[spoilers] Lucas. Just Lucas.

[binkie]

Another day, another dissertation. Yes, I do have a paying job. Why do you ask?

I mentioned I would come back to deal more directly with a couple of thought-provoking points, raised in the ‘How did you feel about season 9?’ thread, regarding Lucas’ need to define himself, and be defined, in terms of ‘normality’ and expressions of trust on the part of others. I also promised this would be a shorter post from me. I’m not sure I was entirely successful on that front. I should mention that this post does contain a short discussion on an incident from 8.4. I am keen not to impose on the excellent and interesting analysis of this episode being undertaken by Byatil. I hope I’m not trading on any toes here.

I wanted to return to the question of Lucas’ reintegration – in terms of both paid employment and emotional function – because it is such a vital element of his rhetorical purpose in seasons 7/8. The character of Lucas hardly represents the first occasion on which Spooks has explored questions pertaining to traumatic experience in the line of service. He does, however, represent the first occasion on which these questions have been addressed via the agency of a character presented to us in such an already compromised state. We never knew Lucas before he emerged, hooded and exhausted, from the back of a car on an industrial estate in Bexley. We can never know how capable he was. What we know of him by the end of 7.1 is defined in terms of damage and Harry’s awareness of the need for damage limitation. This is Lucas. We do not see him brought to this, reduced from a state of familiarity to one of disorientation and self-doubt (Tom, Adam in season 5, Jo, even Ros). Neither do we learn his character through sharing in the experience of all the tiny compromising decisions made in the course of an evolving progression (Ruth).

This is a bold decision on the part of the production, because it means we must appreciate the quality of what is different about Lucas, as we see him, based almost entirely on the ability of the actor to communicate the absence of a comparative value we will never encounter. It is striking, I think, how much of the criticism of the writing of Lucas’ character and history in seasons 7/8 tends to focus on accusations of under-writing. It has always seemed to me that what we see is, in fact, an incredibly rich and unusual kind of negative metadata: information about a lack of information. Richard Armitage’s performance – so often so quiet and still - reveals a man in an agonising dichotomy of conscious and unconscious isolation from not only everything he has been, but also everything he wants to be. Armitage has a rare ability to detail distance in his performance. This is something much more mature and intelligent, as you point out, BravoNine, than “brooding”. Rather, it is this acute representation of someone engaged in an almost physical effort to be a person in the world that lends such potency to Lucas’ awareness of, ability to respond to, and reconciliation with, what it is about him that is different now.

Byatil, I think you are right when you suggest Lucas is, in part, defined in terms of a:

(17-11-2010 11:30 PM)Byatil Wrote:  ...need to prove to himself that he could cope, and be "one of the best" again. His personal-identity at that point seems to be based purely on how he performs at work, and how he interacts with those around him.

I think also, Belle, that you conjure an excellent, and elegantly expressed, point when you say that Lucas needed:

(19-11-2010 11:15 AM)Belle Wrote:  ...to feel cared about, to feel trusted. He needed other people to trust him because he could not trust himself, he didn't know who he was and it's hard to trust a stranger.

I would suggest that there is an additional texture to appreciate here arising from the way in which these correlated needs are conveyed in the fabric of the character. It seems to me that Lucas places distinct and quite separate values on the three iterations of himself of which he is most fundamentally aware: the pre-Moscow Lucas, who no longer exists outside Lucas’ own functional memory, except in the largely unconscious gaze and recall of Harry, Malcolm and Elisabeta; imprisoned Lucas, who exists, and must only be allowed to exist, in the margins, but has tremendous value because it is this man who survived imprisonment at all; and post-release Lucas, who is learning as he goes how to be Lucas here and now. There is a quality almost of liminality about the way Lucas is written and rendered. Lucas is a man in transition, but he did not choose to be so. He has been forced by circumstance to abandon one state of being, while still being uncertain as to the nature of the state he will occupy as a result of that abandonment. Meanwhile, the threshold condition – the identity of the survivor – persists, even as the hoped-for identity of the confident operator struggles to assert itself.

Lucas, possibly more than any other principal character in the history of Spooks, navigates by a map of such intensely personal and painful experience that he is sometimes sent off course by his inability to make sense of it – to make sense of himself - in the landscape in which he is now expected to find his way. Armitage’s performance allows us often to see quite clearly all three iterations of Lucas present in the behaviour of the character. We are able, as a result, to appreciate the complex ways in which these iterations relate to one another in the mind of a man who is re-learning not only the extent to which he is able to act as Lucas, but also the extent to which he is able to locate that action in his ability to be Lucas. We can see, as well, indications of the very long way he has to go in his pursuit of this reconciliation.

Lucas inhabits a confused, and confusing, psyche, which we see made manifest in his interactions with the human company he has for so long been denied. We see it also in the ways in which he seeks to impose a kind of control on both his environment and his place in it. This is where we can appreciate the visibility of the survivor, evident in Lucas’ recourse to a number of sometimes conflicting coping strategies. He compartmentalises, of course; he is often unable to, or is unaware of a need to, describe or communicate his intent; his appreciation of personal risk is extremely compromised; his frustration and disappointment with himself is sometimes laid bare in the extent to which he is at times so very biddable. Survival for Lucas has been about more than resilience. It has required him to learn compromise, acquiescence and humility. Thus we see the condition of the survivor emerge as the mediator between the identities of Lucas’ pre- and post-Moscow selves. Two sequences suggest themselves above others as indications of this curious state.

In 7.6 we see a very complex and detailed exploration of this theme in a synthesis of writing, direction and performance. Following a night spent in a safe house with Dean and his mother, Lucas makes tea alone in the kitchen before being joined by Dean, who has experienced a restless night. Lucas’ attention to the act of tea-making is fascinating and frightening in the way it describes his institutionalised behaviour. Every individual action in the process of making tea is shown to be a tiny observance in itself, a way of marking time. There is no rush, no attempt to complete several actions in a united sequence. He does not fill more than one mug at a time with water; he does not add teabags to the mugs at the start of the process; he carefully returns the kettle to the hotplate before beginning the whole process again for the second mug; he keeps the spoon in his hand throughout; he even shows the mug of tea to Dean, asking for permission to continue, before placing it on the counter for consumption. This is a survival ritual.

Lucas them implicates Dean in this experience, essentially telling the young man the reason for his lack of sleep. The conversation turns to the financial problems being suffered by Dean’s mother, and Dean makes a passing reference to Beyoncé. Lucas cannot disguise his excitement at even knowing who Beyoncé is. He accomplishes a moment of humorous deflection, but cannot suppress the unaccountable delight in having made this miniscule connection to a world that carried on without him. He turns away and goes, with the spoon still in his hand, to retrieve a tin of powdered milk and reassert his control over his environment. Then he is made to confront the alien quality of even his pre-Moscow self when it becomes clear Dean has no knowledge of the purpose of Methodism. There is no part of Lucas that belongs in this room. He is all about difference. It is only when he hears the sound of a newspaper being pushed through the letterbox that he is able to inhabit again the iteration of Lucas that is learning to be normal and capable. He knows now where he is, what he needs to do, and who he needs to be.

Another, smaller, example of the extent of Lucas’ deference to his own condition of survival occurs in 8.4 when, following the meeting in his own flat with Oleg, and the confrontation in the same location with Sarah, Lucas calls The Grid to communicate the name of the Sudanese terrorist planning to bomb Central London. As he makes the call, he is agitated and struggling for control over his responses (we do not yet know the full reason for this). Having given Ros the name of the terrorist, Lucas places his ‘phone on the kitchen counter. Even as he begins to be overwhelmed by whatever it is that is he is experiencing in this moment, he still takes the time – still needs to take the time – to ensure that the edge of the ‘phone is parallel to the edge of the counter. This matters to Lucas and his survivor’s brain. It is the last chance he has to control what is happening to him, and he cannot afford not to take it.

Lucas lives in the spaces between iterations of himself: what he was, what he needed to become, and what he is striving to be instead – and because - of this. He needs desperately for someone to put a value on what it means to be Lucas, because until that happens, he will be adrift in these spaces.

Right: tattoos next, then I might have another look at 8.4...