[spoilers] Harry and Ruth Strike Back

[A Cousin]

Great stuff - just great stuff in 9.3 for H/R and from NW/PF. One of the best episodes yet for all of them.

I thought that the furthering of the theme of how the job affects them personally that seems to be contained in the HR scenes was very well handled in the context of the threat du jour. It would have been very easy for the HR moments to take over in a completely unrelated way, but they didn't. I could tell the Michael Canton Jones gave extra care to this particular theme as they figure it all out.

The first scene when he growls at her, "Doubting my decisions, Ruth?" was frightening! Her reaction was fantastic! Later, when she tells him that he may have committed and error in judgement, but not an error in decency, his reaction is equally as great. Both the lines: "Sometimes you have to give a man a chance to show you who they really are" for him and her "We have to have a strategy" both have a double meaning. Just as he seems surprised that she still thinks him a decent man, she seems just as surprised that he hasn't given up on her.

I think to a certain extent that she is learning to deal with the idea that he is "just" a man. I think she had idealized him somewhat. By the nature of their respective jobs, he has access to so much more of her personal and psychological life than she does his.

I thought this episode did an excellent job of moving their mutual but individual struggles with their humanity, decency and guilt along.