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Slow Horses
Footprints
Season 3
Episode 6
Editor’s Rating
Photo: Apple TV+
For starters, let us consider the amazing journey Roddy Ho undertakes in these last two episodes of Slow Horses. Having escorted Jackson to the home where they believe Catherine is being kept, Rod is told to wait in the car while his more experienced boss investigates. When he notices a suspicious vehicle headed to the same location, he climbs out of the car and takes action. The narrative convention would have you believe that Rod is a bit like Argyle in Die Hard, the limo driver who couldn’t be expected to take out Hans Gruber and his band of Euro-terrorists, but continues a meaningful punch to the cause.
But that’s not what happens here. Within the masterful crosscutting of parallel action between this location and a firefight at the offsite file facility, Rod pops up to improvise his way around the house and figure out how he can surprise the bad guys. He starts by picking up a pitchfork, the best weapon he can find, but wisely divines that he may be overmatched against heavily armed professional agents. Then he spots a double-decker wedding bus on the property and jumpstarts it. Just when the dust has settled and the assailants have been dispatched, Rod drives straight into the living room, the hero of whatever thriller he must have had playing in his head.
Jackson, with the deadpan of the night: “Can you talk me through your thinking here?”
In the scope of this incident-packed, drum-tight finale — the end of what has been the best season of Slow Horses to date — Rod’s odyssey is an inconsequential flourish, funny because it has no meaningful impact on the story at all. Yet it’s a sign of the show firing on all cylinders, paying off its careful character development while bringing some variety to an episode that’s long on action and intrigue. After jumping into the season’s plot with barely a throat-clearing — the agent shot over the “Footprint” file, Charlotte’s kidnapping, and the Tiger Team infiltration of the Park all happen in rapid succession — the ending barrels to a purposeful conclusion that feels well-balanced and sets the table for a fourth season following closely on its tail.
The first two-thirds are naturally action-heavy, picking up from last week’s cliffhanger at the file facility, where a grenade blows River back into shelving and boxes. Ben has been shot in the neck, leaving Sean and Louisa to fend off Duffy’s gunmen while trying to tend to River, who wakes into a firefight. Soon enough, Louisa and River are fighting over who gets to wield the one handgun they have between them — a sign that you’re not watching an American show, where guns are plentiful — and fending off the wave of goons that have been sent in their direction. The trio are being funneled toward an escape hatch where a steadily decreasing number of men are waiting to kill them.
While Duffy sends hapless agents to fight the Sean/Louisa/River trio in one area and the bickering Shirley and Marcus in another, Jackson prepares for an assault on the home where Sarah has been holding the sympathetic Catherine hostage until getting word from the rest of the Tiger Team. He improvises an exploding canister triggered by entry, leaves a breadcrumb trail of Pringles as an intruder alert, and sets up an exposed nail and a snapped-off steak knife to cut up his assailants. Hobbs calls Jackson “a wily old fucker,” and he’s right because those will be among the last words he ever says. The show asks a lot of its viewers to expect the slow horses to survive wave after wave of heavily armed “dogs” at the file facility. But sending a couple of guys at Jackson Lamb? That’s easy pickings.
The fallout at the agency over the “Footprint” file is mostly satisfying, starting with River taking the file to his grandfather, who predictably tosses it into the fire. “Jesus, don’t leave the file in the hands of a demented man by an open fire,” I had in my notes before it happened, so it was gratifying to see that River had considered that likelihood in advance. His grandfather, David Cartwright, is a retired MI5 bigwig, so there may be some institutional loyalty behind his decision to toss the file as if it’s better for the agency not to face public embarrassment and accountability. Or maybe he’s being honest about trying to protect his grandson, who may face repercussions for exposing his superiors at the Park. Either way, it introduces a new tension in their relationship that could pay off in future seasons. (And honestly, the more Jonathan Pryce, the better.)
A burnt file would have also been a bummer of a payoff for all the lives lost and risked over the “Footprint” affair, though it’s almost too British to have Ingrid slink away with her bottle of McCallan rather than show her doing the perp walk. The reputational damage to MI5 after these events would seem to be unfathomable, but for the show’s purposes, it hits the reset button nicely for season four, with Jackson’s favorite frenemy Diana taking over First Desk and no doubt toying with Slough House again. The one lingering bit of intrigue involves Catherine, whose dust-up with Jackson in the final minutes over her loyalty to Charles Partner leads to her quitting and taking the long way home.
No doubt Catherine will find some way back in the fold, but the finale does well to give a little bite back to Jackson, who’s been a bit too hard-shelled/soft-centered to qualify as a tough boss of late. When Catherine says, “Stop pretending you don’t care about us,” and “Charles always said you hid your sense of duty behind your cynicism,” that’s the cue Jackson uses to lash out at her about her alcoholism and her blinkered understanding of who Charles was. This isn’t some warm-and-cuddly misfit. Our hard-drinking, foul-mannered fartsmith has returned.
• “For fuck’s sake, Freddie! I thought you were a professional!” I’m going to miss Duffy’s blustering arrogance. Judd’s, too, for that matter. And Spider’s. The show will need more characters ripe for comeuppance.
• As I mentioned before, Louisa and River arguing over who gets to have a gun makes this a British show. But that same gun getting thrown to the ground after it runs out of bullets is a very American show thing to do.
• With Sarah looking despondent over what’s happened to her house, Jackson offers only cold comfort: “I don’t think insurance will cover it. Deliberate destruction using a bus driven by a fucking idiot.”
• In case you might feel a little sympathy for the goons coming after our heroes in the file facility, it’s stamped out by this threat from a tough guy coming after Shirley: “I served in Iraq. And I used civilians for target practice.”
• “Please don’t worry about me, Diana. I’m going to be just fine. Duffy is very good at his job. You trained him well.” LOL to that, Ingrid.
• The episode ends with a preview of the fourth season, which will offer at least one familiar new face in Hugo Weaving, the great British/Australian character actor best known for playing the diabolical Agent Smith in The Matrix movies. Bring it on.
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