Slow Horses Incompetence Index: The Dogs Have Their Day

The Slow Horses Incompetence Index is a rundown of which characters on the show are doing the worst at their job and/or life following this week’s episode. It will be a competitive situation, as everyone on the show is a complete disaster of a human being in their own special way. That’s what makes it fun. 

Slow Horses is a show that understands the importance of escalation. This is, in some ways, a silly thing to say about a season of television that opened with the bombing of a London shopping center. It’s kind of wild that most people on the show appear to have moved right along from it all to follow leads up the ladder. There’s still rubble in the street. But there’s no time for that now. River has drawings to look at.

This is what I mean, though. Slow Horses does as good a job as any show on television with weaving plots together and then pushing them through at frantic speeds. So, like, yes, the suicide bombing. But also: fake identities and flashbacks and chases through train stations. River has been gallivanting across Europe and may have used some artwork he found to tie his grandfather to a crew of mercenaries in France and a woman who is in the wind. I have theories here. I’m not going to get into them yet. But the drawings in the Harkness compound and the one in a drawer of his family home sure do look similar. Similar enough that even River sees it. Again, escalation.

Two episodes left in this season and still plenty to get to. And, one assumes, more bungling and buffoonery on the way there. It’s coming together nicely. River made it almost four full episodes without getting captured by MI5 this season. That might be the most shocking twist so far, actually. 

Let’s get to it … 

Unranked

Jackson (he couldn’t save Sam but he did keep everyone alive long enough to start unraveling the plot); Giti Rahman (good for her); the prince who hired Frank Harkness (surely nothing will go wrong after threatening to dismember a man who fathers many assassins then choosing to let him go); various hotel employees (spy business aside, one would hope a hotel concierge could keep an eye on a lost grandpa better than that); Moira the Office Manager (kind of cute that she thinks she’s getting her old job back); David Cartwright (I know he looks complicit in this but I still want someone to give him a bowl of soup); Coe (gonna need someone to figure out this man’s deal soon); the lady who was traded for the car stuffed with contraband (I suspect we’ll hear from her again before this is all done).

10. 
Roddy (Last Week: 1)

It is very funny to me that the building is under surveillance by MI5, and River is cut off from the team and running for his life in France, and Roddy is still dedicating one of his screens to a CCTV loop of Marcus getting heaved through a window during the chase from last week’s episode. It’s funny to Roddy, too. 

Reasonable arguments can be made that wasting resources and time on this kind of gleeful pettiness actually makes him more incompetent than his co-workers. I will not be entertaining any of these arguments. 

9. 
Louisa, Shirley, and Marcus (Last Week: 8, 5, and 2)

The three of them spent the whole episode staking out the wrong buildings and being excluded from conversations that could help them be of use, or at least assistance, at some point down the line. 

It was probably for the best. 

8. 
Flyte (Last Week: 6)

Mixed bag for Head Dog Emma Flyte this week … 

On one hand: She got hauled into Diana’s office to get chewed out for withholding information and getting bamboozled by Jackson. David got away again because her team got flummoxed by an old woman who yanked a fire alarm. She let River evade her at the train station even though she and everyone knew he was going to be there. 

On the other hand: She did corner River eventually with some misdirection at the Cartwright house. 

On the … uh … other, third hand: “Outwitting River Cartwright 50 percent of the time” is not exactly the kind of achievement that gets your picture on the wall at the office. 

7. 
Catherine (Last Week: 10)

The important thing to remember about Catherine is that she doesn’t have to be doing any of this. She was out! And, as Diana mentioned in that meeting with Flyte, the exit package is pretty decent if you resign instead of getting fired, and the Good Lord in Heaven knows Jackson isn’t doing any of that termination paperwork. The ball is in her court. She’s been working there for decades in one capacity or another. You’ve got to believe there’s some combination of pension and severance that she can cruise by on for a while. 

But, nope. There she is babysitting retired spies and pulling fire alarms to thwart official government business and sitting in on meetings about decades-old treasonous acts. She can’t help herself. 

6. 
Frank Harkness (Last Week: 7)

We learned a few more things about Frank Harkness this week: 

— His team of mercenaries was hired to do the assassinations they mostly failed at by a bloodthirsty prince. 

— His history with David and Sam dates back many years to an exchange that involved a car loaded with guns and money and prepackaged fake identities that were just used in a suicide bombing and the plot to impersonate River. 

— The bombing was apparently supposed to be a quiet assassination of one person in a parking garage but, you know, whoops. 

The only things he’s succeeded at this season are talking himself out of getting dismembered and looking debonair while sipping Champagne in a train station. Which, to be fair, are both pretty important in their own way. 

5. 
Diana (Last Week: Unranked)

Diana has a lot of plates spinning right now and a lot of cover-ups to cover up. The temptation here is to give her a pass for letting one thing slip by in the chaos. And maybe we could have if the thing that caused her the trouble didn’t involve getting outflanked by the team of Claude and Giti. 

It’s not even the damning information that’s the problem here, really. It’s that Claude and Giti were able to track it down right under her nose. Those two shouldn’t be able to sneak up on anyone let alone a high-ranking figure in an intelligence agency. Bless their sweet, pure souls, but come on, Diana. 

4. 
Claude (Last Week: 4)

There are really only two potential outcomes for Claude as far as I can tell: one, he ends up resigning in disgrace after decades of corruption get pinned on his beautiful empty head; or two, he somehow becomes the king of England. 

No middle ground. 

3. 
The Dog with the neck tattoos (Last Week: Unranked)

A few important notes on this guy: 

— All he has done this season is get duped and let people get away and I am starting to get excited whenever I see him pop up on the screen with his little serious face. 

— I really like that this goofus had numerous aggressive tattoos in highly exposed areas — neck, hands, etc. — and still went into the intelligence business as though any reasonably capable spy couldn’t see him coming from space. 

— I watched the credits after the episode to try to find out the character’s name and, I swear to God, he is listed in there as Tattoo Dog. 

I will watch and recap any television show called Tattoo Dog the instant someone makes one.

2. 
River (Last Week: 3)

Hard to think of a more perfectly River Cartwright situation than “going rogue and successfully escaping angry French mobs and the top agents at MI5 then getting caught at your grandpa’s house because you popped out of the attic too soon.” 

He’s so close to being a good spy. So far away, too. But also so close. But also so, so far away. 

1. 
Bad Sam Chapman (Last Week: Unranked)

Look, if you get murdered by an assassin who was just hit by a car and you gave him an advantage by stopping in your hideaway to slug some whiskey and the whole thing is related to a deal with shady mercenaries that went sideways many years ago that involved you losing the female asset you traded in exchange for Terrorism for Dummies, I mean …

Yeah. That’ll get you the top spot. More like Bad at His Job Sam Chapman.