It becomes repetitive after a point, but very few shows can balance the thrill of an espionage film with the comedy befitting a sitcom and remain entirely consistent through the bulk of its tenure. In its fourth season, the Will Smith-written show (at the time of the writing of this recap, this show has been awarded an Emmy for best writing) is truly firing on all cylinders. In Slow Horses (Season 4), episode 3 gives the spotlight to almost every character in this massive ensemble cast, minus maybe Kristin Scott Thomas, who doesn’t appear in this episode but whose machinations invite an opposing machination that forms the bulk of another subplot.
Slow Horses (Season 4) Episode 3 “Penny For Your Thoughts” Recap:
Where is River taken to?
I think, for simplicity’s sake, it’s better to deal with two subplots separately right off the bat. River, who in the previous episode had been knocked out while being rescued by Les Abres, wakes up, groggy-headed, in an unknown apartment. He also notices a gaggle of people slowly lining up outside that house, making him curious. Walking over to the room opposite, he could only spy through the window smoke billowing out of the forest at a distance, realizing that he is back in the town and can’t shimmy the window open and could only escape by clambering through the rooftops.
After managing to only extract answers from the old man (holding him at gunpoint) that someone is coming to talk to him before locking him again, River notices a dirty-blonde-haired woman quarreling with the men outside her house before walking in. He presumes that this is the person who wants to talk to him, and his presumption is proved correct when the woman appears with the old man, pointing the gun at him and asking for his identity.
When River reveals that the man they had been expecting is dead, he is filled with embarrassment for his insensitive remark—of expecting the man to be pleased and put down his gun—because he learns that the woman is the mother of Bertrand, the assassin whom River had murdered and stolen his identity. Realizing their wishes or dreams of reuniting with a family member have been shattered, the duo almost orders River to leave, not even worried about River belonging to British intelligence.
This is until River takes out the photo he had discovered back at Les Abres of the men involved with the whole shindig. He convinces them that the man sitting on the right of Bertrand in the photo is responsible for the bombings on Westacres. Warning them that this will happen again, River requests that they furnish him with information about what this group of people represents so that he can try to stop another Westacre from occurring.
We learn that the woman’s name is Natasha, and the old man is her cousin Victor. At 17 years of age, Natasha belonged to a coterie of women who served the purposes of one Frank Harkness (Hugo Weaving). From what we learn, the three men in the photograph serving under Frank were his children, including Bertrand.
Once the women’s work was done (giving Frank a child, it seems), they would be sent off and not allowed to see their children again. Natasha apparently would move away. When she returned years later, she tried to visit Bertrand, but Bertrand wouldn’t recognize her. Victor had mistaken River for Bertrand and had managed to rescue him when Frank was busy obliterating evidence, and River had been in the way.
As it turns out, the similarities in visage between River and Bertrand come to haunt River because Bertrand has a bad history with many people in the village, and they all want a piece of him. So enraged they would become that they would knock Victor out when he goes outside to appease them and instead rush headlong into the house, forcing River to escape in a half-hilarious, half-terrifying chase sequence, where River finally clambers out of the window of one of the rooms and walks from one roof, only to fall through another roof, with a couple of tires breaking his fall. He would try to run from the terrifying mastiff and only escape by hijacking a moped and barely managing to accelerate it away from the enraged mob.
What is the plan of The First Desk?
The shorter subplot finds Claude (James Callis), First Desk of the Park, licking his wounds after being bamboozled into complicit in Taverner’s schemes, calculating a way out of this mess. The result is that he recruited Giti Rehman in an off-the-books operation, reporting only to him to double-check the archives so that another anomaly within the cold-body program wouldn’t rear its head again. Poor Giti, being the dedicated worker bee she is, agrees to the double-checking and accompanies Claude to the library. As the caustic wheelchair-using librarian Molly astutely comments, she is tired of these countless wars between the First Desk and the Second Desk, but unfortunately for her, this seems to be brewing as well.
What happens to David Cartwright?
The main plot, though, concerns the Slow Horses and their increasing attempt to ensure Cartwright doesn’t fall into the hands of MI5, which could jeopardize River’s undercover operation. However, as Jackson Lamb enters Slough House, she realizes, much to his chagrin, that the head of the Dogs, Flyte, has already arrived at Slough House, and she has grown wise to Lamb’s hijinks. The blood work revealed that the corpse didn’t belong to River Cartwright, and now she is trying to put the pieces together and the first step would be to locate David Cartwright.
It seems though that Flyte isn’t impressed by Lamb’s full schedule of “fuck all” he would have to go through because she threatens to call a carload of Dogs into Slough House. That acquiesces Lamb, who is handcuffed and taken downstairs when he reveals that Cartwright is at Catherine Standish’s place. Flyte, logically suspicious, asks why he would reveal that, to which he states that the idea of Cartwright sitting in a basement cell “stars his nethers” (that is an exciting and very unwelcome image), as he is a piece of shit.
Flyte, while racing downstairs to catch Cartwright, is interrupted by Roddy, who attempts to hit on her heavily and unsubtly. She instead, almost with a come-hither look, manages to handcuff Roddy to his gym machine and walk out briskly. Lamb, meanwhile, urges Louisa to call Catherine and orders her to shift Cartwright from her apartment immediately. A confused Louisa gets her bearings and rushes following the mission.
A confused David Cartwright is what Catherine would be dealing with that day because while the Flyte-Lamb interaction would be occurring, Catherine would be cajoling Cartwright, who would shift from confused grandfather to sudden big-shot head of the MI5 in a matter of seconds, addressing Catherine as a secretary and even recognizing the name of Charles Partner. Catherine takes all of it into stride as she convinces Cartwright to immediately call the Park and provide him the first appointment to allow him to voice his fear about the “bomb.” Something tells me Cartwright’s premonitions about this bomb might be related to the bombing at Westacres.
Louisa, meanwhile, is unable to connect with Catherine via her cell (she doesn’t know that her cell phone is with River, and the SIM card has been taken out). She, however, immediately notices Flyte crossing the road and, taking advantage of Flyte’s unfamiliarity with her as a Slough House member, acts as an aggrieved woman worried that someone is stalking her. Flyte, somewhat suspicious but empathetic, assigns another of her dogs to Louisa while she enters Catherine’s apartment complex. Louisa, meanwhile, manages to brush her escort off.
Those few minutes seemed to have done the trick because when Flyte enters Catherine’s apartment, she cannot locate Cartwright and searches every nook and cranny of the apartment. Catherine pretends to be a doddering fool that Jackson Lamb sends officers after for harassing her, and Flyte leaves the apartment enraged. Later, when Louisa finally meets Catherine, she is relieved to know that Catherine has stashed David in the apartment below hers, where she has been cat-sitting. However, the problem arises when both women open the apartment and find it devoid of one David Cartwright, who had left the apartment complex via the back door and is now completely lost in London.
What are the other Slow Horses up to?
A subplot from previous episodes rears its head here: Marcus, a compulsive gambler, has returned to his erring ways, much to Shirley’s chagrin. Thus, Marcus, who had just bought a Beretta handgun, decides to sell it to get some of his winnings back and sort himself out. As it turns out, he deals with a shady arms dealer, and while Marcus might be a proficient gambler, he isn’t a very good negotiator, managing only to sell his Beretta for a meager 3,000 pounds.
Meanwhile, Roddy’s plight of being stuck at the gym machine is finally solved by the new Slow Horse member, JK Coe—the taciturn and yet heightened traumatized figure. As he explains, while holding Shirley with a knife at her jugular, Roddy being handcuffed to his chair triggers him, as he has already been a prisoner, and that is not a moment he wants to recollect. He manages to free Ho, though Ho’s ability to gain a friend from this interaction is debatable.
Amidst all this hullabaloo, Lamb is woken from his slumber by a visit from Moira Tregorian. Apparently, she had utilized her contacts within the Queens of the Database. She figured out two important pieces of information: David Cartwright had never been to France in the 90s, but his “bagman” had been, specifically, at the village of Lavande.
Slow Horses (Season 4) Episode 3 “Penny For Your Thoughts” Ending Explained:
Who are the Slow Horses trying to protect?
Cartwright’s “bagman” had been his bodyguard and former Head Dog “Bad” Sam Chapman. He also happens to be one of Lamb’s trusted contacts outside Slough House, and as we now realize, one of the old men that Harkness instructs one of his “sons” to follow and kill at a secluded place. Chapman is called up by Lamb and asked to meet at their usual location at the laundry, but Lamb soon gets a call back from Chapman stating that he is being tailed.
Lamb, realizing that danger is afoot, begins to walk furiously. He instructs him to meet Lamb at one of their safe houses at an abandoned garage. Lamb meanwhile employs Shirley and Marcus to follow Chapman and the intruder following him. Before Marcus and Shirley can barely get their bearings, the unknown man manages to push Marcus through a window, bamboozling him and Shirley while following Chapman.
As Chapman hides inside the garage, the man enters with a silenced revolver, intent on killing him, when he is interrupted by both Marcus and Shirley. The man is strong enough to dispatch both of them fairly easily. As we slowly feel dread upon seeing Chapman staring at the barrel of a gun, the man is interrupted by a taxi bursting through the entrance of the garage and driving through the man, leading the man to topple over and fall on the other side. The taxi is driven by Lamb, who comes to Chapman and the rest of the Slow Horses’ rescue. He instructs his two employees to put the man in for questioning, only to find the man has disappeared. The case has only started to quicken.
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