‘The Agency’ Spreads Itself A Little Too Thin In Episode 5

The Agency is a strange show, it has to be said. It was wildly off-putting initially, really improved when it cohered a bit, and here in Episode 5, “Rat Trap”, feels spread too thin again. This is a setup installment designed to erect dominoes that subsequent outings will theatrically knock down, which is fine, but at this point, the competing subplots feel too siloed, and the introduction of another angle to follow smacks of overkill.

It doesn’t help that the show’s so well-made. The acting remains excellent across the board, the writing is sharp, and that essential tension you’d expect of an episode titled “Rat Trap” is very much there. But there remains something a little nebulously off about the whole thing.

Martian, Sami, and Osman

There’s a bit of progress in what I would consider to be the “main” plot, which is to say Martian’s relationship with Sami, and by extension her work trying to broker an end to the Sudanese Civil War by way of the Chinese. It’s the Chinese involvement that Martian works to uncover here in a trap that also proves he’s being tracked and investigated by Sami’s “friend”, Osman.

Osman makes it incredibly clear that he’s suspicious of Martian – who he still knows as Paul Lewis – in their first encounter when he gatecrashes a dinner he’s having with Sami. The appeal of this subplot is that it’s thoroughly muddied by Martian’s relationship with Sami; it’s unclear how much they’re lying to one another, and how much they’d be willing to jeopardize their own self-interests to protect the other. I’m willing to bet the answers are a) a lot and b) very little.

Martian’s counter-espionage in The Agency Episode 5 proves he’s a good, clever agent, which has been reiterated throughout, but almost every encounter he has with Sami – and most of the ones he has with Poppy – make him look like an idiot, so it’s hard to tell. This still remains the show’s core for me, but it’s progressing a little too slowly.

Owen and Coyote

Kurt Egyiawan in The Agency | Image via Showtime

A chunk of “Rat Trap” is devoted to Owen, who is sent to Belarus as Coyote’s former handler to try and determine what might have happened to him. It’s a classic fish-out-water scenario as he tries to navigate fieldwork and messes up almost every step of the process, including going to bed with a random woman who it seems Coyote has been cat-sitting for.

It’s this kind of thing that bogs the episode down, for me. I’m not sure the appeal of spy dramas is watching people who don’t know how to be spies fail in the attempt. To be honest, though, nothing to do with Coyote has landed especially well at any point in the season.

Some important clues seem to land in the CIA’s lap by accident as a result of this, though. Owen finds a message on Coyote’s apartment mirror – the word “Valhalla” – and it seems like Coyote had been seeing a psychiatrist while in Belarus that nobody knew about. It’s a lead, if nothing else, and dovetails nicely with the show’s underlying theme of mental health.

Danny Graduates

Despite Danny having secured some leverage over Reza by agreeing not to report his unwanted sexual advances, she spends most of “Rat Trap” being tortured by the CIA as the final part of her fieldwork test. I still have no idea what the show is ultimately planning to do with Danny and, to be fair, I’m not sure the writers do either.

She passes with flying colors, naturally. I think we’re supposed to feel slightly uncomfortable with the lengths the CIA goes to in order to properly “train” its employees, reinforcing Martian’s claims that the whole thing is about essentially breaking people mentally and then sending them out into the field with a just-right level of psychopathy.

Almost to prove a point, Danny doesn’t just pass but also sleeps with her interrogator. I’m not sure how frowned upon that will end up being, but it seems like a minor win for her in the meantime.