‘The Old Man’ Season 2 Episode 7 Recap: Family Values

Dan Chase, Angela Adams, and Harold Harper aren’t the only people whose lives have inexorably drawn them back to where it all began. For nearly 40 years, a little boy in Russia grew into a man (Nikolai Nikolaeff) with one purpose in life: finding and killing the American intelligence operative who killed his father when he massacred an entire Russian unit. Since that unit belonged to future titan of industry Suleyman Pavlovich, our revenge-minded friend is going to get his chance. 

When Chase’s attempt to strike a deal with Pavlovich in exchange for the antidote that would save his life goes belly-up — someone, it seems, has attacked Pavlovich’s men at his mining facility in Afghanistan, and Pavlovich suspects Chase’s involvement — the Russian oligarch leaves our revenge-minded friend in charge of finishing Chase off. A classic villain blunder, as is the revenge guy’s tendency to speechify rather than pay close attention. Chase winds up slicing open his femoral artery with a shard of glass, holding him still in his arms until he bleeds out. An entire life lived for one reason, only to drop dead five feet from the finish line. It’s brutal.

It serves a purpose, too. The Old Man’s cast of characters spend this episode fixated on the question of what they owe the people they love, both the living and the dead. But this was no less important to the murdered Russian son of the murdered Russian father than it is to any of them. We just happen to be following Dan and Harold and Zoe, not the Russian guy, so we sympathize with their plight over his. Including his plight at all is the show’s way of pointing out that I’d do anything for my family is not an inherently heroic way to live your life. Everybody’s got a family, after all. The Russian has as much right to kill on his family’s behalf as Dan Chase does on behalf of his.

Dan spends his time in the interrogator’s hot seat hearing Emily’s voice in his head, barking at him for being too much of a coward to go through with his plan to die in the process of killing Pavlovich for revenge. Instead, he offers to take the rap for all of Pavlovich’s crimes, in exchange for being given the antidote to the poison he inhaled last episode and being allowed to go free with Zoe. Pavlovich can’t believe a life with this woman is so important to Dan that he’d give up avenging his daughter and go down in disgrace by falsely taking credit for his own mentor’s murder. Worth it, Dan says.

Dan’s partner in all this is Zoe, who plays the vital role of feeding the fall guy for Bote’s murder to American intelligence via a local police station. The name she names depends on whether she gets a call from Dan telling her the deal with Pavlovich has gone through. Unfortunately for her the answer is now, and Pavlovich sends a hitman to massacre everyone at the station. 

Zoe, however, has spent the day remembering her wedding-day jitters and how her father-in-law talked her out of them by insisting that it’s okay not to feel love, since love isn’t real, but trust and comfort and security are, and they’re worth something. So are the guns she learned to use from her ex: She blows the hitman away herself. “Harold Harper sent me to make sure you were okay,” Julian Carson says when he arrives at the scene. “Seems like you’re okay.”

Harold, meanwhile, works the last connection available to him: Marion, his Hong Kong–based ex-wife. Since she’s affiliated with Pavlovich in some unknown way, he reasons she can call off the dogs. But her connection to the Russian warlord isn’t what Harold thinks it is. She played Pavlovich and Hamzad against each other in order to maneuver the person she really wants the China-backed rare-earth mineral cartel she represents into power in that region of Afghanistan: Parwana Hamad, aka Angela Adams, aka Emily Chase. Marion talks about her blend of American and Afghan credibility and expertise like a member of the Bene Gesserit discussing the breeding of the Kwisatz Haderach. 

Dune’s influence seems pretty heavy by this point in the story, actually, because there’s a new Lisan al Ghaib in town: Parwana Hamzad, alive and well and leading local fighters in slaughtering Pavlovich’s every last man in the region. It’s just unclear if Dan will live long enough to learn about this, since he discovers there’s no antidote left after he kills the man whose father he killed decades earlier. 

It’s a grimy little circle, isn’t it? The best hope any of these people having of leading functional lives is, what, lying forever, after killing enough people to get set up safe somewhere to begin with? So that, what, someone can come crawling out of the past 40 years later to kill you or your loved ones anyway? When does it end? Sooner for some than others, I suppose. 

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.