The Diplomat is a thoroughly engaging series that had me hooked from the get go. It is such a well crafted show that I wanted to create a place where I could index its subtly epic dialogs (and share it with fellow Diplomat fans). I have watched the series “cover-to-cover” a couple of times now and here’s why I highly recommend it:
- The show is not only entertaining but also educational, as it portrays how diplomatic, geopolitical decisions move through bureaucracies. You don’t have to take my word for it, you can take the Belfer Center, The Washington Post, and Foreign Policy‘s word for it.
- An intelligent portrayal of the complexities of marriage between two intellectual equals, highlighting the nuances of balancing personal and professional advice within a relationship. I have rarely seen this captured in cinema but this series finally gives this a worthy, intelligent treatment. It explores themes such as:
- Trusting a partner’s advice while maintaining individuality.
- The gendered conditioning that influences how men and women approach their work differently.
- In fact, the main premise revolves around Hal, a diplomat whose career stalls after a significant misstep, forcing him to support his wife Kate’s career progression. This shift in their dynamic requires major adjustments from both characters, bringing to light issues of career ambition, gender roles, and personal growth.
So lets go! Here are some noteworthy dialogs from Deborah Cahn‘s masterpiece:
S1E3
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- Stuart: Ma’am… It can’t be easy having a spouse that attracts that much attention. And the idea that in a crisis, he was tapped…
- Kate: Are you concerned I’m jealous? Of my husband’s star power? Intelligence is a story. Even she will tell you that. A story based on incomplete facts. Life or death decisions turn on whether people buy the story.
Some members of the administration have had mixed experiences with jaw-dropping stories that come from Hal. Half of State will tell you about Hal Wyler, bravely flying from Kabul to Mazār-e Sharīf, middle of the night, convincing Taliban leadership to hold back the seizure of Kabul by one more day. The other half will tell you he did that by commandeering a plane that was meant to evacuate Afghans who worked for U.S. forces. People we swore we’d protect. Three hundred and thirty-two people who didn’t get on a plane because Hal Wyler went to do something brave. A lot hinges on whether we believe this is Iran or we believe it’s someone else. When it’s Hal,you have to be really f*cking sure.
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- Kate (to Hal): As soon as this lunch is over, get on some plane and not be here. You have so thoroughly fcked with my head, I can’t do the fcking job if you are within a -mile radius.
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- Billie: The list of people who can replace her (the VP) is very short. It features four identical-on-paper female legislators who’d all kill for the job and use it to launch their own presidential campaigns. It’s something that makes the president extremely ornery. You’re not cut out for campaigning, clearly, but governing is something you’ve managed to pull off under live artillery fire, which is not unlike a chat with the U.S. Congress.
It’s entirely possible that you could be a reasonable lieutenant to help a lame-duck legacy-build overseas, which is the only way possible given the polarized death match that is today’s Washington. - Kate: That is the worst marriage (VP) proposal I ever heard.
- Billie: The list of people who can replace her (the VP) is very short. It features four identical-on-paper female legislators who’d all kill for the job and use it to launch their own presidential campaigns. It’s something that makes the president extremely ornery. You’re not cut out for campaigning, clearly, but governing is something you’ve managed to pull off under live artillery fire, which is not unlike a chat with the U.S. Congress.
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- Kate: We can’t do anything. When we had a dangerous head of state, we relied on our allies to respond when we made distress calls. You know why I didn’t want this job? I spent a decade building a reputation in a community such that when I say something, people f*cking listen to me. I have none of that here.
- Stuart: Not none.
- Eidra: Not none.
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- Eidra: It’s Iran’s backyard. If we wanna know who did this, they’ll have better intelligence than anyone.
- K: Shahin’s own regime will go after him. He will be killed.
- E: If we go to war with Iran, a lot of people will be killed.
- K: Shahin wants to modernize his country. He’s one of the only people in the regime who gets along with the reformists and the millitary and the mullahs, because his father rode bikes with the supreme leader when they were 10. And inexplicably, he doesn’t believe we’re the great Satan.
- E: I understand he’s valuable.
- K: You don’t. An Iran Deal can be revoked. What we’re really doing when we negotiate with them, or with anyone, is looking for one or two friends we can call when the world is truly f*cked. It is a flimsy web of relationships. But sometimes it holds. Do not tear it. Do not be an infinitely ravenous American. Use what he already gave you.
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- Billie: I sent you here to be with him. For a lot of reasons, but he’s checking you out.
- K: Thats creepy.
- Stuart: Five U.S. presidents were formerly ambassadors to this country. It’s the right place to learn. You’d melt on a campaign trail. You’d call your donors corrupt to their faces. But there’s no campaign. Imagine if your… frankness were actually a plus, if your only goal was to keep the president relentlessly on track.
- B: The president needs someone to stop him from rambling about chicken tariffs when he needs an arms deal. The VP spends more time in the Oval than anyone who doesn’t have a desk there. – First in, last out of every meeting. You wanna know why you’re on the list?
- K: Uh, I have a uterus.
- B: That’s not… Not the only reason.
- K: You spent seven years building a ticket where an elderly guy could hand the baton to an electable woman and deliver us the first female president. Now you want someone with no voting record, no baggage, no opinions. Clean me up, put me in a dress, and hope I never speak.
- B: Yeah. I had a plan. Turned to sh*t. But as far as rebounds go, you don’t have to survive a campaign. We air-drop you in to govern, maybe you catch fire.
I called nine people and said, “If it looks like the apocalypse is now, who’s your first hire?” Five said you. What you did in Lebanon. What I’m not supposed to know you did in Baghdad. - K: Makes a great poster. “Iraq. Could have been worse.”
- B: No campaign. No posters. We’d put you in the lead on foreign policy. You get the Middle East. You can deal with Russia without freaking out. You know cobalt is the only thing we’re really gonna be talking about for the next years. You’d be doing it for the country, not the power.
If I’d thought about it, – I’d have planned it this way. Really. It’s almost embarrassing. Never even occurred to me. - Stuart: Pick someone good at the job, not the interview?
- B: I mean, it’s bad for the guys, but for the women? f*ck me. Is she pretty but not too pretty? Appealing but not hot? Confident but not bitchy? Decisive but not bitchy? Cute bitchy, but not “bitchy” bitchy. We had to come to an agreement about how many days a week the VP would wear a thong. She doesn’t like them. Her team doesn’t like panty lines. Weeks of my life. And then an agreement. Yes, she will wear ass-floss, but only two days out of seven, and days cannot be banked week to week. Can you imagine hiring someone for a key governing position just because you think they’d be good at it?
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- Hal: Katherine. You know the chessboard, you are undaunted by complexity…This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get someone into the White House with a preternatural ability to un-f*ck clusterfucks
- K: I called our attorney. I called Rick and said, “Get us a mediator. Because this is gonna be the cleanest, loveliest divorce anybody ever had.”
- Hal: You have an orchard. The president of the United States is in it. You need to have a conversation with him. Hear what he’s thinking. You need to, in a chill way, get to know the guy before he leaves, which is in 10 mins.
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- Billie: President’s not budging on the ships. It’s a rescue mission. I thought maybe you could turn him around.
- K: This is perfect.
- K (to the President): Marla Dane has a lot of experience. She took a year off to take care of her dying mother who is now dead. So… she’s available. She can be ambassador. She will love this… whatever this is on the walls. And she’s the one you want for the other thing too.
- President: Where are you going?
- K: I am not cut out for this. I’m stepping down. Good news is, that makes me the one person in the world who isn’t trying to kiss your ass, but still knows a lot about Iran. A man named Saman Karimi was removed from the command of a Quds Force unit in Syria when even Bashar al-Assad said he was a guy who took things too far.
- President: But you can’t fire a Saman Karimi.
- K: No. So they gave him command of a Fishing Industry Safety Regiment. Complete with boats and a lot of RPGs. You think they’re gonna swarm the Fifth Fleet? I think they’re gonna load an RPG onto a fishing trawler and see what they can hit. A couple of Americans die, and then we’re in it. Not rescuers. Combatants.
- President: The minute Russia savaged Ukraine, every NATO state’s been waiting to see if I meant it when I said, “An attack on one is an attack on all.” One just got attacked.
- K: This is not the straw that will break the alliance.
- President: Why not? An alliance is nothing. It’s a pinkie promise like I made with Jason Slavick when I was 10. – “You get hit, I show up.” In this case, I show up with a carrier group.
- K: Or judgement.
- President: Fifty thousand British soldiers marched on Baghdad because we asked them to. And we chased that with an era defined by a profound lack of interest in anybody but ourselves.
- K: Sir, you’re not doing this to restore our reputation in the world.
- President: This ought to be good. Why am I doing it?
- K: You’re scared your enemies think you’re too old and frail to put Americans in the line of fire. You’re right to worry about it. That smug Brazilian guy who kept offering you pee breaks every 15 minutes at the G revived all the rumors about incontinence your team spent six months trying to kill. And it’s not nothing, particularly when you’re dealing with Russia and China. Any leader who looks at you and sees his own age, it makes them wanna crush you. But that is like 49 percent disastrous. And potential for war with Iran is 51. Which means I win by two.
A wise man once said, “Decisions don’t get to the desk of the president unless they’re 49/51. I spend my days splitting hairs, but that’s the job I raised my hand for.” - President: I said that.
- K: Did you? 🙂
- President: I thought you were the only one in the world who wasn’t kissing my ass.
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- President (to Billie): No ships. She wins, I lose. Find the secretary of defense. Tell him no ships go to the Gulf. Make sure he doesn’t fly back with me. He’s gonna be a real turd about this.
- President (to Kate): You’re doing great. Just knock off that “I resign” sh*t. It really pisses me off. I don’t have that kind of time.
S1E4
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- Kate: He wants to be president. Hal.
- Stuart: He’s not gonna be.
- Kate: He’s okay with vice president.
- Stuart: He is not gonna be that either.
- Kate: You think I’m vice president and he just starts a quiet initiative to help blind children learn ballet?
- Stuart: He’ll have a job. He’ll have whatever job you want him to have and not an inch more. He shouldn’t be the impediment. It’s not right.
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- Stuart: Mr. Wyler is not the only one who has your back. I just think that you and he and Billie are all linking your marriage and the vice presidency, and I think it’s a false narrative. The whole point is you don’t have to survive an election. Even if you did, the American people have heard of divorce, they’ll get over it.
- Kate: If Billie wants to talk to me, she should call. You’re a grown-up Foreign Service officer and you’re spending a lot of time on my marriage and my clothes.
- Stuart: Because I’m good at it. I didn’t join the Foreign Service to see the world, I joined to get out of Washington. I used to run campaigns. With Billie. When you actually win the presidency and watch the courts take it away… But if I had the chance to get someone good in the door, no dog whistles, no recounts, I… Mr. Wyler shouldn’t be the reason. If you wanna get divorced, get divorced.
- Kate: Stuart, you’re a very good person.
- Stuart: I’m not. The leader of the free world heard what you had to say and reversed strategy. The guy wants to know what you think.
- Kate: He wants to know what Hal thinks.
- Stuart: That’s bullshit. Excuse me, ma’am, but that’s bullshit. He does not wanna know what Hal thinks.
- Kate: Hal’s one of the great foreign policy minds of our generation. We’re a crackerjack package.
- Stuart: Jesus!
- Kate: No, I’m part of it, I get that, I bring a lot to the table. My self-esteem isn’t that far in the toilet.
- Stuart: Billie told me about this before you got here. About you. Not Hal Wyler. And it sounded delusional. And then I met you and it sounded, frankly, more delusional. But now I’m getting the idea. And I’ve heard why Billie wants to do this.
- Kate: You’ll see. Rayburn, Billie… they don’t want me without Hal.
P.S.
- More Dialogs of other previous and newer episodes
- Cinema is rife with stories of “great” men with an array of irrelevant domestic relationships, predatory romantic interests or unhealthy partnerships of skewed power dynamics. Personal lives are depicted as yet another dimension to demonstrate power, one where they can pick the rules and discard those that don’t maximize their domination. This is why ‘The Diplomat’ is such a rarity in that sea of beaten-to-death nonsense. A breath of fresh air.
- If you actually watch the series, the extra material on Netflix’s fan website TUDUM is a great companion as well.
- Some useful links on women and their relationship with work over the past decade:
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