The Dumbness, it Burns [MI-5/Spooks Season 8]

So MI-5 [aka Spooks, in the UK] is an awesome, smart show full of great characters (who have the life span of fruit flies, but they are GREAT), and you should all be watching it (first 4 seasons or so are streaming on Netflix; the even-better later seasons are on Itunes or cough mumble internet somewhere thingy).

However. Season 8 does not keep up with the usual level of smart writing, at least not in the overall plotty thing. It has this ongoing villain group called Nightingale, that is up to shadowy unknown stuff, and is being handled SO stupidly they might as well call it KAOS and be done with it.

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"Did you check out that secret Nightingale meeting that we heard about?"

"I asked a couple of questions and the meeting definitely occurred, and we know where. But that's all I know about it after several weeks, despite having a small army of agents at my disposal who have, in previous seasons, done stuff like made contact with a dude while he was hiding out in an airmail crate on a moving truck. Let's continue to mention this secret meeting in every episode of the season."

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"Look, on the TV! That's the new head of security for [unstable country!]"

"Gosh, look on my computer! My 3-day effort to decrypt a Nightingale memory stick just completed this minute, and popped up a photo of that dude on the TV!"

"He's Nightingale's man! They must be trying to destabilize [unstable country!]"

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"This random act of violence doesn't seem all that random."

"Do you think it's....Nightingale?"

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They haven't had an actual nightingale bird fly in the window and land on an MP's shoulder yet, but I expect that at any moment.