Warning! This one will actually contain spoilers. I normally try to avoid them like the plague but this is about episode 5 from season two way back in December of 2022 so hopefully anyone who wants to watch it already has.
For at least a year people have been telling my wife and I "You have got to watch Slow Horses!". After a slow start where we watched the first episode about 6 months ago and then got distracted by other shows, we then raced through the next ten episodes in a week. We were enthralled! The acting was incredible. We both love Gary Oldman so his performance was no surprise. But literally everyone else was also performing at this high level. We also thought the writing was very clever and intriguing. It is a spy show that had some cool twists and turns. We really liked how it didn't treat the audience like idiots. You had to be paying attention to catch all the details.
In fact, right after we finished season two episode four last night, I was going on and on on how much I liked the show. We decided to watch the next episode. And then I was done. Before the episode even ended I told my wife "check please" and stopped paying attention. I took my phone out and started scrolling until the episode mercifully ended. We did not watch the episode and I have no intention to do so.
LOOK OUT HERE COME THE SPOILERS!
If you read my reviews, you might think I love every movie and TV show I watch. But that is not the case. I just can usually tell rather quickly if a movie or show is for me so I don't waste my time on it. By every so often, I get tricked. The last time I was tricked this bad was the TV show Homeland. Without getting into too many details, in one episode of that show, a character goes into a steel bunker a mile under the earth. An essential cell phone call is being attempted. This call will save the world! I paused the TV and told my wife "If this guy gets a cell signal in a metal bunker 1 mile under the earth, I'm done". Sure enough he did. I turned off the TV and walked away never to watch the show again. Maybe he's still in that bunker? Who knows?
Well Slow Horses did the same thing to me last night. The show has been incredible intelligent for 10 episodes. I assumed it always would be. But no. HERE'S THE SPOILER:
Although not as bad as getting a cell signal in an impenetrable fortress, something so implausible happened that I simply cannot forgive it. In my mind, literally nothing else that ever happens in the show could have really taken place so why bother watching? So one of the MI6 agents is undercover. He is looking for a Russian spy and also some Russian sleeper agents. Of course he finds them. But he does not know it is them. Why? Because the sleeper agent was a... WOMAN! Who would have ever guessed that women can be spies too? Ummm I would hope a trained MI6 agent would no that... but no. This was a nice wife and mother. She couldn't possible be a spy. She had to be a potential victim he needed to protect. Her husband (who happened to be a MAN) must have been the evil Russian spy.
This does not accurately measure my opinion. Mine needs to have flames shooting out of the ears and shaking at least 1 fist!
OK. That was dumb but I could have written it off to the fact he was biased and liked the lady's daughter and she was a great cool and hostess. But what happened next is simply unforgivable. The writers deserve to be punched. Hard. So after the spy (did I mention she was a... WOMAN!) uses a taser to knock out the MI6 agent, he wakes up. The sleeper agent and the evil Russian spy, who has already murdered at least two agents in the arc and presumably hundreds more, decide NOT to kill the MI6 agent. They are about to carry out a terrorist attack that will rock the entire world... and they leave the guy who can stop it alive. Why did they leave him tied up alone and alive? I have no idea. The writers didn't even try to include a semi-plausible excuse... because there isn't one! They would have immediately killed him and then carried out their attack. So in my mind, that character can't be alive. If he can't be alive, then nothing that has to do with him can ever happen. So why bother watching? Simple answer... I won't.
Oh well it was good for a few episodes. On to something else.
Have you ever rage quit a show like this?
