In the Aftermath of a Major Twist, Counterpart Goes from Good to Great
Photo: Starz
Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers from the March 4 episode of Counterpart, “The Sincerest Form of Flattery.”
One of the Catch-22s of the peak TV era is that, while there’s an abundance of stellar programs, the harsh reality of time means we can’t watch them all. For most series, it’s all but impossible to achieve the appointment-TV glory of ratings juggernauts like AMC’s The Walking Dead and HBO’s Game of Thrones, no matter how amazing critics tell readers they are. For a series to get to the point where it’s a bona fide must-see—particularly when episodes air over time, instead of being dropped all at once—requires a good deal of word-of-mouth, think pieces like this one, and just sheer luck that viewers will have the patience to wait it out.
Counterpart, Starz’s new sci-fi/spy hybrid series, may have officially hit that moment with its seventh episode, written by Gianna Sobol and directed by Alik Sakharov. (Disclosure: Sobol is an acquaintance of mine, and a former colleague of my husband’s.)
It isn’t that the episode, “The Sincerest Form of Flattery,” has a surprising plot twist—that came at the end of the sixth installment and, quite frankly, was fairly predictable to anyone who watches TV for a living (sorry). Nor is it that the episode offers a major development in the relationship between pencil-pusher Howard Silk (J.K. Simmons) and his domineering clone (also Simmons), who crossed over from a previously unknown-to-Silk parallel universe. That gimmick may have been an entrance to the show and an approachable way to set up its ideas about a new kind of Cold War, but it doesn’t seem like that relationship dynamic will continue to be the major problem for the characters.
Instead, we’re treated to the backstory of Nazanin Boniadi’s Clare. Until the sixth episode, the character is only really seen as a handler for Sara Serraiocco’s ride-or-die assassin, Baldwin. That’s when it was finally confirmed that Clare’s the mole that her conceited, in-over-his-head husband, Peter (Harry Lloyd), has been looking for in his operation ever since the two Howards were introduced in the pilot. With the latest episode, the plot thickens. It’s revealed that Clare isn’t the woman Peter fell in love with: She’s a doppelganger from a renegade group on the other side, who long ago destroyed that woman and seamlessly fit into her life without raising an eyebrow on Peter, her family or anyone else around her.
This idea certainly has plenty to say about feminism and society’s tendency to dismiss women who seem to be happily playing the part of a Stepford homemaker. (How well do you actually know your significant other? What does a stay-at-home mom do during the day while her unsuspecting and trusting husband is at work at his high-clearance government job? She cracks the doofus’ safe, obviously, and pores over his confidential work stuff.)
But it also offers a chance to look at things from another point of view. Counterpart’s other side, the world the still-living Clare and the more grizzled Howard had been inhabiting, was hit with a flu epidemic some years before, evidently spread through pigs. It wiped out seven percent of the population—including that Clare’s parents.