Having met with Angela Burr towards the end of last weeks’ episode of The Night Manager, this week, Jonathan Pine begins to embed himself into Roper’s team – and not by conventional means.
We begin with Jed, Roper’s other half, on the phone, talking to her mother, who evidently, by the tone of Jed’s voice or the fact she then proceeds to down a handful of pills, causes her significant distress, as does her being distant from Billy, her son. Nevertheless, preened and ready to face Roper and play the dutiful girlfriend, she heads off outside and finds herself dancing with Roper’s son Danny. It’s a sweet moment and one perhaps you might hope lasts a bit longer but alas it doesn’t, and all of a sudden, the tension ramps up as Roper and his crew are ambushed and young Danny taken hostage.
Fortunately, watching through a peep-hole in a door is Pine, ready and waiting to have his moment…but first, how exactly did he get there? A quick flash-back six months to Zermatt soon answers that question.
It turns out that the ambush, and Pine’s subsequent rescue of Danny, is all a set up – one that requires him to be beaten to within an inch of his life but hey, you gotta put the work in if you’re going to infiltrate a crime boss and his ring right? Burr, we see, had earlier sent Pine to Devon, to build on the alias and criminal history which would help Roper believe the story he’s set to be spun. “There’s not an hour that you won’t be scared,” Burr tells him. “But you will nail him.”
Returning to the present moment, Roper finds Pine laid out from the beating he took and recognises him as a hotel manager. Nevertheless, since Pine saved his son, Roper deems it only right that he and their friends take care of the evening’s hero. He’s brought to Roper’s residence to re-cooperate and although the majority of Roper’s men are just glad that Danny’s okay, Corcoran (played superbly by Tom Hollander) isn’t so easily swayed. Believing Pine to have an agenda, walking into Pine’s room, standing over the injured patient, there’s a genuine menace to his delivery of: “I’m not sure about you at all, Pine” and he warns him of lying to him or anyone else: “I will hood you and hang you up by those lovely ankles until the truth falls out of you by gravity.”
Roper, as it turns out, isn’t completely won over by Pine’s hero act earlier either, and the episode ends with him watching his patient, steadfastly saying in little more than a whisper: “Tomorrow we’ll find out who you really are.”
So, can Pine really pull this off? Will Corcorcan suss him? When exactly are Pine and Jed going to hook up? We all know it’s going to happen, right? Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait until next week to see if any of these questions get answered, but in the meantime, leave your thoughts on the episode in the comments below.
