The Diplomat - Season 1-3
“Male-skewing numbers aside, The Diplomat reveals an empowering script where women drive most of the series’ events.”
Title: The Diplomat
Episodes Reviewed: Seasons 1-3
Creator: Debora Cahn 👩🏼🇺🇸
Writers: Debora Cahn 👩🏼🇺🇸 (7 eps), Peter Noah 👨🏼🇺🇸 (4 eps), Anna Hagen 👩🏼🇺🇸 (3 eps), Peter Ackerman 👨🏼🇺🇸 (2 eps), and various
Reviewed by Li 👩🏻🇺🇸
—SPOILERS AHEAD—
Technical: 4/5
From the producer of fast-paced political dramas The West Wing (1999–2006) and Homeland (2011–20), Deborah Cahn’s The Diplomat delivers a similar sense of anxious gravitas. The Netflix show stars Keri Russell as Ambassador Kate Wyler, a Kabul-bound American official who’s suddenly relocated to London, where she finds herself at the center of global conspiracies. Both aided and undercut by her inscrutable husband Hal Wyler (Rufus Sewell), all while working with her British counterpart, Foreign Secretary Austin Dennison (David Gyasi), Kate forges ahead with a blend of stubbornness and quiet idealism that repeatedly gets her into geopolitical trouble.
While the writing is sharp, and dry humor keeps the plot-heavy series watchable, much is crowded out by nonstop dialogue—particularly in the first two seasons, where writers seem under the gun to capture your attention, not your heart. Politicians and kingmakers and spies seldom pause to catch their breaths in between brisk read-outs, veiled conversations, and panicked outbursts. Without room to organically develop, characters feel more like chess pieces than actual humans. It’s true that Kate, her allies, and her frenemies are assigned a variety of personalities, but they lack the backstories or visible friends and families that would convert them into three-dimensional people worth caring about. Luckily, Season 3 slows down the mania, taking more time to invest in a few key characters—Kate, Hal, and Vice President Grace Penn (Allison Janney)—making their messy dramas that much more enjoyable to watch.
Gender: 5/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES
Cut from the same ultra-capable cloth as Homeland’s protagonist Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes), Kate is also a woman in a position of power who works mostly with men. But male-skewing numbers aside, a glance at the quality of roles reveals an empowering script where women drive most of the series’ events. In a subversion of gender roles, men pose as love interests and symbolic figureheads, most of them simple creatures who are easily manipulated.
The only exception is Hal, who matches Kate and other key players beat-for-beat in the show’s wily game of cat and mouse. But make no mistake, those key players are women: the Prime Minister’s confidante Margaret Roylin (Celia Imrie), White House Chief of Staff Billie Appiah (Nana Mensah), VP Penn (Janney), and London’s CIA Chief Eidra Park (Ali Ahn) all have central parts to play. In contrast, Prime Minister Nicol Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear) causes a lot of blustery chaos while Foreign Secretary Dennison tries to bring him to heel, but as episodes pass, it becomes clear that they’re both being influenced by one or more of the aforementioned women behind the scenes.
The only area where the portrayals of women feel a bit thin are the spaces in between them. They’re largely tethered to men in their orbit; Kate’s personal life is often subsumed with romantic interests and love triangles. But when Grace Penn is introduced in the second season’s penultimate episode, she vigorously shakes up the landscape with enticing, tension-filled discussions that acknowledge the unique challenges of being a woman in office. Season 3 ramps up Grace’s role and fosters her intriguing kinship with Kate, laying fertile narrative ground that Season 4 will hopefully take advantage of.
Race: 3.5/5
The Diplomat is firmly led by white characters Kate and Hal, but actors of color do have important roles—which is fitting for a series set in London that centers around international diplomacy. They include Dennison (Gyasi, who’s English Ghanaian), Eidra (Korean American Ahn), Kate’s deputy chief Stuart Heyford (Ato Essandoh, Ghanaian American), and Billie (Mensah, also Ghanaian American). Still, none of these characters divulge much of a backstory beyond factoids of who’s attracted to who, where people have previously worked, etc. Neither does race ostensibly factor into anyone’s identity or motivations. With this colorblind approach, The Diplomat’s diverse casting is welcome, but the depth just isn’t there, and by the time Season 3 rolls around, characters like Dennison, Eidra, Stuart, and Billie have even less to do.
—SPOILERS IN THE NEXT CATEGORY—
LGBTQ: 1.5/5
We never meet any explicitly queer characters, but Stuart’s aide Ronnie is queer-coded. Played by nonbinary Irish-French actor Jess Chanliau, Ronnie sports a pixie cut and regularly wears a suit and bowtie to work. The script doesn’t codify they/them pronouns for the character, but writers are also careful not to use gendered pronouns, instead making sure to call Ronnie by their name when mentioned by other characters. (Chanliau uses they/them pronouns.)
Ronnie plays a beloved character, often seen with Stuart trailing behind Kate as the ambassador power walks from room to room. But Ronnie only makes it to the beginning of Season 2 before being martyred as a plot point in a car bomb explosion. As The Direct gleans from an interview with Cahn, “Ronnie's death was meant to further drive a schism between the show's central couple, Kate and Hal Wyler.” To kill a queer character for the purpose of furthering a straight couple’s narrative pretty much defines the tiresome Bury Your Gays trope.
—END SPOILERS—
Bonus for Age: +0.25
Supporting character Roylin, played by Imrie (who is 73 years old at the time of this review), is a power player in the British Conservative Party and has a key role in the first two seasons. Along with Janney’s (65) multifaceted portrayal of Grace, these women over 60 have an immense impact on the plot.
Mediaversity Grade: B- 3.56/5
White women have no shortage of main roles in political dramas, seen in Russell’s previous series The Americans (2013–18) or Téa Leoni’s Madam Secretary (2014–19). Similarly, The Diplomat centers around a white woman while intersectionality lags behind. A greenlit fourth season gives The Diplomat plenty of opportunity to reinvigorate the characters of color it’s already introduced (but mostly forgot about in Season 3), and could add new folks to the roster who bring fresh angles and perspectives to the show.
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