Undercover

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Because one suspects the FBI / CIA wanted Antwi out of the way.

Well, yes - but ...

i.e. maybe yes, indeed, HE too was in undercover work, had got disillusioned and was likely to spout, partic after the lethal injection failed.[ Was the drug muling part of how to keep his cred with the targets the FBI / CIA were interested in?

Y'see??!!! We don't know - we're having to hypothesize! And, if I have to write the script, I want a fee!

And whom do you mean by "HE"? Rudy? (Then the rest of your sentence makes sense; but the second one about "drug muling" doesn't - because I don't remember Rudy being involved in this?) Or Michael - in which case the first sentence doesn't make sense, because Michael was killed years before the botched lethal injection.

And Nick knew same.

... as ... ? (And if he did know whatever this is, what was the information that made Nick destroy the recording he'd made?

Hence The Scotsman desperately needs to discredit Maya - which of course fails spectacularly, or does it? - then kill off Nick if his blackmail does not keep him in line, Both would keep The Scotsman's own credit and networks in USA operational, protected in UK. He cannot ever be allowed to be cornered, questioned by ANY authority because he knows far, far, far too much on both sides of Atlantic.

I don't follow the logic of the "hence" - why should Maya need to be discredited if the "he" you refer to is either Rudy or Michael? What does she know/what can she do that might need this - especially as the baddies could much more easily arrange for her to have a dangerous epileptic fit? (And was there any other reason for Maya's illness than to give a context for her daughter's accompanying her to the States?)

[jean]

Could be; but wasn't Michael was killed back in the '80s - I thought the murder for which Rudy was condemned was more recent?

Yes, of course - I'd forgotten (possibly because everyone in the flashbacks looked almost identical to their present selves).

I thought Michael was the drug mule, which makes him seem rather less of a noble character - unless it was a cover for something much more important (but if it was, we never knew what).

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I thought Michael was the drug mule, which makes him seem rather less of a noble character - unless it was a cover for something much more important (but if it was, we never knew what).

Yes - IIRC, his mother spoke to Maya and "Nick" about how she discovered the drugs and let him know of her displeasure in no uncertain terms. But if the baddies already knew this, then it wouldn't've been such a revelation when "Nick" told his handler this news. Unless the handler didn't know, either?

[jean]

And why was the 'mayor' shot? And noble as it may have been for Rudy to know who did shoot him and to refuse to say, of what interest is that if we're never told?

Same about the statement that Michael 'deserved to die'; if we don't know why, it's of no dramatic interest.

[DracoM]

Maya didn't know the guy she was defending in US was undercover at all............IMHO.
Maya being shot at from all sides - only family to hold on to, and Nick gets drawn into that love of / in the family he never had?

Yes, making your own scripts is exciting too.

Ferney - you and I ought to go into biz as a syndicate. Eat your heart out, Moffatt / Mercurio!!

[DracoM]

And why was the 'mayor' shot? And noble as it may have been for Rudy to know who did shoot him and to refuse to say, of what interest is that if we're never told?

Same about the statement that Michael 'deserved to die'; if we don't know why, it's of no dramatic interest.

Mayor is a wrong'un. In drug trade himself - can't have anyone bleeding identities / going off-message. Maybe FBI need to have him shot and make our man look like the guilty one? Hmm.

Hence The Scotsman's panic when Maya gets involved - will she discover the UK / FBI et al conspiracy?

WHO is not undercover? Aha!

[Serial_Apologist]

Feeling as I do as baffled as everyone else, it looks as if I'm going to have to watch the whole series again!

[jean]

Kate Abbot foresees the problems involved in bringing the whole thing to a conclusionin her analysis of ep. 5:

...is an hour enough time to reveal all, while still giving us a passably tense series end? Aren’t we being drip-fed too slowly to expect a satisfying conclusion? Indeed, is there anything at this point that could give us one? My main worry is that it’ll be so inconclusive the BBC will have to commit to a second series...

Can't wait for her take on ep. 6.

[jean]

...but wasn't Michael was killed back in the '80s - I thought the murder for which Rudy was condemned was more recent?...

Yes, of course - I'd forgotten...

But we both forgot just how long people hang around on Death Row for!

Kate Abbott on the last episode:

...As I see it, Undercover’s great potential – brilliant cast, huge angry knotty issues – has been fatally undermined by implausibilities. I know we always have to suspend a bit of disbelief, but it’s hardly ideal to leave your audience hollering at copious plotholes every couple of scenes, is it?

There’s still so much that fails to add up. Why did it take Maya so long to investigate Michael Antwi’s death? Why is she still driving when she has epilepsy? And can it really all come down to the elected mayor of Baton Rouge? Did the minister of justice and the mystery Scotsman enlist Antwi to assassinate the mayor? Why have they expended so much energy and evilness to cover this up for so long – to stop a riot? Nick’s work seems unlikely “to make the world a safer place”. Surely he’s just there to save face for them. The triumvirate of evil’s reasoning was: “we’ve been making sure police officers are not put on trial. We live in a tolerant society and none of us want to disturb that.” It seems so weak.

Though the bid for justice didn’t work out so well in London, yet, Maya actually did overturn the US constitution. Her argument before the Supreme Court to prove that the death penalty was cruel and unconstitutional swerved from slavery to superheroes to linguistics to racism, and finally to pain (very topical). But she can’t offer any hard evidence. Rudy Jones can, though. It’s a miracle! What a recovery from the man who came out of a lethal-injection-induced coma to give a lengthy, rousing and history-defining speech. The excellent Dennis Haysbert gave it his best go, but why did no one veto this secondary strand in the States? Police brutality in Britain would have been quite enough for one script...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

But we both forgot just how long people hang around on Death Row for!

Yes - I had hedged my bets with "more recent" (than Michael's death), but I couldn't remember how long Maya had been defending him. (Was there some dialogue when she introduced Clem to Rudy that the case had gone on for most of Clem's life? I just can't remember.) But why was the Mayor of the Capital of an American State murdered by a British secret agent? Entirely to lay the blame on Rudy? There must have been easier - and less expensive, and (unless the US government was also in on it) less potentially damaging to international relationships - ways of keeping a "trouble-maker" out of the UK? (Like ... ooh, I dunno ... for example, refusing Rudy a visa?!)

I don't think that Michael accepted the "to make the world a safer place" guff - I understood that he was pleased to get this admission on record. It was whatever the Scotsman told him afterwards that made him change his mind and destroy the recording. And the reason? "Because he deserved to die" "Who? Rudy?" "No; Michael" (fade out and credits).

No - I'm still left with the feeling that I've missed the most important point. (That's a fib - my real feeling is that the writers tried to cover a poor conclusion with a terribly disappointing atmospheric, enigmatic-seeming fudge!)

[DracoM]

Looks like Kate Abbot and I agree about the conspiracy way back to bump off the mayor.

[jean]

But if the mayor was involved in drug-dealing, why not just expose his drug-dealing and get rid of him on those grounds? That way, any more shady involvements he may have had disappear without trace.

The problem is that we are not told any of this. It's not dramatically satisfactory for the viewer to have to speculate quite so much.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

But if the mayor was involved in drug-dealing, why not just expose his drug-dealing and get rid of him on those grounds? That way, any more shady involvements he may have had disappear without trace.

Yes - or get a domestic hitman to do the work that - if Michael is supposed to have been the hitman - we're expected to believe that the US "outsourced" to the British Secret Service.

The problem is that we are not told any of this. It's not dramatically satisfactory for the viewer to have to speculate quite so much.

Precisely. With the first two series of Line of Duty (which I found much more enjoyable and involving in every respect) unanswered cliffhangers, leading forward into the next series, were made clear that this was their function - each series ended with a satisfactory (if only temporary) tying up of details essential to that series. There was none of this "What were they going on about?" that Undercover has caused.

[eighthobstruction]

....glad I didn't watch it....I guessed from original blurb and trailers that the director/writers would create a tense complicated thriller....that in the end it would create a serpent eating it's own tail....

[DracoM]

Yeah, but think of the scandal if a major local US politician gets elected and it transpires that he is a drug dealer, and being used as an undercover to entice / blackmail, AND a Brit lawyer sees his assassin's attempted execution as a purely racial issue and shames the US Supreme court into the his release - think Snowden, think Pananma Papers - but the US Govt. knows the real truth, that he is in fact an undercover for them.

Think of the hold The Scotsman would have over the FBI etc if that came out, and the scare he would have then if Maya uncovers this massive undercover scandal involving lots on both sides of the Atlantic. and if Nick really does get the story into the press in UK.........phew!!