‘The Old Man’ Episode 7 Recap: Family Reunion

Dan Chase. Harold Harper. Morgan Bote. At different times, each of these old men appeared to be the old man, the titular character of Jonathan E. Steinberg and Robert Levine’s masterful spy thriller, The Old Man.
Yet in this final episode of the series’ excellent first season, a new challenger for the title emerges.
His name is one you’ve heard throughout the show: Faraz Hamzad. Played as an old man by Navid Negahban, he’s the Afghan warlord who’s been hunting for “Dan Chase” this entire time…only his real quarry is someone different. Turns out it wasn’t Chase he wanted, not really anyway. He wanted Angela Adams, aka Emily Chase…aka Parwana Hamzad, his long-lost daughter.

Suddenly, the answers to all the show’s riddles become evident. Why would Hamzad pursue a decades-old grudge against Chase for stealing Hamzad’s now long-dead wife—a woman he was on the verge of executing for her refusal to divulge the location of a potentially war-winning cache of precious metals? Why would he renege on the deal he struck with high-ranking FBI official Harold Harper to exchange Chase for Angela? Why would he kidnap Angela, an American federal law enforcement officer, in the first place, knowing the kind of hell it would bring down on him from the United States government, ending an alliance that dates back to the Soviet-Afghan War?

Because he misses his daughter, that’s why. Because he misses the little girl that Dan Chase, aka Johnny, and his own wife Belour kidnapped all those years ago.
The journey to his revelation is a riveting one—the most effective action work since the show’s premiere. Tasked with holding on to Angela until the deal is done, CIA agent Waters and private hitmen Carson and Mike (Echo Kellum) realize they’ve been quietly surrounded by enemy operatives; Carson first-person-shooters his way through them and clears the path for Waters, Mike, and Angela to escape, only for a gun-toting woman to ambush them in the middle of the street, killing Mike and Waters (RIP) and absconding with Angela.
Meanwhile, on the road to the handoff with Hamzad, Harper’s Moroccan secret-police escort turns on him, forcing him to drive like a Grand Theft Auto character while Chase expertly takes out all three pursuing vehicles. The show is confident enough in its craft to stage a spectacular crash in the far background of a shot, as if this sort of thing is old news to Chase and Harper, which, of course, it is.
But there’s plenty of emotion to go along with all that action. Chase says goodbye to his erstwhile hostage-slash-partner Zoe, who simply can’t bring herself to believe that there’s no way out for Chase but Faraz Hamzad’s bullets. (I’m curious how, or if, the show will bring her back into the loop during its second season.)

Angela spends much of the episode drugged by Carson, Mike, and Waters, weaving in and out of a dream state involving her mother—revealed here as a stern and distant figure, shrouded in mystery. In one memorable moment she appears in an ornate white robe in the middle of a room full of tiny dunes straight out of Tarkovsky’s Stalker. Angela’s unconscious seems to sense a connection between her own life and whatever went down between Johnny, Belour, and Hamzad before anyone else does.

And Harper and Chase spend much of their time on the road arguing about which of the two of them is Angela/Emily’s “real” father. Is it Chase, who sacrificed everything for her? Or is it Harper, who took her under his wing and helped her answer the hard questions Chase avoided? Of course, neither man is her biological father, as it turns out; the real question is who cares enough about her to be a fatherlike figure in her life, and the answer to that question is both of them.
Where does that leave everyone? Waters and Mike are dead. Angela has been forcibly reunited with her real father, Hamzad. Carson’s in the wind. Zoe is god knows where—just because she was told she’d be returned safely home doesn’t mean this actually happened, as everything else in the episode makes clear.
And Harold and Chase are now united as rogues, wanted by just about everyone on the planet. “Wherever this leads, we’re in this together now,” Harper tells Chase as they escape from their pursuers; Chase ends the episode by clapping a friendly hand on Harper’s shoulder. (Never mind that Harper tried to have him killed a few episodes back; “water under the bridge,” Chase tells him, and he seems to mean it.)

Where does that leave us, then? In the grips of an expertly made story of devotion and deceit, supported by excellent acting (I’m particularly impressed with John Lithgow’s ability to convey dismay and disbelief in seemingly dozens of different ways), played out with guns, on an international scale. And hey, did I ever mention how beautiful those medieval-style opening titles with the dogs are, by the way? The Old Man is crackerjack TV, in other words. I can’t wait for round two.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.