Kooks...

We might as well kick off with This Week's Topical Touchstone which one could hardly ignore as it was treated with the customary, classic Spooks heavy-handedness. Yes, it was the Israeli/Palestine situation and the eagerness of Lighthouse (or 'Obama' as we know him) to engineer peace talks. But we all know better than to think that political forward thinking can ever actually take place in the world of Spooks (or even the real world for that matter)...

This weeks' plot was decidedly convoluted (as usual) and revolved largely around a double Lebanese agent switcheroo. We quickly (I say quickly, it took the actual plot about 20 minutes to get there) worked out that an attempt was being planned on the president's life. Of Beth and Dimitri, who had been tasked with babysitting the delegations one went about their job in an ordinary way and the other got beaten up... again. Guess which? Yes, Beth got tied up and nearly died for the... I've lost count of the number of times. She wasn't alone however. Lucas nearly died too, his assailant resolving to leave him tied to a drain by his belt however. (It was at no point explained how Lucas got free from the drain. Presumably there's a whole episode here where some yoofs nick his trousers and he has to bite through the leather belt and then chase them). Lucas' attacker later gave himself up and explained that he wasn't the one who planned to kill Lighthouse and he had instead been trying to kill the one who planned to kill Lighthouse. Got that? Good.

There was some sort of minor argy bargy between the delegations involving lunch (I didn't particularly understand this bit, but then I was trying to read an article about Wayne Rooney on the Guardian website at the time, so cut me some slack, will ya...). The Palestinian head made a joke about dates, I forgot to mention that earlier... oh and the Israeli ambassador was called Levi Cohen, which I believe is the first name listed under Jewish Characters in the Hamfist Guide to TV Stereotypes. Cohen doesn't get on with his daughter, also a politician, mainly because he allowed her to be kindapped in 2001... you think she'd be over that now but apparently not (whatevs... etc.).

The main point was that Beth's captor cut himself in the right thigh with a sterilised knife (one hopes that he dresses to the left) and limped away, leaving her to engineer an escape by using a jack to break the radiator pipe she was tied to and tip off Lucas about the limpy assassin (big on the old limps this series). Ruth and Tariq quickly tried to work out if a shot was possible from the roof of the hospital. Tariq noting that it would indeed be 'a record' 1.67 miles and (repeatedly) that there was another building in the way. They quickly called Dimitri who reeled off an array of astonishing ballistics based facts and informed them that it was basically impossible. Ruth pointed out that the sniper might have prepped the building beforehand and sure enough the sniper fired off a quick salvo, taking down the Palestinian rep. Lucas loomed behind him however and when the perp went for his handgun, shot him down.

The sniper died with an unsettling grin, so unsettling in fact that even stony Lucas was unsettled by it and phone Ruth to explain just how unsettling it all was. He'd achieved his goal of creating chaos at the front of the hotel and forced the president to take the back door where someone else would be waiting. Dimitri ran off to find Anna Cohen, who had conveniently disappeared.

We built to a stunning denouement where Anna Cohen turned herself into a walking diabetic bomb by injecting chemical explosives with her Insulin syringes. A masterful play, even by Spooks standards of implausible heel turns and improvised weaponry. Fortunately Dimitri whose growing on me each week was able to talk her down and disarm his second bomb in 2 weeks, all the more impressive when you consider that one of them was a human.

Back at HQ we were treated to the usual 2 or so minutes bolted on the end that we don't really need. Lucas was told that the sniper had been fed false intel the whole time and that Anna was completely responsible. Another hard day over, Lucas/John went to Maya only to find that her partner Michael was home and that Michael was Vaughn! Yes Vaughn faked a Stroke (somehow) and was in fact cleverly pulling all the strings somehow. There was not even one mention of Albany this week. So much for finding out why the file was just a Turner. We may never know...

Character of the Week
Dimitri was this week's go to guy with all manner of ballistics and explosives expertise. He identified chemical explosives instead of insulin from one sniff (mad skills) and persuaded Anna not to spray her innards around the office suite. Top work from the new boy.

Clamour of the Week
Over on the Guardian blog there are calls for Tariq to be given something more than clunky exposition by way of lines. I, however, suspect that Tariq is the sort of character that would remain largely silent, were he not tasked with explaining most of the plot and implausible technological leaps (unless he was playing Call of Duty with a headset).

Next Week
Lucas! John! Lucas/John! Harry & Ruth! Compromised Grid! Shouting!