In season one of this show, we got some significant screen time to a drone pilot that amounted to…a whole lot of not much. He wasn’t instrumental in ending the terrorist plot at the end of the episode. Heck, he stopped appearing at a certain point. We know he used a drone to stop a sexual assault of a major character for the season, and…that’s about all that’s really noteworthy in terms of his connection to the main plot.
Well, now we have the Boat Guy. I’m not gonna say much about Boat Guy just yet because, well, I have nothing to add about Boat Guy. We’ll see if Boat Guy factors into anything.
Of course, we also have a character played by Michael Kelly, and since Cousin Mike (actually, I have no idea if we are related but probably not) usually does play government types who seem to be a bit on a sleazy side. This one, CIA Venezuela Bureau Chief Mike November, seems to be more or less a good guy, but he was married to the ambassador multiple times before, and that just raises some questions from me. Starting with “How is that even remotely appropriate?”
But then again, Jack realizes the woman he screwed around with is a foreign agent. Yes, for Germany, but that doesn’t make it OK even if she does save his bacon when the pair are both investigating the same boat and she hands over some intell implicating President Reyes’s righthand man as being maybe looking to take over. She’s there to find a man, a man she was very close to, a German national who, well, may be Reyes’ personal assassin. The head of security that was bribed/forced to look the other way for the assassination attempt on Jack that killed that Senator (and how is that not an act of war?) did manage to get to the American embassy and request asylum. He only got away when the killer who took out most of his family was slowed down by the family dog. The dog died. The dog was a hero. The family parakeet didn’t do squat.
Of course, a savage mauling helps Jack identify Reyes’s head of security as the killer, plus German agent Harry Baumann confirms that when shows a sketch of the killer.
Now, we have some momentum. Can Jack refrain from doing something stupid after getting the go-ahead to stay in-country and agreeing to help Greer look into their clearly related cases? Not really. At a meeting with Reyes, Jack can’t stop himself from telling the President of Venezuela that he, Jack Ryan, doesn’t believe the word of a man who already got away with killing an American Senator.
So, this is where things go a little bad. The local cop seems to be dead in his holding cell, possibly a suicide. That’s no way to get asylum. And Jack, well, some masked man tries to drown him in his hotel bathtub, and when that doesn’t work, suffocate him with a plastic bag. The only thing that keeps Jack alive is calling out to Greer in the next room, and then getting a knife to stab the wouldbe killer in the leg and eye.
Ouch.
But as he recovers, Greer gives chase and then the plot remembered Greer has a heart condition and the now one-eyed killer gets away.
Jack, you sure can be dumb sometimes. I thought you were smarter than that!
That said, all these assassination attempts happened while Reyes’s daughter was celebrating her quinceanera. That’s a smart move on Reyes’s part that reminded me of The Godfather where a lot of people have lethal “accidents” during a family baptism. So, at least the show can make a good cinematic reference when it wants to.
We’ll have to wait and see when it comes to Boat Guy.
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