’s nice to be reminded immediately that he’s very good at the chief executive aspects of the role, both well-informed and able to articulate himself clearly in his first meeting with Cabinet members and representatives from the Departments of State and Defense. It would be a very smooth transition for him, should Grace need an extended recovery period. As he and Kate typically do, their conversation in the equerry’s room ping-pongs across the subject at hand, side topics, and their ongoing arguments about the state of their relationship and Kate’s role in Hal’s likely temporary administration (though a future administration seems more on the table than it has previously). 

Over the course of their conversation, Kate guides Hal from his initial refusal to consider any agenda of his own to rattling off some diplomatic and military plans he’s clearly been refining mentally for quite a while. All the while, they’re veering back and forth, from the easy shorthand of longtime collaborators to the exasperation of a couple who love each other while driving each other up the wall. Kate plainly thinks the world of his acumen and strategy, while he’s grateful to have her there to keep him in check. It’s heartening to see them like this. Sweet, even. But it also dredges up a new version of Hal’s resentment of Kate’s commitment to her ambassadorship. She’s all in on working side-by-side with him if he were serving as president, but not as vice-president? His pride can’t tolerate this, so he strikes back, repeating Billie’s earlier question about whether or not Kate might have confided in Callum after all about the real location of the Poseidon. In response, Kate is indignant and offended, and Hal must have known he was doing himself no favors in posing the question as he did, without Billie’s unpleasant but analytically correct perspective that the Secret Service and MI5 are lacking a vital piece of information for their threat models, so she and he both have to ask the terrible question. 

Four seasons in, it’s hard to imagine Kate and Hal finding their way to long-term, mutually satisfying stability in their relationship. It sometimes seems as though Hal knows Kate is right about the high highs and low lows but still thinks something more even-keeled between them is possible. The best they can do right now is agree to move forward under their agreement that for the foreseeable future, she’ll be the one to take the blame and the one to take the lead on reconciliation when things go sideways between them. Hal can’t resist twisting the knife just a tad, telling Kate he doesn’t want her to come back to D.C. with him right now, and he does so again when he’s on the phone with an out-of-surgery-but-still-groggy Grace, turning away from Kate as the door to the equerry’s room shuts in her face. 

Intrigue and Crumpets

• Remember last season, when Todd asked Grace how many more times she’d let Billie throw her under the bus? I thought she’d have made an exit by now, but it seems likely that she’ll stick around while Grace recovers. Todd’s feelings clearly have not changed, and she agrees that it’s time, but in that final scene, she’s still making the most of her position, enlisting Hal in the delicate work of postponing Grace’s resumption of her office. Maybe she should stick around, after all? 

• Eidra continues to manage her and Stuart’s relationship with brisk efficiency and by maximizing the opportunities provided by little interstitial moments. Romance by “by the way” is now leading to them moving in together, yay!