Black Doves Recap: Genuinely a Huge Fan

Well, things were bound to get increasingly messy on the way to resolution, weren’t they? After regrouping at Williams’s flat in the previous episode, everyone now has to flee from a massive gunfight with the Clarks, who are still after Kai-Ming and that ever-elusive pinhole camera. At the end of episode four, Sam and Helen realized that they were not delivering Cole to an anonymous life of fabulous wealth but to an uncertain fate at the hands of the Chinese government — which also wants answers about Ambassador Chen’s death, as well as that camera and footage — and have to make a literal run for it after they get stuck in horrible traffic. Even Dani has a crummy night-to-day at the office, spectacularly misjudging the mark in her attempt to seduce Wallace and ultimately getting her ass kicked by Helen. Whew!

In the middle of it all is poor, reasonable civilian Michael, trying to process Sam showing up at his door with half of London’s most wanted and would just like everyone to keep their voices down so as not to wake 4-year-old Ruby in the wee hours. Michael is easily the MVP of this episode. He shouldn’t have to be, and it’s monstrous that the reason he’s involved at all is that Sam made a hash of his assignment back in 2017. Still, without Michael and his willingness to hear Sam out, everyone else would be dead.

The Clarks’ attack on Williams’s flat is about what Cole led us to expect; they rely on overwhelming firepower and ruthlessness, even when they’re just planning a run-of-the-mill home invasion, double homicide, and kidnapping. I salute Williams and Eleanor for managing as well as they do on their own until Sam shows up and manages to extract Williams. At least they had Eleanor’s mini rocket launcher to supplement their arsenal, and Kai-Ming’s sense of self-preservation got her to lie down in the bathtub. Sam is leaning into some heroics and acts of loyalty in this episode by racing upstairs to Williams’s flat, which is in flames when they arrive, and whisking an injured Williams out and into the taxi he commandeered earlier.

This is a very ultimatum-intensive episode. The new Chinese ambassador insists on restitution for Chen’s death in the form of military contracts or blood. CIA station chief Porter demands the return of Cole Atwood, incorrectly assuming that he was removed from the Embassy by Chinese agents. The prime minister calls … an as-yet unidentified someone, demanding the recording device. The Clarks demand the recording device from Helen and Sam, lest they kill Eleanor and Kai-Ming “in ways so absurdly cruel that the manner of their passing will haunt you ’til your own dying day.” This guy really loves a florid turn of phrase. Reed instructs Sam to kill Alex Clark (and to deliver Cole to her). I just want to point out here that the governments of three major world powers with very sophisticated and well-funded intelligence apparatus at their command have thrown up their hands in the quest for this bit of technology and are relying on the unpaid services of a handful of exhausted solo practitioners, most of whom aren’t even spies. Seems like a managerial skill issue to me!

Fortunately for Helen, Sam, and Cole, they’re able to cobble together something resembling a plan. Cole gets to work trying to inform Trent that they know where Kai-Ming is. Once Trent shows up, they can draw his mother out into the open, too. Helen and Sam work on retracing Maggie and Phillip’s steps since they actually saw the footage and will have hidden it and/or the device somewhere safe. Or, they would work on that, but Helen has been summoned home by her nanny, Marie. In all the excitement, she lost track of time, Wallace is still at No. 10, and Marie has stayed well past the end of her usual hours. Work-life balance is a real bear in Helen’s line of work, and she and Wallace aren’t exactly crushing it on the work-emergencies front.

What comes next is one of my favorite beats in the story, mostly because it’s a little ambiguous. Wallace turned Dani down quite firmly, but she’s gotten in his head a bit, too. He half-quotes her to Helen, musing out loud that he must disappoint her and that nobody ever knows 100 percent of another person’s inner feelings. Something shifts in his perception of her again when Agent Perryman drops by for a quick confirmation of Helen’s presence at the U.S. Embassy that evening. Perryman doesn’t seem to entertain even a whisper of the notion that she was there for any reason other than to have coffee with Vanessa, but a blend of confusion, suspicion, and maybe a teeny bit of admiration for Helen sweeps across his face. It’s the look of a man who has a big important job, whose wife takes care of all of the details that make their lives run smoothly, so he hasn’t had occasion to pay attention to them ’til just now, and now he realizes just how much he hasn’t seen because he hasn’t been looking for it.

Rather than address the specifics of what’s making him wonder about Helen and all she gets up to, he goes for a more oblique angle, with an unexpectedly affecting declaration of love. He’s loved her since the day they met; he’s desperately grateful that she wants anything to do with him, particularly as he’s just a pretty uncomplicated guy who loves her and the life they’ve built together. His top priority is protecting that, fighting for them and her, because, as previously noted, he loves her.

I don’t think Helen quite understood how profound Wallace’s love is ’til just now — he sees her. Whoever Helen is, the person she’s created out of this and that over the years, she’s who he loves. We know that’s a bit tenuous given how betrayed Wallace would likely feel if he knew she was a spy causing the leaks that the CIA station chief mentioned in their meeting with the prime minister.

On a purely personal level, Wallace’s sense of betrayal would probably bear a close resemblance to Michael’s response to Sam showing up out of the blue in the previous episode. Maybe, like Michael, he’ll be able to excavate happy, untainted-by-treason-and-murder memories that keep alive the notion that a renewal of their former relationship is possible. Maybe, also like Michael, he’ll find himself more afraid of his partner than of the people who’ve come to kill him. Helen tells Sam that it didn’t faze Jason, so maybe the revelation that Helen steals state secrets and commits the occasional murder won’t be as troubling to Wallace as Helen imagines.

Jason, who Reed has the gall to say might not be worth avenging, does Helen one more good turn from beyond the grave. The bracelet he gave her? It’s from the shop where Maggie Jones worked, and it’s where the recording device has been quietly waiting in the office safe. If Dani hadn’t shown up looking dreadfully smug, Helen could have gotten on with her morning and done her bit to prevent a war. Instead, we first get a knife-fight scene that’s got a whiff of Kill Bill about it and concludes with Helen finding she’d rather be magnanimous. Rather than garroting Dani with a double strand of pearls or cutting her to ribbons, she tells her vanquished rival, “I’m not going to kill you because I’m still Helen Webb, and Helen Webb doesn’t stab girls to death in jewelry stores on Christmas Eve.” A brave stance, which I hope will pay off in both the short and long terms!

Helen’s review of the long-sought footage reveals quite a twist. After all the shootings and explosions we’ve seen, it turns out that Ambassador Chen’s death was just an accident and that the perpetrator isn’t a professional assassin or a covert operative, but “trust-fund-baby moron” Trent Clark. Panicked, Trent calls his mother for help, police commissioner Yarrick shows up, and that’s it. Everyone’s been assuming this weeklong bloodbath was being masterminded by one of those sophisticated intelligence apparatuses we were talking about earlier, but it’s all been the ripple effect of a failson doing what he does best (or worst, depending on your interpretation of events).

Closing Doors, Opening Windows

• Williams gets two runners-up to the best line of the episode. She’s being weirdly lighthearted about having a gunshot wound, on the grounds that “I don’t like to make a fuss!” Her encouragement to pray to the nonreligious Kai-Ming, “maybe now’s a good time to have a chat with your man upstairs,” also had me in stitches.

• Of course Reed turns out to be a Christmas girly; I should’ve known she’d have a fondness for studding oranges with cloves to make a pomander ball!

• Officer Perryman is played by Adam Best, who graced screens recently as Joe Lynskey in a few episodes of Say Nothing.