![]() “You can’t buy me off with a speech at Chatham House,” Hal insists. ![]() In the same bedroom scene, Kate offers Hal the opportunity to do an important speech in her place, offering him a hint of importance while she goes off to an all-important meeting in Paris. The Diplomat also deals with sex in a fascinating way - an opportunity for pleasure, sure, but sex for Kate and Hal is often transactional, and typically on Kate’s terms. It’s an honest aspect of relationships that The Diplomat nails, and it does wonders to help the show feel grounded and accessible amidst the international whodunit of it all. In these scenes, I thought of how natural it is for couples to have passionate rants about their employment, weaving in silly little asides, jumping from work to life and back again in one fell swoop. There are plenty of these intimate and exceptional moments - in the first episode, Kate interrupts their conversation for Hal to sniff her armpits before she heads out - that keep the show grounded and true to life. It’s a funny, sweet and natural moment, and feels very true to the lives of married political operatives. Smoothly and suddenly, they snap into playful bickering worthy of any married couple: in a second, Kate has gone from serious policy discussion to pestering Hal for getting crumbs all over the bed. In the finale, Hal and Kit eat breakfast in bed, yet the pair are in professional mode, talking about the intricacies of the situation in Afghanistan. It’s a desperate move, but from Hal’s perspective, a clever one - how could Kate possibly divorce him now? It’s a parasitic, toxic relationship: Hal and Kate need each other to succeed, but at what cost to their own sense of self? That’s a major question that The Diplomat runs with, effectively balancing humor and drama as it tries to figure out whether Kate and Hal are destined to stay together or split up. There’s always a sense that alongside Hal’s undeniable love for his wife is a lurking gamesmanship, which keeps tensions deliriously high.Ĭase in point: when it seems as if their relationship is completely beyond repair, Hal suddenly drops the bombshell that Kate’s being considered for vice president. Hal, on the other hand, is almost eerily cool, and while the things he says are certainly more emotionally vulnerable than anything Kate says, he maintains a quiet befitting of a lifelong political operative. ![]() Her voice gets louder but never cracks, and while fury rises, tears certainly do not. Kate is fiery when they argue, but never overly emotional. But, fascinatingly, in The Diplomat, it’s the reverse, as Kate and Hal perilously teeter between divorce and matrimony with each passing day. The will-they-won’t-they plot device is typically key to romantic comedies, with audiences wondering whether two characters will end up together. Hal and Kate Wyler’s marriage is a fascinating and extremely unstable relationship propped up by promises of once-in-a-lifetime career opportunities and endless secrecy. But to avoid getting bogged down in the detail, The Diplomat is anchored by television’s most compelling, and toxic, relationship. This is an intelligent show that gleefully bandies around muddy political jargon and explains things for those of us who are unfamiliar with intricate foreign relationships just well enough without making us feel stupid. She’s been given the role to check her viability for a much bigger role - the vice presidency - something Kate doesn’t know, but her husband Hal (Rufus Sewell), a former ambassador himself, does. There’s political intrigue galore - the story follows Kate Wyler (Keri Russell), who has suddenly been given the role of ambassador to the United Kingdom, interrupting her vital work in Afghanistan. But Netflix’s The Diplomat, created by Deborah Cahn (writer-producer of The West Wing and Homeland) is the rare breed of series that demands every second of your attention, refusing to pander. In the age of streamers, with countless shows being released each and every day, it’s difficult to find something that really holds your attention before being bludgeoned by notifications to watch 50 other shows. Warning: this post contains spoilers for Season 1 of The Diplomat.
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