How Does The Night Agent Deliver Such Big Thrills With Such Bland Characters?

[Warning: The following contains spoilers for Season 2 of The Night Agent.]

It was about 16 minutes into the fifth episode of The Night Agent's new season when I found myself asking every TV viewer's favorite question: Wait, why am I watching this show again? Friends, I don't know how to tell you this, but that existential question popped into my brain during a two-minute scene — although I would've put money on it being at least three hours — in which shady henchman Solomon Vega (Berto Colon) and his even shadier boss, Jacob Monroe (Louis Herthum), who are working together to broker sales of classified U.S. intelligence to the highest bidders, discuss whether Solomon should get a raise. No, no, it's worse than you think. 

Solomon, happy to murder FBI agents in the streets of Bangkok and sell out his country to Eastern European warmongers and the Iranian government, is scared to ask his boss for a salary bump — not because his boss is a particularly scary dude, but because Solomon doesn't know if he deserves it. He starts at 10% and then, without Jacob saying anything, nervously talks himself down to a 2% ask. Jacob wants Solomon to plead his case, and Solomon goes on to talk about his qualifications and his success in his current position. And, OK, obviously, Solomon should be getting paid more; he's very good at what he does! My very serious question, however, is: WHY? And a quick follow up: WHAT? Why in the world do I have an opinion on a tertiary character not knowing his own worth, and what are we even doing here? There are vast government conspiracies to unravel and chemical warfare plots to thwart, and we really should get back to the fact that tech genius Rose Larkin (Luciane Buchanan) has invented some pretty scary facial recognition software that she promises will be totally cool because there will be an ethics board to control who uses it, and The Night Agent just kind of drops that entire plot after a while. Instead, we get a U.S. Traitors H.R. meeting. 

More:

• The complete guide to winter TV
• More shows like The Night Agent

Is this an example of The Night Agent trying to round out its plot with backstory and adding layers to relationships? Sure. Eventually, Jacob gives Solomon a 15% raise, assuring him that he really is valuable, which I guess is nice even if Jacob is evil. (But again, why do I know this much about this henchman's salary?!) Now we know that Jacob has a soft spot for the guy, so when Solomon gets impaled in a parking garage at the end of the season and dies, we buy the rage brewing on Jacob's face when he hears the news. The problem is that this character development, like so much of the character development in The Night Agent, is done so half-heartedly. Perhaps it's in the name of mystery, but the characters on this show, in general, lack any kind of specificity to make them compelling. When this scene takes place, five episodes into the season, we don't even know Jacob's first name, or really anything about him. Because these characters are relegated to tropes, these "character" scenes just don't hit in any meaningful way. 

Our other set of villains don't fare any better. We meet a former Eastern European dictator locked up in The Hague named Viktor Bala (Dikran Tulaine), his son Tomás (Rob Heaps), who finds conflict between his conscience and his daddy issues, and Viktor's brutal nephew Markus (Michael Malarkey), who is jealous of Tomás's elevated status. They — hailing from a never-named country (again, specificity would be nice!) — are planning to enact revenge on the United States by unleashing a top secret chemical, which was created by the U.S. government, at the headquarters of the U.N. Again, The Night Agent attempts to give them motivation and backstory, but it falls flat, relying mostly on tropes and clichés. When those daddy issues and jealousy all come to a head in a way you very much can see coming, it should be a major moment, but you mostly just shrug. It's fine, but nothing exciting.

This lack of interesting character development isn't just a supporting character problem — I'd lump our main characters into that list as well. Season 2 kicks off with our brand new, very brave Night Action Agent Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso) going rogue from his secret FBI gig to avenge a mission gone wrong and Rose appearing to make sure the man she maybe loves is safe. They are extremely easy to root for, but they remain as milquetoast as ever. There's no real heat to their romance, and even I, a lover of the cheesiest of romantic entanglements, agreed with Rose every time she announced that she would like to return to her life in California and get out of this clandestine FBI end-of-the-world mess, for good. (Yes, girl, follow that instinct!)

And yet, in true Night Agent form, there is a twist, readers. Because in the very same episode in which I was asking myself why I would keep up with a rather mid show, I found my answer. The Night Agent may not be wildly skilled in character work, but oh buddy, is it great at action. The final act of Episode 5 covers an attempted extraction of FBI informant and Iranian Embassy aide Noor's (Arienne Mandi, a real highlight of the season) family out of Iran that goes horribly wrong. It is one of the tensest, most thrilling action sequences in the entire series. I was sweating. It was the perfect reminder that the reason The Night Agent is so inherently watchable despite some of its deficiencies is that it keeps the story moving in interesting and completely entertaining ways. I might sometimes forget Peter's and Rose's names, but watching them work a case, figuring the way out of increasingly hairy situations, and doing so in a flurry of stunts and fight scenes that are honestly so much fun (for us, the audience; definitely not for them), is anything but forgettable. 

By the end of Season 2, our cutie pie fighters for truth and justice stop Bala's nephew Markus from unleashing that chemical weapon at the U.N. and all over Midtown Manhattan in another truly heart-pounding finale episode (The Night Agent is two for two here). Yet part of Bala's plan was to expose the fact that it was the Americans who created this chemical weapon in the first place, and that does eventually happen, thanks to… Jacob Monroe. 

Monroe, the secret intelligence broker who already has an immense amount of power working in the shadows, makes a play for even more of it by using his special set of skills to get Richard Hagan (Ward Horton), a racist, America First isolationist, the presidency. And he does so by revealing that Hagan's opponent in the election, Patrick Knox (Geoffrey Owens), was involved with that secret chemical warfare program known as Foxglove, forcing the guy to suspend his campaign days before the election. Hagan is going to become the president, and Monroe has made it clear to the guy who is really in control. 

Meanwhile, because Peter agreed to get Monroe some of the information against Knox by very illegal means in a trade for information to save Rose, who at that time was being held hostage by Markus, Peter is now in Monroe's pocket. But Peter is a good guy; he fills in his Night Action handler, Catherine Weaver (Amanda Warren), on the situation, and she decides they are going to use Peter's ties to Monroe to stop him from the inside. In an even more clandestine mission than Night Action! If you can believe it! Thankfully, Rose has already hightailed it back to her tech job in California, mostly because Peter tells her she'll always be in danger if she remains close to him, and he can't do his job if he's worried about her safety because he will always choose her over the mission. A romantic declaration equal parts sweet and terrifying! 

It's nice that Rose left of her own volition, because Peter's mission for Season 3 sounds even more dangerous than his job in Season 2, which sounds impossible, since that was about thwarting a chemical weapon that burned people from both the inside and the outside. And yet The Night Agent has proven twice now that it knows how to do dangerous government conspiracies that never let up. As we await The Night Agent Season 3, in which Peter's mission will surely have him at odds with some of the most powerful people on the planet, I won't hold my breath for some knockout new characters, but I will eagerly await the thrill of the ride. 

Season 2 of The Night Agent is now streaming on Netflix.