Kermode & Mayo’s Take - JACKSON LAMB in SLOW HORSES: Do spies make the best therapists? – SHRINK THE BOX

Episode Date: September 3, 2024

Ben and Nemone put Jackson Lamb from Slow Horses on the couch. Gary Oldman’s version of Mick Herron’s character has become household name, and you can see why. A man with many layers, a million secrets, and a lightning rod for other’s emotions – perhaps he is the perfect Freudian analyst. Nemone gives us a crash course in transference and counter-transference, looks at why people mask and create false selves, and what drives people into a career where they hide their true selves from everyone, including themselves. This is the PERFECT watching companion to Season 4 of Slow Horses, coming 4th September on AppleTV+! And if you want to look at false selves, then listen back to our episode on The Morning Show’s Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon. We want to hear about any theories we might have missed, what you’ve thought of the show so far and your character suggestions. Please drop the team an email (which may be part of the show): [e-mail] NEXT CLIENTS ON THE COUCH. Find out how to view here Carrie Bradshaw, Sex and the City (selected episodes) CREDITS We used clips from Season 1 of Slow Horses. It’s available to watch on AppleTV+. Starring: Gary Oldman - Jackson Lamb Jack Lowden - River Cartwright Kristin Scott Thomas - Diana Taverner Saskia Reeves - Catherine Standish Rosalind Eleazar - Louisa Guy Christopher Chung - Roddy Ho Created by: Mick Herron Will Smith Directed by: James Hawes Jeremy Lovering Saul Metzstein Produced by: Iain Canning Hakan Kousetta Jamie Laurenson Gail Mutrux et al. We would love to hear your theories: [e-mail] A Sony Music Entertainment production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts. To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, this is Mark. I want to share a secret with you. I've always wanted to watch Densutis Van on Denmark's public TV station DR. Oh, and also that broadcast of Michael Dudokdovic's The Tot Du Rouge on France TV. And you know what helps me get to do all of that? NordVPN. Wherever I am, I can pop NordVPN on and bingo, I can switch my location to 111 countries and unlock rare films and global content in the process. Not only that, but all of that watching is safe with encryption, threat protection, and dark web alerts to guard against hackers and secure public Wi-Fi. And by the way, forget any others. NordVPN is the fastest VPN on the market, providing smooth streams with no lagging or buffering, and it can be used on 10 devices. To get a huge discount on your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com slash take.

Our link will also give you four extra months on the two-year plan. There's no risk with Nord's 30-day money back guarantee. The link is in the podcast episode description box. Oh, hey, Mark. Hey, Simon. Have you ever had a boss who farts, drinks, swears and goes missing without any explanation? We've not talked about my time in local radio have we? We can get to that but I'm talking about that cantankerous old booze hound who runs the

misfits and castaways at Slough House whilst outsmarting everyone else. Yeah, Jackson Lam. Meanwhile, on my subject of my days at local radio, I think we'll come back to that on a future show. Here we go with Shrink the Box. You need to hear this from me. Not an insensitive like him. Can't yourself lucky?

Yeah, lucky me. Yeah. From my end of the telescope, surviving's the short straw. By the time I was your age, I'd lost a baker's dozen. I haven't forgotten any of them. I won't forget Sid. Besides, she was the only one of you.

It wasn't complete. Yeah, yeah, you've said that. At any rate, the moral of the story is, get used to death, because you're going to see a lot more of it. And if that scares you then open the door and roll out now. Ben Bailey-Smith here. And I'm Nimone Metaxas.

And yep, we're back with another psychic evaluation of your favourite TV problem children. Nimone, how you doing? I'm good. I was just thinking about how I do it psychically. I'm just going to send you. Oh, yeah. Psych. It's not psychic, is it? Psychological. Psychological. Yeah. Yeah. Psychic evaluation. That's that's when you've elevated to a whole.

I'm beyond Yoda. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. Can't do that yet. What were we hearing in that clip? That's Jackson Lamb. That's this week's client played to perfection by the brilliant Gary Oldman. They're delivering a very sad piece of news actually to another agent, River Cartwright, played by Jack Loudon, who's the young buck aspiring secret agent who

may or may not have had a thing with agent Baker said, yeah, it's, I mean, great show. I was, I was reading the books before I knew a show existed. So, I was very worried, as I always am, when they adapt a book that I like. So you'd read... I'd read the first two. Okay. So I read Slow Horses and I think it's Real Tigers is the second one. Then I watched the

first series when I was put onto it. It's so close to the book. And in fact, the castings are so spot on that now I'm on book six now, Joe Country. And I only think of the characters in terms of the actors that play him in the show. And who's been cast. Oh, that's incredible. So we've really leapt off the page. They won me over with this show, honestly. I loved it from the off as well. Hadn't read the books, but they had been read in our house. They're very funny. Oh my God.

They are apparently, aren't they? It's like John Le Carrey with gags. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and then some, I mean, I'm a sucker for a spy thriller anyway, born movies, bonds, I'm afraid, although problematic for many reasons, but this is chewing gum for the eyes. This has everything.

Yeah. Yeah. It's the espionage, the thriller, the on-off romantic liaisons. I was in. Yeah. And it's got that other thing that I love in any sort of thriller or series where there might be life and death situations. You're never a hundred percent sure if the principal cast will survive a series, which I think is a great way to keep you on edge in a drama. I never expect that. Even with my other hat on, I start something going, I really like this cast.

I really want them to be the ones to survive. All of them. And then it's very disappointing when that doesn't happen. No, I'm the other way around. I'm like, okay, right. So I've got to stay on my toes here. I've got to let go. Anyone can get got. At any time. Yeah. Particularly, I think we'd love to hear what you think about Slow Horses, your thoughts on Jackson Lam and the rest of the cast, obviously. Jackson Lam, our client this week. And any of the characters that we've been delving a bit deeper into this series of

Something in the Box. Yeah, there's plenty to choose from so far. You've got some beauts out there. Go on, some faves, what's your fave? Well, you know what, I enjoyed the Chandler Bing episode and I know a lot of people watch Friends and I always think there's something either we missed or something that I just didn't say or something that I said that was so blindingly obvious

or blindingly dumb that the listeners can improve. I'd love to hear some strong voice note opinions on that kind of thing. Also, Curb as well. That is shrinkthebox at Sonymusic.com. Yeah. All right. So coming up, does anyone out there think that this flatulent, cynical grump... Good. ...is actually a good boss? Could a difficult childhood make you a perfect spy? And underneath that whiskey soaked exterior,

is Jackson just a big old softy? Let's find out. Welcome to Shrink the Box. ["Shrink the Box"] All right, let's get into our regularly scheduled recap. Jackson Lamb, played by Gary Oldman, has been at Slough House for years. Now Slough House is where the slow horses,

so like a derogatory nickname, sort of play on the Slough House name for agents who've got a mark against their name, made a terrible mistake within MI5. That's where they get sent from Regents Park, big posh MI5 to this crappy building in Barbican. Just outhouse. Yeah, yeah.

And Jackson's been described as practically living there and it looks like he does. He walks around without shoes on, he's constantly farting, smoking and drinking, eating wherever he likes. He makes it pretty clear he doesn't care what his team do as long as they do practically nothing. Oh yeah. Because they're expected to just do paperwork there basically. His closest colleague is Catherine Standish, played by Saskia Reeves, who's a similar generation

of spook to him. She's unassuming, she's quiet, but she's super clever. She's also a recovering alcoholic, which Jackson constantly takes the mick out of. He might be an alcoholic himself. I mean, we see him drinking straight whiskey almost all the time and he's definitely not trying to recover. And as the series goes on, Jackson starts to show us that he's more capable than we might have imagined when everything goes pear-shaped. One of his agents turns out to be spying on Slough House for his bosses at MI5 HQ. Planned kidnapping goes horribly wrong. And in the midst of all that, one of his agents is very badly wounded. So he's got a lot to manage. And even though

he looks unmanageable, his life looks unmanageable, he is good in a crisis. Interesting dude. Tell us a bit about him. It's juxtaposition isn't it? You've got both ends of the spectrum. All kind of kaleidoscope. So yes, I'd say unkempt appearance. He might be termed slob, big drinker, heavy smoker, single as far as we know, late fifties. I've pinned him as late fifties. Again, he's one of those guys whose abuse of his body means that his ages is difficult to pin down. You know, he's one of these guys who almost maybe uses that exterior as a disguise. I don't think he's going to smarten up to walk in your office.

So that might be the very first thing you notice. And then after that, the smell might precede him. I think you would notice that given up exterior. And like you say, we can be thoughtful about whether that is, he has given up or whether that is just a front. When we first meet Jackson Lam in the show in, in series one, he's snoring, he's lying on the couch in his office, holy sock, facing the camera. All the signals are that this is someone who doesn't care about his appearance,

any kind of appearance. And he does wake himself up with his own fart. You're a fan of fart jokes. I mean, the books, the books are absolutely crammed with him and I never get bored with them. They're strategically placed. He puts them into like really serious conversations, life and death conversations with other agents. And we'll come on to why that's also okay. I mean, but I think you've also mentioned a really good point. Is that what he wants us to think about him? I mean, Jackson Lam projects that idea that he's given up, but is he actually the opposite? And quite a lot of the evidence would suggest that it is.

He's great at his job. He outwits those in charge. He's always looking out for his team. He is a good egg, essentially. We love someone who goes against the grain, is a maverick square peg in a round hole. And he is surprisingly brilliant at wrong footing absolutely everyone. It's mad because Heron pushes him even further in the books. I wonder that.

So in the books he's like properly racist. Like constant racist jokes and sexist jokes against everyone. And again it's like I wonder if it's a way of him distancing himself from everyone and making sure that when he's talked about, when he's not there, it's like oh god that guy is a nightmare, he's useless, he's racist, he's sexist, he's drunk. oh God, that guy is a nightmare. He's useless. He's racist. He's sexist. Well, I think there's another layer to that actually. It's not only a mechanism to push people away.

It may work incredibly in his favor. You hear this term bandied about, don't you? Functioning alcoholic. I don't even know what that means. Is that what he is? It's really difficult to tell, isn't it? With quite a lot of this series, his drinking is referenced a lot at the start. He backs it away. He goes standards about her drinking when she has it with quite a lot of this series. His drinking has referenced a lot of the start, he batted it away up it's a bit late forget the good

at spotting your boss's moods this should be in here when cartwright comes back time to his desk buys bollocks i want my people in here doing nothing there's so much in that clip because it's brutal what he's actually saying to her, you know, the whole series and the first book. But this is classic deflection and his way of keeping her in line as well. He is also her superior. He is demonstrating this knowledge really as a bit of shorthand as well for how well he knows her. So in a weird way, it could be felt as affectionate or at least showing some companionship, almost saying they don't have many secrets between them. They're both long in the tooth in the intelligence service. Is that a way of underlining a kind of comradeship? I'm not sure we actually ever see him drunk,

but as you say, he might be a functioning alcoholic. He's certainly, there's a lot of alcohol surrounding him. Yeah. And also you can drink so often that your tolerance level changes and drinking a lot doesn't touch the sides in terms of, you know, quote unquote, drunkness. Yeah, and I think functioning, it can be thought of in several different ways, as in you may well be able to function on a certain level. How you are functioning well in your life or not, that's something different. There are bottles and glasses littering his office, but we don't ever see him necking whiskey for instance.

No, do we not? That might be my lens. No, it could be because I've read six of the books. So he's just constantly pulling out the whiskey, pouring himself like half a pint. I think it's interesting to watch how Ullman has played him because I'm not sure we do, certainly not in that first series, ever see him drink that much. That isn't to say he's not an alcoholic or functioning. Yeah. Yeah. And what about getting deeper into that idea of defence mechanisms that

he's employing in terms of just all of this behaviour, this sort of what people might perceive in polite society as gross behaviour. As against the norm or unexpected or not how a boss would necessarily. Well, I mean, it's all of that, isn't it? As a boss, you'd expect your boss to be going, right, I want you at your desk at this time. I want you doing the best possible job that you can. And leading by example. Leading by example. It appears he would rather have an admin based desk job. Fine. No longer be an active service, also fine. More on that front later though. But a lot of how we see him in the first series, you're right, is terse, is insufferable, he's not pleasant to be around. And we could attribute that to

being stuck out of the way in Slough House. He's obviously, perhaps he's been problematic, perhaps his drinking was problematic. They're like, oh, what are you going to do with this guy? We're going to stick him out there where he can't do any harm. And he's unbelievably cynical about the intelligence services, considering that's who's employing him. And we could get curious as to why he is so mean to his team. Is it a case of tough love? So this gruff, unpleasant exterior in a lot of ways does feel like a bit of a front. But when it comes to Regents Park, when it comes to Taverner and Glossy MI5, he'll protect his team to the death against them.

The important thing to understand about Lam is he's untouchable because he knows where the bodies are buried. Yeah. And his job technically is to make sure that everybody does nothing. They just do the paperwork. It's like a vast amount of what looks like yellow pages in Sloughhouse and boxes. No, no. Well, he does seem to be asking his team to do the least amount of work possible.

As we heard in that clip now, and also not wanting them to excel and asking them effectively to dampen down any ambition that they might have. Like you say, just do the bare minimum. I think it's worth being curious about that because what purpose does it serve and what is he actually up to? And we should note that that first episode is called Failures Contagious.

In episode four, actually, we see them trying to get out of the Hassan Ahmed case because that's the one, as I think you've referenced, or we've referenced, turns out to be an inside job. And Lamb refers to his boss, Taverner, Di Taverner, who's played by Kristen Scott Thomas as Lady Di, by saying, and then what? Lady Di is going to rewrite the timeline. Stick Slough House in the frame for this effing disaster, he goes on to say.

Of course, she'd rather have that, I'd cut his head off and admit that it was her fault. She's scorching the earth. She's covering her tracks, but it's the covering of the tracks that always gets you in the end. I mean, here he's, he's totally showing his wise to the game that's being played. It is espionage and counter espionage at every single turn. So who's playing who? Who's getting played?

What's the truth and who's deciding it? Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's what makes it all so interesting. You know, have you seen, have you seen the pigeon tunnel? No. That's a great documentary about John LeCarré. And you know, he was, he was a spy for a bit. And then obviously, you know, he didn't last very, he only did a

couple of years and he doesn't like to talk up like, Oh, I know everything about he's played that down. Yeah. Obviously way more, way more years, decades as a writer than a spy. But he did say that part of the reason he fell out of love with it so quickly was that most of the politics and the backstabbing and the undercover behavior and all of that was just within the spy world, just within MI5. It's not external at all.

No. the spy world is within MI5. You know, it's not external at all. No, but interesting that he did get plucked into that world. And I'm sure we'll dig into that with Jackson Lam, because when you watch the pigeon tunnel, Lecari's childhood is an absolute hit show. Similarly, Jackson Lam explicitly abhors the MI5 hierarchy. Well, generally he's just so damning of it. I think it's conceivable he might not be a fan of a female more powerful boss. I don't know whether that's more explicit in the book. So could there be some misogyny there? I was curious about that. But I also think he's more egalitarian minded generally. That's the impression I

had and just hates the inherent power imbalance in organisations like the intelligence agencies. Yeah, and he hates a lack of intelligence. He hates stupidity. So again, I think the misogyny and the sexist stuff is kind of a smokescreen. It's his way of pressing people's buttons and knowing how to annoy certain people. I think he rates a good spook over or a good Joe over anybody, regardless of their sex. Look, I should come back to your original question about defense mechanisms, shouldn't I? So belligerence, bluntness, cynicism. We could call those defense mechanisms allowing him to keep the world at a distance, but they're also a way of protecting from pain and disappointment

that he might have experienced in previous relationships. But they also result in little space for emotional intimacy and vulnerability. Now, of course, we're talking about the intelligence services. How much space is there for vulnerability and emotional intimacy? In terms of theory, you might be looking at psychoanalytic theory. So we'd be back to Freudian type work in defense mechanisms and transference. And then that more psychodynamic theory of object relations. We've talked about Melanie Klein before here and early childhood experiences, but I think, should we concentrate on transference for this one? Okay.

Okay. Okay. Break it down for us. What is it? So, transference is what we feel when we look at someone based on what's happening for us, not what they're doing to us or towards us, which is how we can often make sense of it. So it's the assumption and judgment that's coming it from us internally. So you're not questioning the action. You're just looking at the way you feel about it.

No, it's actually the opposite. So it might be better with an example. I first encountered this, we had a brilliant, um, uh, course on this, actually, when I was studying where we all had to go into college for the weekend and our tutor was sat there, stony faced, didn't say a word for the first 10, 15, 20 minutes of the session. And we're all coming in sat down and you could see people start to fidget and go, what have I done wrong?

And some people started to get really cross. One of the other students was like, Oh, why aren't you talking? What's going on? What's to actually do our teacher? I think he might've left it for 20, 25 minutes, which is an awful long time. That's what it felt like without saying a word. You were literally going, what have I done wrong? 20, 25 minutes, then he breaks into the biggest smile and just looked at all of

us and said, what's happening for you. That is transference because you're then projecting all your own stuff onto someone else. And it's really useful in the therapy room because it gets played out and of course we then get curious about the client and what happens for them in relationship. And therapists have it too, it's called counter transference and that's often what we're working on in our own therapy or noticing and supervision. It is worth mentioning attachment theory with Jackson Lam. I think it would be no surprise that you might have guessed he's avoidant in terms of attachment.

And there might be some compensatory attachment for him as well. We could be thoughtful about him trying to create a sort of surrogate environment and family possibly to fulfill any unmet needs from his early years. You mentioned earlier about how he sort of stands outside the norm and I've said how refreshing that can be when someone doesn't adhere to social norms. So his farting, his belligerence is like, I don't care if you like me or not. There is an authenticity to Jackson Lam. And in terms of humanistic theory, that is one of the central tenants for successful therapy,

according to Carl Rogers, who's kind of the forefather of that theory, i.e. being yourself and being down to earth. And it's really about the other person and how they're judging it rather than how that person is being in the world. When you just speak your truth, even when it's foul-mouthed or belligerent, like

you say, you can coax authenticity out of the person that you're displaying that behaviour to, right? It really brings a kind of levity and it cuts through really quickly. Really quick. And you think it betrays the fact that he does actually care about his horses? Yeah. I think in a way you realise how much he cares for the other horses, despite wise cracking that they're useless, that none of them are any good at their job. You just wouldn't

know it by the way he acts sometimes. What you would be doing the surveillance? Yeah. Well that's an interesting proposition considering the last time you were given any sort of responsibility. A lot of innocent people got blown to bits. I am surrounded by f***ups in this building, but you are the gold standard of f***ups by your rights. You shouldn't even be here. You should have skipped this purgatory and gone straight to hell, mow you down for glue. So when you wonder why I have you going through the rubbish of a disgrace right when you're no wonder no more

That's because I don't like you. I don't want you to quit as annoying as he finds River there is a little element of like are just a young Joe, you know starting out trying to do the best He can he respects Deep down, Jackson respects it. But he plays it off so much and he plays everything in such an aloof nature. It makes it hard for the viewer to know whether he's happy being in this position at the top desk overseeing the losers or whether he's just like a nihilist. He just doesn't care anymore. Yeah. What has meaning for Jackson Flav.

What has meaning at this point. That's such an interesting question. There's no denying that it's viewed by some in the service, Tavino and other bosses have put him out to pasture. And that's perfect place also for the master spy to hide. He might not be languishing at all. It might not be nihilistic. It might be Slough House as the ultimate cover. All right.

Well, it's interesting. So let's take a break. And when we come back, we'll ask who he really is. Who he really is. Who's under the grubby Colombo coat. All we can do is ask. And can we trust the answer that we get from him? But before that, let's get a lesson on management from Jackson Lam. Does he use the

carrot or the stick to get the best results from his employees? Because as he says, I use the stick to ram the carrot up their ass. That generally gets results. You're looking particularly pleased about that. I do like that. I'm going to get that on a t-shirt. I'll see you after the ads. Unless you're a take subscriber or shrinker, in which case we'll just see in a few shakes of a lamb's tail. Now the following is an advert from better help therapy. Now, do you feel like you still make time for yourself to learn, like actually learn something new,

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to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash curmode. Hey moms, looking for some lighthearted guidance on this crazy journey we call parenting? Join me, Sabrina Kohlberg. And me, Andi Mitchell, for Pop Culture Moms. Where each week we talk about what we're watching. And examine our favorite pop culture moms up close to try to pick up some parenting

hacks along the way. Come laugh, learn, and grow with us, as we look for the best tips. And maybe a few what not to do's from our favorite fictional moms. From Good Morning America and ABC Audio, Pop Culture Moms, find it wherever you get your podcasts. All right, welcome back. Quick reminder to send in your emails on any of the characters we've done before, characters you want to see, but also your theories. Shrinktheboxatsonymusic.com. Right. We talked in the morning show episode about how some people's jobs require them

to create an alter ego. Yeah. And it's not clear until the last episode, and even then really, if we know who Jackson Lam really is. He's like the mystery wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a greasy pitta, wrapped in a tin foil. Some noodles falling out of his mouth. Yeah. How come? Oh my god, that noodles scene.

Oh my god. How the hell? Was he talking to River? He was talking to River, wasn't he? Yeah. How the hell did Jack Loudon keep a straight, I've got to see the bloopers from that scene because it's incredible. So we've got all these layers. How complicated is that for him to maintain?

Let's start with what would you assume about Jackson Lam on meeting him? They'll all think he's a lone wolf in a, you know, unpredictable potential danger for sure. And none of them will feel completely at ease around him. And I think, you know, I'd obviously have the same. Yeah, you'd be wondering. And then the black spooks would have said to me as well, he's a racist. He's going to say something really. Yeah, just watch out for him because he's not going to necessarily

be friendly in every way. But we often see him demonstrate his clear thinking, keen strategic mind, highly capable experience spy. Here's a man hiding a true identity under slough house, bum, down and out character. So I think it might be a good time to discuss spies and their grip on reality. Do they lose themselves? If this is a front, how aware of it are they? How easy is it for them to snap back into whoever Jackson Lam is when he's not at Slough House? Actually, has he got any good friends, close relationships outside the surface? None of that we see, do we? We don't see any family. The team he denigrates so often are also, as we will see and we'll talk about, are in a warped kind of way his support network. And he does love them like family, like you might with family in that kind of dysfunctional, lovable way. I want to pick up also what we said in shrink the inbox about spies, what

the job requires and why people might be predisposed to dissociating from real life and relationships at depth, which might then make them really suitable candidates for working within the intelligence service. Yeah. You remember that scandal, you know, talking about like blurring the lines where they uncovered like loads of undercovers who had had sexual relationships, started families. And, you know, in some cases it was a hundred percent manipulative of the person that did that. And in a lot of cases, it was just, they just lost who they were, where they were.

I just completely lost the plot. Well, in a way they're being asked to do that, aren't they? By the very nature of the job. And that's where I think there's a whole lot of blurred lines and lack of clarity, which actually is sort of necessary for the job. They're also being asked to take a lot of responsibility. Feeling responsible for the safety of the nation, I'm sure that must be ingrained in you if you've trained in espionage or to be a spy.

And we can see this from the opening sequence with Cartwright in the simulation of taking a suicide bomber down. That's how the first episode opens, doesn't it, of slow horses. It's down to you to stop that person from killing many. I mean, that's an enormous amount of responsibility to land on one person's shoulders. And of course, we would exploring together in therapy, how perhaps Jackson has seen himself responsible and what experiences and messages from the environment have led him to that conclusion. Because although we might feel that responsibility, it can't ultimately fall on one person's shoulders.

So let's talk about challenging life experiences then let's talk about perhaps childhood things in the past that might make you good at that job. He might have had to be resourceful from a very early age. And of course, this largely is conjecture because we don't get a lot of information about his childhood, but bearing in mind what we're seeing in the latter stages of his life and his way of being in the world,

I suppose I'm curious to the extent to which espionage and the intelligence services have provided the perfect place for people to work who are used to hiding their emotions, who perhaps through childhood trauma or misfortune in some way have had to rebuild a sense of self or even create a false self outwardly and therefore are able to mask again in their line of work. And they might not even know they're doing it. Yeah. You know, as we spoke, I think it was the morning show where we, you know,

there's a false self that's been created to enable either Bradley or Alex to be at work, that might be the case for Jackson Lam on a much bigger scale. And it's, it is worth mentioning transference and counter-transference here as well, because his strategy could be that he's worked out that people will project all sorts onto him, and that suits him fine. So the fact that he's not particularly pleasant to be around or he's not going to be nice to you means that he's going to draw out from people a reaction to that. And that allows him to know more about their weaknesses, more about their way of being in the world, which gives him information. All of that also distracts from then getting to know the real Jackson Lam. So it works

in a couple of ways for him. And several people do reveal themselves to Jackson Lam and that gives him the edge. He's the master reader of people. I mean, working on the show this week, I did start to wonder if Jackson Lam might make a good therapist. And I should say as well that some people are a lightning rod for transference and Jackson Lam is one of them. You meet people in life where everyone is going, Oh man, that person. Well, they just feel an energy. They elicit that from others.

They wouldn't even know they're a lightning rod for transference, but they just are because they're quite robust in the way that they're being and he certainly is and what we'd see is that he doesn't really care. Yeah, it's true. That can be a strength in and of itself. Yeah, absolutely. But if it is all a deception, right? How deep does it go?

Like in episode six, he gets all these pictures of his slow horses together in a little manila spy folder and appears to come clean to Standish. What was Taverner going to tell me? Oh, for f*** sake. It's Saturday. Haven't you got other people's cats to steal? What aren't you telling me about Charles' death? Nothing.

Tell me what don't I know? I gave him the gun. Why? Because he asked for one. And he was my friend. I didn't want to be in the field. I wanted to be a civilian even less So this is why I asked for this place

Somewhere where I could run out the clock Nothing matters and no one gets hurt. Oh, come on. One of us has to leave the room now I'm just too fucking tired. Okay interesting because he sounds kind of vulnerable there I'm too f***ing tired. Okay, interesting, because he sounds kind of vulnerable there, but is that story even true? Because we see a flashback scene of him, he goes into the bathroom where we see Charles Partner, who's a high up MI5 dude who committed treason, in the bath and he shoots him point blank.

Makes it look like a suicide. And you see some stress in him, but you also get a sense as he's leaving that building of, it's just what had to be done. How can we tell? It's so difficult. The more you peel back the layers on this onion, I don't know whether you're digging as far as you think. There's just more onion. There's a new little shallot in the middle with the outside skin still on it. It's weird. It's creepy. Because that speech is definitely delivered with some pathos. You do feel the vulnerability,

but master actor. Like you were describing earlier, part of the job. And he recounts his fear that in giving a gun to his friend, Charles Partner, that's how he's telling Standish that he was somehow implicated in his death or he might have been, that of course was marked as suicide. But we also learn as Jackson Lamb tells it to Standish that the experience with Charles' partner killing himself has knocked his confidence and that working in Slough House is part of a retreat on Jackson's part and not having to be faced with messy decisions that might lead to his compatriots getting killed. That version of events is delivered to Standish specifically for her, I think.

He gets a file, Jackson does, from Lady Di Taverner with some info on himself as well. So is he getting a bit of his own identity back? He's clearly very, that's precious to him. Oh, well that whole scene with him asking for that file. I mean, ostensibly around Catherine's alcoholism and maybe how she has ended up in Slough House, Catherine's downish, but definitely his own story. By getting hold of that file, he's maintaining the official story around Charles' partner's death and any implication of his involvement, that remains hidden.

This whole getting the file back, I think is really a way for us to think about Jackson Lam's more compassionate caring side. So in continuing the lie, he obviously obscures his own part in events, but more importantly, he preserves for her, Catherine's version of events. You really see and understand the level of his care in this moment. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. All right. So do we think Jackson Lam is actually good at his job or not? Let's find out or dig into it at least after these ads. What's it like to trade crypto on Kraken? Let's say I'm in a state-of-the-art gym surrounded by powerful-looking machines.

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That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms and conditions apply. Visit amex.ca slash business platinum. All right, we're back again. Let's talk about Jackson's competence or otherwise. By episode six, obviously, and we showed the clip, or we played the clip at the top of this show, we find out that Cyd has died from her gunshot wound, major spoiler alert, and that that happened in the hands of Inside Up Jed Moody.

So Lam handles it and is an inimitable, pragmatic, yet caring matter when telling Cartwright, as we heard at the top of the show, and says, I haven't forgotten any of them. I won't forget Sid. That feels like that's a really important part of his job. And that actually to deliver that in that way to Cartwright is incredibly caring in that moment. You definitely don't want your tech man, Roddy. You definitely don't want Roddy delivering that. But we get a whiff of his compassion, but also his seriousness about the

inner workings of Slough House really early on in episode one. Of course, inevitably it's obscured by swearing and general ribbing of his team. I was going to clean up the rubbish. Sorry. At the end of the working day, your pitiful miserable time is your own. But if I find out you are indulging in extracurricular activities that could upset the equilibrium of this blessed sanctuary, then I will make it so that you wish you were in a Siberian Gulag. Just doubling back to Sid and the compassion thing. He's a pragmatist when it comes to the politics, how to deal with MI5 and Regent's Park. And I think he also knows that as much as he, I do agree with you, he does care.

He does care about the slow horses. He also knows that if one of them gets hit, that's a threat to him as well. He should be untouchable and his team the same. Do you think that's a slight sense of vulnerability from him? Yeah, just a slight thing. I think it's very slight because I think he'll think I can outsmart them. I'm not going to be Sid. I'm not going to be another Sid. That will never happen to me. I think that would shake him a little bit. If you can touch a slow horse, it's a bit too close. Again, it's a real underlining of how seriously he takes this work. Yeah,

I think he does. I think he does. Also, this sounded to me like advice about not getting involved in relationships with another member of the team. Yeah. And therefore, could that do damage to the inner workings of a Secret Service group or cell? Again, could it make them more vulnerable to attack from external? We see it with Min Harper, don't we? We see it with Min. Yeah. Min and Louisa get involved.

I think he's past taking that kind of advice himself. Yeah. And it does make you wonder if anyone ever had a bash. I mean, Catherine does try and give him advice sometimes. Standish. Yeah. She definitely gently tries to present an alternative to his. Di goes at him harder, obviously.

I mean, when he's talking... But she can. She can because she has the ammunition to. But I think when he's talking to Lady Di, and of course she's threatened him by saying she'll expose secrets, it may be best that his Slough House team don't know. Regarding the shooting of Agent Baker in episode three, we start to see again that caring side emerge even more explicitly. Jackson claims not to care, yet at the same time, all that he's belying to us is that he really

does care. I'll go knock on the door for you, But in return, I want the standards farm. And you've been using Slough House as your personal toy box, which pisses me off. Are we clear? Crystal. Oh, there's more. Anyone with me tonight is fireproof.

Oh, and you were in my debt until you were in a care home. God, you really care about them, don't you? Nah, I think they're a bunch of of losers, but they're my losers. What it's worth. I'm sorry about Baker I love that mark on a chart, you know the one that clips to the bottom of her bed that tells you when a caffeta needs changing He's so dry, he's so, he's like brutal Some of the way he delivers. So Taverna clocks this slightly deeper side of him and she is a spy master Mm-hmm, so she'll be analyzing everything he says and reanalyzing it. They're a similar generation of spook, right? They know all the tricks. Yeah, they've been there and they've done

unbelievably dangerous and challenging things and they lie for a living So she can see through his actions in a way that other people can't. But like you say, it's a bit of give and take because he calls her out massively during this part and she obviously has messed up a bit over Hobden and Jackson feels she's using his team to clear up his mess. So to your point, he's going to be very clear that he's seen that coming. So I suppose the care also masquerades as competence. It's really difficult to see, to sort of disentangle those two because, you know, he's told her in no uncertain terms that everybody on my team is safe.

But to your point, he didn't like the look of that vulnerability that came knocking when Baker got totaled. So yeah, he is caring and he also is telling her in no uncertain terms, leave us alone. And we see how far he's willing to push the boundaries to ensure they're cared for. So as you asked me, it is interesting to think about whether he cares for slow horses because they're his, and it's a reflection of, and on him and his surrogate family, or whether he actually cares about them as individuals in their own right and this advice is for their benefit. It didn't exactly sound like it. Yeah, it's a hard one. It really is a hard one to pin down, but that intrigue is what keeps you interested in him

and in the series, I think. So looking at him in 360, what are we concluding about Jackson? I'd be really interested in who was showing up to therapy if Jackson Lam came to see me and what possibility there was to engage in a working therapeutic alliance. And that requires eventually at some level, at least some authenticity on both the therapist and the client's part, of course. So would I be meeting Jackson Lam's true self at any point? Or the false selves created at different times in his career to shield him from the vulnerabilities, which it must come from doing this type of work. But maybe that's the ultimate aim in some ways of therapy, is to integrate those parts.

And the shadow work is equally as important. And yet, that's the bit that's incredibly difficult for anyone, regardless of whether you're Tony Soprano, Jackson Lam, or you or I, to give voice to ourselves, let alone alongside somebody who, you know, we're just getting to know in the room. So it feels like, it definitely feels like a longer piece of work. Yeah. Yeah. And I said before, in an earlier episode, didn't I? Spook Street, the third

book is all about the OB, the old play by Jonathan Price in the series. Oh, River's granddad. River's granddad. Yes. And it tells you explicitly that it never ends. Yes. No matter how old you get, you can't retire. Certainly not psychologically, you can't because someone might be

trying to kill you right now. Imagine what that does to your central nervous system. You're in constant fight or flight. Every single new person you see, analysing them. And even people you see every day and have done for 50 years, they could just be a sleeper cell. They're just waiting. Those that you can't see. And those that you can't see. Oh, Ben. I mean, he has numerous coping strategies for all of this. And their frameworks

for living built up over many years, often from a really early age. So when we're thinking about his childhood, there are his ways of being in the world. And of course these coping strategies or defence mechanisms, as we call them earlier, they're protective. So the idea of stepping out from behind those shields can be absolutely terrifying, could feel like life or death. In the case of a spy, it actually is, are actually life or death. And in therapy, we're not about bulldozing through defences because they're really, really useful and they've kept you safe for a very long time. But I suppose what we get curious about is letting them down once in a while and how that might result in a different way of relating and whether that's of use or is of worth in and of itself.

Yeah, that's really interesting. Even though you know, like some of these defences are holding a person's contentment and ability to participate in a happy life, they're holding all of that back. Just breaking them down straight away could leave them at real risk. They could leave your office and be like to the point of crippling anxiety. It's never binary like that. It's never like you're in a defence mechanism or you're not. It's such a nuanced thing that actually you have to be really careful. I'm always like, look, we're not judging this as something bad. What we're noticing is it might have run out of road for you and there might be

a different way of being. And that's, I suppose we could be curious about that and thoughtful about that with Jackson Lam. He becomes the opposite of what he claims to be in a lot of ways. So he cares about his job. He cares about what people think about him and how the team feel he must do because otherwise why lie to Standish? Why get his team to do what they do after the mole gets his head cut off? I wonder how close you'd ever get to diving in. Is everything as it first appears? And this first series particularly did leave me wondering who Jackson Lam actually is.

And I suppose that might be with you for a very, very long time in the therapy room. Yeah. Yeah. Well, hey, listen, do we ever know exactly who we are? Do you feel that way about yourself? I think it can be transient moments of, oh, listen, do we ever know exactly who we are? Do you feel that way about yourself? I think it can be transient moments of, oh, okay, I get that. Oh, where's it gone? And I suppose that's the ultimate, isn't it? Is knowing that it's ephemera, it's transient, it doesn't stay, much as we'd really like to make sense of the world in a concrete way and go, okay, this is who I am. But we're not because we're a second or 10 seconds older than we were 10 seconds ago. Do you want to

get existential? Oh man, I do actually. Oh no, we're getting into like space and time as well. I'm not bringing Stephen Hawking into this. Good. All right. Well, if we do ever want to go deeper, you know we can because as alongside the books, they're bringing out season four, and apparently they've already shot or are shooting season five. So they're way ahead. Let's let's go further than 10 seconds in the future. Let's go seven days into the future. Who have we got? Who've got next? So I'll give you some clues. Lifestyle columns,

smoking, Manhattan's, Mr. Big. big okay guess who all right. They said single and fabulous exclamation point they did not say single and fabulous question mark that question mark is hostile Miranda can we sue them or something for what miss punctuation it's too late to see I'm all over the city looking like like something that got caught in a drain. Okay you know what I just quit smoking Find me another show out there in pod land that can discuss Omar Little and Carrie Bradshaw with equal gusto and verve and vigor. That would be a date that she should go on. That's a different kind of Mr. Big. We're gonna get into that clip

is obviously Carrie worrying about relationships, which does form quite a lot of sex in the city. Self-image and of course shows that her friends are everything, Samantha Miranda, Charlotte. So friendship, romantic conundrums, there's an awful lot to dive in without a date with Omar Little. It's all happening in one of your favourite cities, Ben. Yes, New York City. I know you were going to sing. happening in one of your favorite cities, Ben. Yes, New York City. I know you were going to sing.

I was like, please. No, no, I wasn't going to sing. It's too late for that. No, no, all that's left to say is that we'd love you to follow us on Apple podcasts or Spotify or Amazon Music, wherever you get your pods to get the new EPS, tell your mates, share a link. If you want to get us ad free, you know what to do? Do the free trial and you'll get the ad free episodes from Kermode and Mayo's Take, access to their weekly bonus

episodes. Just click try free, top of the Shrink in the Box show page on Apple Podcasts or visit extrataste.com and you will be one of the aforementioned shrinkers in our squad. Thank you to our production team, production management, Lily Hambly, the assistant producer, Scarlett O'Malley, the studio engineer, Josh Gibbs, and the mix engineer, Gulliver Tickle. The producer is Jeremy Newmark-Jones, senior producer, Selena Ream, and executive producer, Simon Paul.

And Shrink the Box is a Sony Music Entertainment production. Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you again next time. See ya. Ta-da. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you again next time. See ya. Ta ta.