![]() ![]() Homm isn’t dead: part of the Valence job was posing Homm to be dead, only for Weir to be set up. Once again we must remember his status as an unreliable narrator. Weir’s paranoia in this case is justified, or so we think. He’s the sole survivor beside three dead when Weir’s office explodes, and spends the second hour following similarly anonymous instructions: first on what to tell the FBI, then following Weir to the police station where he attempts to retrieve the authenticator to log into Valence’s communications. Kyle (Walt Klink), the erstwhile intern working for Weir, definitely is. In the cold open, Weir wonders if God can tell him “what the fuck is going on.” There certainly seems to be an omnipresent hand controlling people like puppets: Valence was one, Hailey is perhaps or perhaps not another. ![]() The kind of terrified that makes him jump off the 30th floor of his building when instructed by a text saying “DO IT. Miles Valence (Jason Butler Harner), who runs Arda and hired Weir, has a camera in his office which he appears terrified of. Weir is framed for the murder of Homm at the exact same time he thinks someone is trying to get to him: Hailey’s nearby presence after the Arda job has him suspicious. ![]() It’s peak spy thriller and establishes early that “Rabbit Hole” is capable of building these types of complex setpieces. There’s a confidence to John that Sutherland makes his own, and it allows the next job sequence – which we’re privy to the details of, courtesy of client Arda Analytics – to be very entertaining, as John and his crew frame collusion between US Treasury Official Edward Homm and the CEO of a company rivalling that of one accused of using child labor. Blackmail attempt? Sure, but by who? Not Special Agent Jo Madi (Enid Graham) of the FBI’s Financial Crimes Division, nor indeed – as we’ll come to learn – by Hailey directly. In completing the Esper-Ethika job, he meets Hailey (Meta Golding), an attractive woman at the bar with whom he sleeps, only to unearth a camera in her hotel room clock the following morning. He’s a fixer of sorts, a man who can find a way to make his clients’ problems disappear or make them a whole heap of cash. We learn exactly what it is Weir does: he sets up a fake news report on Esper-Ethika, the company who develop the world’s leading erectile dysfunction drug which has now been linked to cancer, all so that one of his clients can make a fortune when the stock price dropped. What very quickly becomes clear after we cut to three weeks before is that Weir’s status as an unreliable narrator is going to drive the series – and perhaps drive its viewers up a wall. “I literally can’t tell the difference between what’s real and what’s not,” he tells the priest. The show instead opens with Weir in a confession booth, not to lay bare his sins in hope of forgiveness but simply for someone to listen. ![]() Had the first episode of “Rabbit Hole” begun with a Kiefer Sutherland voiceover along the lines of: “I’m private espionage operative John Weir, and today is the worst day of my life,” it would’ve felt perhaps too on-the-nose, but there would’ve certainly been some truth to it. ![]()
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