The Diplomat Recap: Advisory Board, Assemble

The Diplomat
The Dead
Season 4 Episode 6
Editor’s Rating ★★★★★
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The what-could-have-been vibe of “The Dead” is agonizing. If Todd were not so loyal to and trusting of his wife, who is unfortunately also POTUS, he might have been a valued member of the advisory board Kate assembles with Stuart and Eidra. The outcome of Kate’s conversation with Vaughn might have been the same, but perhaps if she could have trusted Todd to attend without trumpeting Grace’s warships ultimatum (even one flimsily disguised as an offer of help), he’d have offered an insight that was sufficiently reassuring to get her to accept Kate’s offer of a joint mission to retrieve the bodies of the Russian submariners. 

Instead, Kate gets her hopes up for nothing, and the shiny new upgraded security clearance she acquires for Todd may wind up coming back to bite her. Boo! I think another part of what leads Todd to back delivering Grace’s entire message to Vaughn — “tell the Russians to stay out of her yard, or I’ll send warships to do it for her” — over Kate’s preferred plan of only delivering the first half is that he hasn’t seen Grace at her reactive, high-handed worst in one of the high-security Zooms yet. He’s seen enough to make him concerned; he tells Kate what anyone with eyes has already seen many times, that Grace has been different since the shooting and that “there’s a lot less nuance in her perspective and in the way that she talks about things.” This seems to me, a person whose vast medical expertise comes from her decades-long enrollment in such rigorous programs as the full-season runs of ER and Call The Midwife, like a problem that is preventing her from carrying out her duties as the Commander-in-Chief and Chief Executive of the nation. My second bold take of the day is that it’s essential for anyone in those roles to be in command of the facts and capable of working with others to arrive at good solutions to the problems they face. Grace seems to hope for escalation at every turn and is recklessly determined to bring it about. Meanwhile, Hal too often dumps gas on the fire when he ought to be pumping the brakes.

Todd also mentioned feeling shut out from Grace’s thoughts and decision-making process; of course he’s been unsettled and worried as well as resentful. This puts him in good, if uncomfortable, company with Billie, who tells Hal about how the week previous, she was in the middle of a negotiation of the Labor HHS budget, when she received a push notification about the President having approved the $200 billion budget without her. Intentional humiliation? Forgetfulness? Is one any better than the other? 

Kate manages to convince Todd to raise the issue of the warships ultimatum with Grace before they meet with Prime Minister Vaughn, and for one tantalizing moment it seems as though reasonableness may prevail. Admittedly, Kate’s (and my) hopes were a little too high to start with. Todd isn’t a seasoned diplomat or political operative, and on top of that, Grace confides that part of why she wants him in London is to show the world that she’s not afraid for him to be in the place where she was nearly murdered. She is afraid, though, and that shared confidence with Todd is a significant one. He can’t bring himself to not do what the President has asked, because she is also his wife.

Once Kate’s Todd hopes are dashed, and she can tell that Stuart told Eidra about her blackmailing Trowbridge, it becomes easier for her to take the big step of reading them both into all of the gory details going back to the attack on HMS Courageous. The levels of shock Stuart experiences…whatever the State Department is paying him, they should triple it immediately. If Kate’s not going to have regular friends, these two, who work alongside and care about her, will make a solidly trustworthy advisory board. Good for her for finally saying out loud that she may be in over her head and incapable of seeing clearly enough to know that she’s working for “a culture of consistent lawlessness”. And good for Stuart and Eidra for confirming her new perception of the situation and facilitating a new plan to circumvent Todd’s participation in her conversation with Vaughn. I love when a plan comes together!

I also love this scene between Kate and Vaughn at the latter’s family home in her constituency. We only see it at nighttime in this episode, but it’s a very impressive old pile, the kind of place you stick with even though it’s impossible to heat or cool consistently and nothing really works anymore. Having opened her home in the middle of the night, Vaughn once again strikes Kate (and me) as the very picture of decency and good faith. The character is written to be very likable and worthy of respect, and Jodie Whittaker brings a really effective extra oomph of warmth and humor to her performance that makes her consistent refusals to accept Kate’s proposals even more striking. 

Grace Penn wants Vaughn to revoke her permission to the Russians as a secret-keeping courtesy to the U.S.? It would have been a courtesy for Grace to mention to Trowbridge that she’d ordered the U.S. Navy to remove the Poseidon, but she didn’t. Vaughn hasn’t given up the Americans, though; she has not told the Russians about the Poseidon, largely because it would seem unbelievable that “our closest allies would do that to us without our consent.” She’s so calm, and not in Trowbridge’s usual way of seeming as though he was holding himself back from flying into a rage through force of will. She’s just a very grounded person who is communicating thoughtful decisions. 

Kate’s new idea, for a joint mission between the U.S. and Royal Navies to carefully retrieve the bodies of the dead from the submarine and tell the Russians it’s all been entombed in concrete, also fails. Not on its merits, which Vaughn agrees are quite good, but because of the number and scale of betrayals of trust the U.S. has inflicted on the U.K. From her perspective, “The fundamental character of your country has sufficiently changed that we have no idea what you will do next.” She’ll take her chances with the predictable Russians instead, thank you very much. And that’s the end of that. As planned, Kate doesn’t issue the warships ultimatum, and once back at Winfield House, tells Todd he’s welcome to sit in on her conversation with Grace. 

Todd is not thrilled that Kate went to speak with Vaughn without him, but there’s no time for him to get into that just yet. Instead, it’s time for Kate to lie her face off by confirming that she issued Grace’s ultimatum, and that Vaughn agreed to call the Kremlin to revoke her permission for Russian ships to enter British waters. 

Intrigue and Crumpets

• That final moment with the secure link video call is the first moment that Gannon learns of Todd’s new role as Special Envoy with higher security clearance. The chain of communication in the Penn administration really is something else. 

• One tiny glimmer of a good thing for Stuart as he learns one appalling fact after another: he can recover his good opinion of the late President Rayburn, who was not involved in the bombing of HMS Courageous, after all.

• What a sweet relief to see Stuart and Eidra resolve their conflict about the status and future of their relationship. I particularly liked the proposal to discuss from Eidra – all those post-its in the breeze of her desk fan and the legal pad sun held aloft reminded me of Max Cohen’s thousand yellow daisies-based proposal to Lorelai in Gilmore Girls. The song playing on her desk speaker in this scene is Prince’s classic slow jam “Adore”. Solid pick.

• Eidra taking the measure of the young Vaughn who asks for a jammy dodger before delivering a cool “no”. One of my favorite little moments of the season so far.