[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Slow Horses Season 5 Episode 5 “Circus.”]
By now, River (Jack Lowden) should know he can’t lie to Lamb (Gary Oldman). But that’s exactly what he tries to do about Gimball’s (Christopher Villiers) death in the Wednesday, October 22, episode — the penultimate of Season 5 — of Slow Horses.
When River and Coe (Tom Brooke) meet up with Lamb, River tries to pass Gimball’s death off as an assassination, making it look like an accident. (It gets to the point that he even brings up Batman as having a grudge against penguins, part of one of the earlier attacks, to give an idea of how terrible a job River’s doing covering up the accidental murder of the mayoral candidate.) But then Coe hands over the recorder that has proof they were there, and Lamb is so clearly just done with them. Does disappointment play into that?
“It’s more, this is another massive problem,” executive producer Will Smith tells TV Insider. “And at that point, I think it’s less about River and more about this blows back on Slough House. It’s not about, ‘Oh, River’s, whatever he’s going through.’ It’s like, ‘This is bad for me now. I’ve got to sort this out. You’ve just facilitated, however it happened, the killing of a major political figure. And I’m on cleanup duty yet again.’ I just love the way Jack plays that. Lamb’s going to find out he can read anyone, so it’s not going to work. So it’s really lovely watching that unfold. And just River’s defense is crumbling.”
Director Saul Metzstein also loves that scene, coming after “the Slow Horses cause the thing they’re there to prevent — you couldn’t be more Slow Horses than that. … River tries to lie to Lamb, and you’ve watched five seasons of this stuff, you’re like, that guy’s never going to manage to lie to that guy. I just think that’s truly marvelous. It’s like, don’t do it. Don’t do it, man. You’re doomed.”
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But while River and Coe did mess up, the Slow Horses have proven to be useful — except in Claude Whelan’s (James Callis) eyes. He says he doesn’t see the point of Lamb or Slough House. “The way that information is filtered to Whelan, as far as he knows, Slough House hasn’t done anything,” Callis explains.
“They’re just a bunch of liabilities, and in the age that we’re in, Jackson Lamb is, as far as Whelan is concerned, a dinosaur. This guy’s an artifact of the way that things used to be in the service, where, are you drinking whiskey at 10 o’clock in the morning?” he continues. “I asked for the report via email. I didn’t expect to receive an envelope. It’s got coffee and ash from cigarettes all over it. He genuinely doesn’t realize how effective Lamb is.”
The penultimate episode of Season 5 also reveals that Tara (Hiba Bennani), Roddy’s (Christopher Chung) “girlfriend,” is much more involved than meets the eye. She’s supposed to be leading MI5 to those behind the recent attacks in London, but instead she ditches her tracker and joins them in a vehicle, ready for the next step; they’ve been using the agency’s destabilization strategy against them.
Whelan was “definitely blinded,” says Callis. “The idea that Roddy’s girlfriend is connected to Libyan terrorists who have carried out [this plan], Claude just doesn’t see that far, which is a mistake. When you look at a picture like this, really, what you have to be saying is, there are no coincidences. How can there be? And that’s a fatal mistake. Claude believes that the girlfriend angle is in some fashion coincidental, otherwise, he’d never take her out of the Park. He’s like Horatio won the bridge. ‘Nobody’s thought of this of playing her off against these people.’ It’s fascinating, isn’t it, thinking back? He’s just convincing himself. He’s in the narrative chamber of his own thing, and I think as well he’s playing the spy game, but as we all know, it’s not really a game. When you play the spy game like it’s a game, then there’s also going to be receipts for that.”
But don’t think that ending will change Roddy’s mind; he still is convinced that even if it did start out as a honey trap, Tara’s really fallen for him.
“He’s holding onto the narrative that she is being coerced and she’s being held against her will and they’re making her do this,” according to Chung. “He’s so deluded and so invested in his own narrative and his own version of events and view of the world that he can’t actually see what’s going on for him. He is completely and utterly love blind at this point in time.”
After all, as he points out, in his box of mementos from their dates is a part of a T-bone from a steak. “It’s kind of psychopathic, this love that he has,” Chung admits. “But it’s the realest physical form of connection he’s had with someone of the opposite sex, so it’s really important to him to defend that in any way, shape or means.”
What did you think of the latest episode? How do you think this season will end? Let us know in the comments section below.
Slow Horses, Season 5 Finale, Wednesday, October 29, Apple TV