Roush Review: Dizzying Twists Make ‘The Diplomat’ Season 4 Edge-of-the-Seat TV

The Diplomat

Matt's Rating:

I bet you can’t watch just one.

I’m not always a fan of the binge model practiced by Netflix and copied (often to their detriment) by some of their rivals. But when a rip-roaring, thrillingly riveting, and sensationally entertaining event comes along like the fourth season of the Emmy-winning political drama The Diplomat, I get it.

The twists come quickly and often in a series where the global stakes couldn’t be higher, and the interpersonal as well as romantic stakes are more fraught than ever. Series creator Debora Cahn, a veteran of The West Wing, leavens a terrifying scenario of international intrigue with some of the wittiest dialogue that will have you giggling until the next dizzying shock stifles laughter into an “OMG” gasp.

Netflix

This is the kind of show where the harried heroine, U.K. ambassador Kate Wyler (the brilliantly brittle Keri Russell), explains her latest state of agitation by remarking, “Toppling foreign governments gives me intestinal distress.” There aren’t Tums large enough to cope with this sort of crisis — and no, I can’t even hint at the circumstances that prompt Kate to make this confession.

Loose lips sink more than ships on The Diplomat, which began several seasons ago with the investigation into an attack on a British aircraft carrier. Kate’s diplomatic mission, and her relationship with the mercurial Prime Minister Nicol Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear), grew infinitely more complicated once it was revealed that the then-Vice President, Grace Penn (Emmy winner Allison Janney), helped orchestrate the false-flag attack in a complicated ploy to keep a naval base in Scotland. When Penn became the accidental president upon the sudden death of her predecessor, naming Kate’s calculating husband Hal (a droll Rufus Sewell) as her vice president, the cover-up created an undercurrent of tension that has never let up. As if that weren’t enough, in the Season 3 cliffhanger, Kate learned that Grace and Hal conspired to remove a doomsday nuclear weapon from a Russian sub that had sunk near the English coastline. Without telling anyone.

No wonder Kate has a serious case of reflux. And that’s just the starting point of Season 4, where the looming threat of geopolitical war provides a backdrop for a ferocious battle of the sexes. Hal and Kate keep trying to repair their long-distance marriage amid so many fearsome state secrets, but even Kate admits, “I’m a strong flavor.” Also at odds: Penn and her mate, the restless First Husband Todd (Janney’s fellow West Wing alum, Bradley Whitford), who senses a disturbing change in Grace’s behavior while trying to figure out a meaningful role for himself and not get in anyone’s way. Which he inevitably does.

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Two other major players, CIA London Station Chief Eidra Park (Ali Ahn) and Stuart Hayford (Ato Essandoh), Kate’s earnest No. 2 as the U.S. Embassy’s Deputy Chief of Mission, also find that navigating a fractious relationship isn’t easy when the world is falling apart around them. To The Diplomat‘s credit, these romantic subplots never feel like distracting filler, instead amplifying the emotional and personal toll of the heightened chess game they’re all trying to survive.

The eight-episode season builds to a fateful G7 conference in Italy, where each of these chronically compromised characters faces a reckoning. The way it plays out reminded me of the West Wing heyday, when you’d see those idealized public servants do or say something so remarkable you couldn’t help wishing they were actually running things. Season 4 delivers another shocker in its final moments, and I’m already counting the days until I can devour the next one.

The Diplomat, Season 4, Streaming Now, Netflix