‘Slow Horses’ Season 5 Finale Recap

0:00Joanna Robinson:This episode is brought to you by America's cookout classics, Heinz, Kraft, and Oscar Mayer. This summer, we're celebrating 250 years of American cookouts with all the classics, Heinz, Kraft, and Oscar Mayer. Rob, what's your ideal cookout scenario? First of all, I want you on the ox. I trust you with that sacred responsibility to pick our music. I'm going to have to man the grill, and I'm going to need like a copious amount of condiments. I need every possible fixin imaginable. Well, make sure to top your burger with only the best, Heinz, ketchup, and Kraft singles. And you know, it's not a cookout without Heinz ketchup and mustard.

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1:20Joanna Robinson:Hello, welcome back to the Prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Joanna Robinson. and joining me today, it feels like for the first time, just the two of us in a very long time. It's Rob Mahoney, back from the dead. Rob Mahoney, how are you doing? I'm doing well, Joe. I like to think that it's not just you and I, it's you and I and all the buzzy, buzzy bees out there. You know, we're really part of a larger hive. Fair enough. We're here to wrap up our spotty coverage of Slow Horses season five. Sorry that we've been on again, off again a bit this season. There was a lot going on. Yes. Please forgive me in particular, as you can probably hear and have heard.

1:54I have been on the brink of death. But I am back. I have risen.

1:59Joanna Robinson:Yeah. I mean, I simply could not be held down from talking about slow horses for that long. It's true. It's true. Rob was like, Rob was very gracious about me doing the pod last week with someone else. But he's like, please, please, I want to do the finale. And of course, like, why would I want to do the finale with anyone else? You know what I'm not gracious about, though, Joe? That we waited, or I say we when I mean you, until I was gone to have Alan Seppenwald on the podcast. Just extremely messed up. Um, well, let's have Alan back and please hang out. One of the greats. Alan was very gracious to come on last week for not just a chat about slow horses, but like sort of a state of Apple TV plus and stuff like that.

2:34Joanna Robinson:Great stuff because Alan is like an absolute legend and the best and really good to talk to. But Rob, I've missed you. I've missed talking to you about television. So here we are to talk about wrap up slow horses. Really quick programming reminders. Rob and I are. So we're wrapping up slow horses today. And then next week, at the end of next week, will be the beginning of Pluribus. We're just staying on Apple. We're staying in the Apple Orchard with everyone else. Pluribus is doing a two-episode premiere on November 7th. And this is the new show from Vince Gilligan. Rob, anything you want to say about Pluribus?

3:06Joanna Robinson:Like, why we're covering it? Why you're excited? Anything like that? I mean, I just think the names, Vince Gilligan and Rhea Sehorne, we should also add, is just enough to basically get us to sign up for almost any show. But I have not dug into the episodes yet. I believe you have, Joe, seen the screener for Pluribus, right? Just the first episode. But we will be covering two episodes on November 7th. So I still have one to watch. So good to keep a little ahead. But I mean, your initial your initial excitement, it really did get me pumped about. I watched it just to sort of see if we wanted to cover it in the first place.

3:40Joanna Robinson:Not that I doubted it would be great, but just sort of like to see. And then and then I just thought it was amazing. So I'm very, very excited about that. So we will be covering that week to week, unless one of us gets another deathly disease or something like that. And then we'll see what happens to us. And then as always, even though we're wrapping up the season, you can always reach us at two email addresses for Slow Horses. Rob, what are they? You can always reach us at Prestigetv at Spotify.com, but in particular for Slow Horses at ArstimeThePope at gmail.com. And I mean, get them in while you can.

4:15You know, Slow Horses will be back presumably quite soon, as is the show's custom. But we love getting the Slow Horses emails to that address in particular.

4:23Joanna Robinson:So we're going to do sort of like a big picture. I'm curious because I haven't talked to Rob about, you know, all like the last four episodes that he's watched. So we're going to do sort of a bigger season check in with Rob. We're going to talk about this episode, of course. And then there is, as is a tradition, a trailer for season six attached to the end of this episode. So including some faces I'm very, very, very, very, very excited about. It feels like maybe custom built in a lab just for me. So thank you so much, Slow Horses. So we will talk about that when we get there. I definitely texted Mallory Rubin and Chris Ryan some blurry screenshots of people.

4:57Joanna Robinson:And I was like, oh, my God. Oh, my God. I'm so excited. All right. So Scars is the name of this episode. We were having a chat before we started recording about what we thought this episode title meant. Rob, would you care to share with the class what we came up with? I mean, I think the obvious one is sort of the geopolitical scars that exist between, you know, countries like England and the greater United Kingdom, any like colonial nation and, you know, places like Libya and the people who live there. Like that one seems right there are top of the page. It's so funny. That was Rob's first instinct.

5:29Joanna Robinson:And my instinct was like, is it not the literal scars on the bottom of Jackson's land's feet that closed the episode? Jesus Christ. So two interpretations of this title. I mean, we love an episode title that means a number of things. And I'm sure it means emotional, geopolitical, all these other scars. And of course, those scars on Jackson Lamb's feet are indicative of a larger emotional scar, given that story that he told earlier this season about his alleged Joe, who was tortured and had his feet burned. and there was a question about whether or not he was talking about himself. I didn't think there was much question based on his performance, but there was some question and I saw because it's not clear in the book that he's talking about himself.

6:17Joanna Robinson:This scene takes place in a different book. The book readers were very active about this on Reddit and they were just sort of like, I don't think he's talking about himself. And the people watching the show, I think, were just like, but based on the performance doesn't it seem like he's talking about himself and i think this you know i mean we know that the shot at the end of this episode makes no doubt as to whether or not he was talking about himself and something i kind of want to start there even though it's the closing image of the episode because um well i i just want to start there and then get your your bigger picture ideas on the season but i want to say that what this season has given us in terms of that insight into jackson's uh backstory and and the foundation of who he is and also thinking about like the promo image for this season is him with his socked feet up on the desk like one toe poking out of the sock but like his his socked feet propped up on the desk which is like you know one of his favorite positions to take is the promo image for this season and so the idea that they're like stripping off the probably nastiest smelling sock you've ever experienced.

7:24Joanna Robinson:I can't even fathom to show you the mess that is underneath and doing the same with with Jackson Lamb, a character who has been a bit inscrutable for us in this series. I think it's really interesting. So what do you what was your experience with the season as a whole? And what do you make of this sort of extra insight into into Jackson? I thought it was a pretty fun season, you know, lean and simple and like maybe in some spots, like a little too simple. But I think slow horses does operate in that sort of register you know this is a show in a world that i don't know that it has like a lot more to say about politics than like hey aren't both of these guys kind of like hollow shells of people who are just like channeling bullshit for their various causes isn't that kind of funny and poking holes and like poking fun at that sort of thing that's totally fine like to me this is a show that knows exactly what it is knows the registers it wants to operate in and i think showed with this season it's just like infinitely watchable and repeatable I will consume this sort of pulp spy craft all day, every day, every season for as long as they want to make it.

8:25And Will Smith may not be long for this particular universe, but Gary Oldman certainly seems to be. And so as far as the Lamb part of that goes, I mean, I love the idea of peeling back some of the layers of that character. And not just that, but I think seeing it in a way where it's like, Lamb being so repulsive is such a put on, right? Like is a means of putting distance between him and other people. And so like the literalization of his gross sock being the thing that is preventing people from knowing the shit that he has been through. That feels like a perfect character moment for me.

8:57Joanna Robinson:I love that. And I think to go back to sort of our different interpretations of scars. I think it's worth thinking about the way in which these are all connected because it all comes back to David Cartwright. Jonathan Price is instrumental in this episode. But in season four, Lamb said that he used to have a heart before working for David Cartwright. And so much of his mental and emotional scarring comes from working under David. And I found, you know, you made a great reference to the Buzzy Little Bees, but I found that scene so sinister with David looking at the bees and talking to River about them.

9:39Joanna Robinson:And he was just sort of like, I like following them back to their hive, you know, like, you know, he's floating in and out of talking about literal bees and talking about, you know, the various cells, hives, whatever, inside of the Cold War. And, you know, and if we hadn't done this, they would have turned red. So we had to do it. But it's just sort of like, I don't know, there was something about the very, like, genteel British gentleman, reducing them to sort of like little, little insects that he's following. When we see the other side of it based on the Libyan characters inside of this season of here are the ramifications of thinking, here's one keystroke that Claude Whelan made.

10:19Joanna Robinson:Here are the ramifications of these actions that the David Cartwrights and the Claude Whelans of the world take. And even if they're just thinking of them as statistics and numbers on a computer or bees in a hive, these are real people with real lives that have been destroyed. And I just thought that was so well done with David. It was so sinister to me, couched in this like idyllic British countryside sort of setting, which is creepy. I mean, it's the power of this show that they can just like pull Jonathan Price off the bench. And he comes in for like a day of shooting and throws on the fedora and talks about bees.

10:56Like it is sinister in exactly that way. Like you're right, like reading between the lines and like part of the fun of that character. and I say fun, like even acknowledging that some of the David Carbide stuff for me is just like absolutely gutting to watch, right? Like characters at that stage of their life, like push a very specific button for me that's like always very emotional. And yet, you know, this is a person who has done absolutely heinous things and parsing every word and trying to understand where he is mentally from sentence to sentence in terms of what he's talking about is part of the fun of that character and is what makes watching like any interaction with River who is just like kind of loath to the responsibility of like feeling his grandfather as this burden that he has to attend to, even when sometimes he's trying to tell him things that are actually important to doing his job and sometimes telling him things that are just like the saddest thing you've ever heard in your life.

11:47That's just like happening on the edges of this story. Like as far as like the very propulsive parts of Slow Horses, they nail that sort of character stuff, which is what makes the show as good as it is.

11:57Joanna Robinson:I was thinking about that as it pertains to you know Alan and I were talking last week about this idea of how the world is populated and we were talking about the way in which like Judd shows up this season shows back up again in this episode to be an integral part of how the plot spins out and I was thinking about you know characters we meet this season like Nick Muhammad's character Jeffrey like I kind of thought he would be more involved in the season than he wound up being but now we know who the mayor of London is right and so So anytime the mayor of London comes in and it's Nick Muhammad, even if he's there for like an episode of a scene or something like that, like that populates the world out.

12:37Joanna Robinson:We got Molly was in this season. David was in this season. I was hoping for more from Dodie Gimbel. But like now that we've met a like very nasty tabloid columnist, like I'm sure that's a character that could be used in the future. And a widow potentially scorned. Right. It's like she has this whole new arc to her life that is sad but interesting in the terms of TV storytelling. And like, I could see her being used in all kinds of ways in future seasons. And I think to your point of like, even though Will Smith is leading this idea that Gary fucking Oldman is anchoring this show and a show that has gotten awards attention means that to hop forward to the season six trailer, I don't know how much Hugo Weaving is in next season, but like I could see him show up for like an episode, you know?

13:21Joanna Robinson:Totally. These characters are just going to populate this world with like really interesting performers in tiny roles inside of Slow Horses. And they'll want to do it because it's such a great show. And, you know, it shines their CV, even if they're only sort of tangentially in a season. So, you know. Well, there's something to like the British TV model, too, as well. When it's like when we're talking about a six episode season, you may only be in one episode, but that is a substantial part of the overall arc. Right. Like all of a sudden it is kind of meaty and important, even though it is like a guest starring performance.

13:54I did get some of that out of Nick Muhammad this season where you're right, we're building out the world. We now know the mayor of London. They just created somebody who is the most cringeworthy man alive. And like you and I have not discussed Lunderful, Joe. Every time he says the word Lunderful, like my entire body skin crawls. Him quoting Dominic Toretto at the memorial, Like, to me, he is the epitome of, you know, we got the Diana Taverner bomb a couple episodes ago of like heavy on hashtags, light on results. Yeah, yeah. As far as like modern activism goes. I mean, that character, like Jaffrey is just like such a perfect embodiment of that sort of philosophy.

14:32Joanna Robinson:I really agree. I think not just quoting Dominic Toretto, which was exquisite comedy inside of this episode, but doing it in close proximity to the William Blake hymn. And then he's like, these two things, like, just comparing the two of them was just really We all know that guy. I've been at weddings where that speech was made. You know, it's like, we've all been there. Yeah, really, really good. Okay, let's go back. Let's go back to the beginning and talk about. So the park has been had an IT incident has occurred and blinded them and shut them down. how was Roddy used this season for you and was it what you expected when we sort of had the idea of like a Roddy Ho season like how how did that all pan out for you it wasn't what I expected at all like when when I had conceptualized a Roddy Ho season I'm thinking oh yeah maybe he's a target but it's like you know a him and lamb road trip you know like they're bouncing around town trying to keep him safe like he is the the moving ball right that everyone is trying to get to for some reason or another i did not conceptualize him seeing himself as the hannibal lector him doing like weird pull-ups in an interrogation room like the physicality of that character and like i think his ability to remain such a central part of the plot and of all the moving pieces while being immobilized right like for half the season he's been in custody and yet he's still getting quips off he's still being super weird with emma flight in a way that makes me laugh almost every time they're on screen together like there's just ways in which like there's characters who you can't do that with right if you bench catherine standish and put her in a room we've kind of seen what happens with that and it it mutes that character and it limits her ability to you know have more interactions with lamb or river or at that time louisa like characters who are really important as reflections of where standish is i think what we're learning about roddy is that he's kind of just funny opposite anybody and in some ways the characters who know him least and are most like baffled by his whole deal are the most fun to see him with i really loved him in this episode uh just sort of lurking around the the it efforts of the park munching on an apple giving them shit we get the classic it crowd have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again moment um and then and then the ultimate insult to claude when ronnie ho is like you and me both right like Like, what chance did you have when Tara got one over on me?

17:07Joanna Robinson:So really, really good Roddy stuff in this episode. But yeah, in terms of like this idea of this being like a Shirley season or a Roddy season, like I don't really feel, it's almost like a Claude season, almost more than anyone else. You know, perhaps given how this, especially given how this episode ends with Claude seemingly out of the park, though surely still around, you know. He knows how to weasel. Exactly. we go into the libyan embassy and you know alan and i have been talking last week about the way in which like the north korean efforts in the books were were changed to libyan contingency in inside of this season and we had some questions about whether or not that was like effective the way in which these sort of like guys in the van uh whether or not their personalities were distinguished enough and um i we did get pushed back a little bit from some listeners who were i think you know i think alan and i haven't come up in the like era of 24 and a number of other like things where it's just sort of like guys and indistinguishable guys in a van brown guys in a van just like trigger something in us but you have your own scars joe it's true but i think that um you know some of our listeners were enjoying the way in which the libyan cause though of course it's like a very like killmonger we don't agree with the methods but they have a point and they're the way in which they're aggrieved against the uk and the way in which they are using the uk tactics is it is a slightly different spin on this because like you know every terrorist thinks that they're justified and uh you know we can talk about that forever if we wanted to but this idea that like the show feels like it's saying these don't these guys have quite the point here what do you think of that i think it is always fascinating the way that slow horses kind of draws a line between the types of espionage right like we have so much spy versus spy happening in a lot of these seasons where you're left to like think oh this is the good version of a spy and this is the bad version and i think part of the reason the slow horses themselves are endearing to us is because they are so relegated to the bench that they are not deployed in the field to say like disrupt the political system of another country like they are always on defense they are mostly in the uk and in london like trying to resolve some situation that has arisen but right the david cartwright version of spycraft as as we talked about earlier like is fucked up right like is inherently immoral is something that on an individual level these people have to deal with and on a national level we all have to reckon with based on the places where we live and kind of like our alignment and understanding of those things and how they sit in a in a political world like all of that is really hard to to unpack i think for the libyan cause in this in particular i would only i like i agree that the show's perspective seems pretty firm on how all that met like nets out i also think like it's not in its execution dramatically more sophisticated than like top gun maverick nameless enemy uh like we the the actual like messaging of the cause is basically drawn the line at like you fucked up our country and therefore we the members of this like group of security operatives are angry and responsive in different ways i think that's the area in which it works for me is not necessarily the messaging of the cause but that you have not even distinct personalities among this libyan group in particular but they do kind of want different things or at least have different ideas about what is fair recompense right it's like when when they paid is that enough uh when we carry out this attack uh on on a you know a like a service at abbotsfield like is that enough or does like do we have to keep going down the chain like where do we draw the line in terms of what is satisfactory to us like i thought that meant like that lent itself to good tv because not only do we get the reveals of the kind of splinters within this group but you get the reveals for the characters themselves of like oh i'm just like a pawn to these other people who i'm going to be left for dead within the libyan embassy because i don't actually matter to what they want i think it's really interesting that like i think what you say is very interesting and i think i think something that alan said last week because he had already seen the finale is he was like among these guys one of them behaves in a way that i was like really surprised by so that would be the person who peels off i would assume yes to to go after claude and i agree that that particular guy in the van all season was seemingly coded as like the guy who had the most issue with violence the guy who felt like the most squeamish about everything going on i can however reconcile that uh mentality with his messaging here when he peels off which is like enough innocent blood why aren't we going for the person who did the thing like why are we blowing up penguins when that guy is sitting in his comfy corner.

22:08Joanna Robinson:Exactly. So I can connect those dots. It wasn't where I expected that character to go. I thought that character was very much being set up as, I can't do this anymore. You have to stop. You've gone too far. And in many ways he is, but it doesn't mean he's like, now let's go join a drum circle. He's like, let's go assassinate Claude Whelan and who's amongst among us. You know what I mean? Really quick question for you, rob mahoney i actually don't know have you have you spent any time in the uk i have not okay which means you've probably never had a greg's sausage roll oh i would love one though based on my experience on like you know with great british bake-off etc i'm i'm very into the sausage roll world i just have not partaken myself greg's though uh is like is well uh our time the pope but you know like how about to get this wrong but it is like it it's like the subway sandwich of sausage rolls it's like a very like i'm already out it's like a very like it's very like a heavily franchise chain sort of situation however uh people have like this i mean maybe subway sandwich isn't the thing but like people have a strong affection for a greg sausage roll okay but it is um you know like fast food sort of uh anyway i'm not above that but i would love to hear the accurate if not subway representation yeah uh to ourstimethepopeatgmail.com like what is the comp here yeah what is greg here but the greg sausage roll that he got and i'm pretty sure it's greg's based on the the the bag but um i love this conversation about like is this the vegan one if it were meat it would be pink and i think that's a nice indictment of greg's right there um yes so yeah i did think like that whole moment of the sausage roll of lamb kind of talk like backdoor talking standish into making herself a hostage unwittingly was some of the best like lamb standish stuff we've had in a while like those are two characters who had so much screen time together in earlier seasons and have kind of been on the opposite sides of things in a lot of these him talking her into making herself a hostage is is one thing but also he asks her opinion on where tara would go if she was trying to avoid people and then that's where he goes right he's like he i mean this is the thing is like i feel like katherine is constantly like not considered uh not just by characters of the universe of people watching the show they don't consider Catherine but like and you know and he says it himself he's like they won't hurt a harmless little old lady right like this is this is Catherine's like invisibility cloak that she wears around around society but like he respects her ideas about you know what tactics to take and I think you know he'll never tell her that and uh you know she might not even have connected the fact that he asked her what to do and then did what she said should be done but um but it's there for us to see if we want to.

25:12Joanna Robinson:It is. I mean, look at her body of work this season. She was one of the first people to believe that there was a credible threat to Roddy. She stopped an assassination attempt on the mayor of London. And then she successfully extricated a terrorist from the Libyan embassy. Honestly, good spy work all around. She might be a nominee for best spycraft in these episodes. When we get to best use of spycraft, worst use of spycraft, which you told me you have, is it for this episode specifically or do you have it for this season? I have it for this episode specifically, but look, it also is feeding. It's trailing in from some previous episodes, for sure.

25:46Joanna Robinson:Okay, let's talk about some, not necessarily to step on that, but some candidates in the shooting at Abbasfield. Yeah, it's another shooting at Abbasfield. We have Ko, we have Shirley, we have River. Ko is leading the charge here because of that great physical comedy moment when Lamb says, like it would only occur to a psychopath or whatever and then just go just like gets up and walks out of the room really good stuff hilarious um we've got the three of them in there co kicks shirley a gun and shirley takes out one of the shooters like right away yeah which i i gotta say like i wasn't counting on a friendship forming between those two per se but kicking shirley a gun is basically her love language so i like i have no i have no choice but to interpret that like these are two people who understand each other on a fundamental level well i mean when you think back to the end of last season when he like took the gun from her and then killed the guy there was this like you know and he talked to her he talked her down and was like this isn't what marcus wants like all this sort of stuff like that took the gun and then he did the shooting so that was like a really great point interesting connection moment between those characters so yeah i'm very interested to see like what possible direction this this uh goes but yeah the idea that like shirley's been asking for a gun all season everyone's like why the fuck would we give you a gun yeah and then she takes the shooter out like within a second while river's shooting river's shooting wide uh the whole time so um and the absolute gall of river at the end of this episode to be like i'm so fucking good at this job and it's like my guy shirley and co bailed you out at abbotsfield the only reason you even saved claude's life is because pip the dog is overly friendly and disrupted the whole situation if not for pip you have done absolutely nothing through this entire season pip's owner running into frame and like a little patchwork vest being like oh i'm so sorry it's so friendly not reading the room at all um but to go back to abbotsfield so we get uh i love i love shirley's like shirley doesn't have a gun river's like we still have ours she's like fuck you river can't hit anything um surely takes out a one shooter immediately and then ko comes through with the payoff of the push knife how'd you feel about that i mean look it really it really came through an absolutely clutch performance from ko who can sneak up with the best of them but also look i love a bit of surprising grizzly violence and not only is it one stab of the push knife like he's going full stabby stabby in this situation as look as you have to do to uh take down an active shooter i'd say if my uh if i've ever found myself in that situation which part which role are you in in theory i'm co in theory i have a push knife okay theory i'm co though i've never snuck up behind anyone with any degree of stealth so it couldn't be me but let's say i get in close proximity to a shooter and i've got the push knife and their neck is exposed i'm not stopping at one stab are you stopping at one stab i don't know where all those arteries are co does but i don't and so i would just keep stabbing personally well apparently he also knows that this is a small enough knife like we're playing a numbers game you know like it doesn't matter how precise you are we just got we just got to take this thing and i really loved his delivery of you know when when uh joffrey's like where did you come from he's just like i walked up behind him very quietly it's very good he's really growing up this has been a really good season yeah yeah we were we had been discussing sort of like discussing like how would they use ko this season they how did you feel about the way in which they paired him with river like what did that do for you i really loved it it's really good again like a perfect avenue to give river like tons of shit for everything he's done wrong for all of the missteps there's also like an obliviousness to Ko that I really appreciate where it's like he is responsible in some ways for Gimbal dying and yet like it just kind of like water on his back like it's not really phasing him in the way that River is like rehearsing his lines for what he's gonna say to I am and Ko's just over here like eating cherries like I find like how not fussed he is to be a really nice addition to the slough house team yeah and i like the way that jackson always seems to know how to deploy his people and and who will pick up on what uh they don't always pick on up on it right away but he's constantly just sending out messaging for all of them to sort of pick up as as they may which is pretty great for adults with crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms every choice matters.

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32:24call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET.

32:26Joanna Robinson:We already talked about the David Buzzy Bees scene, the sting in the tail, all that sort of stuff like that. Anything else you want to say about this encounter between David and River? I think we hit most of the points. I think I was just so glad to see that there's still a place for him in this show and that he isn't just sent to the old folks home never to be heard from again, right? He is critical to the plot. Him calling River is an impetus for a lot of the stuff that ends up happening at the end of the season and so the fact that we get david back that we get molly back that we get peter judd back i'm ecstatic about all of those things i am devastated joe that we did not get louisa back at any point this season i was waiting to ask you but we can talk about this now rob how are you doing i really thought she'd be back we also haven't she's not in the season six trailer, which is not, well, there's one shot.

33:22Joanna Robinson:No. There's one shot where it's River and two other people are walking out of an airplane hangar and it's the back of their head. So there's a lot of back of the head shot in this trailer. Yes. And it's him and like a big guy. And in between them, there is a shorter person with like slightly curly hair. And I was like, are they hiding Louisa from us? Is that Louisa? We can only dream. This is my hope. So the framing of season six we get in the sneak preview is that somebody has stolen the slough house personnel files, is hunting down the slow horses for some reason. Louisa's got to still be in the file.

33:56And so I don't want our pal Louisa to be imperiled. But if it is a way to like pull her back into the orbit of the show, I can understand how we would get there. These are the limbs that I'm clinging to, Joe. We've now just gone through six episodes. River couldn't even get her on the phone. Like it didn't even ring. He's getting screamed.

34:15Joanna Robinson:Yeah, straight to voicemail, pretty tough. How did you feel about that? When he's like, I have no one else to call. You're it. Accurate. And then also being like, looks like I'm leaving Slough House too. Okay, so we've gotten a lot of, I don't know if you, did you see that really long email we got from, I think it's Caroline, who was like, it was a fantastic email. She talked about working in HR. She was talking about the way in which like the park thinks about Slough House and all of this sort of stuff like that. It was a fascinating email, but part of it was this sort of river. she's like it never occurred to me how much of a fuck up river was until you guys have been talking about it so much this season um and i do think it's part of what makes him so great we should say like i love that he's a fuck up it's why slow horses is right but i think part of it is genuinely part of it is getting him out of the black coats and putting him in that track suit because even when he goes to save claude and strikes that like very james bondy sort of pose which he holds for a beat after he shoots um this shoots the guy he just sort of like he's got like one hand holding clawed back and his like arm you know his shoulders are back and he's just sort of like i'm like i'm really good at my job right yeah but he's wearing this fucking dorky track suit while he does it and it really puts a damper on the whole uh mystique so oh completely but while we're here joe that has to be the fit watch of the week the track suit for river of the season I mean, look, it's been hard for anyone to keep up since Roddy's fits early in the season.

35:45But over a long enough timeline, Slow Horses has proven any of these people become Roddy-ho. They all end up in a track suit in the end. And so the fact that River got there was particularly delightful.

35:55Joanna Robinson:It's true. Shirley is like one track pant away because she's always in that windbreaker. It's true. I will say, though, let's give River credit where it's due. He does remember how many boots there were, even though he was the one who was like saying, surely you're full of shit the whole time. He remembers the boots. He takes David seriously. One conversation too late, but that's okay. Like we got there. Still got there. Yeah. And he does, you know, he goes, you know, takes Claude's wife's advice as to where to find him. I do want to say. I have some notes for Claude. uh it starts with crowded houses running music i don't know how you felt about uh fall at your feet uh playing loudly as he does his sort of cool down run down the stairs even for a cool down yeah like we're going with like coffee shop core for your run like why what is your pain what are the bpms you're trying to hit here because i feel like you're fucking right um i i also just love we already mentioned sort of his running technique earlier in the season but i have to like the way that he was like skip trotting down those stairs it's just like really good and then arstime the pope at gmail.com if you have any thoughts about this but he says you know he's he's been such a day he's talking to himself his driver is dead in the front seat and he's not paying attention he's on like winaroo.com i don't know like what you know um and he's like crack coconut bottle of chalk hill yeah okay this is where me a sonoma county resident can weigh in on this chalk hills the chalk hill estate is in sonoma county winery that's a good wine but it's like a fine wine it's not it's a perfect pick honestly tell me why you think that's a perfect pick well just because it is that like it's not actually like the sommelier's right it's just like a guy who has a little bit of money and like he's not going for the bot like the bottom shelf offerings of chalk hill it's more like the you know the premium 100 125 bottle of wine situation um that i kind of love that exact range for him that's like this is a splurge but it's also something that like people who are actually of this world would kind of turn their nose i just would never say and maybe this makes me sound like an absolute snob but i would never say like I'm going to reward myself with Chalk Hill.