‘The Agency’ Mid-Season Check-in: The Hole in the Boat

What's up, guys? Your boy Johnny Bananas here. The Challenge Season 40 Battle of the Eras is finally upon us.
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Follow Ringer Reality TV on Spotify and subscribe to us on YouTube. Hello, welcome back to Prestige TV Podcast Feed.
I'm Joanna Robinson.

I'm Paul Lewis.

Wait, Joe, who the fuck am I?

I don't even know anymore.

Hello, Brandon.

Is that you?

Hello.

We're here to finally fulfill our promise to return to the TV series, The Agency, a wonderful

television show.

It's very good.

It's currently a wonderful show that surely if we could turn back time, we would figure out a way to do week to week. But we're doing these sporadic check-ins here at the end of the year.
Rob and I may have like, we're pretty close to losing all of our marbles based on all of the pods we've had to do this week. Accurate.
Rob does not get a break because he covers something called sports and sports continues on. But this is my last podcast of 2024.
What an occasion. Here we are.
Get out the balloons and the streamers. We're here to talk about the agency.
How are you feeling, Joe? With everything in the rearview mirror, save for the rest of this podcast, what is your state of mind? I feel a little exhilarated, but also just a little confused about my plan for what

to say on this particular podcast. So we're going to all find out together.
Usually I come in a

little bit more ship shape than I am today. So this is going to be a fun ride for all of us.

Please don't turn this podcast on. There's still time for this to go fully off the rails, right? The drama does not

stop with the agency. It continues into our

agency coverage, clearly.

Is this the pod that I get

canceled on? Let's find out.

No, probably not.

We'll find out. Let's see what

you have to say about Iranian tectonics.

No comment.

Okay, so listen. We covered

episodes one and two, The Benz and Wooden Duck. So that already exists on the feed.
You can go listen to it if you want to. Today, we are here to talk to you about episode three, Hawk from a Handsaw, episode four, Quarterback Blitz, and episode five, Rat Trap.
And then we'll be back in the new year to cover, you know, the back end of the season of Agency. But this is a show we are absolutely loving.
Rob, is it the best show currently airing? I mean, it's like a slightly thin field, obviously. But like, what do you think? I think it has to be.
But again, if you're into this sort of thing, it's not a show that you can recommend to just anybody. But if this is your zone, I don't know why you wouldn't be thrilled with what we've been presented so far.
Rob, before we get into three episodes of a great television show that we're going to attempt to talk about in under an hour, I would like to introduce you to a world of conspiracy theories that I have stumbled into this week. I don't know what the liberal version of QAnon is, but I suspect that that is what is happening at this very moment.

Welcome to my TED Talk about TikToks.

We are here to talk to you about a conspiracy theory that is cooking on TikTok that the current spate of espionage television,

and that would be The Day of the Jackal, which is enormously popular, at least in the UK.

I do not know what numbers it's doing here. Mr.
and Mrs. Smith, which was a popular show this year, obviously.
Black Doves, which we talked about elsewhere on this particular feed. And The Agency.
Yeah. That all of those shows are being put forth into the world by the CIA themselves, itself, in order to entice young people to apply to the CIA.
That this is CIA, like the, whatever the CIA version of copaganda is. Interesting.
Spyganda. I guess actually for the CIA, it's just actually propaganda.
So, let's leave aside the fact that a lot of these shows are about international intelligence agencies. That's not even something we need to worry about.
Here's my question for you. This is conspiracy theory.
A, how much merit do you find in it? Oh, let me stop you there. None.
Okay. But if it is true,

I find some solace in the fact

that our government is actually supporting the arts for once.

There you go.

The money's getting chopped for PBS,

but we're funneling it into spy shows.

So at least it's going somewhere.

F you Sesame Street,

but Fassbender, he's staying paid.

Follow-up question for you.

Yes.

If you were watching these shows, would you be enticed to the world of spycraft? And follow-up to the follow-up, and I'll take my answers off air, which of these shows would be the most enticing to you to join a life of espionage? I think if you're gonna pick one that feels somewhat enticing, it's probably more the Black Doves variety where you get to have cheeky banter and at the end of the day, your contained family life and your figgy puddings. That seems nice and quaint.
I would not want to be working for the agency and the agency. It seems terrible.
Seems pretty tough. In fact, we get a big speech from Michael Fassbender in this episode about how to do this.
You have to be a completely insane person, not come to work and shoot everybody insane, but just insane enough, basically. We're all in therapy and that's fine.
You make a compelling point about the cheeky bants in Black Doves.

I think it's either that or it's Mr. and Mrs.
Smith.

Because if it's Mr. and Mrs.
Smith, you get like a sick house.

Yeah.

Like a really nice house. And they only have to like go kill people.

I think it's like every couple months.

It's like pretty, pretty rare.

But the cheeky banter still applies. I would say just maybe even a little bit more sexually charged, right? Like there's, there's a little bit more of a chemistry.
Like I can see the pitch of Mr. Mrs.
Smith. That's also a show about how, if you sign up to do this, you are being exploited by the gig economy.
So I don't know that it's a straight commercial. Um, I'm giving it to Mr..
Smith with, with love and respect to the figgy pudding. I'm taking the, you're hitting the slope.
I'm done. I am.
I'm taking the multi-story townhouse in, in New York. I, that's what, that's what I'm doing.
Okay. So now that we've cracked that, you know, shady operation wide open, let's talk about the agency.

What I appreciate about the show, among many other things, is when we first entered into this, it seemed like we were just sprawling out. There's just a bunch of threads going this way and that.
And now we've like really narrowed down to, I would say, five plots with the resolution-ish

of Charlie Operation Felix,

I would say four plots.

Is that resolved, would you say?

I said resolution-ish.

So I'm just going to put a pin

in Operation Felix right now.

Okay, that's fair.

Michael Fassbender's Martian's

Life is a Dad, right? We've got his really messy love life that is its own international subplot. It certainly is.
We've got the search for coyote, and then we've got our girl, Dani, going into the field, right? These are our main plots. And some of them are tangling.
And what I do like is that Fassbender is across all of them, you know, in some ways more meaningfully than others. But the fact that he's like weighing in on what's happening with Danny, or, you know, is like involved in the coyote plotline while he's untangling what's happening with Sammy, what's happening with his daughter.
And the Poppy story is, of course, being sucked into the Sami story as well. So which of those do you want to talk about first? Let's start with the Martian Sami stuff first.
I feel like that is a natural kind of cohesive point of a lot of these plots. As you said, things are getting pulled in that direction.
And overall, I am interested in and charmed by and ultimately pulled into the story of trying to understand, in particular, when Martian is being Martian and when he is being Paul Lewis and what the difference between those things even are anymore. I was curious to get your take, Joe.
We get the scene with them in the restaurant where Sammy tries to basically finally tell Martian face-to-face,

or I guess as she knows him, Paul Lewis face-to-face.

I want to tell you what I'm really doing here in London.

Yeah.

And by stopping her short,

is that someone who is in love with her,

who is actually worried about the threat to her safety?

Or is that him pretending to be Paul Lewis

and pretending not to care so that he can kind of follow the rest of that threat? What was your read on that scene? I think he is almost entirely motivated by his love for her. And I would say that is Martian.
Or his real name is Brandon. I mean, we can call him Martian.
Martian or Brandon, if you prefer. Brandon, I like even more because Brandon is like a step away from work.
Martian is his work name. That's true.
Brandon is like who he is. Does he seem like a Brandon to you, though? He doesn't, no.
Which maybe is the point, but. Here's my question to you.
Okay. And it is possible that you were able to watch these episodes a bit more closely than I was.
but do you think there's a world in which

Sami possible that you were able to watch these episodes a bit more closely than i was um but

do you think there's a world in which sammy knows that paul isn't what he says he is she's clearly skeptical this is mostly motivated by the avocado pit incident is what i'm calling it when he pulls her out of the protest.

Yeah.

Pulls her into a room and is like,

be. The avocado pit incident is what I'm calling it.
When he pulls her out of the protest. Pulls her into a room and is like, BRB.
Gotta murder some guys. I'm gonna find us a way out.
And then pulls her out down the hallway and past some dead bodies. And she seems just clearly in a state of shock throughout.
So there's a possibility that she was in such a state of shock. She didn't really register what was going on.
she's listening a bit but not like you know just clearly in a state of shock throughout so there's a possibility that she was like in such a state of shock she didn't really register what was going on um she's listening a bit but not like you know entirely and stuff like that i will just say that i wouldn't be surprised if we get to the end of all of this and she's like of course i know that you are a spy and murder people yeah right like the only thing that guess I would push, would push back on in that regard is when she's being questioned, like to reveal by Osman to reveal his name. And she gives up Paul Lewis.
That does seem like a moment of genuine, like I've given up a truth. Yeah.
Sort of moment. I don't know.
I just have some, I just have some questions because I feel like we've zigged and zagged. There was a zig of, oh my god, she wasn't really here for a conference.
What is she doing here? And then it's like, well, actually, she's trying to broker piece in a war-torn nation. And so I don't think she's there for some sneaky, but I wouldn't mind if's just like one more turn on her character.
Do you know what I mean? Yeah. She also doesn't seem naive and clearly isn't dumb.
This is an incredibly educated woman who has a, not only that, like a good scholastic sense, but a sense of the world and how political like actors operate and how people manipulate each other. And like, she's an expert in the social dynamics of basically an entire region of people and by extension, every foreign enterprise that has come into it.
And so, yeah, the idea that this guy she's seeing could be more than he lets on, I think she tips her hand as to that. She kind of puts it to Brandon, if we want to call him that, or I guess Paul Lewis, if we really want to call him that, that the way he questions her is very similar to the way that Osman questions them and questions specifically Paul Lewis, right? There is something that is information gathering about the Paul Lewis she knows.
And there is something fishy about the guy with a flat she's never seen, with a daughter she's never met, with a book that she's never read, with a teaching job, but doesn't teach, right? Everything that Osman is saying about Paul Lewis makes sense. Honestly, I think he's given pretty good advice under the circumstances in saying stay away from this guy.
It's probably in her best interest to do that. But she has to know that something is up in the same way that Marsha knew that something was up.
That she was not all that she was projecting to be. These are two incredibly intelligent people who care about each other

and pay close attention to each other.

But I don't know if you've heard this joke.

Love is blindness, you know?

Like they're being,

just blotting out all of this information.

I want to shout out,

so speaking of Osman,

I want to shout out the actress playing Osman

who plays Grand Maester Orwell on House of the Dragon, was also in A Real Pain and Chaos this year. It's just like really having a year.
Oh, yeah. You've seen A Real Pain? Have you seen that yet? Not yet.
he is so good in a real pain and playing just the complete opposite of this just like someone who's

very like kind and curious and gentle and then in house of the dragon is some sort of like combination of the two i did not watch chaos but like um he's like a sneaky mvp of the year for me like in terms of the range he has shown across these various projects. And, um, I really love him in this because he is both quite menacing.
And then as you put it often, just quite right about, uh, you know, the state of things. And obviously like he's an antagonist to our protagonist.
So we are meant to put him in a villain bucket. But it's that kind of villain bucket that I love the best, which is just sort of like a villain with a point.
Yeah. A villain who might be right at the end of the day.
What do you want to say about Osman and the way he's been rolled out in the show? I mean, I think that's a key part of it, too, is not just the character that he portrays and the sort of, like, menace you're feeling

from him following people and lurking

on the edge of the frame. And also, like, comedy, right?

There's the scene with Brandon

and his daughter in the mall. They're trying to, like, ditch

him, you know, store to store,

cafe to cafe that I thought was great.

But the gradual rollout of

we don't know who this guy is,

right? Is he a competing

spy from another country? Is he Sammy's husband or working for her husband? Like we have no idea like what his relationship is to her at all if there is a preexisting one until we start seeing them in scenes together. And I think when you get them in the same room, at first he gets even more frightening, right? Like the tension and the aggression and the potential for violence gets ratcheted up.
And then the more they spend time together and the more that he's trying to convince her that Paul Lewis is bad news, I think the more and more empathetic he feels. And the more you get the sense of like, this is a guy who has been delegated to keep a very fragile peace process together.
And he sees this complete wild card who's acting contrary to everyone's best interests and trying to rein it in. And I'm sympathetic to his perspective.
I think it's incredibly well acted and that he can be that sort of dangerous and that sort of sensible at the same time. It's just a great character for a show like this.
I agree. I agree.
And every time we meet another character in the show, because there are just like a ton of, you know, irons in the fire here. It's a character with dimensionality.
Um, you know, it's, it's someone who's interrogating Danny, but then also flirting with Danny. It's like, you know, there's, there's like, there are multiple uses for all of these, uh, these various characters.
I want to talk about Hugh Bonneville shows up as James Richardson, a British intelligence agent, a friend of Martian Brandon's. And they have this sort of sidebar at the apartment to talk about, put together pieces of what's going on here.
Yes. And just how big it is.
Are you a Downton Abbey fan?

Like, how much does it matter to you when Hugh Bonneville

shows up in a property?

Are you like Lord Grantham at last, we meet again?

Or how do you feel about it?

I am not Downton inclined,

per se. You're a Paddington

bro, though.

I mean, who isn't? Yeah.

Like, ultimately. I'm glad to see

him here. I can't say I was, like, jumping out of my seat, per se.
The way you did when Dominic West showed up and you were like, my guy is here. That was just full, like, Leo pointing at the screen.
Like, that's my moment. I love Hugh Bonneville.
And I think he's so good at... He's played, like, jovial quite often, but there's something about his depiction here of like, this just feels like a bad move, honestly.
And Martian is- In terms of sharing this information. Yeah.
Anytime you share information with people, you leave yourself vulnerable in the game of intelligence right and so i just think it's uh you know martian is prone to making bad moves um across the board uh but this he's not he's not like a slow horse level operator uh but he certainly commits his share of blunders no i mean he's he's. He can slip a lead and not slip a lead or this, that, and the other thing.
But he also makes, yes, strange errors. And this feels like one of them.
I would not tell an intelligence operative from another agency this kind of information and expose yourself that way. Especially when the whole thread of these, like this string of episodes is trying to figure out like, where has our information line been compromised, right? Like, what have Coyote's operations have we lost track of? And have we completely lost the thread as to what is valuable and what is not? Like, I think they give some percentage, like about 60 or 80% of whatever of the intel coming out of Ukraine might be just like total bogus at this point.
And meanwhile, back near base, Martian is just out here trying to barter information or not even barters. He's just giving it away to get someone's opinion.
I will say a lot of that is because he is so inside something he is not supposed to be doing and so isolated from the natural chain of command. We also get a big architecture through these episodes of he and Henry's relationship and the warding off of these, putting the personal before the professional or putting the personal before the goals of the agency blunders that now both of them have made.
And because he is so boxed in with that stuff at work, he can't really take these concerns to anyone at the office until it becomes so big that he has to go to the China desk, basically, to get a global perspective on it. And that takes us back to where we started.
When Coyote goes missing, and one of the various handlers, played by Alex Jennings, tries to cover up the fact that he, based on their own experiences with sobriety, skips some steps in the processing of Coyote. And it's just sort of like that as an early example of the secrets will out eventually in one way or another inside of this agency.
And so you can be an incredibly smart and capable agent and you cannot keep a lid on something like this indefinitely. With Henry, Jeffrey Wright's character, when the lie that he is fed is like, oh, I'm having sex with a married woman and that's why this, that, or the other thing.
At one point he says, it's just a fuck. What are you doing? And I felt slapped by that because he's working with a certain set of information and I have been sold this love story, this like, like magnetism between these two actors.
And I'm like, to hear it summed up like that again, he's working with limited information, but to hear it summed up, I'm like, sir, you know, and to watch- Haven't you been watching the first three episodes? Come over, I will pop some popcorn. And to watch Brandon, a.k.a.
Martian, absorb that as passively as he does, I thought was a really fascinating moment. I think watching Brandon try to parse out all of these different versions of himself has been one of the joys of the season so far and specifically these three episodes.

There's some great shots of him in session

with Dr. Blake of it's like him in the mirror,

in the mirror, in the mirror.

As he's talking about like who Paul Lewis is, right?

Like trying to explain the differences

between these two people.

I thought the sequence in which he has to learn

how to fight like Paul Lewis

is just exceptional spy shit.

And most of that is like how you get your ass kicked and not fight back effectively and not look competent.

All of that stuff is really, really working for me.

And his relationship with Henry, I think, is really, really working for me.

There's some great navigation of their shared history of what's clearly a trust.

They run this like, we don't even have to really say what we're doing one-two op on the Belarusians as they're trying to like, figure out how to back channel and get all these negotiations. And these are two people who clearly know how to work together.
And there's a lot that doesn't have to be said. Like there's even apologies that don't really have to be said between them.
But there's also a lot that's going unsaid because it would get somebody fired or somebody in trouble, or in this case, maybe jeopardize a very delicate peace process or blow up relations with China or whatever kind of finger you want to put over which particular button. Ultimately, I get why Henry is so exasperated with Paul in the same way that Olsman is so exasperated.
These are people who are trying to give good advice and ultimately are not being heard because two people are in love and they're acting like people in love. Are you saying love is blindness? Is that the point you're trying to make? I don't know if I'd go that far, but it is blinding.
Something to consider. On that sort of like reflections inside of reflections uh of of this particular identity what does paul lewis mean to martian is like a windshield it can protect against bugs but anything hard would break it i really love this really good stuff there's some great speechifying in these this set of episodes in particular like richardere does a big one that's straight out of A Few Good Men, basically, about the number of words in the English language that are pruned every year.
Just fantastic stuff. I love that element of the show right now.
We talked a bit about bringing in a therapist character and how this is a Dr. Blake as operating in a couple levels.
One, there was the way in which she operated to ask the questions that we at home might be asking about the way things work inside of this organization. But also this is just like a very classic prestige TV device of like we get to cut to a therapy session.
These are better than that device usually is. This is used quite well, I think, with apologies to Big Little Lies.
Any others you want to call out while we're here? Maybe over time. But what do you think makes it feel different or better or not seem just like a narrative crutch to you?

I think part of the problem with some of those other shows

is it's like the therapy session is the space

for usually the main character,

usually the main male character,

to go into therapy and to say the things

that they won't say to anybody else

and to give us a sense of their interiority

and to like vent out some of the natural

emotional frustration in a show.

This is a therapy session in a room with one-way glass and a camera. And so it's not in complete privacy.
It itself is a kind of performance by both of them. And I think in particular, Brandon's like hyper-awareness of the fact that he is being observed and recorded and very, very seen is something he's wielding against Dr.
Blake and challenging her version of this performance. And it makes it just like another battleground, right? This is another form of counterintelligence within the show.
And it's him trying to hide everything that is actually bothering him and everything he's actually doing from the people who are hiring him to do other clandestine shit. And so like running the interference through therapy, I think just makes it more constructive and useful than, oh, let's just put a voice to the stuff that you were wondering about.
And I think what's interesting is like to your point about sort of this is a way to get around doing a voiceover while it's doing voiceover, but the show has voiceover. We're hearing him, we get this introduction of this other element of the plot, which is like at some point in the near future, Paul will get the ever loving shit kicked out of him and is telling a story about that.
And we don't know who he's talking to. If you had to bet, who do you think he's talking to? His publisher for not getting the pages on the red river in, in time.
Those deadlines are no fucking joke. You think you could put them off, but then somebody shows up at your door.
I don't know. I've pushed a few deadlines in my day.
Do you think it's Dr. Blake that he's talking to in the future? Do you think it henry like i don't think it's dr blake that he's talking to in the future i this this is what is wonderful about the show for me right now is i have genuinely no idea who he's talking to in the same way that when danny gets taken and interrogated i'm like is this the americans who have taken her again yeah i felt so sure it, but also was ready to be wrong.
Yeah. But like...
I didn't feel that way in part because the rules for that interrogation were so different from when they were interrogating... I'm blanking on the guy's name, but Coyote's like asset, right? When they were trying to figure out if he could be Alexei.
Like they weren't physical with him in the same way that were with Dany, right? They weren't hitting him in the same way that they were her. Just based on the line of questioning and the situation that she finds herself in, I'm like, is this British intelligence running this? Is this Iranian intelligence running this, trying to vet whether she should be allowed to come to Tehran or not because she's actually working for some competing agency? There's enough of these threads, as you said, where some of them have been resolved, but there's still so much in play that I feel like Martian could be talking to anybody by the end.
Yeah, I felt like it was... Yeah, I'm very curious how much, if at all, Dany's storyline is going to further bleed into the main storylines here because again martian is sort of like tangentially connected to her but like how much will i don't know iranian nuclear engineers have to do with what's i got to do with the price of uh tea in china and sudan who's to say but let's find out together um i felt like i felt reasonably certain that this was an interrogation, but not 100% certain.

And I think, let's talk about Dani for a second.

Dani goes to her new job and meets her mark, Re he, um, invites her to this black tie event and says, you know, you're going to give this presentation. Here's what I love about this show.
Um, Danny, who we both like sort of singled out as, as someone we thought was really compelling in the first couple episodes. Um, someone who I think of as, as incredibly competent, but new, you know, she's brand new.
She's competent, but she's brand new. We saw her when Marsha was running her through that training of if you're going to honey trap someone, there are consequences to that.
So how are you going to use this, that, or the other thing? And so when she's in the car with him and he starts putting his moves on her and she stops him, I couldn't tell because I don't know about you, Rob, but I'm not a spy. I couldn't tell if she was doing a good job or a bad job.
And it wasn't until she got out of the car and smirked that I was like, okay. I mean, I knew she was like, she definitely wanted out of this presentation because the battery has died on her phone and she has not memorized all of her.
Danny, why aren't we plugging our phone in as we're trying to speed memorize the content? I don't know what your reaction was in real time to that, Joe, but like, look, espionage is a high stakes, intense profession. I, my secondhand anxiety was highest when she had to memorize a textbook on her phone in like two hours.
And I'm just like, I am sweating bullets watching her try to retain this information. While also putting an outfit together.
That's the added layer of bullshit, you know? If you wanted your first sign that Mordesevi was bad news, like telling someone, come to this black tie event in three hours is demented behavior. Demented is the precise word for that.
It's simply a no for me. But anyway.
Absolutely insane. She gets herself out of the car, out of the event, but also seems to have like planted a seed that she thinks will bloom for her inside of a rejection of someone that like, you know, from a certain point of view, you might be like, oh, she fucked it.
You know what I mean? Like this is her way in. And, you know, she, in order to get out of the short term, she fucked her long-term plan.
But she seems incredibly satisfied with what she's done here. What do you want to say about that? I want to kind of break this into two parts.
Because one, I completely agree on a tactical level. This is working out very well for her.
And I think she has effectively, like, started to shift the power dynamic between them. This was a person who she came in needing to stand out to and impress in order to get this assignment to Tehran.
Now she has him nervous and maybe even a little grateful that she didn't report him. That's something she can clearly use to her advantage.
And I think we see a version of that with her in the interrogator too. I think that dynamic was so interesting when she gets out.
And she does, I would say, a bare minimum flirtation with him. And he takes the hook so quickly.
So fast. That it's like, on the one hand, felt like a power play from her.
And on the other hand, felt like another one of these sorts of inversions, right? It's another situation where she's trying to turn the tables. And if anything, practice turning the tables in that particular way.
That guy falls into bed with her, falls into a chair with her so quickly. She has this power.
And she has this power over certain men she is coming into contact with, even ones in this case who are fellow CIA operatives. And it is so extremely believable from, she's a beautiful woman, but she's not an obvious seductress.
And so she has an allure, an intelligence, a ferocity, a commitment. And that makes her just a far more fascinating version of a character that we've seen before.
again I feel like I'm throwing a number of people under the bus,

but with love and respect to Scarlett Johansson,

this is not Natasha Romanoff sort of behavior. No, not so much.

This is something else entirely,

and that is the economy of it too.

Yeah.

She gets out of that interrogation room

with a couple bites of a chicken Caesar wrap

and just a handful of words.

See you next time. out of that interrogation room with like a couple bites of a chicken Caesar wrap and like just a handful of words.
And it's done. And we know what's going on and they know what's going on.
And that's the magic of performance and the magic of writing as well. So that economy works very, very well.
The one thing on the show I have bumped on so far, I would say is not the substance of Danny's interactions with Dr. Mordazevi, but the speed of it, how quickly things accelerated once they get in the car.
It's clear that this guy is targeting her in a way and has paid attention to her. And then he makes his moves very quickly.
I believe this person in a predatory position could move that fast and could try to pull someone into his orbit that just with that kind of speed I buy. Yeah.
It's the things that he says and the way he makes that move where it's been like, I've been watching you all this time. And it's like, you've had two conversations with this woman.
Do we know how much time has passed that she's been in there? So here's the thing. They could be doing the TV version of these two timelines are operating at different speeds.
But our other timelines are day-to-day, hour-to-hour. You're right.
And he's commenting on... Martian is commenting on her interrogation.
Her progress, right? We can't be speeding too far ahead of, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think there is some of that.
And clearly, there are some jumps in her process, right? She's teaching a class now, which, God, I can't even imagine having to fake your way through that process. But yeah, there was just something about the things he was saying that were like, this feels extreme, not in terms of the behavior, but the way he is portraying his interest.
Interesting. I think that's, I think that's worth watching.
Um, if that is going to wind up feeling like a consistent character trait or something that's plot convenient. Um, Rob, if you were asked to go undercover and teach a course on a certain subject, what do you think you could bullshit your way through? Philosophy.
Easy. Can you? Yeah.
Have you taken philosophy classes or you just feel like philosophy is bullshit enough that you could just say some things and get away with it? I've taken intro-level philosophy courses, and I mean no disrespect to the overall profession or endeavor, just that when the whole point is constructing the asking of questions, I can facilitate Socratic discussion in class and sit back and throw on a video at every other class and we're going to be fine. Okay, so just to sum up, on this podcast here at the end of the year, we have tossed Big Little Lies, Black Widow, and philosophy on the pyre.
Just the greater school of thought. Socrates eats shit.
Eat shit, Socrates. I want to talk about Naomi.
Catherine Watterson is playing Naomi, who is Danny's case officer at CIA. I'm kind of obsessed with this performance because it's a, it's a minimal role so far.

We'll see how much more Naomi gets to do.

I just love what like an unrelenting asshole.

She like,

she's just,

there's no warmth from her and I love it.

See,

I don't entirely agree with that.

I think she is that way with Danny,

but she is also like quite protective of Martian,

I would say.

Well, that's, that's the thing is like,

I think she has like a schoolgirl crush on him.

That was my interpretation of the way that she greeted him on his return.

Interesting.

Where she was like flustered. Man, love really is blindness.
We're doing our best here. Okay, you mentioned you invoked the slow horses before.
If anyone is a slow horse here, it has to be our guy Owen, right? Here's the thing. Did his overall operation into the field go well? No, Joe, it did not.
I would not tell you that it did. That said, were I in his position? I think the only thing is like, I think you got to put that secretary in the closet faster, it felt so clear that he was being played.
And frankly, I'm not ruling out the fact that he was being played, even though everyone else seems very cavalier about this situation. Uh, my, my eyebrows were raised.
It was just a very suspicious sequence of events. From the moment you see the cat, she's going in the closet or like, do we get a drink at least in first um certainly no one night stand uh pre-closet um it's the minute you see condensation on the shower you're like we're done here oh yeah what do you make of i mean it was just so delightfully inept um and John Magaro is just wonderful.

Any thoughts or feelings

about Valhalla

written on the mirror?

Oh yeah, I have no idea where that's pointed.

We haven't heard any or seen any Valhalla

or Valhalla adjacent

codenames, imagery.

This is a group of people who loves a cutesy

codename. We have learned that.

But I have no sense of what Valhalla is or could be. Do you feel like the secretary definitely wrote it? I'm just like, I'm trying to figure out who that would be for.
Not to typecast people based on their physical appearance, but that doesn't look like that woman's handwriting. Oh, okay.
But it's finger on a mirror. But it still reflects your penmanship, I think.
Do you feel like your mirror finger writing, and I don't know the last time you had to leave a message on a steamy mirror, but do you feel like that writing is reflective of your handwriting? 100%. Interesting.
Okay. It may be a little looser, but it's ultimately going to be your stylistic fingerprint.

What more do you want to say about the coyote operation? You invoked this Belarusian, you know, like the coyote thing is we are constantly zigging and zagging down alleyways and actively working the case on this. and this is where we see

the most levels of spycraft i would say is is involved in in this storyline and it's funny because like i didn't realize when it first happens i don't know that i pegged it as like the season-long yeah hunt and yet here here we are where is coyoteote and what has he said? What has he leaked? And I love this and I am having a really good time with it. What has been your favorite aspect of this? Is it bike for sale? Is it, I've lost do you, what do you think? The bike for sale is good.
The hidden kebab shop phone, I think, is pretty good. Honestly, even the fact that, frankly, Owen, as Martian tells us, bungled every part of this there was to bungle, but fell ass backwards into some really important potential intel.
And the combination of the fact that Coyote had been seeing some kind of psychiatrist

who had been prescribing him all these drugs

sure sounds like a potential leak

as far as all of this stuff goes.

And then also, I think, overall,

the game of this is so long

and there are so many open threads

that you can see a way for the Coyote plot

to very easily intersect with

whoever the target is for Felix, for example.

There are ways in which this stuff starts pointing in the direction of each other. I don't think a show that's this sprawling is going to get to one final, like, oh my God, all five plots have converged.
Danny, come on in. Charlie, what are you doing here? Direct flight from Tehran to Minsk.
That is not going to happen. But enough of these are going to have to.
There's going to be more for Charlie to do. And we should at least brush on the fact that he and his Ukrainian bros.
Are those guys Ukrainian? Well, they were definitely pretending to be. I said, I called them the trio of hot doctors without borders, right? Isn't that what you're calling them?

I call, since he's Charlie, I've been calling them Linus and Lucy in my notes.

I'm just going with that.

Charlie's Angels. Love it.

I mean, it's just like we need something in order to signify those guys. But they have found their way to a kind of safety and they are back in the field,

still pursuing whoever their target is going to be, which we don't know.

But we do know it's important enough that the president is looped in on that decision, which says it's probably a pretty high-level target. We also don't know what target means for Operation Felix.
Is that an abduction target? Is that an assassination target? Is that an extraction target? I have no fucking idea, but I like having no fucking idea at this point in the show. The myriad of ways this show has figured out how to entangle people emotionally inside of their high level of operations.
And by high level, I mean like they aren't bunglers. They are really good at their jobs until something bleeds in and they aren't yeah and that is uh you know something hard and fast hits the windshield and that is to be able to see it there's a there's a worse version of this show where this is just martian's achilles heel this is just one spy has a foible and we're going to watch people exploit it or it

destroy him or something like that. But this is how do you as a person, and again, as you pointed

out, we've heard a number of different versions of speeches around this. How do you as a person

do this job? Especially as it asks you to dissolve your own personality into something else. But then also use, you're asked to assume a costume, a mask, an identity, but also you're asked to use aspects of your own personal life or history or personality.
Right. You know, like the most convincing lie is a lie that has some truth to it.
So like, you remind me of my father, like, you know, if there is a part of your own life that you can use to help orchestrate these lies, these gambits, all the better, but all the more dangerous at the end of the day in terms of keeping those things either separate or organically blended. And that's where we're seeing some of these start to come together.
You know, Osman is, or not Osman, but one of the guys working with them has found now Poppy's ID card. What was her ID card doing in his jacket? I don't remember.
I have no memory. Actually, you know what it was? There was a line when they went shopping, when they did their little retail therapy session

about how she had some kind of student discount.

Yeah, okay.

So it must be because of the student discount.

She's like, here, use my card or something.

I'm just yada, yada, yada, use my card.

And he just put it in his jacket instead of giving it back to her.

But that seems so sloppy.

Like if he knew, like he goes to the police station,

he's prepared enough that he is prepared to learn how to fight Paul rather than himself. Yes.
Right? But he's got this very incriminating piece of evidence in his jacket. It is confusing.
But also at this point in the game, he is that sloppy. He has rocked off his access to the point that even Poppy is finding his secret stash within the flat.
Right. Clearly, this is not a guy who's operating at the absolute pinnacle of how discreet and intelligent and resourceful he can be.
He's still making some very calculated moves. He obviously has has enough at his disposal to like dodge the tails that the CIA have put on him.
But he's still stepping in shit everywhere. And in particular, I think like the fact that Poppy can get the edge on him so easily that all it takes is like a little bit of searching around the apartment to find the Paul Lewis ID he's not supposed to have anymore.
Not great. This reminds me of a Dune prophecy plotline.
And frankly, how dare you make me think about Dune prophecy. I'm sorry.
I apologize. At the end of the year.
We did get an email. You can email us.
PrestigeTV at Spotify.com or it's tiptopinthepink at gmail.com. That's the word.
To PrestigeTV at uh and we have heard we've heard from people that they would like us to continue our show specific emails we probably will but no matter what press ccv at spotify.com you can reach us um talking about the architecture the literal architecture of the show and the way in which there are scenes with henry in his office i haven't seen the behind the scenes on this particular show, but like, um, to me, it looks like perhaps green screen windows. And then they're like foggy day in London town, uh, you know, dot JPEG in the background or whatever.
Um, but there are definitely scenes where they're running through. They're definitely in London and, um um it looks great and there is a you know obviously like the the smoky cityscapes is part of our opening credits in the show um but there is like a almost brutalist um sort of a lot of concrete um vibe which invokes Cold War Yeah, security state Yeah, yeah, sort of stuff.
What do you think about sort of those visuals inside of the show? I love those visual trappings I especially love the way they play out with Martian at home on his balcony This is like the one space that he has identified that might not be buggable effectively, just because I assume there's so much background noise. But it is that sort of very concrete, very brutalist, angular style.
And the fact that it is him kind of like overlooking the city as he is trying to figure out like literally what to do on a day-to-day basis to keep all of these balls in the air that he has in his life. I think that's just one of my favorite like vistas on the show right now, which is a crazy thing to say when, as you mentioned, like it is gray and foggy most of the time.
Like it's not super pleasant to look at, but it feels ominous. And it feels, I think, like a man grasping for control.
Like that's what it feels like when I see him up there. And that's exactly where Martian is right now.
I think what I love about Fassbender, we talked about this in this role,

and we talked about this in the first couple episodes,

is he's such a ship sharp,

contained,

the sharpness of his jaw,

the narrowness of his hips,

and just the way that he just looks like he should be in control at all times.

Yes.

And often,

when he's panicking,

which we see him,

it's not big panic.

And we might be building to big panic, but it is not, we saw some of it like when he's panicking, which we see him, it's not big panic. And we might be building to big panic, but it is not.
We saw some of it when he sees Osman at Sami's door and he's like, oh, that's the person that was tailing me. He thought it was CIA.
It turns out it was him. So we see medium, I would say medium panic in that moment.
But I don't think we've gotten to full-blown big panic yet and i like that because it gives us something to build towards but it's also like there's a version of the show that is like more frenetic or you know like a sort of uncut gems like jangly koki sort of uh energy and i like that this is a steady build to something um i was sure pj is the one who wrote in about the architecture and this is what he said, which I thought was interesting. He says, has any TV show found such interesting, cool sets and shot architecture so well, it makes it feel like it's set in just a slightly different universe.
And I like that, that it does, it gives like a bit of surreality to it. If you, if you go down that brutalist sort of pipeline, you can get to like something like Brazil or, you know, something like that.

That's like sort of slightly fantastical.

And I was, I was thinking about that question and I was like, well, something like Westworld did this really well, where they found when they moved into modern day storylines, they found buildings that look like they're from the future, even though they do exist in our world. But it is a true accomplishment to not make us feel like we're not in London, but to make us feel like we're in just like a different London.
I don't know perfectly how to encapsulate that. Well, and at the risk of putting like a very Western lens on this experience, I think the idea of a CIA station in London, there's a version of that kind of setting and placement that could feel like, oh, this is very friendly soil.
The allyship at work between the two nations could feel protective and to puncture that with a real sense of danger and a real sense that not just, oh, you could lose this woman you love. Oh, your daughter could be in danger.
It's like, if you fuck up in the wrong way, like there are real geopolitical consequences and you haven't even really left station soil or like 50 square miles around it. That's quite a feat, right? Like I think managing to pull off a, a spy show that granted is not in America, but like as close to America as a CIA show can basically get, that's something that I think is really impressive about the overall stakes and the way that they're escalating and the way that it's not just us, you know, from our perspective, juggling these five or six plot lines who have a grasp of what's going on here.
The fact that Martian now does too, I think is going to ratchet up the process you're talking about. Like that unraveling, the moment of Fassbender breaking and screaming at somebody is coming.
Like that has to be coming. Something's gonna result in his beautiful face getting beaten to a pulp.
Okay, Ramahony, anything else you want to say about these episodes of The Agency? I have one more thing to say, and it ties into, as you talked about earlier, Joe, we covered Black Doves recently. We sure did.
This also happened in Black Doves, two spy shows, two shows in which people need to be having private conversations and duck into, of all places, a rep theater to have these covert conversations as a movie is playing out in front of them. I want to make this very, very clear to anyone who's listening in the intelligence community.
That space is not for you. That is for us sickos.
There is no talking in any movie theater, but especially not fucking there. Right? Like, these are the real movie nerds.
You're sure, like, if you're seeing Catch-22 on a weeknight, I don't want to hear about what's going on with your fake girlfriend in Sudanese politics. I don't want to know.
Please respect Rob. Please.
He's real serious about this. When Rob goes, when you go to LA, the first thing you do is check out the rep theater schedule.
Got to. You got to check the schedule.
You got to see what's playing. Do you have a favorite rep theater that the CIA should make sure to avoid in particular? I'm so sorry.
Let's just not limit it to the CIA. All intelligence agencies that are definitely listening to us talk about the agency.
Rob, if you could pick one theater to keep as your very own, what would it be? I refuse your question because not only is it not about one theater, I don't want you going to AMC or Cinemark. I want to be able to go see Mufasa in fucking peace.
That's not where I would hold the line personally at Mufasa, but you do. Is nothing sacred? All right.
Well, that's it. We did it.
We talked about agency we uh we put out rob's job application to be a fake philosophy professor yep uh we have protected office hours are on thursdays come on in we have protected all movie theaters everywhere it's a sacred experience i'm you know i'm with you i saw um i saw a show last night in san francisco um where and this happened when i saw wicked in oakland this woman sitting behind me i swear to god she was eating cellophane she was just chewing cellophane the whole movie it was just like crinkle city constantly behind me and the same thing happened in a show i saw in san francisco last night i'm like like, people, I'm sorry. Leave your conversations and crucially your cellophane food that you're chewing.
I don't know what it is. Leave it at home.
I don't want it. We do have to figure that out.
I'm pro snack for the record, but you have to do it tastefully. And I think most importantly, like you can sense when the volume is about to spike in a movie.
Just like, just wait to eat your M&Ms. It's not a huge deal.
Yeah, and this was no M&M bag situation, by the way. Because an M&M bag, you can navigate that fairly soundlessly.
This is super clear, crunchy. What is in that kind of bag? I don't know.
I don't know. They must have smuggled.
That doesn't sound like something they would be selling at the theater. And listen, I don't mind a smuggle.
I love a smuggle. You can smuggle a snack any day, but just like, you know, and to do it for so long.
Okay, I'm done. I'm done.
This is my last part of the year. Smuggle responsibly.
Smuggle responsibly. Hire Rob.
And come back and join us in 2025 as we just spend time together with shows like

Severance.

We'll be wrapping up our Squid Game coverage.

Rob's about to get a crash course

in the charms of Noah Wiley on The Pit.

I can't wait.

That's coming.

So we've got a lot going on.

White Lotus, all this sort of stuff for the new year.

So we'll see you then. Thanks for hanging out with us.
And thanks to Kai Grady, as always. What a year for Kai Grady, 2024.
Oh my God. Kai, doing one million hours of pods alone.
He's the best. Thanks to Justin Sales for joining the Prestige team and helping oversee everything that we do.
Thank you to all of you, our listeners. I don't know if every single one of you is listening to this episode about the agency in particular, but we've really, really enjoyed getting to do this show.
It's such a treat for us to get to do this show. Without a doubt.
100%. To hear from you guys that you're picking shows to watch because you can then listen to us

like chatter about it.

Just very-

You're going to love the pit.

Noah Wiley is going to-

I think it's his year.

I really do.

All right, I'll stop.

I'll stop the ever-ing.

We'll see you guys next year.

Bye.