[For The Night Manager “Part Three” or any other recaps on Fetchland, assume the presence of possible spoilers.]
AMC Summary:
Part Three. Pine uncovers secrets about other members of Roper’s household; Burr and Steadman recruit someone.
The third part of The Night Manager opens at the Madrid home of Apostel, one of Roper’s arms dealer business buddies. He’s having a party for his teen daughter’s birthday and makes a spectacle of giving her, “The most expensive necklace” in front of all the party guests. Then Apostel talks business with Langbourne and dances with Jed until one of the maids calls him away because his daughter has just hung herself in the bathroom. Jed is then disappointed when Roper blows off the birthday girl’s death in a callous manner saying she inconvenienced his meeting schedule with her suicide.
Then Frisky brings Pine’s to meet with Roper and Corcoran soon joins to interrogate Pine about his “sordid” past. “Makes a man wonder who you really are,” Roper says. Then he suggests maybe it’s time for Pine to become somebody new since there’s a worldwide warrant out for him. Pine acts like he’s gonna leave but he can’t. It turns out Roper has confiscated his passport. They want him to stay in the cottage down the beach until Roper figures out what to do with him. It’s a forced welcome into the fold. Corky, though, still doesn’t trust him and wishes he’d just walk into the sea with stones in his pockets, Virginia Woolf style.
Burr tries to watch Roper’s island retreat machinations through binoculars from across the water but can’t see much. Pine jogs and plays tennis with Roper, then he asks to take Danny into town for a change of scenery. As they’re leaving Corky tells Pine he noticed a gap in his history and he’s going to find out where Pine was and what he was doing during that time. So, on his outing with Danny, Pine lures Burr over to listen in on his conversation with the boy. In this scene we see that Burr’s pregnancy has advanced quite a bit so Pine must have been with Roper many months at this point. Through his conversation with Danny, Pine alerts Burr that Corcoran is investigating the gap in his resume, in other words – his time in Cairo. In a later scene Danny also reveals to Pine that Roper’s got a secret hidden room off his bedroom that he calls “The Citadel” with a special key and an alarm they check every day at eleven.
Meanhwile Steadman tells Burr that since Apostel’s daughter killed herself he’s been attending church daily and even called the investigators in Madrid to say he has information about a big arms deal about to go down. The guy’s contrite as fuck. So, Burr approaches him at church and tells him she’s his guardian angel. She claims that if Roper wasn’t in Apostel’s life maybe his daughter wouldn’t have killed herself. Although this isn’t really logical or even a reasonable thing for a stranger to say, Apostel isn’t thinking clearly. Burr then tells him he can find redemption by assisting her and taking down Roper. The first step will be extricating Corky from Roper’s inner circle. Right away Burr puts Apostel to this task.
Next we finally see the big meeting between Apostel, Roper, and Langbourne. During it Pine listens in on Jed talking to her mother and crying. He interrupts to tell her the guests are arriving and sees her partially naked in the process – just a side boob, really. But much is made of it by Pine who apologizes later. During the party he and Jed go for a walk along the beach and she says she doesn’t care who sees her naked but makes him promise not to tell anyone she was crying. Then Jed strips down and skinny dips to prove her point about nudity and though Pine refuses to join her in the water, it’s obvious he wants to. We’re meant to understand that women are Pine’s speical weakness and yeah, we get it. He’s here in this mess to avenge a woman he literally slept with once. But guess what? Being into women isn’t really so unique. It’s what straight guys do. You’re not so freaking special, Pine!
While at the meeting Apostel tells Langbourne that “Mr. Bargatti,” the guy with the arms to sell, is concerned about Corky and thinks he’ll run off at the mouth because he’s a big drinker. So, when Langbourne passes along this info to Roper, he starts alienating Corky a bit from the inner circle. Corcoran is an instinctual fellow and immediately senses something is off. Speaking of Langbourne, it turns out that hot potato teen he was flirting with isn’t his daughter at all. She’s the family nanny. We were right about him screwing her, though. Langbourne’s wife tells Pine all about it on the sexy end of the pool where all the action seems to happen at Roper’s place. She also divulges a ton of insider info about the arms deal going on between Bargatti, Apostel and Roper. Her motivation for this seems rather implausible as all she gets out of it is a half-ass back rub from Pine while he puts sunscreen on her. Then Pine sends a surreptitious text to Burr and Steadman using Danny’s cellphone to give them all the dirt Ms. Langbourne told him about the arms deal.
Next there’s a big Roper meeting in Monaco but Corky and Pine aren’t invited. While Jed and Corky are out galavanting, Pine goes through Jed’s personal effects and finds a picture of her little boy and the secret Citadel key. Right at eleven am he uses the “testing the alarm” frame to enter The Citadel and take pictures of Roper’s secret documents. While there he finds a distinctive golden hair that clearly belongs to Jed. When she comes home and finds him there Pine tells Jed she has to be more careful about leaving evidence that she broke into his office and spied on his papers. So, now they share two secrets, well three if you count the nudity but Jed doesn’t count that.
Speaking of secrets, one of the MI6 peeps meets with Roper and Langbourne to tell them about Burr and Steadman’s operation. So, he’s a double agent of sorts and then it turns out Halo itself – a division of MI6 is in on the whole deal. This is also in the documents Pine photographed. Then Roper and Jed have a huge fight over the phone where she accuses him of hiding stuff and he confronts her about having a secret kid. Meanwhile Pine’s texting the documents he photographed to Burr and Steadman. This is when they discover Halo’s involvement. In this rapid unfurling of two parallel secrets, the truth comes out on both sides of the story, personal and business.
When Roper’s back from Monaco he has a present for Pine, a new identity and passport but first Pine needs to witness a document for Roper. He’s going to be Andrew Stephen Birch now and sign on to a “new company” with this new name. Best line from “Part Three” of The Night Manager is when Pine asks about what he’s signing and Langbourne says, “Jesus, for a murderer on the run you’re pretty bloody picky”. While reading it over Pine sees that he’s officially replacing Corky as Roper’s right hand man. Then as “Part three” concludes Roper says, “Welcome to the family, Andrew,” and thus Pine’s in like Flynn. We can only presume/hope he’ll ruin this picture perfect postcard family situation by banging Jed in the near future. That beautiful face of his is just begging for another beating. At least we think so.
–Katherine Recap
