“We do high highs and really low lows,” Kate Wyler (Keri Russell) tells her husband Hal (Rufus Sewell) during another State of the Relationship chat. She’s trying to say she understands their marriage, which has been on the rocks since the Netflix series debuted, is never going to be easy. He’s the Vice President of the United States. She’s the U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom. Their date night conversations aren’t about who’s picking the kids up from school or what movie to rent before bed; they’re about who’s going to talk the President (Allison Janney) out of instigating World War III and which (extremely attractive) international emissary they should trust with their lives.
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“The fights are gonna be spicy,” she says.
Kate wants all this, and so do we. The spice is what keeps “The Diplomat” humming, and the first three seasons may as well have been shot on Arrakis given the plentiful quantities of piquant sand. (Plus, all those interior scenes could’ve been shot anywhere, including another planet.) But back to Kate: She wants Hal so much she’s willing to humble herself before him — to chase him, to prove her devotion, to consider his needs instead of bulldozing past them to enact her own agenda.
On the one hand, the plan makes sense: Kate cheated on Hal and broke his heart. Now, she wants to fix it. But as healthy as that might be for their marriage, it’s a disaster for “The Diplomat.”
Debora Cahn’s political drama about political relationships — and relationship politics — thrives on the layered, overlapping tensions between Kate’s love for her job and her love for her spouse. Each one is high-stakes. Each one hangs by a thread. And each one requires Kate to put all of herself on the line — to save her marriage and save the world.
So when she’s suddenly holding back in deference to her husband’s position, the series loses its foundational source of suspense. Seeing the Wylers work as a team may be a nice, cozy idea, but it neuters the drama, shifting all the weight onto political maneuverings that are simultaneously too close to reality to offer effective escapism and too far from reality to provide cathartic insight. And seeing them square off against another power couple — even one played by Bradley Whitford and recent Emmy winner Allison Janney — isn’t spicy. It’s easy and one-sided, whereas Kate and Hal’s old brouhahas were so emotionally and politically byzantine part of the thrill simply came from keeping up.
Speaking of easy, Season 4 kicks off with a hackneyed “twist” that speaks to the fumes the series appears to be running on (mild spoilers for Episode 1 ahead): President Grace Penn is shot! Fallout from her clandestine theft of a Russian super-nuke (at the end of Season 3) is put on hold while surgeons dig a bullet out of Grace’s guts — not that we see the surgery, or even much of the shooting. That would be a tad too visceral for Cahn’s talky drama, and while the gunshot itself is well-staged by director Alex Graves, what is technically a pivotal moment (in the diegetic history of “The Diplomat,” as well as the overall season) soon feels like little more than a marker in time, when an already hostile president is given extra ammunition to lean into her aggressive tendencies.
The sea change expands the existing divide between the diplomat and her administration (Kate always thought President Penn was dangerous, if not unfit for office), leading to a lot of backroom discussions about how to handle an antagonistic, unreasonable Commander in Chief — and golly gee, what would that be like? “The Diplomat” has always existed in its own imaginary political bubble, which works well enough when its global crises are held at the same theatrical level as its romantic melodrama. But in Season 4, the balance is off, and the fictional president’s parallels to our real-life war-starting, ally-betraying POTUS only make the former’s plight feel that much more trivial.
To be frank, I would love to live in a world with the problems brought on by President Penn rather than the ones produced by President Trump. I’d be just as happy not to think about President Trump at all while watching what’s always been, even at its best, a slick and silly Netflix drama. But without the usual marriage drama, the political drama edges too close to a polite simulation of what’s really going on in Washington, which spoils any hope of suspending disbelief.
Cahn and co. do try to replace the tension lost in Kate and Hal’s renewed commitment. President Penn and her husband Todd (Whitford) get to throw down now and then, as a husband who already feels emasculated has to sit and watch his wife recede into bitter militance. On the other end of the spectrum, there’s Stuart (Ato Essandoh) and Eidra (Ali Ahn), a young couple edging ever closer toward long-term commitment. Their romantic gestures are sweet, just as their tender setbacks prove stinging, but the relationship triptych — the young, kinda naive couple, the middle-aged, mid-life-crisis couple, and the senior, over-it couple — doesn’t go deep enough to replace the juice of Kate and Hal’s turbulent connection. (They were just right!)
Our star couple still fights (and Russell, Sewell, and particularly Whitford contribute strong performances while quarrelling), but after, in prior seasons, tumbling down from the “high highs” of a passionate marriage to an informal separation and assumed divorce, the Wylers’ new alliance (formalized during an impromptu vow renewal in Episode 1) proves too stable. He’s too much of an open book (remember when Hal was a wild card? that was fun!), and she’s too much of a glorified assistant (writing his speeches, delivering his messages, secretly holding up cue cards during Zoom calls — woof). Kate is no one’s lackey, and watching her spend the better part of a season pretending she could be is unconvincing. And it just feels wrong.
“The Diplomat’s” core strength was in its central relationship. Season 4 dilutes that power across three couples, one of whom occupies the highest office in America. But a lofty title is no substitute for rewarding work, just as a respectable union built on lies is no better than an honest partnership contingent on one unbreakable vow:
The fights have got to be spicy.
Grade: C
“The Diplomat” Season 4 premieres Thursday, October 15 on Netflix. All eight episodes will be released at once.