The Dark Joys of ‘Patriot’

OPINION/ENTERTAINMENT — It’s a truth about clandestine operations that you can do everything right, and things will still go wrong. The wise ops officer plans for the unexpected, and then hopes like hell it doesn’t happen.

A million years ago, I was somewhere overseas supporting U.S. interests in one of those conflicts that seemed like a big thing at the time. I was walking in a rural area I had no good reason to be in, doing one of those things that would be hard to explain, when I was accosted by a truck full of Scandinavian peacekeeping soldiers as out of place as I was.  

Despite the flimsiness of my (any) cover story for why an American would be wandering around the rural lanes outside a conflict area, I did have one.  And a back-up story. And the pocket litter I needed to support both stories.  As I transitioned from story one – ridiculous in hindsight – to the second story (plausible) while looking at the business end of a long gun, my greatest concern was less being shot than knowing that being shot by a Scandinavian peacekeeper would be the most embarrassing ending of any case officer in Agency history. Fortunately, taking advantage of the fierce reputation of the local male population’s protectiveness over their daughters and sisters, my story of a clandestine and illicit rural romance and my pocket litter of a carton of Marlboro Reds, chocolate, and a VIP pass to a local nightclub (where we met…) not only got me off the X, but it got me a ride to my inexplicably cached car several miles away. 

While the CIA is a distant second to the military in creating esoteric acronyms – they have FUBAR and we use “task” as a verb – there is one CIA-specific term close to my heart: LOPSies, the plural of Little Old People, and as I confirmed over American cigarettes in the truck, I had been “Lopsied.” (We really do make anything a verb). An old farmer driving to town saw me cutting across a field and when he saw the peacekeeping checkpoint at the main road, kindly informed Lars and Pippi of my trajectory.  With nothing else to do, the intrepid peacekeepers took to the mission like the Eiger Wall and spotlighted me as I crossed a choke point bridge over a local stream heading back to civilization.

Risks change and technologies evolve but the danger posed to clandestine operations by random chance and Lopsies never goes away. The casual observer is the wild card in every operation and in almost every op is the one thing you can’t anticipate but have to prepare for.  Multiple novels, films, and even entire television series are predicated on the fallout from Little Old People.  The old man who looks out the window during the 2 a.m. bathroom visit to see a strange car, and calls police or the woman gathering mushrooms in the woods who comes across a dead drop – Lopsies, the personification of random that is the ever-present thorn in the side of the best planned tradecraft.

Most pop culture espionage focuses on superhero moments, but Patriot is a prestige TV show that goes all in on the pervasive influence bad luck has on operations and tradecraft and the glum resignation of the professionals that have to deal with it.  My love for Patriot perhaps says more about me than the quality of the show, but by any standard it’s great stuff. The pilot is one of my favorite first episodes of any show and it’s impossible for me to imagine anyone could watch it and not need more. Patriot is quirky and downbeat, and as darkly humorous about espionage and politics as anything in pop culture, but it has a humanity in its dark soul that provides uplift and characters you cheer for as they make you wince. Or stab you in the thigh.

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Patriot starts with the premise that if anything can go wrong during an espionage operation it will, and that no amount of planning or skills can stop a Lopsy moment. Intelligence officers just have to endure and somehow keep going forward.  

The beaten down hero of Patriot, John Tavner (aka John Lockman) is forced to assume a non-official cover as a Piping and Flow engineer from Milwaukee and he can see his doom from the very beginning.  When told all he needs to do is take a bag of money on a business trip from Milwaukee to Luxembourg and pass it around, John just shakes his head and says “It’s never that simple.  It always gets messier.”  The series of unfortunate events that follow are both farcical and a testament to the truth that there are a lot more Lopsies than heroes in real life operations.

Patriot is not a Chalk Mark intensive show on street level tradecraft but is masterful in its inclusion of some of the underpinning aspects of operations and life in the clandestine service. At its core, Patriot is a show about pocket litter and Lopsies and elevates their significance to a level unequaled in spy stories.  Pocket litter is what it sounds like – those small items you curate to establish and protect your cover – and more. It is also those things you can’t change about yourself and your past that you try to remove from any operation.

Without spoilers, a partial list of “pocket litter” items that mess up John’s simple little operation:

• Urine (his own!)
• A hotel pen
• Social Security number
• A folk music CD cover
• A luggage tag
• A scribbled note
• A book on the Structural Dynamics of Flow
• His family 

“The U.S. Needs My Pee?”

John Tavner is stymied by his inability to reign in all the detritus of his personal and professional life, to include his own pee.  A scene in the pilot in which John persuades a stranger to give him his urine so he can pass his cover provider’s drug test is one of the great onscreen recruitments of all time. The fact that the pitch, persuasion and pee are all overheard by a Lopsy security guard is proof it’s never simple and it always gets messier, and for John it will only get worse. 

Michael Dormand’s portrayal of the besieged John Tavner is an inspired representation of a “spy” on the edge, if all spies could sing.  Exhausted and traumatized by a previous op gone bad, John has a compulsion to reveal national secrets in his music while continuing his mission no matter how farcical the obligation. In a later episode, John’s father (and handler!) Tom says in reference to finding a missing terrorist “you are what you can’t stop doing.” He is really describing John, who at every turn sees the oncoming train but is compelled to go forward, because in the end he is a spy and spies conduct operations.  John knows good tradecraft, but pocket litter and Lopsies always win the day, so John falls forwards into one hilarious and surreal op after another.

While John’s case is a fictional extreme, I think many if not all ops officers have had those moments when they swallowed their fears, skepticism, and screw-ups, and plodded forward dedicated to mission on a wing, prayer, and pocket litter because in the end that is who they are and what they do.  John knows right from wrong and good tradecraft from bad but his sense of obligation to country (and father) propels him forward like Sisyphus climbing the hill.

Patriot does take darkly humorous creative license in a few tradecraft areas worth noting. For the record, if they existed, this not how Non-Official (NOC) operations would be done. A spy would never go from traditional cover operations to NOC operations any more than toothpaste would slide back in the tube.  The reasons for this are legion, but the plot line of John running around Luxembourg in his NOC cover while a friend is hawking a music CD with John’s true name and photo on the cover should stand as testament enough for why this wouldn’t happen.

Patriot also has fun with the hotel at the center of the Luxembourg operation. Hotels can be a part of operations, but always add to the risk and have to be treated with care. What you don’t do is have all the elements of an operation staying at the same hotel, which is indeed what happens in Patriot to John’s chagrin. Anyone who has ever worked for the government will laugh at the running joke about identifying ops officers, terrorists, and government officials all according to the hotel they stay at. It’s the sort of laugh that will hurt a little bit.  

Patriot, like any good operation, has a lot going on beneath the surface and well rewards a second watch. It also has a second season if it clicks for you, but the magic of its tradecraft, humor (dark it may be) and humanity come together best in this first season. There is more than enough espionage for fans of the genre, and enough creativity, humor, and self-awareness to make it one of a kind. As always, a plan to get you started: 

Primary viewing window: It doesn’t matter, your plan will fall apart. Just keep watching;

Alternate viewing window: Three-episode binges, with your dark-humor loving family member;

Beverage: Old Milwaukee

Snack: Smoked Cheese Curds

Post-viewing song: You’re My Best Friend, Queen

Post-viewing book: Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates, Tom Robbins

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