Summary of ‘The Night Agent’, Season 2, Section 5

The night agent

A family matter

Season 2

Section 5

Editor’s assessment

4 stars

Photo: Christopher Saunders/Netflix

Well, we’re halfway through the season. How are we doing? I’m not sure this season works quite as well as the first when it comes to plot and action; It was the 10 paragraphs not great TV, but the program felt like a well -lubricated machine. Now the less decentration of the US government and the introduction of more competing parties is making the whole less focused, slightly less addictive.

That said, I’m hopeful. The last episode was a clear step up, especially because the two main groups of grades (Peter/Rose/Catherine and Noor/Javad/Abbas) began sharing the same space and “A Family Matter” continues the upward course. If there is anything this season has that last season does not have, it is a touch of true moral complexity; It is difficult to know exactly what it is meant we have to think about Abbas and Javad without knowing the full extent of what they are hiding, but they are mostly sympathetic despite the shadowness they are involved in. And Noor is most interesting of everything. , an informant who will betray both the CIA and Iran to protect his family.

Last season made a decent effort to humanize the evil, both the comic book -like psychopathic assassin pair and the suit that pulls in the threads from the shadows. Outside of the mission and possibly Warren Stocker towards the end, season two has not tried the same. But this episode finally shows us Solomon in a different state than usual, actually interacting with his sister (who, after all, knows about his work) and discusses the opportunity to ask for a pay rise as if he were appearing around the globe to kill People from different intelligence services are any job.

Solomon brings up the topic while later meeting his boss, although he hysterically undercuts his own efforts by talking himself down to a minor pay rise. But later, the buyer – and we can just refer to him as Jacob now, as the episode descriptions do – even the topic and suggests 15 percent and a “VP of Acquisitions” title. It is a good motivation for Solomon, whose primary task is now to “acquire” Peter Sutherland. They have worked hard to identify him, just as Peter has worked on identifying Solomon and the buyer, but they cannot find any records that he is working for any particular intelligence service.

It is a good tempo change to see the search play out from Solomon and Jacob’s perspective: They look at the mysterious phrase “Night Action”, just as Peter and Rose look into Foxglove. Still, most of this is set up for future meetings, and the real focus of the episod is somewhere else.

How should Night Action handle a wildcard active as Noor? Catherine’s solution is simple: threatens to burn her on the mission by revealing to Abbas what she has been doing lately. Peter is open to the tactics, worried about what can happen if the chemical weapons remain in the wrong hands for too long. But Rose is upset about the idea of ​​risking hurt Noor or her family. So when Peter meets Sami Saidi-an former Delta Force operator originated from the prison of Catherine and transformed into a Nat agent-he insists in Rose’s way of doing things. Sami must extract Noor’s family within the next 24 hours, and only so Will Night Action access the information from the ambassador’s briefcase.

There is plenty of stress in the prelude to the extraction: It does not take much intuition to tell that Peter is very anxious, and Sami offers his own bit of wisdom by suggesting that he stops dwelling on his inability to save Alice and find his “moral anchor.” Sami’s little sister is the person he thinks of when he is in a hard moral dilemma or for fixed on his mistakes. It is clear that Rose is Peter’s equivalent.

The drama is more intense at the mission, where Abbas and Javad panic and try to find out how and why Peter infiltrated the party. They expect him to have had the help of someone inside. During Javad’s questioning of Haleh, she admits that the phone from the surveillance recordings belongs to Noor. But he is not ready to see the full consequences of her words, even if they make him search around Noor’s residence. As Abbas calls for an update on the search for a rat, Javad does not tell him what he has learned.

She’s got away with it so far, but there’s no way around: Noor is in deep shit. Unfortunately, the suspicion of the mission is not even the worst thing that happens to her in this episode.

She meets Peter, Rose and Catherine at a Night Action Station in New York, gathering around the lonely phone to wait for a call when the extraction is over. However, as Sami calls from home to Noor’s mother and brother, the news is not good: Azita never told Farhad to travel and he refuses to go. Eventually, he moves as Peter explains over the phone that Noor is in trouble with her employer and needs help – she still insists that she will destroy the images if Night Action does not get her family out.

But the presence of Sami arouses suspicion of their neighbor Babak, who requires to know who the American really is. Even after that, Sami manages to get Azita and her son to the car, Farhad claims he will not go. As the police pull them over in the middle of the drive to the runway, Sami puts his training into use and takes off both officers, sticking one in the neck before grabbing his gun and shooting both. That’s when Farhad seizes the opportunity not only to escape, but shoot a fallen officer’s gun at Sami. It misses, but the returned fire kills Farhad almost immediately. The scream Azita ejects is brutal.

This whole tragic last sequence takes place with a feeling of nauseating inevitability, as an ugly, violent domino effect. This rushed extraction was built to fail even if we didn’t know that exactly how It would fall apart. It’s hard to know exactly who to blame: Peter and Catherine and even Noor to hurry? Azita, for having neglected to discuss the plan with his son in advance? Farhad, to ignore his sister and fire a weapon against the man appointed to help them?

What about Sami, so as not to communicate sufficiently about its supposed credibility and to fire the fatal shot? Couldn’t he have gone after Farhad’s legs or just disarmed him somehow? This is a highly educated operator, and perhaps it is precisely the training that allows Sami to treat Farhad as useless, as if he is an unlucky side injury and not, you know, the whole point of the extraction in the first place. Like the FBI and the CIA themselves, Night Action’s official attitude towards this kind of thing is “shit!” As long as Noor keeps his end of the trade up and shows the pictures, it is not sweat of the back to lose Farhad.

That’s why Peter got the report from Sami in the final scene, we are left to see him plaster on the rank face to lie and tell Noor that her family is safe. It’s the darkest we’ve ever seen him do but in The night agents twisted action movie logic, it may be necessary to prevent even more violence. It may even end up saving the world.

• No signs of Tomás or Markus this time, which is the right move to keep the episode tight.

• It turns out that Rose’s boss loves her changes to the source code and investors want to take Adverse globally as a tracking tool! She immediately exploits her contribution to getting a Chief Technology Officer role and an ethical board that she feels strongly for (which she should). Still not sure it will be enough to prevent the tool from being abused, but surely.