The most important moment of “Last Dance at the Country Club” is not its final, Casablanca -inflected image but a brief, devastatingly telling exchange between Kate and Stuart. After learning that she has no idea what their budget would be like, or who they’d be reporting to, he turns down her offer to leave Embassy London to join her on her next adventure, as Special Envoy to Europe, saying, “I can be an ambassador, though. It’s what I’ve been working toward for 20 years.” Kate’s quiet, wistful “Yeah, me, too” makes me want to cry. It also makes me want to hurl myself into the TV and claw my way into this scene so I can shake Kate by the shoulders (more metaphorically than actually, but also a little bit actually) and say, “Then do it!!!!!”

I get it: duty to the nation before persona

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