Dukes...

Break out the implausibly named chemicals, it's time for this week's Spooks series blog! (As always, here's the link to last week's to keep you in the loop). Weirdly, last night I had a dream that I was in Spooks. It was all very exciting and not quite everything actually made sense. So it was pretty true to form, really. I was Armitage. I even did the Armitage voice and everything.

I must confess that I missed the pre-credits stuff this week and had to go back to iPlayer it, seeing as most weeks half of the entire plot unfolds before the title sequence. This was not one of those occasions however as we were given only a minute or so of fairly banal action with a 'holyshitwhyhavetheygotallthoseguns?!??!' moment at the end. As you'll remember, we've covered Al Qaeda, Somali pirates, Nigerian oil tycoons and last week the Russians, so where to go from there? The Chinese, of course. It was three Chinese agents responsible for the 'holyshitwhyhavetheygotallthoseguns?!!?!?!?' just before the credits, but forget that because Armitage/Lucas North/John (and his torso of many tattoos) is in bed with Laila Rouass/Maya (it is Maya, I checked). There would seem to be trouble in paradise however as a labelled photo on the table in Lucas' lovely open plan kitchen (civil service cuts not quite reaching MI5 yet) would seem to indicate that someone, possibly Vaughn (he of the lopsided face), was onto them.

Meanwhile Beth was using all of her charm attempting to turn a CSS agent Kai (a brilliant turn by Benedict Wong, who was equally fantastic in the Countdown episode of The IT Crowd... the range, dear readers, the range!) to get some valuable intel on their business in England and Harry had heart-to-hearts with both the home secretary and Colin Salmon (who was playing a slightly ropey-accented CIA agent), both of whom warned him not to tread on Chinese toes in the present climate. So naturally, Lucas and Dimitri (yes, Dimitri was let out of the office again this week) were tasked with breaking into the Chinese Embassy. Tariq, who gets lumbered with some awful technobabble-infused exposition (I do miss Malcolm, by the way), poor bloke, lets them in via the window where they roam the building with torches (not exactly Splinter Cell, is it?).

As it happens, someone's dropped a bollock and tripped the alarms. We know this because Kai politely phones Beth to warn them, even though she scared him away earlier that day (again... charm). The CSS man guides Dimitri and Lucas to the roof before Lucas undoes all the hard work by finding another way out 'because they'll know we had inside help if we both go out this way'. Lucas decides his way out is smashing a window and nicking some laptops, then feigning innocence when angry-looking, gun-toting Chinese officials catch him. He puts on a London-ish accent (the perfect disguise) and claims to be a petty-ish criminal, leaving the Chinese to hand him over to the Met, the fools.

Beth met Kai again, with both Lucas and Dimitri watching from afar (Dimitri was really earning his paypacket this week). Lucas' watching was interrupted by a phonecall from Vaughn, who was in a pub for reasons which I don't fully understand, who told him to get the 'Albany' files. Cut To: the MI5 'Interrogation Suite' (yes, this is what flashed up on the screen, so it must be true) where Tariq was conducting a polygraph (or presumably something less technically dubious) on Kai. Lucas headed for the mainframe to look up Albany, but bottled it, realising the implications. I was disappointed to learn that his username was simply 'Lucas North', I was hoping for something along the lines of 'FSBsux' or 'NorthbyNorthwest' or at least 'LNorth36' or something.

The mysterious clueword of the episode was 'Amphitrite' and it was Ruth (yes, even Ruth was allowed onto the grid this week, mostly for her remarkable translating abilities) who was tasked with finding out. Displaying some impressive spy skills including pretending to have Diabetes and ignoring fire alarms, she eventually discovered Amphitrite to be not a dangerous chemical (we had enough of that last week) or even the desalination tech that they originally thought, but rather a woman: a certain Dr. Jiang. Who was being held in a room by the CIA, who had been tasked with protecting her from the Chinese (so even Colin Salmon was talking smack).

Lucas, still needing someone with Level 7 clearance to be his fall guy, picked poor old Stephen Owen, a 22 year old data analyst - easily the least cool job in MI5... like being a dinnerlady at Apple or Andrew Ridgeley- and stole his details with which to nab the Albany file. Which turned out simply to be Turner's The Battle of Trafalgar (depicting the famous pre-battle message flags). All that trouble for a jpg of (an admittedly brilliant) painting, duly delivered to Vaughn on a USB stick with ample time for a quick voddy and to rush to the hospital to embrace Maya.

Meanwhile, Kai was being played by the Chinese all along and turned out to be an unwitting triple agent and was promptly thrown into the back of a transit with Dr. Jiang. The secret services were warned that any intereference would result in a bomb being set off in London. Cue Dimitri's time to shine. Not content with being outside the office on at least 3 separate occasions, he had to diffuse a bomb while Beth, Lucas and what appeared to be a Met task force intercepted the van. Kai went crazy and got embroiled in a standoff, as it all went a bit John Woo. Dimitri melted the bomb with a Zippo lighter (who knew?) while Beth took a leaf out of Lucas' book and yelled Kai into submission.

And they all lived happily ever after... nope... this is Spooks. We finished with more tension between Harry and Ruth, young Stephen being arrested for compromising the mainframe and it transpired that the CSS agents had another agenda as well as Amphitrite... none other than a black and white photo of our own Lucas! Which meant that the negative shot at the end of the show was of a black and white photo. A negative of a black and white photo. Confusion at its best.

Exchange of the Week
More than just a quote this time. It just had to be the conversation between Harry and the home secretary.

HARRY (regarding the Chinese): So we should simply roll over for the bigger dog?
TOWERS: If you roll over you sometimes get your tummy tickled... [stares lugubriously at takeaway coffee] I don't think they put the hazelnut syrup in.
HARRY (does uimpressed face (you know the one... the Harry unimpressed face) gets up to leave, nods): Home secretary... [leaves]

Next Week
Israeli paramilitaries! Beth tied up! Harry and the home secretary argue! Business as usual!