The Perfect Netflix Show Is Back for Another Tasty, Trashy New Season
Toward the end of the second season of The Diplomat, Keri Russell’s Kate Wyler, a career civil servant who in the show’s first episode is abruptly appointed the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom, comes face-to-face with the woman she’s been unknowingly groomed to replace: Allison Janney’s Vice President Grace Penn. Kate has, by design, spent most of her life in and around war zones, negotiating complex conflicts between volatile powers, and the series constantly underlines how ill-suited she is to the public-facing and, she assumes, largely ceremonial task of maintaining the U.S.’s relationship with its oldest and most faithful ally. She’d sooner dodge incoming fire than work out the details of a state dinner, and although there’s no getting around how fantastic Russell looks in a satin evening gown, the expression on Kate’s face as her handlers zip her into it is sheer torment.
When she’s summoned to meet the vice president, Kate’s hair is a rat’s nest, and the paper clip she used to replace a broken zipper pull is still dangling from the front of her trousers. Grace, meanwhile, is the picture of chilly elegance, her face framed by a perfectly even blond bob, a flag pin fixed to the lapel of her maroon pantsuit. The vibe is that of a shamefaced child called to account by a stern headmistress, and boy, does Grace have some lessons to teach. Kate was never out for Grace’s job, and, having spent most of her career far from Washington, was unaware that any such plans were even being made, but it’s clear from her venomous stare that Grace isn’t about to believe that—and from her tone of frosty resignation, it’s also clear that she believes she’s already lost. So Grace isn’t challenging a rival so much as she is confronting her replacement, and getting in a few shots on her way out the door.
Sensing what’s coming, Kate makes a vain stab at solidarity by complaining about the men who keep trying to stuff her into pretty dresses for photo ops, when she’d rather “focus on policy and, I don’t know, the Senate.” But Grace is having none of it. “It’s a visual world,” she informs Kate. “No one will read your policy papers. Meanwhile, your face will appear in the media 12,000 times a day.” In other words: Looks matter. The fact that Kate doesn’t understand how important symbolism is to the role of vice president infuriates Grace; the fact that Kate seems to think she’s better than such trivial frippery enrages her. And so, in the guise of passing on some friendly advice, Grace starts to take Kate apart, piece by piece. That messy hair you think says that “you’re too busy serving your country to get a blowout”? It looks as if you either are sleeping on the job or slept your way into it. That paper-clip zipper? You might think it reads as scrappy and no-nonsense, but it makes you look as if you can’t take care of your pants, let alone a country. And, not for nothing, she adds: “Try a bra with a little padding. I know there’s not much to hide, but when your jacket opens, I’m getting headlights.”
I dwell on this scene in part for the sheer pleasure of it. No one lays into a lacerating monologue like Janney, who musters such calculating animosity that you can barely suppress the urge to curl up in a ball yourself. But it’s also the perfect encapsulation of what makes The Diplomat such a delight to watch, and why I’ve come to think of it as the perfect Netflix show. You’ve got two beloved TV veterans squaring off in a battle of wills and sharp-edged writing (by Anna Hagen) that feels informed and insider-y—and yet you’ve also got the vice president of the United States talking about her rival’s nipples. Peak TV!
The easiest way to describe The Diplomat is as a cross between The West Wing and Grey’s Anatomy, the two shows its creator, Debora Cahn, worked on at the beginning of her career. But there’s a quality about it that’s specific to the streaming era, particularly the moment when Netflix and others have largely abandoned their attempt to lure viewers to their services with pricey prestige dramas and turned forcibly back in the direction of making TV that feels like TV. On one level, the show purports to offer viewers a behind-the-scenes look at how global politics really works, a savvy, jargon-laden exposé of how the diplomatic sausage is made. But on another, it’s pure melodrama, consumed with Kate’s combative marriage to Rufus Sewell’s Hal, a legendary Washington wheeler-dealer, and her simmering flirtation with David Gyasi’s Austin Dennison, the U.K.’s swoony foreign secretary. Hal is a ruthless manipulator, and, as she draws closer to the nation’s second-highest office, clearly put out that his wife is on the verge of ascending further than he ever will, but he and Kate love each other deeply—at least when they don’t seem to loathe each other instead. Their relationship follows not an arc but the flip of a coin—on one moment, off the next—and with lesser actors than Russell and Sewell, it might well seem completely incoherent. But the two manage to sell it, and in the process help establish The Diplomat as a show you can love as long as you don’t watch it too closely.
Perhaps The Diplomat is just a network show shrunk down for the streaming era, cramming 22 episodes of plot into six- or eight-episode seasons by omitting large chunks of the story or simply informing us that things have changed without explaining why. (There’s a particularly egregious break in the middle of Season 3, when the show is on the verge of consummating a subplot that’s been building since the first episode, then abruptly leaps forward in time and informs us offhand that things just didn’t work out.) There are outlandish and genuinely shocking twists, and moments where the writers seem to have just forgotten what happened and started up again from scratch. At times, the show demands that you stop folding laundry and just gawk at Russell’s magnificent performance, the way she balances constant low-boil frustration with moments of disarming vulnerability; at other times, it practically begs you to sort through your socks while it finesses some awkward plot point. It’s smart, except when it’s dumb.
It’s been a while since Netflix put its weight behind boundary-pushing shows like Sense8 or Master of None, and even the “gourmet cheeseburger” that one of its executives touted a couple of years ago seems to have been replaced by one that favors Big Macs, and lots of ’em. But The Diplomat feels like the best-case scenario for where the streamer is right now, a show that makes as much sense if you duck out in the middle of an episode as it does if you watch every second, and offsets its class with just a little bit of trash.
Slate
