Slow Horses Season 6, Episode 5 Review — 'Sayonara'

"Sayonara" Goes All Out: Big Deaths, Twists, Major Revelations, Grand Romantic Gestures, and Explosions Galore. It's the Dumbest Slow Horses Yet, Yet It Brings Season 6 to a High-Note Finish.

This review contains full spoilers for Slow Horses Season 6, Episode 5, now streaming on Apple TV.

"Sayonara," the penultimate episode of Slow Horse's sixth season, is about as close to cinema as a TV episode can get, for better or for worse. The wide shots, mostly set in the misty countryside, are beautiful. Big deaths (Bye Jim, drowned in a lake) and twists (Jane survives a car crash!), high-stakes political drama (Diana Taverner's heated committee meeting), classic espionage (Jackson Lamb's Call vs. Damien Cantor Rossi), and tender moments between its characters (Sid the Nerdnight, and River). Heck, it even ends with a big move and a big car explosion. Slow Horses are finally getting their runway moment.

Oddly enough, this is also kind of an antithesis to the series itself. Since when can slow horses have good things? River (Jack Ludden) makes awful, stupid, emotional decisions that mostly turn out to be good. Mounted horses in Taverner's country house eat cookies and wine. River and Syd can kiss for Chrissake! However, those fleeting moments are actually a poignant reminder that, no, things don't usually turn out so well for Slow Horses as the season winds down and, as Frank Harkness and his two minions promise, will probably literally burn the house down. Especially Diana Taverner's vacation home.

Slow Horses Season 6 Episode 4 Review - "Lost and Found"

Things pick up seconds after last episode, where Syd Baker (Olivia Cooke) was kidnapped at gunpoint by confirmed GRU agents Jim (Kyle Soler) and Jane (MyAnna Buring), but now we're seeing things from River's perspective as she runs after their car. This is really the big part of Sid and River. Syd uses the new "river" plate he bought last episode to cut Jane while driving to save herself from being killed, even though it puts them all in serious danger when the car takes a few barrel rolls and flips over. River comes in to save Sid from drowning and together they kill Jim.

The couple have a few sweet moments together amidst the chaos. River finally tells her about her grandfather's death. They talk about the most romantic ways to die in the Black Site nest. Just before Syd is about to take a Russian plane to Bulgaria - a neutral, untracked place where he will surely be killed - they flirt with each other fiercely. And there's River's big moment, fueled by the power of a woman in her: she punches some dogs, steals an airport maintenance truck, and gives herself up to a gang of Black Cars to keep Syd from being caught and sacrificed as revenge for Taverner's illegal hit on Kazan. Maybe in a different life they could have been together, but almost certainly not.

When it comes to Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas), the first table is unwaveringly under surveillance. There's Lamb (Greyoldman) to blame, as he's gathered that Diana wiped Slough House's records because she used Syd's dead-on-paper, unusable identity to cover up Kazan's assassination. Next up is the all-male MI5 oversight committee as he is questioned about the details of the same hit. In fact, he uses each one as an opportunity to show how in control he is and how poor and underfunded the service is. He hasn't left yet - I wonder if it was backed by arrogance or necessity? - and I'll be curious to see if he makes it through unscathed or goes the way of his other predecessors in the finals.

The merry band of Slow Horses are having a good time at their vacation home, watching TV, drinking, and making Molotov cocktails. Lamb has Roddy Ho (Christopher Chung) digging up dirt on Damien Cantor (Harry Lloyd), but it's Standish (Saskia Reeves) who finally gets a job that isn't staring at wine bottles or being a mom to a bunch of whiners. Funny enough, it comes at a dinner table moment with Reece (Lenny Rush). Both were grieving the deaths of not-so-great men with whom they nevertheless had complicated relationships—Standish, her old boss Charles Partner, and Rees, her father—and neither liked to talk about it. However, both carry out their conversation in such a way that they feel even a little comforted in finding some modicum of common ground.

The episode's biggest cliffhanger is the one we've been waiting for all season to explain (besides "why erase Slough House's records?"): What is Cantor doing? Although it is still not 100% clear, we do know that he is using mysterious Russian contacts for a media distribution deal that is said to be the largest in Russian history. (Is he airing Russian ads on his own network or advertising for Russian state TV? Maybe both?) But Lem isn't far behind. He learns that Cantor hired Harkness (Hugo Weaving) to take out Andy Nasmith, and Cantor has a strangely scheduled meeting at a children's ballet practice (based on information obtained from Ho's detective work). He follows Cantor's call to a theater and then a bookstore, but he misses Lamb—something a normal can't do. Now only the last few pieces of the puzzle remain.

Sayonara pulls it all off: big deaths, twists, big reveals, big romantic gestures, and really big explosions. It's the most uncharacteristically Bond-like slow horse ever, and yet it pulls it off in the service of ending the season on a high note.