The Honourable Woman recap: episode three – The Killing Call
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Version 0 of 1. I love a tease as much as anyone, but I'm not sure how much longer Hugo Blick can hold out on us. I enjoyed this episode for its aesthetic and, as always, performances, but there were too many narrative dead ends for my liking. And I'm inclined to agree with many of you that the espionage capers offer the most dramatically compelling storylines, even if the emotional pull of the warring Steins is still strong. But next week, how about some answers? The Killing Call Bloom's private investigations see him following the money to Kent in search of the dead driver's family. They also get him killed and, thanks to Nessa's insistence on conducting it incognito, mean his body is going to be nightmarishly tough to trace. Coincidence? See below. His assassin knows Nessa, was involved in the Gaza abduction and now looks like the leading contender in the paternity mystery. The hapless police are conned into conducting a flawed paternity test, which clears Ephra when Atika switches toothbrushes. Nessa still refuses to give Shlomo the broadband contract, even when Hugh indirectly provides evidence apparently exonerating him. The cold war between Atika, Rachel and Ephra thaws just a little, while Hugh exposes Atika's lie over Kasim's father – the driver in Gaza was a woman – news which seemed as much a surprise to Ephra as it was to us. None of which excuses the terrible episode title. Family affairs First of all, that paternity test. Quite apart from the aggravating ineptitude of the police – why only retrieve one item to acquire Kasim's DNA? Why not two or three, to be sure? – there's the question of whom Atika is protecting. Not Ephra, we now know (unless she lied to him, too) – so is she covering for Kasim's father, mother or both? For a brief period, Nessa looked properly energised. Her work with Caleb Schwako and Bloom seemed to give her a renewed sense of purpose and hope, until the grim denouement. Ephra, Rachel and Atika offered some useful exposition about Atika's past as well: the manner of its delivery was messy and implausible, but by God did we need it. Nice, too, to see Rachel and Atika forming a very tentative bond. Spy games That Caleb Schwako, eh? A weird character, and not necessarily in a good way, what with his garbled grammar and Professor Calculus chic. Hugh's been busy, too, sowing the seeds of dissent by passing key information on to Shlomo and Ephra. Otherwise, it's all gone a bit quiet on the Samir Meshal front (although I suspect Shelfsider Andy might be on to something with his BTL speculation about broadband wiretapping). The relative absence of the McTeer/Best axis was also deeply felt. The honour roll Nessa is still refusing to give the contract to Shlomo for fear of being compromised, although she seems to be wavering – which seems fair enough. However, there was me appreciating the apparent warmth and honesty of her relationship with Bloom, only to be utterly sideswiped by a decision which, while not taken lightly, was breathtaking in its ruthlessness. After failing to dissuade Bloom from continuing his investigations, she makes the titular call then advises him – through her assistant Frances, to add another level of deniability – to conduct his enquiries on the quiet. By tearfully confessing that her secret wasn't safe, she signed Bloom's death warrant. What secret could be so big and dirty? Surely this must go deeper than Kasim's paternity: wjk's BTL theory that Nessa is herself an agent is looking scarily plausible. Questions • Why did Ephra hand over control of the business to Nessa? He clearly misses running the show. I think Hugh's got a promising line of enquiry here. • How could Bloom have just wandered into Gatz's crime scene – given the driver's grisly fate, wouldn't the police have been watching the ward pretty carefully? Just another reason why the police are looking like little more than useful narrative stooges. What would Jonah Gabriel have made of it? • As lies go, shouldn't "my mother does the books in a stone factory at night" have set a few alarm bells ringing with Bloom? • As the real-world news from Gaza gets ever more horrifying, is it impossibly naïve of me to hope for an optimistic, constructive conclusion to this series? Notes and observations • Hugh, you old dog. Sleeping with the boss and spying on his ex – yet somehow remaining strangely likeable throughout. • I bought into Nessa's intimidation of the nurse, employing corny lines in the manner of someone who isn't comfortable behaving that way. Unless the corny writing was Blick's, but I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt here. • Red-herring corner: Bloom's pseudonym in Kent is "John Hopkinson", while Gail Gatz's email provider was "chastelive.co.uk". • Gail Gatz joins Rebecca/Tracy in Hugo Blick's "We Hardly Knew Ye" file. This whole detour felt almost irrelevant in terms of the bigger picture, but certainly thickened the atmosphere and gave us a whole new perspective on Nessa. • What a gift the Kent marshlands are for the dramatist in search of a landscape of epic menace. Spectacular sound design, too. The reprise of the aural motif of the wind turbines, whenever Nessa took a call from the kidnappers, was a nice bit of foreshadowing. • I look forward – in vain, probably – to a scene in which one of the characters uses their time in bed to get some sleep, rather than lie awake, looking tormented. • Wildlife watch: after the shags/cormorants (again, my apologies for my twitching ignorance) and siamese cats last week, I spotted some chickens and a butterfly. • Vblack's BTL analysis of character names was truly intriguing: Kasim = The Divider/Distributor. Nessa = Miracle. Atika = Noble/Virgin/Honourable. Ephra = Double Fruitfulness. The depth of Blick's writing, allied to BTL research, keeps turning up gems. • Although – DeDuBois: "What if Kasim has a twin"? Behave. |