[SPK] Legitimate Targets

TV Programme: Spooks
Season: 2
Episode: 1
Date I watched this episode: 15/08/2009
Time since I last watched this programme: 1 year, 6 months, 26 days.

Spooks is back, and it's like no time at all had passed since last season. Well quite literally it hasn't in the chronology of the show, but what I meant was that we are straight back into the action and the character interplay as though there had never been a hiatus. It's certainly good to see all those faces back. There wasn't the same dramatic introduction of a character that we often see in season premieres these days, but this was largely due to the fact that the scene was familiar - the last scene of last season's finale "Lesser Of Two Evils".

This was one of the characteristics of the episode which worked quite uniquely well; that the characters were thrust into a new scenario with no real time to react to the events which had just occurred. This was particularly difficult for Tom himself, who finally came to the end of the road with Ellie. I don't think it ever could have worked though; I can't remember a single episode where they didn't have a big argument; I don't really remember any happy times.

I'm not really sure why they are so convinced they love each other. I think the root cause of the problem comes down to the fact that she doesn't really understand concepts of duty. That's why she didn't understand when Tom couldn't make the decision right then and there because "something big [was] going down". And duty is so fundamental to everything Tom Quinn is and does, that it was just a fundamental problem that couldn't ever be overcome.

Of course this was not made any easier by the events of "Lesser Of Two Evils". The fact that the bomb actually did not detonate was a bit of a cop-out to be honest. It wasn't really in-keeping with the clever reputation this show has, and neither was the misdirection that accompanied it, nor the other misdirection which occurred later in the episode. Such misdirection-by-editing is so cliché, and has been used countless times before in programmes such as 24 and Alias so as to make it almost predictable. Nevertheless, this episode was mostly quite cleverly written - it kept me guessing, through the Serbian collaborators, right up to the endgame of the COBRA meeting attack was revealed. The ending was actually quite gritty too - throwing Gradic to the proverbial wolves - again in-keeping with the style of this show.

I should spend a moment talking about each of the main characters. I've already talked about Tom a fair bit but suffice to say that I think he's shown himself to be a very three-dimensional character - perhaps the most complex character apart from Harry himself. His straight-faced exterior hides a vulnerable persona - glimpsed at the end of this episode when he is packing up Ellie's personal belongings - he does feel sorrow, but in a different way from other people. He also showed outright anger in this episode, directed towards Gradic who I guess Tom saw as a makeshift Patrick McCann.

Harry is again often cold but also can have a tremendous amount of feeling and wants to protect his staff. We saw this countless times in season one, like with Danny and the credit card scandal, or with Zoe and the Tessa thing. His relationship with Tom is perhaps the most complicated as Harry doesn't see Tom as needing any sympathy or guidance; they operate independently in a sense. This is seen frankly in this ep when Harry tells Tom that he "couldn't care less about [his] emotional state".

Danny and Zoe are not amazingly compelling characters - though they had more of an important role in this episode than usual, which might perhaps be a sign of things to come. They are almost background characters, doing work under orders from Tom and Harry, with only fairly minor storylines of their own. They remind me of such characters as Travis Mayweather from Star Trek: Enterprise, or Tom Grace from Alias. Zoe seemed run down and fed up with life in this ep, going out of her way to avoid an old school friend when she wasn't even a threat at the time. On the other hand, sometimes she was very alert, especially with her handling of situations with Rado.

Sam is the new kid on the block and I definitely feel sorry for her after such a tough first day. She was trying to be friendly in the morning but got some pretty cold reactions from Zoe and Tom - probably not the warm welcome she was expecting. Her job seems to be quite flexible - ranging from field work, through tedious admin, to leading a team of analysts. This seemed a bit strange and I'm not sure whether the writers had clearly thought through what her role was.

As for her personality - she seems quite light and easy even in tough situations. Her winking at the camera in the film store certainly didn't impress Tom, and she has started to show signs that she doesn't quite know what's appropriate in which situation - although that's not a prerequisite for working in the service. She's seemed to take a fancy to Danny already, and the two exchanged a look for a beat early in the episode.

That pretty much wraps it up for the characters. Tessa was only briefly mentioned and Tom told Danny and Zoe to not mention her again. Perhaps this is the last we as the viewers will hear of her too, though I think it's unlikely. Strangely she did appear in the "previously on" segment. I guess peoples' heads were just too filled with the current events to think about her.

I don't know if McCann's organisation, the War For Irish Unity, will return, but I certainly hope so as it would tie up a loose end in the story. McCann definitely did seem serious when he spoke of bigger plans, and this is a ready-made premise for the writers to use in a future episode.

Well overall, not a perfect episode, but then this isn't a perfect show; doesn't even make my top 25. Still well worth watching though and I look forward to the next episode, where I think we will get a much better handle on where this is going within the current season.