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

[marydell]

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.

----

"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."

----

"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!]"

----

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

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

----

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.

Comments

[oursin]

I always thought Florence was probably dodgy (and in this context, maybe undead as well...)

[marydell]

"it turns out, that Crimean conflict? Nightingale orchestrated that to provide a cover story for their top operative..."

[txanne.livejournal.com]

KAOS? Piffle. Think of another small songbird of evil repute.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Maybe they brought over the writers for Spooks: Code 9... (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ptitlevu7a89mevbh7)

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Wow, that looks bad. Yet I feel a strange desire to watch it...

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Obviously, 'Nightingale' is a homage to T.H.R.U.S.H.

That being said, I stopped watching not long after Macfayden left. The show seemed to lose something with his departure.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Some of the characters they bring on after Macfayden leaves are pretty great, but it takes about a season for the show to hit its stride (and divest itself of more original characters). Ros Meyers is a wonderful character, I think, but she doesn't show up til season 5 or 6.

The sort of heartfelt thing of the tension between being a spook and being an ordinary good person did mainly go away with Tom and his two sidekicks, though. Other characters worry about it some but it's not what the next few central lead people struggle with--they have other struggles that are just as interesting to me, but they aren't as emotionally vulnerable as the earlier folks.