Spoiler warning: This blogpost contains references to episode five of The Game on BBC2 in the UK. Please do not post spoilers if you have watched further in the series on BBC America.
To read the recap for season one, episode four of The Game, click here.
I wondered what was going on. As Alan’s duplicity was revealed, the MI5 traitor framed by the saloon doors of a dowdy hotel phone booth, I found myself also checking my watch. Why give us this prime information – the result of five weeks of Operation Glass escapades – so early in the episode, I wondered? Because, it turned out, the big reveal was yet to come: Odin abandoning his tradecraft to arrive at Sarah’s front door, spelling out what some might have already suspected: Phoenix, with his useful habit of signing off letters with their codename, is not merely one rotten apple in MI5’s inner circle. But how many others may be involved?
Operation Glass
No instalment of The Game is complete without someone roaring on about what Operation Glass really is. Next week, from the looks of the teaser, it appears that Daddy might finally crack it. But, this time around, we had a few more examples of what it is not, courtesy of Captain Philip Denmoor, he of the burned face, and his blowing up of the Conservative Party foyer. (And, presumably, the End of the World is Nigh! man, who should at least have been prepared for the worst.)
The team chances upon Denmoor after he receives a call from an IRA member – the same one, I presume, who delivers the explosive at the docks – who puts him in touch with Sarah’s missing informant, Colin Blakefield, a petty thief who smuggles behind the iron curtain. Thanks to Wendy’s excellent impression of a very nervous, babbling nurse, Blakefield’s remote detonator is also uncovered and temporarily disabled. In among all this to-ing and fro-ing – I’m not sure I entirely bought the explanation for Denmoor’s actions – there was a line about whether this represented the coming-together of the IRA and the KGB, and the danger that would pose. Has that definitely been discounted?
The idea that Joe would be able to identify the exact location of Denmoor’s phone booth based on the call of one apocalyptic sandwich-board wearer is so unlikely it made me guffaw out loud. Just when The Game gets interesting, it does something completely ludicrous.
Phoenix – and beyond
Hurrah for the return of Kate – set up by Kasimir, thanks to the Firebird – who undoubtedly has the best lines in The Game, including, this week: “All right, boy scout. Be at the gates tomorrow with my lipstick and my cigarettes,” and “Oh, Joe, you broke into my flat again. How sweet.” There is more than a touch of the Doctor’s companion, as written by Stephen Moffat, about her.
I quite enjoyed the idea of Kate, Jim and Joe forming a crack mole-flushing-out team, although it feels like that might have been something of a one-off (not least from next week’s trailers). Shame. Unless, of course, Kate is, in fact, a double agent and is laying some kind of trap for Joe. Possible?
The queen and the 10 of hearts
So, Alan. I didn’t see that coming. In fact, I think I even did a bit of a Paddy Ashdown in an earlier blogpost about him being the mole. Apparently, he was recruited during his first year working at British Aerospace. “I’m sorry, my love – this must be such a shock,” he says to Sarah. Given her meeting with Odin, one doubts it; although I’m not sure I entirely dismiss it.
I find it odd that Joe, Bobby and Daddy would take the idea that Sarah didn’t know at face value: that someone they think so brilliant would be outsmarted by her husband. They’re so sure of it that they don’t think to follow her home or accompany her about the office, and even tell her he’s about to be moved. Curious. (Equally curious: the reluctance of Joe and Bobby to bring in any outside help when it comes to interrogating their former colleague.)
It does all put Alan’s earlier conversation with Sarah into a different light. I had been rather slow to realise the possible significance of Sarah’s contraceptive pill: I presumed it was all about her wanting to avoid having Alan’s baby, rather than the possibility that she was having an affair with someone else. There was also some telling dialogue in their exchange: “I’ve asked myself what I would be willing to endure for you and the answer, it appears, is an awful lot,” Alan told Sarah.
Is it me wanting to make excuses for Alan here, or could he be essentially taking the fall for Sarah? That line to Daddy could be read two ways, too: “Betrayal isn’t easy … I suspect it’s exhausting, heartbreaking and perhaps noble.”
Either way, I think this very effective storyline would seriously have benefited from us spending more time with the couple. A longer run of episodes, with a larger list of characters, might have allowed us to know them more outside of work, and for more of the spadework that would have resulted in an “Oh, of course!” moment, rather than my, “Really?” reaction.
The two of diamonds
Given how nervous Wendy was when asked to pose as Grace the nurse, it would be a bit of a stretch to think she was in league with Sarah and Alan. But not impossible: as Jim noted, that move into Bobby’s house was smart. Although it would surely have been smarter to have stayed put if it was all about infiltrating MI5 at its highest levels.
The jack of clubs
Speaking of whom … we’ve seen relatively little of Bobby this week, and I’m not sure being a bit cross about not getting the boss’s job seems enough of a reason for this establishment-man to spy for the KGB. Also, imagine if his very establishment mother found out.
The king of clubs
Is Daddy involved in all of this, too? Apart from that rather odd bit with the ballet dancer, we know so little of him that I’m not sure I’d be particularly bothered either way. He feels really underdeveloped.
The seven of spades
Jim rules Joe out instantly on the basis that “Moscow would never recruit you because you don’t believe in anything”. But we know Joe does believe in love – this week we see Yulia and Joe in London, a year before her death at the hands of Odin – and is determined to avenge his agent and lover’s death. Which, to my mind, rules him out when it comes to double-crossing Daddy. But who knows?
Thoughts and observations
- “Could we possibly lurch forward to the moment it concerns me?” Bobby in dismissively excellent mood.
- I enjoyed the direction ahead of the phone-booth sting: all the MI5 members going about their morning routines.
- I wonder if we might see more of Colin Blakefield next week: he apparently told Sarah about Operation Glass in advance, which she largely ignored; he immediately disappeared again after delivering the detonator.
- Captain Denmoor on war: “Grown men in Whitehall get the working-class boys drunk on lies and then send them out to be sacrificed. There aren’t any heroes. There’s just … meat.”
- More of that lovely le Carré-esque jargon from Alan: “You brought me up from the Watchmakers.”
- Would Sarah really have been creeping around the deserted docks in clacky high heels?
- “I’d rather be getting a foot massage from Paul Newman,” says Wendy. Who wouldn’t?
