Kate and Callum’s First Fight

“PNG” (short for persona non grata, not an image file type) are binary options and arguments. President Penn will apologize to Prime Minister Trowbridge, or she will brush off the global disapproval. Kate is either going to wait out the protests outside Winfield House, or she will be assigned a PNG and will have to flee London with the small suitcase that the house manager, Frances, hid for her in the hall cupboard. The British are meeting with the Chinese about the return of a Russian nuclear submarine that accidentally sank about 12 miles off their coast, and they're either doing it to tease the Americans or they don't even care that the Americans know about it. Kate and Callum take their relationship to the next level or break up. Stuart should get a lawyer, otherwise everything will be fine. American exceptionalism is either bad or it supports the dream of global democracy.

The White House is in chaos, and Billy does his best to convince everyone—staff, cabinet members, and Hal—to be on the same page with the messages he and Grace have put together. The President wants everyone to express shock, sympathy and distance from Rayburn, but not necessarily in that order. As is his wont, Hal suggests an alternative strategy: What if we don't say anything? He believes that the immediate defense and abject apology defeats the whole purpose of their choice to place the blame for HMS on Rayburn. Brave attack. They can still use this move as a means of controlling the narrative.

But can they? Gannon notes that protests have already taken place at 16 US embassies around the world; Türkiye, Hungary and Germany threaten to boycott the purchase of weapons made in the United States; and there are rumors of the need to offer reparations to the British government. Kate is willing to give it a try, so Billy asks her to move things forward and meet with Trowbridge and give him some wiggle room because Grace is willing to look past his behavior the day before. How about we hold another joint press conference and set the record straight by mentioning Roylin's name, and then everyone can save face and move on to the next steps?

Not really. No one will answer calls from Stuart or Neil on Number 10 or in Whitehall. And unlike a normal day, Kate can't just pop into the Foreign Office to enlist Dennison in her communications schemes because Winfield House is so surrounded by angry but largely peaceful protesters that she has to be ferried into the compound on the floor of a borrowed minivan. If she were just an ambassador, she might have some wiggle room, but Agent Bonaventure, who turns out to be named Ulysses!! — is adamant that she, as Second Lady, needs to sit still.

In addition to actually being arrested, Kate must confirm to Stuart that President Rayburn was involved in the bombing. Seeing Stuart's face express devastated disappointment shocks her and reminds her that while she, Billy, Hal, Grace and Todd all knew there would be serious consequences no matter what was announced, when and by whom, on some level their conversations had become kind of academic and disconnected from how the people they know and care about would take this information.

The rest of Stewart's arc in “PNG,” especially his conversations with Billy and Aidra about how frustrated and angry he is and Aidra's own deeply conflicted feelings about working for the CIA (“one of the most overtly paternalistic branches of the U.S. government”), is the episode's most resonant. Eidra's pragmatic approach – “There is no better CIA or America. The ones we have are flawed and we make compromises. Sometimes we feel good about it. Sometimes we have gin” – speaks to me in large part because it's both/and, not either/or. It's also important that Aidra, whose job requires her to constantly make either/or decisions, is the one making this argument.

Stuart's increasingly troubling conversation with Billy, culminating in her advice to hire a lawyer to be prepared for any legal backlash that might arise from his unwitting participation in Rayburn's assault machinations, sounds a lot like the end of a friendship. And at a higher level, Stewart's remarks about the questions he was likely to face in the official investigation about “why Rayburn wanted [Grace] and “if the chief of staff told me to prepare a replacement for the vice president,” they all point to one of the points where the Rayburn-as-bad-guy story is likely to start to fall apart.

While Stuart and Billy have this uncomfortable conversation, Kate enjoys an impromptu lunch with Callum due to Winfield House being in lockdown. He manages to get inside with the help of Agent Bonaventure, but after a quick conversation with Kate about how to approach Trowbrid to get him to agree to allow the US to help with the return of a Russian nuclear submarine, increased crowds of protesters prevent him from leaving the surrounding area.

It's all completely adorable and includes several major milestones for the lovers, such as their first regular conversation (talking about work and sex doesn't count as conversation, according to Callum) and their first horizontal sex. New experiences are available everywhere you look! Their final and perhaps most significant long-term milestone of the day is less exciting: their first significant argument.

This takes them both by surprise and gets very nasty very quickly. Having learned from Aidra's secret intelligence that Trowbridge is not hiding from American political figures but is simply very busy meeting with a Chinese robotics expert who Kate and Callum know is also a man with experience in nuclear power, Callum shares an important detail he has been hiding about the Russian submarine. It's not just nuclear-powered, it's armed with a nuclear torpedo called the Poseidon. Everyone in the US intelligence community, including their own agent in the Kremlin, believes that Poseidon's deployment is at least several years away, but this is clearly not the case. As for Kate, Hal and Billy, it's not just important to keep the Chinese away from this submarine, it's absolutely necessary. Hal and Billy agree to convince Grace to call Trowbridge and apologize to him about Rayburn so that he will agree to let the US help with the return of the submarine.

Unfortunately, this is the last time Kate agrees with Callum on anything. She takes it for granted that the US Department of Defense (in DiplomatAccording to the timeline, no one is trying to look big, brave, important and confident while trying to get things done with the War Department) will be dragged into the conversation by an accidental nuclear strike, while he considers their involvement at any level to be a dangerous escalation. Within seconds, they are shouting at each other about American exceptionalism. Why, Callum asks, “the only way to save us is to let the members of my country die and the members of your country to say please?” Why did he and many other British Army soldiers kill Afghans on American orders when the Americans then failed to save the people they promised to help? Why does the US still consider itself the true arbiter of democracy and freedom in the world when Callum's assets have been transferred to it? No Does anyone in the US intelligence community have information about Poseidon?

Kate becomes more excited by the second until she has a stunning moment of epiphany when she realizes that she has traded one cowboy for another. Like Hal, Callum obtained a vital piece of international intelligence, kept it to himself and came up with a big plan on his own, and now one of the direct consequences of him retaining the privilege of storing and planning this information is that the Chinese government may end up taking control of Poseidon. If you watched Americansyou've seen how convincing and terrifying Keri Russell can be when playing someone burning with righteous fury. Aidan Turner looks both scared and like he's been burned to ashes where he stands. He's so shocked that even when Kate tries to apologize, saying she was wrong to lash out at him like she usually does with Hal in their arguments, he doesn't see a way to give her some leeway because of these extenuating circumstances.

When Kate approaches Callum later, after they've both learned that Grace has called Trowbread with an acceptable proposal for a bilateral summit – not quite “let's kiss and make up” but certainly better than “we'll never get back together again” – he seems to have largely calmed down and is ready to entertain the idea of ​​giving it another chance with Kate. It helps that, during her recovery period, she reflects and now hypothesizes that the problem is not so much that Hal and Callum are alike (despite their almost rhyming names) but that she is “incapable of treating people the way they should be treated.” Will this launch a thousand fan edits of moments from Diplomat combined with the chorus “AntiheroWhat am I even saying? the first season edition already exists on YouTube, and right now we're certainly looking forward to TikTok.

• The divisive theme of this episode is “I have questions.” For example, are Agent Bonaventure's parents classics professors? Are they just fans of Homeric epics? Are they Joycean scholars? Ulysses Bonaventura is the name of the baller! I hope he is continually exposed to the backstory, and I want to know every detail of it.

• When Callum calls Kate to see if he can pay her a visit to strategize the approach to Trowbridge regarding the location of the Russian submarine, she tells him to go to the dumpster in the playground at Hanover Gate and wait to meet the aforementioned Agent Bonaventure. The strange specificity of this detail tickles me. How often did she have to tell others to go to that dumpster on the playground to get into Winfield House? Why a trash container? How does she know that the dumpster is a permanent fixture on this playground? official page of the playground on the Royal Parks website refers to toilets for children and a changing table, but does not mention a garbage container.

• Callum and Kate's post-coital snacks include flavorful little tomatoes, which are great, but Kate has the audacity to declare in front of the entire state of New Jersey that American tomatoes have no taste. As a proud daughter of the Garden State and an enemy of food slander, I hereby invite the fictional character Kate Wyler to join me next summer at any reputable farm stand in New Jersey to sample tomatoes.