The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘The Agency’ Season 1 Finale: Sudden Eruptions of Violence

Episode Date: January 27, 2025

Jo and Rob lay a trap to recap the Season 1 finale of ‘The Agency.’ They discuss their thoughts on the season as a whole, how the final episode compares to the ending of the French series it’s based on, and how the Danny story line left them wanting more (2:37). Along the way, they talk through the dissatisfying payoff of the season-long tease involving Martian’s hospitalization and Richard Gere’s precise usage throughout the season (15:51). Later, they highlight how the show nailed the various forms of spy communication (31:55). Email us! [e-mail] Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of ‘The Prestige TV Podcast’ and so much more! Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Rob Mahoney Producers: Kai Grady and Donnie Beacham Jr. Additional Production Support: Justin Sayles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'm Rob Mahoney. And we're here to wrap up our coverage of the Showtime series, The Agency. 10 episodes. We have watched them all. We're here to talk about. We're just sort of going to do a big picture view of the season of television.

how we felt about the finale, how we feel about set up for a possible season two. And just as a reminder before we get into all of that, that we are covering severance week to week on this feed. We're having a great time. We're having a really good time. Everybody's talking about it. Everyone's talking about Birmingham.

It's great. We're also covering the pit. Yeah, don't forget the pit. I could possibly ever forget the pit. We're covering the pit. people really like the pit. The many medical professionals in our emails will not let us forget about the pit, that's for sure.

Yeah. I say with great affection, by the way. I appreciate. I appreciate their insights. I mean, my dad, who's a doctor, texted about the pit. So there we go. On the pit front, I should say, the extremely gratifying thing, and we'll talk about this when we talk about the pit again, is like, how many people emailed us to let us know they're

watching ER now as like sort of pit methadone between the episodes of the pit and having a great time with it. So that's classic for a reason. I assume ER is also on Max. Yeah, it's on Max. I think it's on Hulu. I think it's on Peacock. I think it's on you can find it all over the place.

But the brand synergists are winning. They're getting you to click over to that sweet, sweet ER content. They should just honestly just like start playing it as soon as the latest pit wraps up. Okay. So that's all we're here to talk. We're not here to talk about the pit. We're talking about

the agency, how are you feeling? So we've watched all 10 episodes. It's very clear that much like the French series that it was adapted from, they're aiming to have more than one season. I don't know that I knew that that was something they were aiming for, so I will say around episode 9 when we only had one episode to go

and Danny wasn't even in Iran yet. I was like, okay, we are pitching to her as a season two. That is a back burner plot line. Got it, got it, got it. So yeah, what are your thoughts? How are you feeling about the agency? I had a great time with this season.

I think it is intricate and methodical in a way that I really respond to. That said, like the best parts of the show, I think, set such a high standard in terms of detail and pacing and overall, like, the spy craft process that when things do feel like a little oversimplified or do feel a little rushed in the case of some of the back part of this season, you feel it more. And that's like, it's tough when you have to hold a show against the standard of itself. But I think it shows what the agency can be at its best. And ultimately, this is a season I really enjoyed. What, do you want to talk about like the things that work the best for you first or sort of dig into some of those things that slowed down for you? I think let's talk about the things that worked better first.

Okay. And ultimately, I think most of them were the things that were given more time to percolate and more time to work. And so some of the developments didn't seem like a sudden left turn from the thing that we knew. it's, oh, this is the continued evolution of what, for example, Paul Lewis and Samia mean to each other and how they are trying to have a continued relationship. And really all of the ways in which the personal and the professional are sort of interacting for these two people. Yeah. And I think for everyone, like the, if this season has a thesis, it's that like, you know, Naomi is the character, Catherine's character who is costly banging the drum of like, there's friends and then there's targets, you know?

You don't care, you don't get personal, you don't care. And then, of course, we see her care very much. Yep. You called out very early, Joe, that she seemed to be making some eyes at Martian in a way. This is genuinely my favorite thing that happened. And it's not just because I was right. It's because like, Dr. Rachel Blake calling out Naomi to be like, oh, is that because you're in love with him too?

Yeah. It's almost like love is, what's the word I'm looking for? Near-sighted? It's one of those. but not quite that one. Okay. It's blindness, guys. Oh, that's it.

That's right. Thank you. Thank you. I actually, I loved how that was executed. When she says, you know, that he,

that Martian tries to make everyone fall in love with him, that that's like his thing. I was like, you're right. And Fast Fender does it too. He certainly does. But then to watch Naomi go through this

and under, like, rewatch footage of herself. talking to him and what she was or was not actually absorbing at the time. I thought it was really, I thought that was really well done. And also I was right. But also it was really well done. That stuck out to me.

I think some of the wrap-up of, you know, like the Felix wrap-up, the way that some of those tales come together. I'm going to talk in a bit about, we had a bunch of listeners. listeners write in to say like, hey, you should really watch the French series that this is based on, Le Birore. Which, fair enough. Rob and I were like, yes, yes, yes. As soon as we're done with Squid Game and rewatching all of severance and doing this on the other thing, we will watch it. Remember that we agreed to do like eight podcasts in the last working week of 2024? Remember when we did that?

We're so smart. We signed up for that. Yeah, we are brilliant. Anyway, here we are. I did not watch all of Le Bureau, but I did not watch all of Le Bureau, but I was. I did watch the season one finale of that show, just to sort of compare and contrast. So we can talk about that in a second.

Can I ask you one first blush impression based on that? Who wore it better? Which finale? I know you didn't see the full season of LeBiro, but do you feel like it put a bow on some things in a different way? There's so many decisions that this version made that are somewhat bass. here's what the a core difference that is

an sort of insurmountable problem for this adaptation is the French version we are following French spies and when the Martian counterpart defects he's defecting to the CIA

which just feels more insidious that oh and I need to tell you I'm so excited to tell you Rob Mahoney, sports enthusiasts, Texas Native Sun. Oh, wow. It's all coming together. So inside of this, inside of the agency, it's Hugh Bonneville of Downton Abbey fame,

who is sort of the MI6 official who is, okay, his counterpart in Le Bureau, who is a CIA agent, is Buddy Garrity from Friday Nightlights and the scream I scrumped when that happened I cannot even begin to tell you so imagine like just the good old boy Texas draw of Buddy Garrity as a CIA agent who's like we own you now

buddy guy can you defect from French intelligence to East Dillon please is a different proposition altogether. Sure. It just seems much. And then there's like, there's a, yeah, I'll get into all the differences here.

There's a big twist that I'm not going to get into because I, I guess they're saving it for season two. So I guess I did spoil myself. Okay. But it is such a massive, I was expecting some sort of turn of the screw here at the end of the season and I, of the agency. And I'm not really sure I feel like we got it. Like, we got Coyote back.

And, you know, two out of the three. Hot Doctors Without Borders are okay. I know. And I have to say, pulled a very smooth grenade pull. That was some artful stuff. When they were like, we're going to do this, I assumed they were going to blow themselves up. But no, it's just like,

we're going to drop a grenade in this helicopter. And walk away in slow motion as it burns to the ground. And Danny got to Iran and like all this sort of stuff. So like I was expecting something like bigger. And the fact that he's going back to work as now a double agent for British intelligence is in and other self. But I will say LeBiro had like

something on a big cherry on top of that that sort of made that finale feel a bit more intensive. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zepbound terseptide may be able to help. Zepbound is a prescription medicine

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you've got something that can help. Erasing thoughts and restless nights won't stand a chance. Find Ollie sleep solutions for the whole family at ali.com. That's OLLLY.com. Another part of it, a thing that the Bureau has on its mind is maybe like a slightly closer examination of Martian's personality in terms of like, is it just love for Samia that is motivating him here? Or is it this idea of like he can't retire from the field he needs to be sort of like

in it? He needs to be wearing a mask. He doesn't want to be himself out there. He wants to be some sort of, you know, undercover version of himself at all times. And so that, which is more compelling to me than like true love conquers all at the end of the day. Though I do love a true love story. Anyway, do you have any thoughts about that? I do think they hint at some of that in terms of the, you know, there's the line about like all of the appeals of being out in the field but the comforts of home.

It seems like that's kind of where we're headed for season two of him getting to exist in both worlds. One thing I really admire about this finale and the way that a lot of the resolution wrapped up is almost all of our core characters are sidelined by the end, and they are observers of the main action. They are watching on a screen what happened. Martian himself is up in the hospital,

basically being interrogated by the other government that's trying to recruit him. They are not like active participants in rescuing coyote, for example. The card's been dealt, and they're just kind of waiting to see what happens and who wins. And ultimately, these are,

characters, especially in Martian's case, who want to be active, who want to be in the field, who almost doesn't know what to make of himself in an office in a lot of ways and has been trying as he might, including like drop shipping into Belarus at one point in these final episodes, just to get back out there again. And so he has succeeded in doing that. I understand. I know I need to think of this in terms of the fact that like Europe is much smaller than we think, but they're just like back and forth to Belarus with a much frequency. On the one hand, that's super interesting. I think that's really interesting. On the other hand, Danny, for instance, like, her presence in this finale felt quite inert to me when she was, like,

one of my favorite characters to follow. Yeah. I felt that. And then I watched the French version of this. And in that version, her character has been, like, taken, put in a hotel room. She's being held there. She doesn't know what's going on. She breaks out using like a spoon from her room service. She barters her like underwear for a cell phone. There's like all this stuff that she's like actively doing to try to get herself out of the situation. But ultimately she does what our version of Danny does, which is not break. Yeah. Which is only what she has to do is sort of like do do not under any circumstances break your story. Like that's the, like that's the, lesson that Naomi tries to teach Danny early on.

So that is still true for our character of the French. She just gets to do more than sit in a room and look tired and hapless, you know? But honestly, the doing, I think, is really important for a show like this. Because the reason that

some of the denser plot lines work is that the show lays out, these characters need to accomplish A, B, and C, in order to bring coyote home, whatever does they want to do. We're told very early, instead of very to understand. Danny needs to beat interrogation. Like, she's going to be

questioned and she's going to need to stay strong and overcome it and not give up her alibi or her alias. Like, she's going to need to be resilient in that moment and she's going to have to learn how to do that. But because she's not given a lot to do, it just kind of happens A to B every time. It's like she learns what the horse race

is that happens near her supposed on time and gets questioned on it immediately. Immediately. Yeah. And the also thing is, like, we saw her not break earlier when she was tormented by the guy she ends up like fucking that she already

wasn't breaking. She broke in this exercise with Naomi but it wasn't like a season long thing that she needed to learn and finally conquered. So that was a little funky to me but I'm excited like Danny in Tehran is exciting to me. I really

like that character and I'm excited to see her have to do all the things that she's going to have to do there. And then you mentioned in terms of the sideline, that's the other, like, that's another major difference, which I think is really interesting, is like, you saw a lot of, we talked about this earlier in the season when they had a sort of shootout scene that we actually thought looked like quite good and we were, like, impressed with it.

You can see a lot of the money on the screen in this, like, we've got the standoff on the road outside of the medical camp and then we've got the exploding helicopter and stuff. Like, all of a sudden we're in. like an action film. I'm going to tell you, in the French version, it's like night vision goggles on one monitor that they are watching. And it's like one convoy,

and we don't even have the other part with the medical camp, like, you know, with the, anyway, all that other stuff is not happening. It is a much, much smaller scale. And so I understand the impulse in a glossier, we've got more money.

We're American sort of adaptation. Yeah, I think the American part. it's pretty important. Yeah, to do like big action. But I thought that was a really interesting difference between the two. And I kind of, I don't know. I'm not sure exactly which one I like better. It's possible that if I had been with the French counterpart for Owen,

John McGarrow's character, who I love so much. I think John McGarrow is like one of my favorite things of this whole thing. And he's getting win after win after. win in these back episodes. He's getting posted note, booty calls. He's in the control room. Like, he's making it happen. He's doing it.

But, like, I think if I hadn't cheated and just watched the finale of the French version and been with that, like, that French Owen, I would have been more invested in his investment in, like, what's going on in this, like, weird little night vision gogg monitor. So that was like, and he's watching, like, two dots on a screen at one point. Like, it's so lo-fi. Oh, and also the French version doesn't have the whole thing where they hit him with a car. And, like, he's injured. That all, that stuff is so convoluted for no reason.

And it's just, like, dissatisfying payoff for this season-long mystery of, like, why is he injured and who is he talking to? I just didn't, I don't think it was worth that sort of twisty, torturous journey to get there, you know? That part didn't work. Like, ultimately, getting to the point where Martian becomes a double agent for the British is an interesting place to land the season. as you say teasing out the who is interrogating him question to be that not that satisfying doing the head fake of I actually really like the first conversation with Richardson is the name of that the British operative right where he basically like tests whether Martian will defect and then pulls the rug and says actually who cares I don't I'm not going to help you yeah when they're like street by his totally getting into his car and something like that yeah yeah that is interesting like the head fake is interesting taking this desperate person and seeing how far they're willing to go. that's good TV. When they just like manufacture a situation to hit him with a car for absolutely no reason so they can get him in a room to have a conversation we all know has happened,

that's where they lose me a little bit. And for that matter, you don't need to do the tease, like, show that as the open of the finale and then do the six-hour early loop back. Like, I just don't need any of that. I really agree with you. How do you feel like Richard Gere was used this season at the end of the day? pretty effectively. I actually really like him in this show

and I like him as someone who helps us understand really the fundamental tensions of Martian's character and of this kind of work, which is the matters of scale depending on who you are within the CIA or within an intelligence organization. He has this big speech about how he has to be conceptualizing the board in terms of decades and eras.

It's not about this person. It's not about this year. It's a long timeline of international conflict. And meanwhile, you have Marshalizing the board. who's trying to save one woman's life because I do think he loves her, first and foremost, and is trying to get her out of

a black site prison effectively. And to Bosco, as he says, she's less than a pawn. She is a non-factor on the board that he is operating with. And so I think having Richard Gere as a figure of authority, a person in that performance

who can realistically sell, a figure who can finesse people, who can manage up in particular and manage the, director of the CIA, the president of Yatou, who can be exactly as charming as Richard Geer can be, who can deliver these big

ideological speeches, and also have, like, a haggard, like, grizzled kind of feel about, like, I've been doing this shit for too long, and I'm kind of tired of having to hurt all these cats. I think it's a really important and potent combination between like the hazard, the haggard,

grizzled, I'm tired, and also the, like, dick swinging. Oh, yeah. I buy and sell information. that's what I do. That whole sequence I thought was really, really good. And to your point about, like, in terms of casting, casting him and then also casting Dominic West as like just the head on the screen, like, who we sometimes just like are watching from outside the room that Dominic West is on the monitor inside the conference room. I just want to say it was worth every dollar of Dominic West salary to have him say no nut dick clowns.

Money well spent. Yeah. You will always be famous Dominic West. You're the best. So all of that really works for me. And I think also just sort of the gradation of like you go from a Catherine Waterson to a Jeffrey Wright to a Richard Gear. I wouldn't put Dominic West above Richard Gear necessarily. But like, you know, all of that sort of stuff. Henry, that whole resolution with his brother-in-law, again, there just feels, it felt like it didn't really work for me personally. I'm with you. I think there's some things about those plot lines that are satisfying and there's some things that just didn't pay off

and you can tell what they're trying to do right? They're trying to put a face to this arm of everything that's happening right? Like there's a personal investment

in his brother-in-law being there. I like, like, I love what Jeffrey Wright is doing. I love as far as all these characters who have to kind of sit eye by and watch as things happen in front of them in the finale,

like Jeffrey Wright knows how to furrow a fucking brow, you know? He knows how to sell us the relief of the moment of seeing his brother. They're alive. Those are powerful things, and I'm not immune to them.

Did it make the Felix plot line feel any more satisfying? I wouldn't say so, but I also, I want to be like a little measured in that because one thing I do like about the agency a lot is that you never really know which are the head fake plot lines and which ones aren't, right? Like, we get a lot of false starts in the kind of intelligence gathering they're doing. And every screw that they're trying to turn, sometimes they just screw too tight and it blows up. And then they move on to the next one. And I like that not everything is...

Not the boots. Well, the boots did not go great. You know? That did not play at all. Yeah. Yeah, no, no. I think that's a really good point. And I think it's a really good way to compliment the show to say that, like, yeah,

we'll be introduced to a character. You know, we're with Richardson for a lot of it. Then we meet this woman who's sort of like his second. And is she going to be more important in season two? Or how much of my sister invest in this character? or this truck driver or this secretary or this, that, and the other thing. So I do think that that is interesting. So it forces you to pay close attention to everyone because is this person going to come back

and be important in a later plot? How is all of this going to work? I think that ties into the John McGarro element of this too, where I know some people who were fans of the original French series reached out after the first couple episodes of the agency and said that one of the things that they were bumping on was the awareness of the cast. They knew who John McGarrow was. They knew who Catherine Waterston was.

And so it was telegraphed to them in a different way. Like, oh, these are going to be important characters. Whereas if you're drop shipping in to an acting scene you may not be as familiar with, like, a stable of French actors, you can't so quickly identify, oh, Owen's going to have huge moments this season versus like, what would John McGarro be doing here if he wasn't going to have some kind of moment? I love the respect we put on John McGarrow's name. As we should. to me. Yeah, and I think that's why someone like Sarah Lightfoot Leon who plays Danny who is like really good because like we don't know her.

We don't have any associations with her. And I agree. Like watching Le Bureau and like I know the actor who is playing Martian, Mati Kassavits, who I know from Amelie, et cetera. And I know that like Matthew Amarik is in a later season, I think. but I didn't see him. I only saw one actor, basically, that I recognized plus Buddy Garrity in the Viro finale.

And I agree that it changes the way that you imprint on those people. You don't come with expectations. And it is a joy of watching, you know, like a Squid Game Season 1 or something like that where we as American audiences are largely unfamiliar with some of these performers. But, yeah, I mean, overall, I would say I had a great time with the agency. It's something that I like that we checked in on. But also, and I usually rail against it, I could see this as a very pleasant binge experience. Sure.

I could see just like mainlining. I don't feel like I needed to marinate in the themes or intentions or character studies of anyone in the agency, that it is like top tier spy shit. And I love spy shit, but spy shit, I don't think I need to like, you know, soak in. I feel fine sort of clicking next, next, next. How is Danny going to fuck over this colleague in order to get to Tehran? You know, sort of thing.

Just kill a grandmother or two. It's no big deal. No, she's letting Swiss doctors do it. It's fine. It's different. It's a meaningful distinction, I suppose. I'll disagree with you a little bit on that. Just because I think the whiplash of the plot lines

might be a little intense if you're watching four episodes in a night. And so having a little bit space for these things to marinate. Again, it works better on some sides of the board than the other. But just taking how the threads come together in Ukraine, for example, is a very intricate process. Like, at the risk of over-recapping our recap show, this is the chain of events that leads

things to tie up in Ukraine. We have the bike auction, which is run by someone named Cossack, who is selling information about Coyote. That guy turns out to be a retired KGB general who tells the Americans that Coyote is being held by this general. Volchuk, who's guard, who's like, has his mercenary group Valhalla. The CIA then goes to Alexi, who's the guy we knew earlier in the season from the wooden duck situation. They re-recruit him, basically force him to help.

And all he really does is get in the room with Volchuk, sell him some lies and be able to say who else is in the room, which points them to Sylvia, the secretary and the whole boot debacle that we laid out, does not go great. Volchuk sees right through it. He sees right through Alexi, for that matter. Not everything is going well. They lose the beat on what was supposed to be a tracking device. But, they know he's on the move because they recruit another asset in Leo Kravitsky who's just disgruntled enough to be exploitable.

They do that in a matter of hours by identifying that he's been in the business for too long effectively. And that brings Marsha- WhatsApp groups talking about it. I mean, look, a WhatsApp group and you just like put a picture of a hot woman in there and all of a sudden

you can pose as a Russian general is what I've learned. And then you put some poetry in there. Look, I haven't tried it, but it might work. All of which is to say, like, That's just how we get to the information of where coyote is, much less actually get to him. And I am a sucker for the legwork of that. Like, that's a process I really enjoy watching unfold. And I think it's ultimately a show that's probably thus far much more successful on plot than it is on character.

I was going to say exactly that. What you just described, which is really fun to listen to. Thank you so much for Rob Mahoney. It's on here for it. It's really fun to watch. Plot, plot, plot, plot, plot is really fun. But I'm not feeling like character, character, character, inside of it. of all of that.

And so I think that's why it feels like, is his prestige television? Yes, absolutely. Based on the caliber performer. We talked about Joe Wright as a director, set deck visuals, all this sort of stuff. Like I would call his prestige television, but I wouldn't call it profound prestige television.

I don't think it is like changed the way that I think about people or the way that I think about myself in any sort of way, which is I think an ideal, you know, we're covering severance at the same time. Severance makes me think. about a lot. You say a lot in our most recent severance pod that made me go, uh-oh,

do I need to look at the mirror about my own work-life balance? Like, that's like the prestige of the prestige. That's the ideal. This is glossy. This is good. Yes. But I, and I would recommend it to people. I would recommend it certainly to like dads out there.

This feels like a real dad show sort of thing. But I, but I wouldn't say this is close to the best thing I watched this year or any year, you know? I'm inclined to agree with that. Like, I really enjoyed it. Again, I enjoy the plot mechanics a lot. The character stuff, I don't even know if it's ever going to quite get there.

And I'm curious for fans of the original series if they felt that that's like a very character-rich show or just one where they enjoy the spy craft. Because as Martian lays out earlier in the season, to do this job, you have to be pretty insane. You have to be kind of on the edge of a kind of sanity. And because of that, the problems that they run into are not. very relatable to people like you and I. They are very understandable within that world. And I enjoy learning more about the psychology of what it takes to be a spy. And in particular, I would say the back half of the season does a really great job of this.

It's just time after time after time. Every time they need to recruit a new asset, it's who is vulnerable, who is compromised, who can we compromise? And how do we twist them and turn the screw? And so to contrast that with a character in Martian, who is himself incredibly compromised and now we see by the end as being being turned by another government, like those things, I love the way they tie together. I'm just not sure it tells me a lot about human nature so much as like the difficulty of

doing this exact kind of work. I guess you're right. I guess when we think about Severance and Lumen, I can relate to certain jobs I've had, whereas if you watch Danny get her colleague cooked up in a bathroom so she can talk about her ill mother, I've never done something similar, unfortunately. What makes you sad, Joe? I'm not telling you on Coke in a bathroom and a club, that's for sure. That is wise.

That was a great sequence. I really liked it. Okay. To that end, in terms of talking about Martian's vulnerability and his exposure to being turned, should we talk about Dr. Rachel Blake, Harriet Sansom Harris' character, who's been here all season, sort of to give us wry commentary on the psychological inner workings. I'm not sure what she's here for anymore. It's very confusing her role in the show.

That's my question. Like, at the end of the day, do you feel like this was utilized beyond, I don't know, you know, she played an important expositionary role in terms of people had to explain things to her about how these things work? She played an interesting, not always interesting, sort of somewhat overbearing sometimes like morality role, like when she's shaming the idyllis. about the secretary and all this sort of stuff like that. So like, yeah, how do you feel about this character and how she is?

And also, why would she be in that room to question the agent about the secretary in the first place? If she's doing like a psychological debrief, I suppose, but like it doesn't make a time. But in the war room as an operation has happened? It doesn't make any sense. I don't understand her role in the office and what her level of authority is versus, you know, like she can't get Martian in a session. So does she not have the authority to do that? What is her level of authority inside of this organization? I felt like that was quite nebulous at the end of the day.

I understood her when she was the POV character, the kind of fish out of, not fish out of water, maybe unkind, but like someone who has no field experience and is having to learn the realities of this stuff for the first time. And I found her role in that much more credible than, say,

when Henry explains to Naomi, like, how it works when you land in Iran and, like, in what, like in what ways you would be abducted or not. Like Naomi would know that information. Dr. Blake might not.

And so she is a useful storytelling purpose to be explained to periodically. I understood that value. I understood her as a foil for Martian in session and as a way to explore some of those ideas and the performances. And I was actually really engaged by a lot of that stuff. I do not understand what she became.

And I think it's frustrating because if you watch individual scenes of Dr. Blake, it's like, I like this scene. I like that scene. I like this third scene. The performance is really fun. The performance is good. And she's given some interesting things to do within those discrete scenes.

But those three scenes, the character in them, has nothing to do with the other two. And so I don't know what she's supposed to provide. Like who she is relative to these people. Especially if you're going to not nail that to give her, to have her share this lingering look with Martian in the finesse. this final moment sort of look without really solidifying her place in all of this leading up to that, but it

didn't really work for me. Okay, I keep saying negative things. I did like the agency. I did enjoy it. I'm glad we covered it. Is there anything else you want to say about it before we go? I would say on the positive front, I enjoyed, and again, this is more like plot, practical stuff in terms of the way the story is constructed. How much of this season turned out to be about

how spies communicate and how much back-channeling has to be done, which is an obvious thing that I think you understand implicitly about when you work in clandestine operations. Like the cigar lounge move? The cigar lounge, the bike auction, posing as a retired KGB general's oncologist, all of the ways in which people are not allowed to speak to each other.

And so when you mirror that with someone in Martian or in this case Brandon who is posing as Paul Lewis, but is in love with this woman Samia, but can't be honest with her about literally anything until it's basically too late. I like the kind of juxtaposition of those ideas. And I love seeing the practical execution of literally, how do a bunch of Belarusians get in contact with the CIA

when they have information about one of their operatives that's been like lost on the map? You know, that stuff is, I think, very fun. That's true. And that's a great shout about the parallels between the two. Rob, you're a joy to talk to you as always. Likewise, Joe. Thank you for going on this agency journey with me.

We'll be back with The Pit and Severance. And thanks to all of you for writing in, PrestigeTV at Spotify.com is where you can email us and harass us for not having watched the original version of any other show that we cover. Anything else you want to say? Thanks to Kai Grady. Thanks to Justin Sales. Rob, you want the final word? I got none. I actually know.

In addition to Prestige TV at Spotify.com, you can email. us at our original the agency email address tip top in the pink at gmail.com, which we have to say nobody's tip top in the pink by the end of this thing. Really true. Okay, we will see you soon on this feed. Bye.