Summary
A tamer outing than some might like, but “XIII” continues to feel like a return to the show’s first-season glory days.
When you go on the run, you only take the essentials, and that’s the feeling that hangs over The Old Man as we enter the final third of Season 2. Things continue to feel, as they did in the previous episode, like a return to the first season’s vibe; quieter, more understated, more contemplative. In Episode 6, “XIII”, Chase and Zoe head to London searching for Faraz Hamzad’s lawyer, Nina Kruger, while Harper tracks down a familiar face in pursuit of Morgan Bote’s last words.
There’s nothing from Emily/Angela/Parwana, though that’s by design since we – not to mention Harper and Chase – are supposed to believe she’s dead. I have no idea where the dogs are. Chase and Harper are once again separated, working their own angles in their own ways. And the margins of a much wider conspiracy are beginning to emerge as we finally find out what Suleyman Pavlovich’s interest in all this really is.
The Return of Julian Carson
As if to remind us that we’re evoking the first season, “XIII” opens not just by reintroducing Bote’s personal wet work triggerman Julian Carson, but by directly redoing his introductory Season 1 scene. Waiting for a bus, he’s approached by a young woman, the same woman he met on the night that Harper hired him to kill Chase. This time, he’s a little more forthcoming. They even go out for dinner.
It’s important for us to understand that Julian is in a different space now. His “best friend” and long-time boss is dead. He has become thoroughly disillusioned with the kind of work he was doing and the kind of sacrifices he was making to do it. The reimagining of this meet-cute is like Julian has stepped into a parallel universe, living the life he might have had if things were different the first time.
Because of this, it stings much more when this new, reinvented Julian returns home and finds Harold Harper sitting in his apartment. Harper has intuited that Bote’s final email was sent to him, and he wants to know what it says. Nobody, least of all Harper, believes Julian when he says he never received an email. Harper punctures the illusion. With Bote dead, all the walls of secrecy and security he built for Julian are beginning to crack. If Harper could find him, others can too. The fantasy cannot hold.
We’ll return to these two towards the end. In the meantime, let’s check in on Chase and Zoe.
Can Chase Trust Zoe?
As a reminder, Chase and Zoe are looking for Nina Kruger, who may or may not have knowledge about Pavlovich’s interest in Hamzad’s mineral deposit. Chase is still reeling from what he believes is Emily’s death, while Zoe continues to grapple with the idea of her own normality being gradually eroded by Chase’s continued presence in her life.
I’m not buying Zoe’s hesitancy about the new, chameleonic persona she has to adopt to survive in Chase’s world. For what it’s worth, I don’t think she is either. Even in Chase’s absence, she remained tethered to Bote. She has taken to international espionage like a duck to water. She even implies the same herself in her dialogue, mentioning multiple times that she’s the kind of person prone to breaking things – she always has been.
Zoe’s internal conflict is supposed to be the lens through which we consider Chase, I think. When, during a bar stakeout that doesn’t amount to anything, Zoe questions Chase about how he made all his money and namedrops “Lou Barlow”, someone she overheard Bote talking about, we’re to assume that she’s switched-on enough to be pressing the right buttons. Her constant reminders about breaking things imply she’s not necessarily to be trusted. She already took Chase for half his fortune. Whatever she has worked out about his past could be more leverage for her in the future.
Surveillance
Pictured: John Lithgow as Harold Harper. CR: Chuck Hodes/FX.
With the bar sting a bust, Chase puts a new plan in motion. He tries to get Kruger’s location out of her assistant, Anna, but she isn’t forthcoming with information, so Chase books a hotel right across the street from her apartment – using an old man’s performative eccentricities to ensure he’s in the right place – and sets about using his very particular set of skills to get the information he needs.
I think The Old Man Season 2, Episode 6 cheats a little bit here. Chase builds what I assumed was a directional microphone, which would have been a stretch, but turns out to be a much more sophisticated device. While Chase intimidates Anna outside her apartment to frighten her into making a call to Kruger, Zoe uses the device from across the street to hack into Anna’s phone, listen to the call, and trace the location of the number she’s calling.
It’s a nitpick, granted, but the fact that Chase built this in five minutes in a hotel and it worked perfectly the first time is the kind of thing that’s supposed to remind us of how capable and experienced he is, but it ends up feeling like the writers needed to get themselves out of a corner and didn’t know how to do it beyond techno-magic.
Nevertheless, the call is traced to a quaint countryside property where Kruger is hiding out, but by the time Chase gets there, he’s too late. Kruger is alive, but the presence of a gasmask-wearing intruder who has an empty vial in his pocket gives things away. Kruger has been gassed by an airborne toxin, and Chase, having entered the house, must now be infected by it.
Pavlovich’s Plan
Kruger lives just long enough to reveal the location of a hidden USB drive and lay out the particulars of Pavlovich’s activities. As it turns out, Hamzad’s mineral deposit, which Pavlovich sent his mercenary army to take control of, is one of several in dangerous parts of the world unfriendly to U.S. and U.K. governments. Those who control these deposits plan to band together into a cartel that completely controls the supply of rare earth metals.
But Pavlovich has a problem. His connection to Henry and Marcia Dixon ties him and his activities to the CIA, which is causing other members of the cartel to mistrust him. If Pavlovich wants to be part of this lucrative club, he has to completely eradicate any traces of his connection to the American government. That meant getting rid of Bote, and now the “Dixons”.
Kruger expires, which doesn’t bode well for Chase’s future given he’s now similarly compromised. And the nitpick train must once again pull into the station since I’m not sure lethal airborne toxins work this way. How long does Chase have here? How long are we supposed to assume Kruger’s assassin was sitting around in her house waiting for the toxin to take effect? Can we even be sure that the empty vial contained an antidote in the first place?
An Unforeseen Connection
The Old Man Season 2, Episode 6 ends with Chase deciding to send Zoe on her way to contact the police and Harper, while he surrenders himself to Pavlovich’s men. This isn’t a heroic self-sacrifice, though. His assumption is that this is the only way he can access an antidote for the toxin.
Meanwhile, back in the U.S., Julian finally decides to meet Harper after all. He reveals that Bote did indeed send an email, which he initially deleted, but then recovered out of curiosity (or perhaps obligation; even he, it seems, isn’t sure.) He hands the printout to Harper.
The email contained only a photograph of a group of people, taken covertly. Suleyman Pavlovich is among them, so this is presumably the rare earth metal cartel (good name for a band.) The surprise, though, is that Harper recognizes another of their number – his ex-wife, Marion. You didn’t think they cast Janet McTeer just to languish on the other end of a phone, did you?
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