The Night Manager “Episode Six”

And so it all comes down to this…who is a better planner:  the perhaps vengeful Jonathan Pine or the paranoid Richard Roper?

Well, Pine obviously.  He’s the good guy here, though given this is based off a John Le Carre novel, it does have a somewhat ambiguous ending.  I don’t want to go into too much detail here because the ending actually grabbed me pretty tight.  Considering one of the tensest scenes involved a pregnant woman trying to sneak out of someone else’s hotel room with some stuff she’d just stolen from the safe before the deceptively named “Frisky” found her, that’s something.

So, the final episode ends, and we learn Roper suspected Jonathan more than he let on.  Oh, nothing Jonathan did gave him away.  Mostly it was because Jed was clearly into the new guy, and while Pine might be good at lying and deception, she wasn’t.

But for all that Roper loses, he doesn’t go to jail.  Heck, he laughs at the prospect.  No, what happens instead is his buyers get ahold of him after Jonathan not only causes all their arms to explode before their eyes, but also stole their down payment, meaning Roper can’t even give those guys a refund.  Angela has the satisfaction of watching Roper get what was coming to him, but that’s all she’ll be getting since the botched raid from episode five means not only is she out of a job, so is her entire two-person agency.  She does get back at the crooked superior, so maybe it’ll work out better for her.  Who knows?

And Jonathan may have started out as a hotel night manager, but since Roper was at the very Cairo hotel he managed, he knew people on staff to help him out when he needed it.  So, he got Roper, he got his revenge for the death of Sophie, and he may be up $300 million.

You know, this was a lavish, well-produced mini-series, and a better spy story about a suave British spy than many James Bond movies.  Heck, Roper even pointed out as Angela was personally arresting him that he didn’t produce war or even kill anyone.  He just sold the weapons that made it possible.  Bottom line there is if he doesn’t do it, someone else will.

My only complaint is Roper seemed a little too quick to trust Jonathan.  Even he admitted as much, but it happened all the same.  Let’s say nine out of ten chefs with connections.

But since we’re done another something, what’s the next show?  Well, we got a rare Watson TV recommendation lately in the Gabbing Geek Home Offices, so we’ll be hitting the new Netflix series THE OA next.

I have no idea what this was about, so I hope that I’ll be as surprised as anyone as things unfold.  We’ll just have to wait and see.