Hostage Negotiation

After teases and hints in the first three episodes, the fourth episode of The Honourable Woman finally stops fucking around and shows us, in chronological order, what happened eight years ago in the life of the Steins, in Gaza, and in the most secret corners of several countries' (and one territory's) governments. What we've already seen has prepared us that it's going to be upsetting and awful, and it is -- but what happens in the lead-up to what we all probably predicted is actually worse. "The Ribbon Cutter" is so carefully plotted and structured that I didn't realize how it was manipulating me until the manipulation was over.

We open with a party celebrating the birth of Ephra's daughter. Ephra would normally be the one to travel to the Middle East to give a speech at one of the schools the Stein Foundation has funded, but because of his newest arrival, Nessa is going in his place. If Ephra had gone, there wouldn't be any questions about a seven-figure sum that's mysteriously gone astray, and no investigation to follow the unsatisfactory answers that would bring any of the Steins to Gaza, and thus no murdered driver and no kidnapping. (Way to go, baby.)

What happens then is that, after we've spent the episode watching Nessa's anxiety about the missing money, her fervour to maintain the good Stein name, and Atika's brave selflessness in figuring out how to assist Nessa in her search for answers, both of them are offscreen for a while. Like, around a quarter of the episode. In their absence, we return to London, as the relevant spies and machers try to figure out how Nessa came to be taken, and why, and whether there's a way to get her back. Julia may not have ascended to her lofty position yet, but she's smarter than everyone around her, and shares a scene in the back of her chauffeured car with Monica in which it seems like the two of them could probably run all of British intelligence between the two of them and get a lot more done.

"No spoilers but the next 'Honourable Woman' features a hot bitch contest between Janet McTeer and Eve Best (winner: the viewer)." I tweeted. See, Monica got Julia's boss on tape doing part of the shady shit that ended in Nessa's abduction, and Julia and Monica use it to get that dude out, so that Julia can get his job. And then Julia out-bad-asses herself even FURTHER by going along with Monica's suggestion that she find a "night watchman" to install on the Middle East desk, calling Hugh in the middle of the night and ordering, "Time to wake up so you can come over here and fuck me in your new office." As the changeover happens at MI6, Ephra has to hear from an irate Israeli Shin Bet guy (I assume) that he's brought Nessa's predicament upon himself, and left himself in a position where he can't do anything to help her -- if he does, Israel will find out where she is and bomb it.

As Ephra sobs, and falls to his knees, begging for her life -- "We only ever had each other" -- it starts to dawn on me that the hot bitch contest, with its spiky dialogue and cool assessment of political expediency, kind of hypnotized me, so that I totally blew past the part where Monica told Julia that no one was going to intervene for Nessa: "From now on, Julia, we really don't negotiate with terrorists," she says, with an ingenuous blink and smirk.

And then there's Julia's promotion and her proposition to Hugh and Ephra's dressing-down by Israel, and after about thirteen minutes of watching everyone talk about her, we're back in captivity (or purgatory) with Nessa. Time passes. Saleh, Nessa's captor, ponders the photos of the loved ones he's lost. Then he's taking two pills, one yellow and one teal. Then he's screaming. And then he's storming into Nessa's cell, showing her the images of his wife and daughter, whose deaths he blames her for. And then he's ordering her to lie down.

Nessa asks what Saleh's going to do, even though she knows, but before anything can happen, Atika has jumped on his back to try to overpower him. It doesn't work, because she's tiny, and he easily gets her up against the wall and starts choking her to death. This goes on for a while, until we hear Nessa's voice -- frightened, but still firm and clear -- telling Saleh, "Stop it. Okay, look, I'm lying down. I'm lying down. Look. I'm lying down. Stop it. Stop it! Stop it, I'm lying down."

From the moment Saleh enters, out of his mind with grief and vengeance and whatever kind of (I assume) speed he took, it's obvious how the scene is going to end; each woman taking a turn delaying the inevitable by putting her body in his hands for the sake of the other is a counterpoint to all the machinations we've just watched unfolding in London. The civilized political operators have assessed Nessa in absentia and determined her not to have any political value. Saleh has also taken her measure and thinks he's figured out how to dehumanize her even more than mere imprisonment has done. Maybe Julia and Monica have little reason to think Nessa might get raped in captivity -- we later learn that Saleh's superiors don't condone what he's done and will banish him for it, so presumably this violation is far beyond even what terrorists are thought to be capable of -- but I feel like since Monica and Julia are women, the possibility should be part of their calculation of Nessa's situation if for no other reason than any time a woman is isolated, she could get raped, whether she's in a cell in Gaza or in the corner at a party.

It's obviously impossible to say that any part of this scene is worse than any other. It's...all bad. But the staging of Nessa's capitulation is particularly striking. The first half of the episode finds her coming into her own as a meaningful contributor to the family business, bravely taking over Ephra's usual duties because she believes so deeply in the work they're doing in the region, excited about carrying their father's legacy, personally offended by the loss of the misdirected money. She takes Atika up on her offer to go to Gaza in search of answers because she's wealthy and powerful and has probably always gotten through difficult predicaments with some combination of charm, money, and force, until now. And so I think we don't see Nessa lie down because this isn't a melodrama. The point of this moment isn't for us to see Nessa's anguish as this man squeezes the life out of her friend, and Nessa deciding that the indignity of submitting to him is worth it if it will save Atika. We know that's what happens on her side whether we see her or not. The point of this moment is that Nessa is solving a problem in the only way she can. For that voice -- which by this point we're used to hearing give speeches or direct high-level meetings -- to float into the scene from Nessa's unseen face and announce her surrender is even more unsettling to me than what follows.

This is also the moment where it becomes clear to Nessa that, as long as she's imprisoned, her body is going to be the only thing of value that she has to bargain with: soon we'll see her trade the fetus she doesn't want to carry for Atika's life and freedom. For now, her captors can look. She's lying down. She'll stand up later.