Scars
Season 5
Episode 6
Editor’s Rating
5 stars
*****
River’s future and the future of Slough House itself is briefly in question.
Photo: Apple TV
With the computer system down, an ominous countdown clock up, and chaos reigning at the Park in the middle of a terrorist crisis, Whelan is shown in the opening scene of the first-rate Slow Horses finale holding court from a couch, as if in his therapist’s office. “I have three questions,” he tells Taverner, who disrespects him too much to say a word: “How, why, and what the living fuck is next? And no answers! Afraid heads are going to have to roll.”
It is supremely satisfying that the only head that rolls at the end of season five is Whelan’s, whose cravenness and stupidity finally catches up to the shameless opportunism that had brought him all the way to First Desk. He’s like a much dimmer version of Paul Reiser’s corporate sleaze in Aliens, smugly conniving and conspiring against his colleagues, even after they save his life, right up until fate gnashes its teeth. In order to get away with his incompetence and come away from this embarrassing Libyan debacle scot-free, Whelan has to outwit Jackson Lamb, and he has the irrational self-confidence to believe he can do it. Alas, he falls flat on his face.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Whelan’s comeuppance is merely the cherry atop this mostly delicious season finale, which sustains the fast-paced thriller plotting of the last few episodes while keeping the tone light and frequently hilarious. Of course, Whelan is a big part of the latter, as he wanders haplessly around the crippled MI5 headquarters and asks tech experts if they can solve the computer shutdown with antivirus software or a “backdoor patch.” (“I don’t think shouting out words you find at the bottom of emails is going to help,” snipes Taverner.) In truth, they’re completely unable to do anything to solve their technical problems or much of anything else. The terrorists are fully in command now, and they’re dictating the terms.
Those terms are simple enough — or so it seems. With a gun to the head of the Libyan ambassador, Tara bypasses her erstwhile father-figure Whelan to speak to Taverner, demanding £100 million in a Cayman Islands account and safe escort out of the country. If unpaid, her ultimatum is that she and her group will carry out a final step in their destabilization plan, which is to attack any one of the city’s 5,000 places of worship on a Sunday. (Whelan tries to narrow it down by confirming that “Muslims don’t worship on a Sunday,” only for the man he’s asking to say that he’s Sikh.) The narrative expectation is that the Park will take a “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” stance, but Taverner (and, elsewhere, Lamb) calmly acknowledges that their adversaries have the upper hand and the best option is to give them what they want.
That’s where things get messy. For as much confidence Tara has shown in manipulating Whelan, Flyte, and her MI5 keepers, she’s not the person in charge of the group. Farouk is playing her a bit like she played Whelan and company, using her to negotiate an end to their “destabilization” actions as a cover for actually finishing the job. That leaves her high and dry, at the mercy of MI5 and the Dogs, but gives Farouk and his cohort Kamal a chance to position themselves at a church for maximum impact. For Farouk, revenge is worth more than money, which would seem more compelling a motive if the show weren’t intent on turning him into a garden-variety bloodthirsty terrorist than a villain with a point.
Still, the stealth attack on a place of worship brings our Slough House heroes into the picture. In maybe the single funniest moment in an episode full of them, Lamb gives some thought to the church the terrorists might target and narrows it down to one place “that would only occur to a psychopath,” which immediately leads Coe to beeline out of the room. While everyone else puzzles it over, Coe is already on his way to the multi-faith ceremony at Abbotsfield, where Mayor Jaffrey is joining other mourners to honor the 11 people killed in the assault that opened the season. (His quoting of Thomas Campbell by way of Dominic Toretto in Furious 7 is perfectly in keeping with his brand of political cringe.)
The chaos of the shootout that follows seems out of character for Farouk, who’d managed most of the other steps in the plan so meticulously, but it feels absolutely right for River, Shirley, and Coe, who as members of Slough House are near catastrophic by nature. River and Coe bust into the church with no clear idea of how they’re going to disperse the crowd, so they land on panic as the best option with River yelling at the people to leave and Coe pulling the fire alarm. All the confusion allows for Farouk and Kamal to slip through with their guns and take out the mayor they’d failed to hit on the night Gimball was clocked by a paint can. Shirley takes out Kamal in a single shot after River can’t shoot straight. And then, playing cleverly on their natural discord, River and Shirley argue their way through a standoff with Farouk just long enough for Coe to take advantage of the distraction and plunge a blade in Farouk’s neck. For River especially, redemption proves sweet.
A fake denouement turns out to be a second climax as River uses his grandfather’s rambling over the bees at his retirement home to deduce that the fourth terrorist, Sami, is still waiting with a “sting in the tail.” Though Sami’s previous ambivalence over the group’s mission makes his eventual attack on Whelan a bit curious, River’s heroic rescue of the beleaguered First Desk stooge sets up the real dénouement in which his future and the future of Slough House itself is briefly in question.
One important bit of business for Slow Horses, in this moment, is to hit the reset button for season six. Because as things stand toward the final minutes, Whelan intends to make Lamb the fall guy and shut down Slough House and, even if he wasn’t, that leaves River believing he should get promoted back to the Park and poor Roddy Ho twisting in the wind after his unfortunate relationship with Tara. There’s great satisfaction in seeing that Lamb is way ahead of Whelan’s plan to frame him — bringing back the loose end of Gimball’s personal tape recorder is a great touch — but there’s also something sweet about Lamb’s grudging devotion to the Slough House misfits. He doesn’t want River or Roddy to leave, because they’re his kind of people. They can all make another stink together in the near future.
• Excellent return for the ever-oily Peter Judd, whose name is associated with the Cayman Islands account where the Libyan group wants their money sent. He claims he has no knowledge until Taverner makes it obvious that he’s dealt with them before. (“I’ll never do business in the Middle East again. They love to haggle and they have a tendency to go completely fucking crackers.”)
• Finally a meeting of the minds occurs between Whelan and Roddy, the dimwits of their respective tribes, over getting duped by Tara. “You and me both, bro,” says Roddy. “You didn’t stand a chance. She’s a female me. That’s why I fell in love with her.”
• Lamb suggests to Taverner that he knew that Tara was playing Whelan but took no action because he thought she’d “enjoy watching him make a complete and utter tit of himself.” (The British still do the best insults in the English language.)
• Whelan telling the prime minister on the phone that he’s “as disappointed as you are” that they have to pay the £100 million recalls the strained apologies from the president to the Soviet premier in Dr. Strangelove after the U.S. inadvertently unleashes a nuclear threat.
• Coe thinks through the Abbotsfield church scenario as a psychopath would: “They might already be inside dressed as mourners. That’s what I’d do.”
• Great line from Whelan when his move against Lamb blows up: “When I said checkmate, it was more like check, wasn’t it?”
• Cruel gambit to leave the show’s fans thinking about the gnarly bottom of Lamb’s foot until next season.
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