Summary
The Diplomat Season 2 has lost two episodes but not an ounce of quality as it swaggers its way through another series of political crises. Season 3 can’t come soon enough.
“Messy and dysfunctional” is how I’d describe my life most of the time, but it’s also a good way of summing up The Diplomat, perhaps more so in Season 2 than even the excellent first season. Of course, that was the point, to begin with. Debora Cahn’s spiritual successor to The West Wing was conceived as a thoroughly modern interpretation of Western – particularly U.S. and U.K. – politics, treated with equal parts mockery and seriousness. It was as funny as it was genuinely dramatic; the six-part second season is about as amusing, but even more deranged and entertaining in its plotting.
It occurs to me that this is a more difficult balance to achieve than most people will give the show credit for. It’s hard to be funny in the proximity of terror attacks, espionage, collapsing marriages, and backroom backstabbing. And yet here we are. But The Diplomat is funny in a specific way that doesn’t undermine the seriousness of its subjects but highlights their innate absurdity. And when it is serious, it doesn’t feel preachy or hectoring. We’re all in it together.
So, too, are Hal (Rufus Sewell) and Kate Wyler (Keri Russell), career U.S. diplomats who have given their personal and professional lives to the advancement of America’s national interests. Season 1 found them being embedded in London following the destruction of a British aircraft carrier, and ended with Hal being blown up by a car bomb. Luckily, he survived.
But Season 2 has a lot to pick up on. So much, in fact, that it feels more direct and urgent. Thanks to this and two fewer episodes, The Diplomat is an even more tempting binge-watch proposition in its sophomore outing. In fact, it’s almost impossible to stop watching, each calamity giving way to the next as the politicking reaches a fever pitch.
It’s a very direct continuation, too, which is just as well since Season 1 ended on a massive cliffhanger. It isn’t a spoiler to reveal that both Hal and Kate’s deputy chief of mission, Stuart, survived the car bombing, though admittedly with wounds both obvious and not. But there are bigger fish to fry – whoever ordered the bombing is likely the same person who orchestrated the sinking of the aircraft carrier, and the likeliest suspect is U.K. Prime Minister Nicol Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear).
The Diplomat. (L to R) Keri Russell as Kate Wyler, Allison Janney as Grace | Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2024
With Kate and Hal facing an international incident, then, they’re forced to work against the clock to expose a conspiracy connecting the British government to a Russian mercenary with the help of their few trusted allies, including CIA Station Chief Eidra Park, and U.K. Foreign Secretary Austin Dennison (David Gyasi). Amidst all this, Kate is still being groomed as the new potential Vice-President of the United States, a subplot that brings the current VP, Grace Penn (Allison Janney), into the fold.
Some of the other character-based subplots have been significantly trimmed down to accommodate all this, so there’s less about the state of Hal and Kate’s marriage, and relationships like Eidra and Stuart’s are deliberately sidelined. Even Kate’s burgeoning romance with Austin is put on hold somewhat. There’s a crisis to avert, and since The Diplomat has the rare distinction of already having been renewed by Netflix for a third season, it can afford to devote these episodes solely to the matter at hand.
But we’re not being short-changed here. The investigation into the carrier attack and the car bombing is full of twists, turns, red herrings, and frantic crises; the back half of the season, in particular, is rife with developments that might strain credulity but only compound the entertainment factor. Never before has professionally smoothing things over been so exciting to watch.
I, for one, am eagerly anticipating Season 3 of The Diplomat, at least in part because these episodes make no secret of the fact that there’s still much more story to be told. This is swaggeringly confident and dynamic television that builds on the groundwork laid by the first season to riveting effect.
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