The Diplomat is still chockfull of cliffhangers designed to keep you clicking “next episode” into the wee hours of the morning, and a mid-season time-jump feels a bit jarring, if necessary. But the series retains its sobering depiction of the geopolitical machinations that keep the globe spinning, and, like The Americans, it understands that the political is almost always personal.
It’s a role and a series that has clearly been tailor-made for Stallone, playing to his particular brand of mealy-mouthed charisma. ... It also doesn’t have anywhere near the humble, world-wearied power of Stallone’s work in the Creed films, but with his slick one-liners and gruff deadpan, he manages to carry the entire series on the back of his imposing frame.
The special is most compelling when the cast is allowed to just revel in their surroundings, sitting together on the Central Perk set, or in Monica and Rachel’s still-mind-bogglingly mammoth West Village apartment, and reminisce like old friends. But we also lamentably get a series of inexplicable celebrity appearances.
While the writers have successfully created an atmosphere of dread and uncertainty that echoes that of the show’s characters, the withholding of catharsis can be wearying. Like society itself, the series resists progress at its own peril.
Director Melanie Aitkenhead manages to weave Franco and Coney's allusions and themes seamlessly, and both the sex scenes and action sequences are executed with a kineticism and style that the dull 1996 version lacked.
While there's plenty of potential fodder for a pulpy potboiler spread throughout the rest of the nine episodes, it's these more mundane, increasingly transient plotlines that come to define the latest installment of the series.
