‘Jack Ryan’ Season 4 Episode 3 Recap: “Sacrifices”

A line ran through the Bourne films. “Look at us. Look at what they make you give.” It was the  assets of black book CIA programs like Treadstone and Blackbriar, trained to kill without question, suddenly realizing – usually at the truncated end of their lives – that their investment and sacrifice was ultimately for nothing. That their deaths would serve an agenda above or even outside of their pay grade, and would not trigger any accountability for the puppet masters. (One of those puppet masters was Brian Cox, who was so good in those movies, but that’s not why you called.) That same realization is currently fucking with a few of the CIA’s peeps in a different fictional universe — that of Jack Ryan Season 4. As the mess former director Miller left behind consumes lives and becomes increasingly connected across the continents, Jack Ryan, Elizabeth Wright, and James Greer are each considering what they’ve gotta give up to get the job done. Sacrifices. What are they worth?

Elizabeth has landed in Lagos as a US envoy of peace, hoping to reassure Nigeria’s acting President Okoli (Joseph Mydell) that the CIA had nothing to do with the assassination of his predecessor. And for some perspective on the situation there, she’s brought along Ade Osoji (Okieriete Onaodowan), a Nigeria-born, US-based oil lobbyist who describes Okoli as a tradition-minded political pragmatist and his chief rival Ekon Ameh (Hugh Quarshie) as a straight-up warlord. At stake in the country is the control of its resources, Osoji says. And while Okoli wants to claim them for Nigeria’s people, his adherence to “old ideas” is holding the country back. “Nigeria isn’t just a country. It’s an opportunity. It’s a strategic hub in a world whose global powers, they’re equalizing.”

Miller’s death has brought into the open how far up the rot goes. It’s bigger than just the former CIA director, Jack tells President Bachler. It’s kind of an all-over-the-globe stink. And so Jack’s plan is to resign his acting deputy directorship in order to bring the scandal’s odor with him and draw fire away from Acting Director Wright. James Greer is installed as deputy director instead, and it’s a position the CIA lifer has always felt he deserved. Didn’t he give everything to the agency? Well, yes. And the flipside is that he gave everything to the agency. Greer arrives at his son’s high school football game, only to receive the phone call about his sure to be very busy new gig. And James Greer, Jr. (Anthony J. Abraham) is crestfallen as he watches his dad drive away. Sacrifices.

Freed from DC, and senate hearings, and suits, Jack Ryan grabs his ride or die Mike November and they rendezvous with Domingo Chavez. Their plan is to cause a ruckus in Yucatan, Mexico that will get the attention of the Marquez Cartel and Chao in Myanmar, and the next thing we know everyone’s dressing in the tactical gear of the Mexican police. (November: “I always wanted to be a federale.”) They execute a raid on a dockside cartel drug lab and confiscate the latest shipment of triad contraband. And under duress – they’re shrink wrapping his head – Marin (Ricardo Carriço), Chavez’s cartel contact who’s also his cousin, gives up the location of “the marketplace.” That’s the black market bazaar where Marquez originally made contact with Chao and the Silver Lotus Triad, it’s in Dubrovnik, Croatia, and that’s where Jack and the boys are headed next. Walking to their jet, Jack calls Cathy Mueller. Voicemail. It’s tough to keep that personal life popping when you’re flying around the world trying to thwart a criminal-terrorist power grab. You gotta sacrifice something.

Chao’s doing that, too. Convinced his boss Tin Tun (Jim Lau) thinks he’s a traitor to the triad, he shoots and kills his henchman/brother-in-law when it becomes evident that the Silver Lotus isn’t going to let Chao skip out of Myanmar with his wife and daughter. It’s also revealed that drugs are only one of the triad’s revenue streams. They’re also depraved human traffickers. And they launder all of their misbegotten cash through the kind of “pleasure casinos” we’ve seen Chao operating. That’s a term well-known to Cathy Mueller, who ignored Jack’s phone call because she’s at lunch with Zeyara Lemos, the philanthropist with international ties, whose aid efforts Cathy commits to helping through her capacity as a physician with the World Health Organization.  

When Acting Director Wright met Okoli in the presidential palace at Lagos, she was surprised to find him speaking with the warlord Ameh. But the sworn enemies said they were united in their wish to uncover who killed their former prez – they also had to make sacrifices – and shared with Elizabeth the phone number one of his assassins kept calling. It’s Greer’s first task as the new acting deputy director to run it down, and what do you know, it’s connected to the Bethesda co-working space where we saw Tuttle operating his kill missions from afar. With that snooping, Tuttle makes a call. “Greer’s getting close; what do you want me to do?” Who is Tuttle calling? This rotting onion just keeps revealing more layers.

“What makes me different is that I face the world without pretense,” Elizabeth told Ade Osoji. “I don’t call that a sacrifice. I call it realism.” And her candor has been steady, even while getting grilled by the senate intelligence committee. Jack’s self-removal from his executive role in order to gallivant the globe with his fellow crusaders should insulate her further from the toxicity at work inside the CIA. But only for now. We’ll have to see what sacrifices the acting director is willing to make as this multinational conspiracy of puppet masters continues to play out. But it will also be interesting to watch her work directly with Greer at Langley. The two haven’t always seen eye to eye, but do share a professional rapport, and they both trust Jack completely. But with the power and reach of the organization(s) they’re up against, are the agency’s top people even safe? After Greer calls his son to apologize for another no-show moment and is promptly hung up on, he gets a knock at the door from Tuttle. “Stop,” the guy says, and openly threatens Greer’s life and that of his son. What if all the sacrifices you made for your job caused the destruction of what you loved most? Look at what they make you give.     

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges