The Slow Horses Incompetence Index is a rundown of which characters on the show are doing the worst at their job and/or life following this week’s episode. It will be a competitive situation, as everyone on the show is a complete disaster of a human being in their own special way. That’s what makes it fun.
This is not going to end well. There’s just no way it can, at least not for most of the characters involved in this multifaceted mercenary/cover-up business. Jackson will be fine because Jackson is a cockroach. Diana will be fine, too, probably, because she’s a cockroach with much more stylish jackets. But just about everyone else is on a path to peril.
Start with River, who is staring down a dark family secret and has now ended a second consecutive episode in the hands of a group of people hell-bent on capturing him. Claude’s whole world has crumbled in about four days. David just more or less confessed to treason. Flyte, assuming she survived, just got ambushed by a Terminator and lost a high-value asset. (Yes, I just called River “high value.” You know what I mean. Shut up.) Marcus sold a gun that might end up in the hands of organized crime. Molly gave Frank the information he needed to capture River. Giti’s superiors both kind of want her dead for being too good at her job. Coe took out his earbuds long enough to start psychologically dismantling his co-workers, which is hilarious but uncomfortable for everyone. Roddy learned his girlfriend is a scam-based algorithm. It’s not ideal.
Which is what makes this show so great, honestly. Every single person is always on the verge of personal and/or professional ruin, often owing to their own decisions and/or personality flaws, and it’s a blast to watch it unravel one hour at a time. It’s always a miracle whenever any of them survive the situations they stumble into. Sometimes they don’t. The ones who do are left with scars to add to the ones they already had. It would be pretty depressing if it weren’t so damn fun.
Let’s get to it.
Unranked
Moira the Office Manager (it will make me unreasonably happy if she is the one who brings down Claude); Giti Rahman (I worry about her); Catherine (seems like the kind of person who could go on a vacation to relax and end up spending the whole time consoling a hotel employee whose mother is in the hospital); Coe (I really want him to keep going through the staff of Slough House picking apart their various psychological issues one by one); Patrice the Assassin (absolutely flying on painkillers and adrenaline right now); honeypot chatbots (effective enough); Tattoo Dog (RIP, DAMMIT); me (I deserved that for getting attached to a nincompoop the show didn’t even deem worthy of a first name).
Frank Harkness (Last week: 6)
Things are coming together for Frank, sort of, finally, after multiple failed assassinations and the thing where he almost got dismembered in a hotel room by a prince with an unlimited bone-saw budget. He used Molly to get River, he left behind some mysterious envelopes, he seems to be making his point. Also, he’s played by Hugo Weaving and therefore has great villain energy owing to things like his voice and posture and … just his whole deal. Someone should make a show where Hugo Weaving and Jeremy Irons play masterminds of competing evil schemes that end up canceling each other out before the hero even has a chance to intervene. Something to consider.
That said, he is definitely going to fail and/or die in the finale next week, in part because that’s the way television works and in part because “one man and his idiot son try to dismantle the entire government” rarely works out. Frees up Hugo for that show with Jeremy Irons. Win-win situation here.
Jackson (Last week: Unranked)
It’s just really funny to me that he’s out here unraveling a decades-old mystery that puts a country at risk and he’s still driving around in the busted taxi he stole and tried to kill an assassin with. Like, steal a new car, man. Or rent one. Or something! Lots of options are less conspicuous than the one that involves a broken windshield speckled with blood spatter. Almost all of them, really.
Molly From the Records Room (Last week: Unranked)
Two important things to note here:
➼ Molly is my favorite for a lot of reasons (cranky smartass, doesn’t take crap from anyone, uses the same brand of power wheelchair I do), so it hurt me physically to see her get outfoxed by Frank this week.
➼ If Frank had shot her, I would have been too mad to write this article.
I wish she had run him over with her chair. And then backed over him to be sure. We learned that lesson from Jackson the other week.
David Cartwright (Last week: Unranked)
David clocks in at No. 7 this week for setting all of this in motion many years ago by giving Frank Harkness the terrorism starter kit in exchange for his estranged daughter, an understandable decision as a parent but a treasonous one as the head of a spy agency. But more importantly …
The daughter here is River’s mother, right? Is that what we’re getting at with the various reveals and the phone call with Louisa? Does that mean Frank Harkness might be River’s real father? I wondered if that’s where this was headed last week, and now I’m pretty much all the way there. River is going to make an all-time River Cartwright Face if/when he figures this out.
Louisa, Shirley, and Marcus (Last week: 9)
I desperately wish the show had done a post-credits scene where the driver of the bus these three were on explained the conversation he or she overheard — guns sold to a dance-enthusiast arms dealer; cocaine use; “Sorry I told you your son was dead, he’s not, whoops” — to the other people at work.
Diana (Last week: 5)
She just wants to cover up some schemes. Is that so wrong?
(It is.)
River (Last week: 2)
Once again, I suppose River didn’t do anything “wrong” this week. He hasn’t done all that much wrong at all this season, to my surprise and disappointment. But what I love about this sweet naïve goofball is that even without making a tragic mistake, he can still find himself taken hostage by two different people from two different organizations in a span of a few hours, most of which he spent handcuffed to the door of a black SUV.
I would love to see him try to assemble a piece of furniture from Ikea. I bet he’d knock out the Wi-Fi for a three-block radius.
Flyte (Last week: 6)
GET OUT OF THE CAR.
USE YOUR GUN.
HOW DOES ONE MAN TAKE OUT YOUR ENTIRE OPERATION?
SHOOT HIM.
COME ON.
TATTOO DOG’S DEATH IS ON YOUR HANDS.
AND RIVER’S ABDUCTION, TOO, I GUESS.
BUT COME ON.
Roddy (Last week: 10)
It must be such a joy to add little touches to this character every week. Mistletoe affixed to a rod attached to his chair so it dangles over his head all day at work? Sure. Duped by a sexy chatbot despite being a computer expert for an intelligence operation? Of course. Using an AVI with his own real face — again, the man is a spy — atop a cartoonishly muscled torso? Absolutely.
Roddy is very good at exactly one thing and completely clueless at every other aspect of life. I adore him.
Claude (Last week: 4)
Things are going sideways for Claude at a startling pace. He’s backtracking on the transparency he based his whole career on. He’s on the verge of being revealed as a man who frequents sex workers using the absolutely perfect alias “Galahad.” All of his actions might be uncovered because he missed an email that contained a picture of the terrorists he’s trying to bury. It’s not going great.
But my favorite part was the bungled PowerPoint presentation he tried to show Diana. I don’t think you could sum up the man’s entire Middle Management Stuffed Shirt Energy better if you dedicated the entire season to it. Which they kind of did. He’s not a smart man. That’s my point.
