Caffiends

Holy mother of paper mache! Wowee! SPOILER WARNING! Spoiler as in this episode will probably make you spoil your pants!

That warning is probably too late for most, now. Toilets up and down the country are being flushed. Washing machines are whirring up. Irons are steaming for tomorrow’s replacement pair. And one thing is for sure, I’m putting my name on the list for a pacemaker. I could hardly take it!

Richard Armitage jumped right into the Lucas role – quite strange considering he had a rather traumatic time in Russia as a captive spy. Oh well, he jumped in and he jumped in well. It was a cold relief to see Harry’s face again, as he sat there in the helicopter coming into land on British soil still. Being forced to kneel to the floor wasn’t the nicest of things they could have done to him and it was worrying hearing that he could be sold on… At this point I started to quiver. Could this whole series be a plot about rescuing Harry who is being exchanged from terrorist group to terrorist group? The fella pulls a nice speech which is interlinked with some even nicer fight scenes as the guards at the manor are getting brutally massacred. I tells ya, them geezers were ninjas.

BOOM! Indian man bursts through the door in a way that only Mr T could muster. Harry’s now got a friend kneeling alongside him. Pop. Not anymore. By this point my heart was entering orange territory on my speedometer. And it rose even further as them armbands got pulled out, the camera phone switched on and the chanting commencing. Oh god, the dude still has the gun out! And he gives Harry the ultimatum that he will die right there, right now. This is borderline red territory for my heart rate. Harry pleads to leave a message. My heartbeat starts pushing over the boundary. The gun is aimed. Heartbeat is well and truly in red territory and I’m feeling faint. And then BANG! Bullet fired. Beat skipped. I almost died. Harry did die. Or so I thought.

The video is plugged at the MI5 HQ and it certainly looks like Harry’s dead. He’s lying there in a pool of blood. I’m on the verge of crying here. How could they have killed the most vital character in Spooks and in such a lacklustre way? At least give him an immensely heroic farewell in the middle of triple car bombing inside the Buncefield fuel depot! Ros gives her chitter chatter and Lucas gives his briefing. Jo watches. Well they start talking as if Harry might actually still be alive. I’m wiping the tears at this point and I feel some sort of muscular movement in my cheeks (which I was also hoping wasn’t lockjaw). Then Christ! We see Harry bound to a chair and they’re talking about the fake execution. Hurrraaah!

Malcolm! [INSERT CHEER HERE] He’s back to his computer wizardry and he’s buzzing about this new language from Kerala. Wow, he is a genius. I swear down, Malcolm is the grand dad everyone wants. So they’re already closing in on the culprit. Back to Harry and there’s talk of an agent in Baghdad… I was lost as well. Holy crap! It’s Ruth! I thought she was gone forever. And blimey, she’s got a decent pad ain’t she? The kid’s swimming about, she’s doing housewide shit and the bloke is buggering off. And then comes a super clean 4×4 rolling down the drive like a Boeing 747 tearing down the M6 (basically, it’s a bit obvious). So obviously Ruth is right to be alarmed. Remember, this is Baghdad. I doubt even the president rolls around in the pimp wagon. The kid gets his orders and she pulls an absolute Usain Bolt around the house. She’s pulling out passports, gym bags, car keys. She’s in the car, she sees the guys running towards her. She’s going at an impressive pace but them two nasties are really keeping up with her. Second gear, she’s off.

So somehow she’s back in London like nobody’s business and she’s giving a code 10 to our friend Malcolm. Ros is alarmed. Malcolm goes to see them. It gets boring. The kid gets bored. Malcolm has a lovely natter to the kid about backgammon – even if he throws him off a bit with the laws of probability (I chuckled here). So yeah, they ask for a new place. Ruth dithers about in MI5 and we discover a story behind all this. We’ve got uranium in the mix and the main men are American, British and Indian – it was starting to sound like the premise for a joke. It sounds sneaky and Lucas is a tad confused – can’t blame him. So at first when we think Harry is a culprit here, we discover he was the saviour. He turned his back on all them mofos and he went to the top to stop this uranium smuggling operation. What a saint!

Ruth returns home and the family find out they’re going to be moved all thanks to Malcolm (he really knows how to please). Jo has a quick word with him (I swear that’s the first thing she said in the whole episode). Oh well, she makes sure he stays cautious. At this point I left to grab me some more beer and when I returned it turns out Ruth is with Harry and the rest of the family are having a kickabout in the garden. The guards that are protecting them are actually there on orders of the evil Indian geezer to kill when asked. Ruth is being interrogated here and no one likes it. She’s warned her family may be killed if she doesn’t give the info on where the uranium that the British took is being hidden. She cracks, she spills. It’s Norfolk! NO RUTH NO! Wait, what’s the Indian guy doing? “Take the child into the house, kill the father.” WHAT?! Jesus Christ what?! There’s CCTV on the laptop and oh god it’s so awful. My heart has jumped straight from green to red and then this man appears and BANG! The husbands falls face first to the ground…. Ruth’s grievances look a bit freakish as well are given an explicit look into her dental portfolio. But you feel for her. Part of me thought that this could be fake but it seemed too real.

Why did he do it? She gave the wrong information? Harry, you sly dog! But we don’t blame you… Now the child is at threat…? Malcolm can’t handle this. Lucas is getting into some chitter chatter with the Americans. Wires are crossed, words exchanged and the like. Malcolm can’t handle all this happening at the new safehouse and he secretly goes there. He’s allowed to enter and he meets the child. He tells the poor lad a story about a dog (really touching stuff, even the guard looks like he may spark a tear. Seriously, Malcolm is the nation’s grandfather) and he then quietly pleads with the guard. Around this point Harry is put under immense pressure to reveal the location of the uranium… this pressure is coming from Ruth as well as evil Indian bloke. American geezer is intercepted – that bit really felt like a filler to be honest. He was useless but he gives the location away to MI5. This is just as the evil Indian bloke slowly walks towards Ruth from behind. There’s something in his hand. Lucas does his best Linford Cristie impression and he’s running through this building like he’s auditioning for Levis adverts. Schwing. A blade shoots out of Indian man’s palm. Harry wrestles with a guard as he sees what is coming to Ruth. Ruth sits calm, she knows. Her head is held back. BANG BANG! Lucas smashes through the door and pops one between the eyes of evil Indian bloke whilst the other guard backs down.

Elsewhere, at the safehouse, the guard stares at the child who has his eyes closed at the end of the table. He sits, staring at the child. He’s got his gun aimed tentatively. He backs down, puts the gun down. No man in his right mind would do that. He walks past Malcolm, giving him a simple yet massively reassuring nod of gratitude and acknowledgement.

We’re back at MI5 HQ, and everyone’s reflecting on the events that have just occurred. Ruth is gone, she’s back home. The child has just learned his father’s death… shit it was real. Then Malcolm goes to a one-to-one meeting with Harry. He drops the bombshell. Malcolm wants to resign… Harry says what we’re all thinking… “You can’t resign!”. But Malcolm is near insistant that he is too old for it all. He walks out of the building and Harry watches… He takes a swig of something stronger than what I’m guzzling and it’s done.

So cor blimey. That was most certainly a corker! Next week’s episode looks to be completely different so maybe the old format is back. But the entry into the new series was stunning. We had lots of bullets and banging and booming and that’s ignoring the fireworks going off outside! May it continue!

I’m a huuuuge fan of Spooks. I watch it religiously. Popcorn, beer and nachos prepped before every episode. And it’s no different today as Spooks returns for it’s 8th series. Last series was a big change from the normal format where every mission was interlinked, and there were some major cast changes. The loss of Adam seemed to be quite premature for my liking and the introduction of Lucas didn’t seem particularly strong. He came out of nowhere. Ros is not a favourite by any stretch, with me. Her cold looks seem to scream to me that she is a spy – what other guise could she come up with with a chilling stare like that?! And good old Harry, you gotta love him. He must have had a mental breakdown at some point – he’s seen agents come and go in all sorts of ways, and he’s seen his beloved Connie betray him. Now he’s locked away, away from home. Ros best bring his ass back otherwise it’s all been wasted. Malcolm’s an absolute geezer, surprised they haven’t got some techno-wizard from Carphone Warehouse to fill his place  because no one his age would know what to do with all them gadgets. And Jo… where the hell was she last series? Dwindling in the background with a macho new trim. Preferred her when she first joined – true eye candy.

Anyway. So, tonight, I shall be bringing you my first review and I intend to do so every time it is on. Be excited, be very excited!