Still Fixated on Television - Now With More Accents!

God bless and keep you, BBC America1, for bringing to your subscribers Coupling (the American version? Total crap. The British version? A near-consistent delight until the last season, which was mostly crap.) and, what we're-a gonna discuss today, MI-5. If you happen to be on the side of the Atlantic where the show's produced, it's called Spooks. But that little colloquialism doesn't translate appropriately on the sinister side of the pond. But now you know what you're looking for if you're off to stalk Lucy Davis or something2.

This post catches you up, then, as an experiment, we're going to try recapping an episode of something that TWoP doesn't recap. Josh wants to make our own recappy site for... reasons passing understanding, so that might happen. If anyone else (like there's more than 3 other people that read this site) want to do that, we could do that. It might be fun until our brains melt.

Click the thinghy to continue.

Here's the deal: perhaps you've heard of England. Land of people who are, on the whole, more articulate than you, have funny names for things (bubble and squeak, anyone?), and whose imperial yoke we threw off a zillion years ago in favor of some stuff that seemed like a really good idea at the time. But we have things in common! Things like English, beer, and that terrorists want to kill us. Our story is about the good guys who sneak around, beat up bad guys, foil plots, and have Issues with their significant others because they have to be sneaky all the time, and tell people that they work for the International Peat Bog Preservation Society on the off chance that someone listening works for Al Qaeda3.

So. Series One found us joining Tom Quinn (Matthew Mcfayeden) and his intrepid team of secret agent men and women. He immediately starts hanging out with a wet-blanket girlfriend who has a cute daughter. She figures out that he doesn't work for an import/export firm when he comes back home lightly perforated with gunfire. They deal with can-they-can't-they know who he actually is, and WBG sadly doesn't get blown up at the end of the first season when terrorists plant a bomb in Tom's laptop. Though, she certainly doesn't survive because she was able to defuse it. Oh, no, she's completely worthless at that, and it's only because that bomb's a decoy that she survives. She would've been able to get out of the house if her stupid kid hadn't put peanut butter in the super-secure-door-lock mechanism that they had to install in Tom's house because Tom wanted to make WBG feel safe. She's crappy, and she breaks up with Tom in the beginning of Series Two, because she makes him choose between her and England, and of course, Tom chooses England, because she sucks and England doesn't.

But the cool part is the foiling of terrorists, which happens thusly: pro-life carbomber foiled by the team when they fuck up her cell phone so she can't detonate her bomb. She's American, they give her to the CIA, she's in deep doo-doo, even though Tom and the Gang tell her she won't be if she gives up her accomplices. Oh well, sorry bomber, sucks to be you. Enjoy Florida and the thumbscrews the CIA'll probably put you to. Race Riot Instigator, who's some sort of muckety-muck in the business world gets the attention of Tom and the Gang, but unfortunately, Helen, posing as Tom's wife for this mission, whiffs on a question from RRI's wife, which is overheard by RRI, who sticks her face in a deep-fryer and kills her. For reals. It's awful, and unexpected, and MI-5/Spooks would like you to know that they will be refraining from pulling any punches, thankyoverymuch. Please don't get comfortable, as the captain will not be turning off the fasten seatbelts sign, and will in fact be diverting into a cyclone. Enjoy. Hugh Laurie joins the cast briefly as the best MI-6 officer since Bond, being kind of a dick to our MI-5 clan whilst enjoying an opera and running super-triple-secret-agents against everybody. Good times. One of the 5's, Tessa, gets caught running phantom operatives and pocketing the money herself. Needless to say, this doesn't go over well, so she's not on the show anymore. Mostly. MI-5 foils a plan to make Air Force One land on top of another plane rather than somewhere conventional like a runway at Gatwick. Stuff like that.

While everybody was worried about Tom's stupid girlfriend maybe blowing up at the end of Series 1, they weren't paying attention to the real bomb that blew up the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Whoops. Stupid girlfriend. On the plus side, they figure out that the bombadier is going to blow up a COBRA meeting (This COBRA, not this), foil the guy, and instead of sending him to The Hague for trial, they fool him and send him to Egypt. And tell Egypt that he's also a pedophile, so he'll get the special pedophile treatment. Good for you, Harry Pearce. (Tom's boss, and basically the only guy who's not dead yet. (SPOILER!)) Let's zip through this some more, eh? The possibility of bombs at a mosque introduce us to Dr. Bashir who grudgingly joins the team in return for... something, immunity or whatever, to stop the imam from using children as suicide bombers. For a while, everyone thinks Doc's double crossed our MI-5 guys, but he's just doing things his own way. Of course, he gets his ass blown up for his trouble, just when it looks like he's talked Li'l Boomy out of taking his exploding vest out clubbing. I mention this at length, because it's a really extraordinary episode that doesn't get preachy about Muslim relations in England, AND you get the fake-out of "Oh, everything's all right, now. He's talking to the little kid on the playground, and they wouldn't let anything happ- OH DEAR CHRIST!" So, yeeeeah. There's that. Oh, meanwhile, we're introduced to Christine Dale, who's going to eventually be Tom's new love interest. She works for the CIA, and is able to not be a simpering wreck much. Which is good. Other good times from Series 2 include: mystery bomb goes off in Parliament Square, which turns out to be VX gas and everyone is super-screwed. EXCEPT, it's totally an exercise, and nobody knows about it, making everybody lose their freaking minds and reach the point where they're going to shoot each other. I recommend it. The season ends with everybody being kidnapped and drugged by some freaky-deaky ex-CIA guy who decides that it's time for a spot of revenge and not only kills the defense minister with a bad-ass sniper rifle, but frames Tom for it. Everybody and their mother believes that Tom's somehow lost it and is playing for the bad guys, so the only thing left to do, of course, is to end up in some house in Dover or whatever, and have Tom shoot Harry in the shoulder with a shotgun to escape. He then re-enacts the end of The Awakening, and we're to assume that he's dead by North Sea poisoning.

Season 3! Tom's been washed away to wherever, and Her Majesty's Government is not amused. Nasty Bastard of the Joint Intelligence committee will be a thorn in Harry and co.'s side for the most of the season, until Harry tells him to cram it. Our Gang has some delightful clandestine meeting scenes while they try to prove Tom's innocence (oh, right, he's not dead. Sorry.). Some raving loon (Adam - not a loon, and soon-to-be New Tom) shows up on a bicycle and lets them know they're being surveilled, and they scatter in a thousand directions as people we don't care about arrive in trench coats, and talk into their sleeves about how pissed they are that Section D got away. So Tom's in good standing, until he has to get Emperor Palpatine to be a spy, and has so much fun with it that he doesn't notice that Palpatine is now electrocuting people with his fingers and is building a Death Star in Shropshire. Or, he just can't handle the strain, and the entire operation goes pretty much pear-shaped, but Adam fixes it in a way that's not as interesting as watching Palpatine and Tom lose their collective mind. Harry tells Tom that they can't hang out together anymore.

Zoe meets a charming photographer (aren't they all), who becomes useful to the plot when his no-good brother outs Zoe as a spy with incriminating spy photos of spy stuff. Or something. Whatever, it's no good, but Zoe's real problem comes when an operation goes wrong and a policeman gets killed, and she's put on trial. Found guilty, she's going to go to jail, but Harry can't just follow the rules like normal, and sends her to Argentina, instead. They can't hang out together anymore. And she and Danny certainly can't pork, like Danny wanted to, and I forgot to mention. Oh, and Mr. Photographer has to think that she's in prison, but he's clever, and Danny decides not to keep that secret, so, Mr. Photographer is all "What's new, Buenos Aires," and they can't hang out together anymore. But Zoe and Mr. P can hang out with ex-Nazis4. Danny's not handling things well. Even though Cute Scottish Agent Sam wanted to be all up on him at some point in the season, that doesn't seem to go anywhere, and he gets all snippy with her, and she writes about it in her journal. I don't know. I just wanted to mention Cute Scottish Agent Sam, and I couldn't think of another reason to do it. She's cute and Scottish. Ruth (who I haven't mentioned, but she massages data) has an episode of her own where she falls for (and ultimately poisons awesomely) some computer guy who wants to send a magic algorythm to... essentially make it not secure to use your credit card on Amazon.com anymore. They're having dinner, she figures out that he's the bad guy, and keeps his algorythm in a suitcase, he gets poisoned awesomely, and she's okay. Danny chucks the suitcase into the Thames, because that's what you do.

Adam's wife was MI-6, but now she's MI-5 so she can work on stuff, mostly doing a shocking amount of blow undercover with some rock star and his wife whose baby is kidnapped. Nasty Bastard wants Harry and Co. to work on the case because it's vital to National Security, even though Harry thinks it's a load of bollocks and the police should handle it. Nasty Bastard disagrees. In any event, things aren't going so well for Mrs. Adam, and subsequently, Adam wants her out, Harry wants her in, Harry wins. In the "the show did WHAT?" category, it turns out that the baby was kidnapped at the request of Mrs. Rock Star, and the kidnappers were so incompetent that they thought it'd be a solid idea to put the baby in a duffel bag and toss the duffel bag over the fence to their confederates. Moral: don't toss babies over fences. Dead babies result, and by extention, stabbed fake kidnappers, stabbed MI-5 agents, really violently stabbed Mrs. Rock Stars, and a Mr. Rock Star who relocates the majority of his brains onto a wall that he painted in a club when he was was Mr. Rock... Guy. Not star, is my point.

We're almost caught up.

Bad guys have figured out where Mr. and Mrs. Adam live, and have bugged the place. They're pissed off at Freedom, and so they're going to set up Mrs. Adam (Fiona). They capture Danny and Fiona while they're bugging some house, and bring them off to the countryside for fresh air and torture. Danny and Fiona engineer a daring (and way-cool) escape, but they, sadly, do not succeed. Adam's on the phone with the bad guys, after being hijacked by some terrorist lady. Terrorist Leader tells him to pick who lives and who dies, because Danny and Fiona committed the faux pas of killing a henchman on their (failed) way out. While Adam looks like he's going to vomit, Danny sacks up and tells Terroist Leader that he's a damn dirty facist and that Danny questions his parentage, and that basically Terrorist Leader can go fuck himself. Shockingly, this doesn't go over very well with Terrorist Leader, who shoots Danny. Nobody can hang out with Danny anymore. Except Helen, and maybe Dr. Bashir. Oh, yeah, everybody hears Danny's (quite bad-ass, to be perfectly honest) speeh, and subsequent shooting, because a nice bit of fieldcraft hooked Adam up with a two-way radio. MEANWHILE, Terror Lady has talked Adam into getting her into some dinner with the Prime Minister. Presumably, if he does this, she'll get Terror Leader to let Fiona go. All she wants to do is talk to the PM, really. She doesn't have a bomb SEWN INTO HER ABDOMEN or anything. Whoops. Good news: she has second thoughts about going from Terror Lady to Tiny Bits Lady, hesitates, and tells Adam. Bad news: Terror Leader has control over Terror Lady's detonation. Good news: Adam calls an audible, and makes sure the PM doesn't enter the building. Bad news: this understandably makes Terror Leader unhappy, so he's going to light Fiona on fire, and then maybe blow up Terror Lady anyway. Good news: the SAS crash through skylights, windows, walls, and the space-time continuum, and shoot the bejeezus out of Terror Leader.

Bad news: Danny's still dead.

SO! Things I wanted to mention:

• Harry Pearce = Everybody's Boss. Better get his ass knighted for all the shit he has to put up with.
• Tom Quinn's Useless Girlfriend #1 (w/Maisy) = "Hey, Tom, choose between England and me." "Well, you suck, but Maisy's adorable.... Ah, Maisy'll probably grow into a shrew like you. I choose England."
• Tom Quinn's Useless Girlfriend #2 = Batshit insane. I didn't even mention her above, but she tried to get revenge on Tom for dumping her by putting up flyers in the women's restroom that essentially said "For a good time, call this SECRET AGENT OF HER MAJESTY'S GOVERNMENT". This didn't go over very well, so I think she got shipped to Scotland or something.
• Tom Quinn's American CIA Girlfriend = Christine was delightful. Kicked ass, took names, became kind of a sissy when Tom became a sissy. This is right about when they started having Secret Agent Sex. Anyway, when Tom got set up, it was kind of her fault. Neither Uncle Sam nor Aunt... Queen Elizabeth was particularly pleased, so she went back to the United States, never to be heard from again.
• Hugh Laurie used to be a Big Deal MI-6 Agent. This was awesome. He then became a crippled doctor on Fox in America, so now infinitely less cool MI-6 agents show up. They will all be known as "Not Nearly as Awesome as Hugh Laurie Agent."
• Malcom and Colin are tech guys who are really great, but didn't figure into that recap up there. Sorry. I want to mention them now.
• Tom = Canned. Zoe = Chilean. Danny = Corpse.
• Adam = New Tom. His wife is Fiona, and they're a Spy Couple, which is, you know, nice.
• Sam = Current Hotness. Stupid Danny never got around to making his move because he was too busy wanting to have the hook-ups with Zoe. I disagree with his choice.
• Oh, yeah, Danny and Zoe shared a "flat," which is British for "apartment." I hope it's still available to rent, because it was really swanky.

Wow. Them's a lot of words5. I also stopped linking to interesting things - I probably should go back and find some interesting links, if I ever edit this. Eventually, I'll recap Series 4 of MI-5, because I have the DVDs from Netflix, I'm excited about the show, and I hate work. I hope you read this far.

1 Apparently, I'm wrong, as it shows on A&E. Whatever. I Netflix it, anyway.
2 This was originally to be Emma Watson, with a link to one of those creepy "countdown to legal age" clocks, but I was too creeped out after actually finding one. Eew.
3 Hello, NSA! I'm just writing about a television show. Nothing to see here.
4 Apparently, they actually went to Chile. Whatever.
5 A lot = 2,681.