Confirmed: Lix And Brown Have *A Past*

It goes without saying that the addition of The Thick Of It's Peter Capaldi to the cast of The Hour is a boon on every imaginable level. It sharpens the show to give its cast a prickly boss who won't just accede to every request Bel (Romola Garai) and Freddie (Ben Whishaw) because -- like the last executive who was in charge of them before he had to resign in disgrace and stuff -- because he's helpless in the face of their charisma and passion; instead, they must be more resourceful and clever and figure out ways around him. It's good for Capaldi to jump onto another British TV franchise appealing to sophisticated nerds, now that The Thick Of It may have just aired its last season.

And when I found out that Capaldi's character, Randall Brown, had worked with Lix (Anna Chancellor) before, some of their more barbed interactions may have made me suspect that their relationship wasn't only professional. Last night, my suspicion proved true. The greatest boon of all: evidence of my having been right! But holy shit, last night's bombshell! They had a kid together! And Brown wants to find her!

Don't get me wrong: I love Bel and Freddie. This whole business with Frenchie (I'm sure she has a name, but I don't care what it is) is obviously just a complication on their path to TLA, and when they finally get together, it will delight us all. But Lix spent all of Season 1 being fascinating and awesome in such an understated, matter-of-fact way. In her smart trouser suits, peering over the tops of her glasses, casually picking flecks of tobacco off her tongue, we could tell she only came to the relatively soft environment of a weekly newsmagazine from a hard news background; it seemed clear that she'd seen some shit and done some shit. Apparently some of the shit she's done includes Brown.

And rather than just parachuting in as an intrusive boss with lots of dumb ideas like Mr. Wick (Craig Ferguson) on The Drew Carey Show, Brown is already showing he deserved the praise of everyone at the Paris office who said he was the best head (hee) they ever had. Installing Freddie as the level-headed, incisive co-hosting counterpart to Hector (Dominic West), with his oleaginous schmooziness is just smart programming. Brown doesn't shy from on-air controversy, approving segments that seem tame by our standards but that would look as indecorous to British viewers as a chair-throwing installment of Maury. He's...kind of great?

Which is why I feel ambivalent about this business with the secret baby, juicy though it may be. It's fine for Brown to have romantic ideas about tracking down his daughter and maybe having a relationship with her: he's a man, and men are expected to have had complicated dalliances in the past, particularly in the middle of a damn war. But for Lix not only to have given birth to a baby but kept the fact from her colleagues and continued to have a career as a journalist must have been extremely difficult. This child's potential reappearance could be hard to reconcile with Lix's life today; it would change the way her colleagues look at her, compromise her authority in the office, and possibly force her to cut down on her smoking.

And yet...Lix and Brown, man. They still have chemistry. He actually seems worthy of her. What if this child -- the one thing they've had between them, throughout all the years they weren't together -- could be the obstacle that keeps them from getting back together again the way I want them to? Even when you place them for adoption in another country, KIDS RUIN EVERYTHING.