Spooks Review 9.7: Spooned, Knifed And Forked

Harry lets Lucas meet old school Vaughn: usually good, but he recommends an extremely long spoon

In which Harry introduces Vaughn to Lucas, Ruth meets an unreliable source, Vaughn gets pressured, Lucas checks Malcolm´s mum medical history, Maya gets in Vaughn´s car, Vaughn gives Lucas/John some pictures, Lucas tells Harry his real name, Ruth is brave, Dimitri picks up a Frenchman, Maya can´t save Michael, Malcolm follows Harry´s protocols and Harry still believes in Lucas.

~~~~~~~

The story of the week is about a bombing on a British Ambassy in Dakar in 1995, 15 years ago. Harry and Lucas are in a car at the docklands where they meet someone for a rendezvous. The bombing was blamed on a nascent AQ-cell, but there was never any claim. Lucas shares that he was there a year before he signed up, to find himself, being a rally addict. At the rendezvous they meet Vaughn who has some intel about that bombing, for a price. Vaughn tells them it was done by British people. Harry tells Lucas he will have to go to the Home Secretary to beg for money. Lucas offers to dig for those files, but Harry wants him not to be involved and will task Beth.

Ruth talks to a, what Dimitri calls a, ´walk-in´ on the Grid, a council snooper who investigates illegal dog ownerships and has a interest in spying. When he followed a woman, she made a ´dead-drop´, which she left a little note in a newspaper, on it: two clues. Ruth has to send the man away. Dimitri finds out that the man applied for Spooks in three consecutive years, but was traumatised by his wife´s death, which labels him as ´an unreliable source´.

Vaughn gets inside his house and two Chinese men are there to threaten him to harm Maya, if he doesn´t give them the Albany file today.

Harry received a letter for Ruth in which the Greek family of her late husband George asks her permission to sell the house. Harry understands Ruth´s feelings for not wanting to marry him, because she might blame him for George, for not protecting the boy.

Ruth makes a call from a public cellphone in a park to a Greek woman.

Beth checks out the files what Lucas North was doing in Dakar 15 years ago, while Lucas checks Malcolm´s mum medical history.

Michael/Vaughn picks up reluctant Maya outside the hospital. Maya says she´s now with John. Once she is in the car, he aims a weapon at her.

Ruth is in the park and the council snooper encounters her. She has to be cross to get rid of him, which she feels bad about and tells Dimitri.

Vaughn calls Lucas/John at the Grid. Vaughn passes the cellphone to Maya who asks him to confirm that John is a spy. L/J doesn´t want her to get hurt. Vaughn says that if L/J hadn´t done what he was supposed to do, then he wouldn´t be in danger. Vaughn says he doesn´t want to hurt her, that it´s the Chinese he works for. Beth has a print-out of an old file of Lucas North, whose picture doesn´t resemble that of Lucas´s face. Beth follows Lucas outside who takes a cab.

Vaughn gets knifed by Lucas/John for lacking passion about their common past and Maya

Lucas/John finds Vaughn on a bench at a kindergarten playground. Vaughn says he´s been tracked and listened at by the Chinese. Vaughn shows L/J passionate pictures of Maya and John, while saying he still can´t get used to see these. L/J thinks Vaughn is good at manipulating people, but not at passion, and stabs Vaughn with a knife in the leg. Beth warns Harry through comms and gets in a face-to-face with L/J waving the weapons. Says that Harry wants to help Lucas like Harry helped her, that he saved others and that they believe in him. L/J wants Beth out of the way.

Ruth arrives at the home of the council snooper and finds a key behind the letterbox.

Maya is stuck with handcuffs at the floor in some industrial site as she sees Michael/Vaughn falling of the stairs, with a knife still in his leg. She, being a doctor, wants to help him, but he doesn´t trust her offer, as she may take advantage of the situation to escape.

Ruth finds no-one at the house, yet she gets sedated.

Beth and Lucas are in another safe house. Harry asks Beth to leave them alone. Harry confronts L/J that there were two Lucas North´s in Dakar, in 1995, and hands him a large picture of Lucas North. Harry mentions the bombing happened on his watch. L/J says his name isn´t Lucas North, but John Bateman. Harry thinks he thought he had his share of betrayal, but this does it all. Lucas tells about his morally fluid past and that he had to run well paid errands for Vaughn, who was a mercenary. So there was a package for the British Ambassy. Vaughn was being set up. Harry thinks it suited L/J to believe Vaughn. And there was Lucas North, wanting to get in the Service and had passed the first checks. L/J only needed to borrow his passport, but he refused. So Vaughn had to kill him. Harry gives Lucas his weapon back saying: betrayal is a cancer, let it eat your soul, not mine.

Dimitri picks up a French assassin, and calls Harry that he thinks Ruth is in danger, as she crashed the party. Ruth´s phone rings and that alerts the Frenchman in the room. She fights and manages to get his weapon. The council snooper shoots first, Ruth second. Harry and CO19 take over.

Lucas frees Maya and tells her to wait outside. She is concerned about Michael/Vaughn´s health. Vaughn is onto L/J. Telling them it was Vaughn who killed Lucas, while it was John all along, knowing full well the implications! (see quote)

Ruth and council snooper are at the hospital. Ruth is released, but the man feels very emotional about killing someone. Ruth has some ethical words for Harry.

Malcolm visits Harry and said he had a visit by Lucas about a file, which Harry knows as the Albany file.

Harry gets a call from Lucas, pretends it´s all normal, but Lucas doesn´t trust Harry. Maya sits in the car. Harry insists that Lucas is foolish, but invaluable to him. Lucas states that Lucas North is dead!

Vaughn:

You're a killer who fell asleep. Dreamed he was a hero.

Now it's time to wake up and discover the truth.

The dream is over. And the killer is awake.

Question of the week:

How long are you allowed to mourn about a dead person?

Michael just died. It´s got to be forever with John who just got forked not to be Lucas anymore...

~~~~~~~~~~

Tease: Vaughn breaks out in a sweat, erm, no, finally, it´s the kitchentable teaser

Anti-climax: picture of kitchentable teaser

Remarkable: Vaughn shakes hands with John and with Lucas: twice in total

Crush/crasher: Vaughn is an ambiguous opportunist; IG in zombie slasher: pass!

Nice: Ruth has more screentime this episode

Flashbacks: croupier work, meeting Vaughn, the real Lucas North, a bomb, a bad memory

Interesting: the baddier L/J became, the more I buckled up for this rollercoaster! Lucas the hero was adoring, but now there is a bad past, yes! I expect this to be nicely reprised by his next role as an ´convincingly evil spy´ in the Captain America movie

Good: Lucas comes clean

Bad: John is bad, bad, bad!

Replay: long scene with Harry and Lucas/John, who´s explanations got me reminding Patrick Stewart´s passionate monologues in Star Trek: The Next Generation. As in: good!

Prop: pictures

Hope: Maya can forgive John

Verdict: no heroics

Screencaps: RAcentral