Identity Crisis

DVD, BUGS S3 (Identity Crisis)

The Bureau 2 boss gets to be Action Jan for the space of an episode, kicking bad guys in the face, biffing others with fire extinguishers, abseiling down buildings… She basically becomes Ed, even down to wearing a leather jacket (while two Eds may be better than one, one Jan is more than enough!), and you could never have had an inkling of any of this from every other episode she'd been in where she was the office bod, the top dog office bod, leading the troops from her desk, which doesn't sound very flattering when you put it that way, but we'd seen she was a master manipulator, all in the service of law and order, and of course, an older woman so you wouldn't expect her to be in the field running around in her night clothes trying to escape hulking brutes. If Jan gets to be Ed for the episode then it's only fair since Ed goes back to being largely ineffectual, back in Alex' bad books for being himself (beautifully described as like being out with the Marx Brothers, all of them!) - it takes both he and Alex to take down this week's main villain, Lance, while Beckett shows how things should be done: on the fly, under pressure, trying to protect his boss from the pug-ugly goons on their tail and packing a bazooka, and all he needs is a spanner and a high-vis to take them both out! Ed take note. It just shows how romantic issues can take away from a man's skills, and with Ed this season Alex has often been his Kryptonite. Sure, the spiky little spy has been an asset to the team, but in terms of Ed himself she's done as much to lessen his impact as what she brought, and I wonder if this was part of the reason why McLachlan went back to his original plan of leaving the series?

Ed isn't the only one sidelined for much of this, Ros takes a backseat, too, now that her big story with Channing is over. But that's the way of things, there isn't an expanding running time, so if Jan gets more screen time, others have to have less. But it was all worth it to see what our Director of Intelligence Coordination would be like when her role is switched with the team she coordinates. No more cushy meetings in ornate government ministers' offices or smug smiles as Beckett and the gang express concern, she's right there in the thick of it and it really made a change of pace. Perhaps pace is the wrong word, the series is always full of pace, that wasn't going to change, but we get more insights into who she is and how the Bureau works than ever before. I imagine they left it so late to give Jan something more to do, the penultimate episode of this run, because they wanted to see how she and Alex fitted in and by this point they really know who they're dealing with, as do the characters, even if Ed is still a little inconsistent - after they've defeated fake Jan, Elaine Harman, he professes how much it makes him realise the real Jan wasn't so bad. Then only a short time later he's saying the exact opposite, that he liked the new Jan more! Don't know what happened with that, unless the tag scene was written before the capturing of the villains and no one spotted the inconsistency.

I thought this was the one where Ed becomes Bureau Chief, but that's obviously Season 4, where it would have made much less sense - at least here a new Jan planning to confuse and shake things up would have made it a more realistic proposition, even if Ed would never in a million years come across as Bureau Chief material. It's fun that Alex finally works him out with the acronym WYSIWYG, What You See Is What You Get. It really was appropriate, he doesn't tend to keep things to himself or rein in his exuberance, which is one reason why he's so likeable and fits well with the others who are a little more logical or controlled. Well, sometimes. If we're talking inconsistency there's another glaring one in Beckett's situation. I've mentioned before that his financial issues didn't make a lot of sense, and this time we find out Jan doesn't even know about them continuing since she shows surprise at his condition, living rent-free on a houseboat ('Charlotte'), looking after it for a friend (Jan asks if he's harking back to his Navy days!). Does he spend all his Bureau pay on the upkeep of the Jeep and its petrol? The whole point was that she knew all about his troubles and that's what she leveraged to get him to join her little setup in the first place, and here she doesn't know what's going on! I suppose this means she's more honourable than she seemed as she's clearly not keeping tabs on them in the way she seemed fully capable of at the start, so that's a positive, at least.

Something I love about the episode is how it explains things clearly and concisely regarding the Bureau and its operations. We learn that Roland Blatty was in Beckett's position of Bureau Chief and reported to a different Jan, though that does bring up the question of what happened to this prior Jan, since presumably she (Alex says it was a she), wouldn't have been caught up with practical work and ended up under the spell of Cyberax like the others did? Even if she were a lot more practical compared with our Jan, and got involved with the Cyberax devices, that surely would have meant she'd have been the most important target rather than Roland. Of course, they didn't know all that back then, so some retconning could be inevitable, I was just pleased to hear about the setup of the previous iteration of the Bureau and how much Jan had lobbied to set up a new one, which has been a big success - the pinnacle of her career, she claims. We also learn a fair bit about her personal life, from a cat in a flat (though it looked a bit big to be called a flat!), called Wagner, to very personal details such as how close she was with Sir Anthony Fairchild, who makes a pleasant return from 'Happy Ever After?,' meeting him in 1973 and almost marrying, even suggesting she was Julia Fairchild's real Mother, though she later scotches that. All this gives the series more layers of reality: that the Fairchilds are still living their lives even though they're not integral to an episode, Beckett asking after Julia and her Father saying she's bearing up.

It's the jeopardy that usually makes the episodes and this one is no exception, with poor Jan Harvey really put through her paces and made to earn her crust! She's terrorised in her own home (twice if you count the urgent exit from a bomb - I'm glad Beckett was able to save the cat!), chased and held captive, but in all this, while you can see she's shaken, she's a tough lady, and experienced, and she doesn't take it lying down, other than to lull the lunk into thinking she's asleep. She uses her courage and any resources that come to hand in the most Jason Bourne-y way and generally proves that she's much, much more than a pen-pusher. It felt like meeting her superior in a darkened room was a bit daft (he must eat a lot of carrots, or have relations in Transylvania), but it's all for atmosphere, I understand that, but there is a question over why she or her team couldn't simply get the Alpha and Beta cards cancelled. She couldn't even call in for assistance, as we see Elaine and Lance have somehow changed the security code. Not sure how they did that. And while this was a great episode I did feel it would have been even better if the running theme of the past eight episodes, that Bureau 2 can deal with the enemy within as well as ordinary villains, should have been played up a lot more. If we could have seen Lance through the season, or Elaine, setting this all up it would have had a greater payoff, rather like Jean-Daniel in Season 2. But on the other hand it might have seemed a bit too much like a rehash.

My only real problem with the story is that the goal of the villains is to clear out the Bureau's bank account. It's not like it's even to destroy the organisation, perhaps with sanction from opponents of Jan in the services, merely to make themselves rich, nothing more, and perhaps in keeping with such relatively modest goals, not a single baddie dies, incredibly! At once it's both personal, in that our team will be directly affected, but also more detached because who cares about money being stolen, no one's lives are at stake, other than Jan being on the run. And what were the orders of Decker and Luba? It didn't seem to be to kill Jan, merely hold her hostage, yet once she's escaped they have no interest in taking her in, just blowing her up with a big bang! I can understand maybe their professional pride (if they had any), was injured and they wanted revenge, but it makes Lance look like a dummy for hiring such idiots! Of course there are no people about when they're hunting Jan, running round the streets with guns and bazooka, it's as deserted as Technopolis, which is just as well or they'd have police surrounding them in no time, and Jan is more isolated. Some terrific shots, however, with Jan ducking and running as gunfire ricochets around her, something those in charge agree with as they used part of that for Jan Harvey's credit in the title sequence for Season 4.

There's more fighting for everyone, but I would say the more personal aspects of the story are what makes it concerning to see, such as when Elaine sprays bullets around the Bureau office when she doesn't get her way, Ed making a comment about a change in management style. It's also good to remind us that our team work outside of convention, that's why they're successful, Ed getting another good line about if they just did what they were told they wouldn't be there - although Jan has kept somewhat of a tight rein on them she also selected them because of their freelance abilities. The new Jan seems so much more relaxed and personable at first, but that's all a cover to get them to lower their defences and work for her, and they do. They actually carry out a sting that they hadn't been able to do at the start of the season: the pulse emitter works this time, the DSA, Data Storage Agency must have been less well protected than the earlier bank. I lost track of all the gadgets that are used, so they certainly had that angle down pat. Funny to see a Jaz drive, I suppose that would have been the height of cutting edge at the time, I certainly remember using Zip disks, a smaller version of the removable media, a couple of years later!

Like much of Season 3, there are a lot of natural environments and old architecture, such as Sir Anthony's residence, but in this case we bounce back and forth between the ancient and the modern of the usual 'BUGS' buildings. I was just thinking when Spring, the guy at Consolidated Clearing, was taken hostage, why didn't he fight back against Elaine, and then he did, 'springing' into action and allowing Ros to go in for another fight - for at least the third time this year she gets punched in the face: last time it was Flood, and before that Kitty McHaig, but she gets the best of her, as she well should! In terms of colour we have Beckett in a purple shirt, and what I couldn't decide was dark blue or purple tie under his suit, while Ros is in all cream suit and skirt and Ed in his jogging stuff. I'd noticed this in another episode, but he and Alex wear the same colour, if only slightly: Ed has this lime green t-shirt you can just see the collar of under his other top, and she wears a big cardigan of the same colour as if to remind us that they are linked even if they aren't hitting it off right now. And in the end scene they both come in with white t-shirts, too. Beckett and Ros are both in their bright colours (green shirt for him, red top for her), when they meet up at the end to make another uncertain final moment where they discuss what happened and Beckett muses on time and regrets, while Ros pointedly agrees with him, preparing us for the finale and its bittersweet ending to come…

It's not just the two groups of two that show signs of uncertainty as Jan, too, is offered a promotion: asked by Sir Anthony himself to serve on the National Security Executive. And she doesn't say no. Of course we know what happens so it's no mystery, but it injected some concern into proceedings, and back when this first came out we didn't know if the series would even be returning for a fourth year, and if it did, whether everyone would be in it, so it was adding to that sense of anticipation. In those days I knew nothing of the BBC's deal, how it had signed off on two more years after the success of the very first episode, nor how it had changed in reaction to how it had all been received, it was only in later years researching and reading magazine articles that I came to understand the history better. I'm glad we did get a fourth set of episodes, even though they weren't nearly as good, but at that time I'd have taken anything. It's only in repeated viewings I came to see how much continuity and care had gone into building the world of the series, because in those days it was more about how much excitement it was on a Saturday night and the building sense of drama, looking forward to it each week. In that regard it excelled.

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