Just How Absurd Is 'The Diplomat' Season 2 Finale? And Does It Work?
Spoilers below.
The ending of The Diplomat’s second season is both deeply consequential and deeply unserious. It was already a bold choice for the Netflix political drama to drop season two mere days before the 2024 presidential election, but for the finale to end on such a chaotic note is downright audacious. As the camera zoomed in on Allison Janney’s bewildered gape in the final moments of episode 6, 'Dreadnought,' I threw my head back and cackled. As I suspect will be true of other viewers, I was bowled over by the cliffhanger—but I certainly wasn’t bored.
At the centre of this emotional whirlwind is The Diplomat’s framing. The show, created by The West Wing veteran Debora Cahn, tries to toe the line between soap opera and sophisticated political commentary. A firing-on-all-cylinders Keri Russell and her co-stars do a lot to give the show its whiff of prestige. But The Diplomat is, as Netflix content chief Bela Bajaria famously put it, a 'gourmet cheeseburger,' not a filet mignon. If you’ll allow the metaphor extension, The Diplomat can get sloppy and over-stuffed, lacking self-awareness. It is also, like the gourmet cheeseburger, something of a silly invention. But silly isn’t the same as unsatisfying.
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Let’s look at the evidence. Episode six begins with diplomat Kate Wyler (Russell) processing the revelation that Margaret Roylin (Celia Imrie) hired the Russian militant Roman Lenkov (Sam Douglas) to attack a British vessel, but that the self-inflicted attack on the U.K. wasn’t her idea. U.S. Vice President Grace Penn (Janney) gave her the idea. That makes what happened to the HMS Courageous in season one an indirect attack by the Americans.
Kate and her husband, Hal (Rufus Sewell), theorise why Grace might have 'secretly [told] its ally to attack itself': She wanted to protect democracy. The attack on Courageous was an effort to stymie Scotland’s pursuit of independence. If Scotland had gone independent, Hal explains, it would have become a smaller, weaker democracy, and Northern Ireland and Wales might have followed, splitting the U.K. into independent quadrants. With democracy 'going out of style,' Hal says, such instability isn’t something the world could afford.
Kate gets it, sort of. But Grace’s supposed rationale doesn’t erase the seriousness of her offense, which means, as Kate puts it: 'Oh, shit. I have to be Vice President of the United States.'
Grace is almost supportive of that plan. As Kate’s Deputy Chief of Mission, Stuart (Ato Essandoh), rallies to launch Kate’s pastel-infused vice-presidential makeover, Kate earns something like an endorsement from the sitting VP—herself on the brink of resignation, thanks to a nebulous scandal involving her husband. (That scandal, it seems, is merely a cover-up for the much larger Courageous scandal.) Hal tells Billie Appiah (Nana Mensah), the White House Chief of Staff, that Kate is 'in' for the vice presidency. But Billie’s body language implies she knows the truth of Grace’s betrayal, and she suspects Hal might, too.
Meanwhile, Foreign Secretary Austin Dennison (David Gyasi) meets with Prime Minister Nicol Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear) and his wife, Lydia (Pandora Colin). Lydia wants Trowbridge to resign, given the obvious corruption within his own government and his vehement response to Roylin in episode 4. But the PM is less inclined to resign 'in a fetid cloud of disgrace,' even if—after some pushing—Dennison agrees that he should. Trowbridge says he’ll think on it, and that in the meantime he’ll proceed with a secret internal investigation. Still, when the time comes to inform his would-be investigator of the corruption, the PM chickens out at the last moment. Trowbridge claims it 'isn’t the right time' to launch such an inquiry, but Dennison remains unconvinced.
Everyone’s ambitions are then thrown into a tailspin when Grace receives a call from President Rayburn (Michael McKean). He informs her that a) Trowbridge had some really nice things to say about her! and b) Rayburn and Trowbridge want to appoint her as the U.S. 'nuclear czar.' In that capacity, she would 'reduce weapons stockpiles' and 'grow our [America’s] nuclear capacity.' As we’ll learn shortly, Grace has a lot to say about nukes.
When Billie learns of the president’s plan to retain Grace as his VP (and his nuclear czar), she tells Stuart that Grace 'can’t' stay and that Stuart needs to 'shut down' this czar plan. Stuart relays this message to Kate and Hal, who tells Kate to tell Dennison to tell Trowbridge. (There’s a lot of this 'tells X to tell Y' mess in The Diplomat. That’s the information game for you!) But Dennison refuses to help: He argues that 'all of it'—i.e. his entire relationship with Kate, including their flirtation in season one—was 'a mistake.'
So, instead, Hal slips a tidbit to one of Trowbridge’s left-hand men, Randall, who tells Trowbridge himself that the 'vice president’s spouse finds himself in a bit of a bog right now with a regulatory agency' and that, therefore, it’d be best to 'avoid lashing ourselves to her mast in our remarks.' Translation: 'Don’t talk about nuclear czar.' Indeed, when Trowbridge introduces Grace at dinner that night, he skips forward in his welcome speech—and Grace immediately shoots Kate a suspicious look.
'Tell her,' Kate orders Hal, and he does, leaning over to Grace and whispering, 'The ambassador knows Margaret Roylin didn’t come up with her plan. The ambassador knows who did.' In response, Grace drags Kate into a separate room and starts marking up a map of the world with a stick of charcoal.
During this scene—one of my favourites of the episode—Grace presents the real reason she instigated an attack on HMS Courageous: Nukes! 'The quickest way for Russia to penetrate our naval defenses is steaming from the Arctic to the North Atlantic,' she says. She then points out the U.S.’s minimal military presence in the Arctic compared to Russia’s significant presence. On the map, she circles a spot she calls Creegan, a nuclear submarine base in Scotland, home of the U.K.’s entire nuclear arsenal and the only base in Europe where U.S. nuclear submarines are allowed to dock. 'It’s the last place we have any hope of detecting a Russian sub before it’s in the vast Atlantic barreling toward New York,' Grace explains. If Scotland had gone independent, its leaders would have closed Creegan. Doing so would have put America in an impossible, near-defenseless position. Grace—in her opinion, anyway—couldn’t allow that to happen.
From my (admittedly limited) understanding of nuclear power, there’s some reality from which The Diplomat draws this storyline. There’s a real naval base on Scotland’s west coast that houses the U.K.’s nuclear subs, though its name is Clyde, not Creegan—and it’s more commonly known as 'Faslane.' There’s real precedence, too, of course, for Grace’s concerns about Russia. A Russian submarine was spotted off the west coast of Scotland in June of this year, and according to the U.S. Naval Institute’s news resource, USNI News, Russia’s 'increased military activity' in the Arctic is considered a 'growing threat.' I won’t pretend to know exactly how closely this season two plot skews toward reality, but Grace’s scheming certainly feels real—and those are the moments when The Diplomat is at its best.
Kate later tells Hal about this game-changing development, and he agrees that Grace made a difficult decision, one he probably would have made himself. But he disagrees that Grace is still the right person to serve as vice president. 'Swooping in to convince Nicol Trowbridge that he’s the leader the world can’t live without?' he says. 'That’s not realpolitik. That is risking the credibility of the U.S.'
Kate insists that she and Hal can’t decide Grace’s fate alone, so he recommends they call up the U.S. secretary of state, Miguel Ganon (Miguel Sandoval), for his thoughts. Such a suggestion infuriates Kate, who thinks Hal’s a hypocrite. She storms away, livid, only to change her mind once her old friend, Carole Langetti (Laurel Lefkow), observes that Kate doesn’t seem to 'like' her husband 'when he’s good.' Hmm! Fair point!
The next morning, Kate informs Hal he’s right. They should call Ganon. Oh, and by the way, she wants to be vice president.
Hal marches to the Embassy to make a secure call to (supposedly) Ganon, and Kate and Grace enjoy a walk amongst the grounds. During this jaunt, Grace grills Kate about whether her vice presidential ambitions have truly evaporated. Her decision re: Scotland wasn’t a complicated one, she claims. But right as their argument gets heated, Stuart crashes the party, rushing in with an 'urgent' call from Hal. As he is wont to do, Hal has meddled in Kate’s affairs, and—apparently—has inadvertently killed the U.S. president.
As the Secret Service come dashing out of Kate’s stately London home to swarm Grace, Hal informs Kate that he didn’t call Ganon; he actually called Rayburn. And when he told Rayburn of Grace’s betrayal, the president 'got really upset,' upset enough that he...had a heart attack, I guess?? Season two thus ends on the daunting conclusion: 'Grace Penn is president.'
Look, I’m not a doctor. I am certainly not an expert in cardiology. My cursory Google search informed me that, yes, frequent anger is linked to heart disease and an increased risk of heart attack. But it seems a stretch that an aging but otherwise healthy man would get so mad that he’d not only suffer a heart attack but also die within the span of 30 seconds. (That’s how long these events take on-screen. I understand that’s not necessarily reflective of how long they took within The Diplomat’s fictional universe, but...still. Thirty seconds!) Was there attempted CPR? Did someone use an AED? How many people have to confirm the president is dead before he’s actually declared dead? Is Hal certain Rayburn’s dead, and not just, I dunno, tired? And if Rayburn is dead, is that information Hal should be sharing so soon?
To be fair, Rayburn wouldn’t be the only sitting U.S. president to have died from a heart attack. He’d have the company of Warren G. Harding. Nevertheless, the sight of all those suited Secret Service agents soaring across the lawn toward Janney like a flock of agitated pigeons was SO FUNNY TO ME. I have watched it multiple times now and never fail to laugh. The whole thing is preposterous! But, then again, so is the state of American politics! The state of American television! The state of the world! There’s something almost thrilling about watching The Diplomat embrace that chaos with such open arms. I won’t say it makes for highbrow television. But it makes for a tasty cheeseburger.
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