Keri Russell (left) and Rufus Sewell as Kate and Hal Wyler, in The Diplomat Season Two |
This essay follows the prior review The Shallow State.
The first season of Netflix’s series The Diplomat turned heavily on its relationship with then-current events. A career American foreign service officer gets appointed to manage the relationship between an aged American President, who is terrified of appearing old, and an oafish British Prime Minister who opportunistically seizes a catastrophe to improve his public image. In the eighteen months since Season One dropped, global politics have shifted violently.
First, Rishi Sunak’s Tory administration imploded, culminating a decade-long train wreck that included such questionable luminaries as Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Almost simultaneously, Joe Biden removed himself from consideration for reelection as U.S. President. This set American politics up for a contest between a highly competent but anodyne Democrat, and a charismatic Republican spouting talking points plagiarized from Weimar Germany. Politics stands idle for nobody.
The Diplomat foregrounds the unelected professionals who make American and British government offices run. On the American side, this mainly includes career foreign service officer Kate Wyler (Keri Russell), who didn’t want the ambassadorship to the United Kingdom, but accepted it because it’s right. Wyler has built her career preventing impending wars and violence. The State Department thinks this makes her a good potential political candidate; she disagrees.
Season One ended with Wyler and her chief ally, British Home Secretary Austin Dennison (David Gyasi), believing they’ve discovered a conspiracy running through Britain’s government. Anybody who reads or watches thrillers regularly knows that, the more fervently characters believe something in Act One, the more thoroughly Act Three will dash their beliefs. Our only questions are: how will their expectations be upended? And, what will replace them?
This matters because the British Prime Minister isn’t elected by British voters. Though the PM traditionally must be a member of Parliament, this isn’t legally mandatory, just expected. The PM is elected by Parliament itself, and therefore is almost always the leader of the majority party. This gives the PM extraordinary power and, as Boris Johnson proved, tragically little oversight. Government conspiracies have liberty to travel quickly with little impediment.
Season Two runs two episodes shorter than Season One, primarily because it dispenses with character-building. Creator Deborah Cahn assumes you remember the characters and their relationships; she introduces few new characters this season, and no new core ensemble members. This lets her dive straight into the action, a movement made possible because Season One ended with an explosion, and lingering questions about who survived.
Allison Janney as Vice President Grace Penn |
Therefore, for a show driven substantially by dialog, the pacing never feels slow and talky. Every conversation carries weight, and nobody speaks flippantly. The terse, telegraphic language packs every interaction with weight, as characters talk bullets at one another. The show bespeaks the influence of Aaron Sorkin’s similarly dialog-driven The West Wing. Probably not coincidentally, this season introduces West Wing alum Allison Janney as Vice President Grace Penn.
But this creates a difficult dynamic with the show’s real-world inspiration. Two season’s worth of events have happened in just weeks, while Anglo-American politics has whipsawed drastically over eighteen months. The aspersions cast on President Biden’s age, which Season One name-checked without mimicking, seem dated now. As Kamala Harris tries to sustain Biden’s legacy, the character of Grace Penn seems unexpectedly pointed, and potentially dangerous.
This series emphasizes an important Platonic principle: the people who most fervently desire power over others, deserve it least. One achieves political power in modern democracies by showing the people an amiable public face, but by engaging in backroom negotiations and cutting deals which push the boundaries of legality. Prime Minister Nichol Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear) is an effective leader, if he is, to the degree that he’s a terrible person.
Same goes for Grace Penn. Season One established that the American government wanted to remove Penn behind a scandal. This season establishes that Penn knows this, and seems willing to cultivate Kate as her replacement. However, Kate quickly learns that Penn faces consequences only for the scandal where she’s been caught. Like Trowbridge, Penn scaled the heights of American politics by sacrificing her morals.
Anyone who follows politics, American or international, learns quickly that purity of heart is for fools. Situations necessary for the common good, often are deeply unfair to selected individuals. Life in politics requires candidates to question which of their principles they’ll willingly abandon under pressure. This series forces Kate Wyler, a career civil servant driven by high morals, to ask these questions of herself.
And by extension, it asks us, the audience, what price we’d willingly place on our souls.