Head definitely spinning now [Spooks 9.1-9.5 spoilers!]

Same disclaimers as in the past. My caps.

All of the “previously on Spooks” scenes were from the John / Maya story line, which led me to expect that we’d learn a lot this week. Not so. But it kept me on edge for the entire episode, waiting. Manipulation, much? Of course, since the plot of this episode otherwise seemed unanchored from the rest of what was going on, it’s not clear what else they could have put at the beginning.

The episode:

“me + richard armitage” is resolutely, intentionally not about politics, and it’s going to be hard for me to talk about what was an extremely political piece — despite the attempt of the scriptwriters to make it into a piece about the relationship of the Cohens, père et fille — in much detail using the analytical method that I usually prefer (narrative analysis). I generally don’t care for the way in which the Israel-Palestine conflict is drawn on TV and this episode, while more subtle in some regards than many contributions on the theme that I’ve seen, is no exception; I’m also less than thrilled about the role President Obama plays (sight unseen) in the plot as “Lighthouse.” [Summary, if you’re curious: Servetus is tired of being asked by scriptwriters to see the conflict as a tragedy without causes; the players, as crazed, or alternately, as actors without choices who suffer at the hands of forces beyond their control and events set in motion in a land before time; and the U.S. president, whether Democrat or Republican, as — alternately — the Messiah or Satan to the subaltern and not so subaltern peoples of the world.] So I’ve got a lot less to say than usual this time, which is just as well since I’ve got a bunch more papers to grade before my lecture tomorrow.

The tragic inability of the Israelis and Palestinians to solve their problems unaided must be keeping entire careers at MI-5 alive, not least when the spooks have to deal not only with the conflict itself, but with locals like Michael Sands who’ve been altered by it; Ros’s picking off of the MI-6 sponsored assassin during the special negotiations in 7.6 is one of my favorite Spooks moments ever. Entendu? This episode doesn’t even come close, although the plot twist where the supposed assassin turns out to be the would-be assassin of the real assassin was clever. The identity theme (do you know your daughter, or is she just another person you betrayed? Do you know the person you’re guarding, or is she just another suicide bomber? Do you really even know yourself, if you don’t have a secure social role or someone else telling you what to do?) was subordinated to the plot, and I found it more superficial and less intriguing than it has been in previous episodes of series 9. These questions pile up, of course, on the way to the final question of the episode, which is whether Lucas knows who Maya is.

Beth (Sophia Myles) uses fancy footwork to make an amazing escape in Spooks 9.5.

We’re back to a “bomb of the week” piece, it seems, though it’s almost a relief after all of the *headdesk*ing regarding Lucas / John in 9.4. Or it would be, if the plot were even vaguely enthralling. Not this week. This episode seems unusually coincidence-driven, with Lucas discovering evidence about the occupant of the hostel room due to some dirt or sawdust he chances to see on the floor, Beth just happening to be standing there while Baltasar Jad is fiddling suspiciously with the security cameras, and a hydraulic jack just happening to be within reach of her feet during her captivity. There’s also the highly obvious and artificial plot impetus of Levi Cohen’s “black flag” threat in accelerating the last twenty minutes of the segment.

After escaping from Baltasar Jad, Beth (Sophia Myles) demands and gets the use of a cell phone from a suspicious lurker, in Spooks 9.5.

The three moments I did like: first, Beth’s rather amazing resourcefulness in getting herself out of the workshop where she was tied to a waterpipe and her down-to-earth demand for the cell phone from the lurking teenagers: “Just give me the bloody phone!” The scriptwriters are going to make me like her yet, and this also makes one suspect that the character will be ongoing into future seasons. (Whether Servetus will be ongoing into future seasons of Spooks remains to be seen.) Second, the sequences that show Baltasar Jad’s preparation for his sniper attack on “Lighthouse.” There’s something about the contemplative way that this is shown that always draws me in (it was the same with the Teiresias sleeper in 7.8; I like those sequences, as well). And finally, the teamwork the spooks use to figure out how a sniper could hit a person on the hotel entry stairs from a mile and half a way. It was cool how they pooled their knowledge to figure out it out. If it’s plausible that a sniper could do something like that (I have no idea), it’s really scary.

Since there’s been no discussion of reference at all to the pressing questions on everyone’s mind (the Chinese and their relationship to Lucas, the fate of Albany, John and Maya), the script has to get very heavy-handed toward the end. Harry preaches a little sermon on identity to Lucas. Then Dmitri tells Lucas he thought he knew who Anna Cohen was, which in light of the final scene reads like rather oxy foreshadowing. Lucas, having saved the world, or at least England, for democracy, or at least for the continued prosecution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, shrugs enigmatically at Dmitri’s question about whether he plans to get drunk that night, and then telephones, presumably Maya. Our beloved master navigator of the human expressional palette gets three separate faces in here:

And then, of course, at the very end they throw us a bone regarding the question of John and Maya, except, of course, it’s not clear what the bone is going to be. Vaughn is now “Michael,” Maya’s boyfriend. John seems taken aback, though not intensely (see below — the script again doesn’t give Mr. Armitage many expressive options), by discovering Vaughn / Michael in Maya’s house; Maya seems uncomfortable (we assume, because she’s between two lovers — but is she also playing a double role here?); and only Vaughn seems to be in control of the situation. Dunh-dunh.

The character previously known as Vaughn (Iain Glen) introduces himself as Michael, Maya’s boyfriend, in Spooks 9.5. That’s now two characters who have to be referred to with slashes. Next week: Maya shows up on the Grid as a biochemical weapons specialist and introduces herself as Charlotte. Week after next, we learn that Maya / Charlotte is Chinese, has had eyelid surgery, and is taking skin pigmentation pills. In the final episode, in a thoroughly postmodern twist, all three of them eschew actual names in favor of symbols that have no pronunciation.

Well, at least we as viewers get some relief from our suspense with the information that everything is not as it seemed to be last week, even though it looks like Lucas could still be Vaughn’s dupe — another curious parallel to the Cohen / Hattri storyline in this episode. In other words, we have hope that we don’t understand what’s going on, but not much that Lucas isn’t being scripted as an idiot yet again.

No, no idea what’s going on. Please remember in your comments NO SPOILERS for episodes that haven’t aired yet. SERVETUS HAS NOT SEEN “SCENES FROM NEXT WEEK,” EITHER. She always turns the player off at that point. Thanks for your cooperation.

Mr. Armitage’s performance:

I asked last time who we’d see Armitage playing next: John or Lucas? The answer at the beginning of the episode is clearly Lucas: he’s back on his game, sharp, analytical, tough, caring about his colleagues. (Though why is he so short with Tariq and so concerned, in comparison, about Beth? Are they trying to set up a mood of tension so that Tariq will want to track down what Lucas did with the framing of Owen and the MI-5 mainframe?)

The script puts Lucas in control and has him thinking clearly rather than constantly jumping to conclusions, and Armitage takes on an impressively commanding tone.

Lucas North (Richard Armitage) diverts all Section D resources to finding Muatt Huttri in Spooks 9.5.

He achieves an intriguing quality to Lucas’s voice in anger in this episode, a timbre that we’ve only heard once before as far as I know, in 8.4, when Lucas yells at Sarah for breaking into his flat. Not sure exactly how to describe it; it’s a combination of anger and desperation but it’s up toward the top of his pitch register, and has a very round sound. For example, two moments where we hear it in 8.4:

and here, in 9.5:

In terms of the physical aspects of Mr. Armitage’s performance, we continue to see — and enjoy — the more active, flexible Porter-influenced Lucas:

… climbing into a window at 16 Ashton Gardens …

… in pursuit of a terrorist …

… turning on a dime in the chase …

… jumping up on the building ledge toward Jad, whom he’s just shot.

The first opportunity the episode gives Mr. Armitage to move away from the typical Lucas characterization comes in the obligatory scene where they evaluate the operation. Armitage is in his new comfort zone as action man all the way through; it’s only at the end that we get a reminder that bigger things are stirring under Lucas’s efficient exterior. Informed by Lucas that Anna Cohen appeared to have planned the terrorist plot all alone, and that no one had any idea of “what she’d become,” Harry quotes from Søren Kierkegaard, Sickness Unto Death, about how easy it is to lose one’s identity. (This choice seemed really implausible to me. Classic poems, ok, or even obscure ones; Harry’s gone to public school, his wife was a literature teacher, maybe he reads a few favorites before dozing off to sleep in the evenings. But I only know a dozen people who’ve read Kierkegaard at all, none who’ve memorized him, and all of them have an undergrad degree in philosophy or a Ph.D. This heavy-handed insertion of a quotation feels like the scriptwriters took Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations or whatever the UK equivalent is off the shelf and paged through till they got to “identity.”)

Then we see what Lucas thinks about Harry’s reaction. This is a really interesting few seconds in his performance, I think, as he ducks his head slightly to the right, appearing to be thinking about the problem of identity loss, inserts the typical Armitage flattening of the face in preparation for changing expressions or shaking off moods, says “I’ve never read it,” and then moves immediately into a very direct, very challenging stare.

Below, Lucas North (Richard Armitage) responds to Harry’s musings about the potential ease of loss of identity by stating that he’s never read Sickness Unto Death, in Spooks 9.5. First, we see the response to Harry’s citation of Kierkegaard …… then Lucas is by turns contemplative ……sad or avoidant (?)… (this is the “shake off” move)…

…raising the head, apparently resolute …

… whereupon he gives us that defensive smile intended to convey regretfulness (sorry he looks so goofy, couldn’t get the frame to pause the way I wanted for the cap) …

… before becoming really challenging. All of a sudden. Is this the defiant stare of the liar (and, one presumes, he’s lying about more than not having read Sickness Unto Death)? This really kind of frappierend, as we would say in German: he seems to be sad and then polite in acknowledging ignorance and then this stare just comes out of nowhere. Watch it for yourself.

We don’t get to see Lucas’s reaction to Harry’s praise at the end of that scene; the camera blurs his face. Too little, too late?

The last point where we have to examine Mr. Armitage’s performance, indeed probably the decisive scene for our response to him tonight, is of course the kicker scene of the episode, the one we’ve been waiting for: John discovers Vaughn in Maya’s house, masquerading as Michael. I suspect that the people who think Armitage’s performances wooden are going to have a field day with the scene, but here’s another place where Armitage is really restricted in his expressional choices by the script, if he wishes to keep the audience guessing as to what is really happening in the plot of series 9.

To wit: IF John is real and Lucas is the legend, THEN John should be stunned and upset to find Vaughn / Michael in Maya’s flat, as he’s just ransomed his relationship with her by betraying MI-5. HOWEVER, if in this scenario, John shows his amazement, he’ll potentially give away his secret — the one that led to fifteen years of life spent without her — to Maya, and lose her. So Armitage can’t let John show any significant surprise in this scene if he wants the viewer to believe John is real and Lucas was a cover — the storyline as it appears on the surface. On the other hand, IF Lucas is real and John is the legend, if Lucas’s decision to give Vaughn the Albany file was not just a response to blackmail, but an attempt to steer the course of the interaction and gain the upper hand for some as-yet-unknown-to-us purpose, then showing any surprise gives away Lucas’s hand to Vaughn. So Armitage can’t let Lucas can’t show any surprise in this scene, either, if he wants to keep viewers open to the possibility that the story is not as it seems and Lucas isn’t a total idiot being duped by Vaughn. Not letting much out is a way of keeping further plot developments plausible.

In sum: Mr. Armitage can’t let Lucas / John show much of anything here. How to deal with this?

This is what we see:

He enters the scene as John, in clear delight (though of course, if he already believes before the scene that Maya is in on some kind of deception, it’s also fake delight):

Then Maya tells him that “Michael” is there, and he says, “Shit,” and says he’ll come back. Still John.

And then we hear Vaughn’s voice from off screen, saying “who is it?” and we see this sequence of responses:

Reaction to the voice …… turn of head; Armitage trademark blinking which is not about whatever emotion he’s feeling, but is Armitage-speak for his attempt to suppress the emotion. Here, at the very latest, John is gone and Lucas is back …… a testing glance in the direction of the voice; the asymmetry of his eyes is especially effective here in conveying a second of apparent dislocation …… a direction of his head more toward Vaughn, who is still behind the camera …… an intermediate glance: evaluative or surprised or uncertain? any might be possible …Arriving at recognition.

Then we’ve got the handshake to negotiate:

Armitage moves Lucas from recognition …

…to that slight Lucas-like scorn that sometimes relates to hurt but sometimes doesn’t…

…to, one thinks, the battle being joined with the attainment of the handshake.

Then the camera shifts to Lucas’s reaction and we’ve got basically five slightly different expressions until the flash shot that ends the episode:

Under control: evaluating Vaughn;

Eyes to Maya, evaluating her reaction cautiously;

Turn of head toward Maya, still in evaluation;

Back to Vaughn; fatigue and wariness;Closing shot; lips slightly narrowed; readiness for what’s about to happen?

To conclude: we can note that Armitage navigates this scene by giving almost nothing away. Perhaps a tiny bit of surprise, perhaps not; certainly a look toward Maya but of evaluation rather than surprise or anger, and finally, something that’s significant in terms of how Armitage moves Lucas’s face: what we don’t see — that look of nausea or sickness that we see when he’s really distressed about something. John / Lucas is never really distressed in this scene, not just in terms of “hands to face,” but more significantly, in terms of that other key sign of Lucas’s nervousness, the Adam’s apple bob and the noticeable swallow. So if I am going to argue for what I want to believe, emotionally, that John is the legend, I have to go mostly on what we don’t see here, both in terms of what Armitage is showing us and in terms of the repertoire we know from our wider experience of Lucas. It’s subtle, I think, but mostly effective, depending, of course, on what this scene is supposed to accomplish.

More specifically: thinking that Armitage does a good job in a difficult situation is not the same in my eyes as justifying this bizarre script. That is, it seems to me that the script and the plot have to account for plausibility of potential plot twists on their own account, without relying on the actor to provide a sufficiently ambiguous performance to accomplish that. Assuming that art is supposed to imitate life, and that Spooks is not a much more postmodern narrative than it usually manages to be, it cannot be the actor’s job to keep anyone of three or four different potential conclusions to the series plausible in the minds of the viewer solely via his acting — people react in situations as they actually react based on their knowledge at the time, not based on the awareness that in the future their knowledge might change and that they thus have to keep their reactions open to consistency with those hypothetical futures. People live in time as they experience it, not in potential time — and this script directly violates that basic rule of verisimilitude in a way that would make it extremely difficult for any actor to know how to respond.

Given all these problems, I’ll be watching with my eyes glued to the screen to see how Mr. Armitage acts his way out of this one. I mean, my eyes would be glued to the screen anyway. But he’s got a real conundrum here. No wonder he was throwing scripts at the walls of his trailer.

Clothing Armitage:

Not a lot of new stuff to note today.

However: I really love these boots, which I think are on the actual Mr. Armitage:

But I like these shoes, too, which are smaller, and have laces, and I think must have been on his stuntman:

Random — From the Sublime to the Ridiculous:

On the state of his cosmetic dentistry, look at these beautiful molars. No cavities, mom!

A stupid intertextual location moment:

Why isn’t Lucas a little more careful here?

Given that he already learned in 7.3 that danger comes from above in this particular setting:

Lucas North (Richard Armitage) experiences a sudden flashback to his experience of torture in Russia in Spooks 7.3. Source: Richard Armitage Central Gallery

Problematic grammatical situation:

“Muchas gracias por tu ayuda,” Beth (Sophia Myles) tells Francisco Gutierrez / Baltasar Jad in Spooks 9.5, successfully negotiating the por vs. para dilemma so troublesome to non-native speakers learning Spanish, but addressing a total stranger in the second person singular familiar. I guess it’s her revolutionary past that causes her to tutear … And yes. You’d be justified in asking me WHY I CARE ABOUT THIS ANYMORE. There’s going to be some linguistic mess-up every week. Luckily I don’t know any Chinese, so wasn’t cast into despair while watching 9.4.

Favorite quip:

Home Secretary (Simon Russell Beale): “Just checking out the new Home Office app. [pause] Well, it’s worth a download,” in Spooks 9.5.

And finally, since I saved all that space on narrative analysis of the plot, I’ve got room for another gratuitous thumb shot:

Lucas (Richard Armitage) is bound up with a belt by Muatt Huttri in Spooks 9.5. Knuckles looking a little swollen here.

Butchering Milton: They also raise viewer numbers who only stare at the screen and wait. Impatiently.

~ by Servetus on October 19, 2010.