"The Old Man" is a tale of 2 fathers and their love for their daughter set against a John le Carre-esque spy plot
"The Old Man" is a tale of 2 fathers and their love for their daughter set against a John le Carre-esque spy plot
Binge all 6 episodes this week ahead of Thursday's season finale on FX/Hulu.
Before I even knew what the new FX spy thriller series, The Old Man was about beyond that it felt action packed and espionage bent from the trailers, I knew from the cast alone (see below), that I was giving this show at least one try. Turns out each episode runs over an hour so it’s quite a commitment, but that 1+ hours gave me enough to know I wanted to come back for a second episode.
The “wow-factor” casting includes: Alia Shawkat (Arrested Development, Search Party), John Lithgow (just about anything really good, but notably Harry & The Hendersons, Dexter, and Third Rock from the Sun), Amy Brenneman, (Judging Amy, The Leftovers, Private Practice, NYPD Blue), and last but certainly not least, Jeff Bridges (The Dude from The Big Lebowski). There are also 2 amazingly trained, beautiful Rottweilers that play Bridges’ companions and protectors.
Warning: Spoilers ahead!
The show centers around Bridges’ character, Dan Chase, a former CIA agent stationed in Afghanistan in the 1980s (think Soviet invasion: exploitation of resources, like oil, political takeovers, puppet leadership and instability, insurrections and spies). The show goes back and forth from present day to the past to help us to piece together how Dan ended up alone, widowed, and the victim of an attempted assassination, which he narrowly escapes with the help of his canine companions.
Apart from conversations with his dead wife and the ghost of seasons’ past, Dan’s only other human interaction is with his daughter, Emily, who, we get the gist, he hasn’t seen in a long time because it would be “too dangerous,” but he talks to her all the time via phone. We assume she’s real and that there’s a lot of love, sacrifice and honor in their relationship based on the dialogues they have, but again based on his living in relative seclusion, under an alias, we get that there was some shady business leading up to their separation. We also don’t know for how long they’ve been apart.
While one can easily make the assumption that Dan is the eponymous “old man” that the title alludes to, upon watching the show, we learn that he may have competition in that department - in the form of a puppetmaster-like character, in the form of a cameo by a man who may or may not be related to someone who used to Dirty Dance in the 80s…
Dan, it turns out, is somewhat of a pawn, even though the show does a good job of making us feel like Dan is the Bobby Fischer of reading his opponents and playing his strategy accordingly. He’s definitely accomplished and hones his craftsmen-like skill, priding himself on understanding human behaviour and manipulating others to seek out what he needs with every interaction he has. The thing is is Dan is getting old and it’s just possible he’s losing his marbles or at the very least, his edge, if his conversations with his dead wife are any indication. Then again…
As the season progresses, we are introduced to other key characters, like Harold Harper (Lithgow), a CIA director, working with his protege, Angela (Shawkat) who also happens to hunting Dan down in an attempt to clean up a mess from 40 years ago. That’s right. Dan is a fugitive of sorts who absconded from the CIA and has been living his life under assumed identities and dragged his family into it. Don’t worry you will know this by at least the beginning of the second episode.
At the heart of a show about spy games and betrayal, is the story of love and loyalties. And boy, is this show ripe with them. Which brings us to the story of Dan’s daughter. She’s the key and the one that, as it will likely become more apparent in the finale, is the draw for Dan’s former buddy, a jilted lover, and Afghani insurgent, Faraz Hamzad, who as it turns out, is gunning for Dan, because of one of the 4 core themes of the show I mentioned at the start of this paragraph.
Harold Harper, it turns out, is in mourning when the show starts - having lost his only child, his son, in an event which predates the start of the show, and while at first Harold presents as a wooden, calculated, Machiavellian-like CIA head, over time he grows on you. Maybe because Lithgow is just so good in everything he does…Winston Churchill anyone?
Amy Brenneman as Zoe, Dan’s unlikely partner-in-vigilante-CIA-spy justice is as unassuming a foil to Dan’s latent arrogance as there ever was and we applaud her for her efforts to keep Dan on his toes second guessing himself. Someone had to keep this guy in check.
And with that, I’m going to leave you with your cover of the week, an acoustic version of “More than a feeling” by Natalie Taylor brought to you by Physical, Season 2 on Apple TV, another one of my favorite shows. Thanks Ariel for the reco. It’s grown on me.
And yes, she kinda looks like Phoebe Waller-Bridge in this video still.
Happy watching. Happy week.