The Diplomat Season 4

The assassination attempt. The assassination attempt is where the loss of investigative interest becomes particularly frustrating. Someone shoots the American president, Grace Penn (Allison Janney), which initially seems like it should open up a substantial mystery. Then the suspected shooter is reported dead by suicide, and the investigation largely recedes while the show moves towards its bigger geopolitical confrontation. We get an update, but I never felt that we got a satisfying exploration of what had happened and why.

The shooting does have value beyond the mystery. The emergency, the recovery and the return to work show how much depends on the president being able to perform the job. Her survival matters across an entire administration and its responsibilities, far beyond the immediate crisis. That part comes through. But the investigation itself becomes surprisingly easy to forget by the end. If the show returns, how much of an already neglected thread are viewers going to carry into the next season?

Grace after the shooting. The show spends considerable time asking whether being shot has made Grace more aggressive. I am not convinced it explains as much as the characters seem to think. Long before she became president, she conceived the plan to attack HMS Courageous without President Rayburn (Michael McKean) even knowing about it. She was already willing to act behind the president's back and accept the risk to human lives in pursuit of what she considered a necessary geopolitical outcome.

Those warning signs were there before she held the highest office, let alone survived an assassination attempt. The shooting may have affected her, but I am unsure how much it changes the way she operates. I find it entirely plausible that she would have made similarly aggressive decisions without it. The stronger explanation, for me, is the continuity of her behaviour: someone who already trusted her own judgement enough to bypass the president now has the authority of that office herself.

Trowbridge's address. Also in play is the confrontation with Nicol Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear). His public address announcing the death of Austin Dennison (David Gyasi) carries a barely disguised attack on American bullying. He does not need to name Grace for the people concerned to understand whom he means. I read that as another possible reason for her growing impatience with Britain. She already believes she knows what needs to be done; now an ally is publicly condemning the way her administration operates. By the end, her attitude feels like someone who has decided she is done accommodating these people and will proceed as she sees fit. Call that my reading of the escalation, but it gives her aggression a political context that the discussion of the shooting alone does not capture.

The G7. By the G7, Grace's attitude has become particularly stark. Her approach to Britain and the other allies increasingly feels like a demand to accept American terms. The partnership is still there on paper, but she behaves as though American power should settle the argument. The other countries have collective weight; they also have to reckon with what a rupture with the United States would mean. Grace understands that imbalance and is willing to exploit it.

Trowbridge and Dennison. Kate Wyler (Keri Russell) is not a perfect diplomat herself. Her own attempt to put pressure on Trowbridge helps bring about his resignation. That matters because it complicates her objections to Grace's methods. Kate is capable of arm-twisting, too, and she has to live with what follows.

But the way the season moves on from the old British administration feels abrupt. Dennison's death is delivered as news of a helicopter crash. For someone who mattered so much to the previous seasons, his departure feels remarkably remote. There are consequences for the people around him, but I would have liked the show to give the loss itself more space. Instead, it often feels like another development to absorb before the plot moves along.

Trowbridge is gone by the season's halfway point, and his operatic farewell did not work for me either. The Pagliacci sequence makes his internal collapse theatrical, but I found it cringe-inducing. I understood the intention; I just did not find the execution moving. Between Dennison's off-screen death and Trowbridge's elaborate exit, the show seems impatient to clear the old administration out of the way.

Three women in power. With Bethan Vaughn (Jodie Whittaker) taking over as British prime minister, Kate has another working relationship to build while managing a president who expects obedience. Whatever understanding she can establish with Britain keeps coming under pressure from Washington. She is supposed to maintain the relationship between the two countries while the people above her make that increasingly difficult.

Also striking is seeing the American president, the British prime minister and the ambassador in the middle of this struggle all being women. The concentration can feel nearly utopian, given how rarely we see that particular arrangement of power. But the characters themselves are anything but idealised.

For that reason, it works for me. I do not feel that the show pauses to congratulate itself for putting women in charge. These women are convincing in their positions, and they are allowed to be ambitious, capable, unreasonable and wrong. Their conflicts feel rooted in who they are and what they want.

Todd as special envoy. Todd Penn (Bradley Whitford) becomes a special envoy to the UK, and I start wondering what the media in this world is doing.

The vice president's wife is the ambassador. The president's husband is now a special envoy. Kate has an established diplomatic career, so these are hardly identical appointments, but the optics alone should invite relentless scrutiny. With Todd especially, I wanted the show to acknowledge more of the public reaction that such an arrangement would provoke. At some point, surely someone would ask how much of American foreign policy is being handled within these two marriages.

The sticky-note proposal. The sticky-note proposal between Eidra Park (Ali Ahn) and Stuart Hayford (Ato Essandoh) is the clearest example of why their romance frustrates me. Eidra turns office supplies into a romantic gesture, and I understand what the scene is trying to communicate: these people live through their jobs, so even an attempt at intimacy takes the form of something improvised at work. I still found it painfully contrived. At some point, television needs to stop assuming that an awkward or deliberately unromantic gesture becomes cute simply because the characters are bad at expressing themselves. For me, this one was just irritating.

Stuart's dissent does eventually become consequential, but that late importance did not make the preceding relationship scenes feel necessary to me.

The ending. Then there is the ending, which brings me back to where this review began. The season makes consequential moves: at the G7, Kate publicly resigns, saying she no longer supports the Penn administration, and Billie Appiah (Nana Mensah) and Miguel Ganon (Miguel Sandoval) follow her out. But it also stops just before the conversation I most want to hear. Hal Wyler (Rufus Sewell) walks out to join them and is about to address the press, and we are left waiting for what the vice president will say. That works as a way to create anticipation. Also, it is becoming a very familiar way for The Diplomat to finish a season.

Plenty remains to speculate about, particularly where Hal is concerned, but those theories deserve their own article. My frustration here is with the viewing experience: the show builds towards a moment that opens so many new possibilities that the finale can feel like the beginning of the next story. I want to watch that story. I also wanted this one to feel more complete.