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‘The Diplomat’ returns with new season 18 months after its debut. What was it about again?

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‘The Diplomat’ returns with new season 18 months after its debut. What was it about again?

I can’t wait for Thursday’s arrival of the second season of “The Diplomat,” the smart, fast-paced Netflix political thriller starring Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell.

A drama that devoted its first season to a story line about the possible eruption of World War III should be a relaxing break from watching the news leading up to Tuesday’s presidential election. It might even help lower my heart rate from imminent implosion to mere extreme anxiety.

The trouble is, I barely remember what already has happened on “The Diplomat,” not because I’m AARP-eligible or because the plot was more intricate than “Tenet” on a caffeine jag. It’s because the first season arrived in April 2023, slightly more than a year and a half ago. In terms of politics-induced stress levels, that translates to a decade for anyone who’s been paying attention.

I do recall that Russell plays a behind-the-scenes career diplomat who is reluctant about becoming the very public U.S. ambassador to Great Britain. I can picture her husband, played by Sewell, who is a former bigwig and so uncomfortable at being a veritable first spouse that he interferes with, er, helps her any chance he gets

I recollect a quite dashing British foreign secretary who has crazy chemistry with Russell’s character and that the attack of a British aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf sets the plot ball rolling. There’s a poisoning, right? Iran is involved somehow? Russia, too? For some reason, I vaguely remember a photo shoot taking place where Russell wore a very cool dress. But how this fits into the big picture, I couldn’t tell you.

Yet I do know that “The Diplomat” was well-written, exquisitely tense and a smidge outrageous (in a good way) in its foreign policy bombshells. If you can relate to this conundrum, it’s not you. Or me. It’s the fault of the timing problem that exists with some of the best television content these days.

Like so many top-quality shows of the current cable and streaming era, the densely laden details and surprise twists of “The Diplomat” made it a pleasure to watch — and nearly impossible to retain for the length of cable and streaming’s typical pause between seasons.

The problem hit home for me recently while attempting to pick up the threads of FX’s “The Old Man,” which just concluded its second season after a two-year, plus two-months gap hiatus between the premieres of seasons one and two. Suffice it to say that I spent the early episodes wondering things like: “Why is everyone after Jeff Bridges’ character again?” “How exactly is Joel Grey’s character connected to Bridges?” And “Why is Amy Brenneman living in Grey’s house if she essentially is an innocent bystander?”

To add to the confusion, the brilliant series “Severance” from Apple TV+ has begun publicizing its long-awaited return on Jan. 17, 2025. That means it will be back with new episodes just shy of three years after its season one premiere.

Let me grab my well-worn cardigan and pipe, as Seth Meyers does in his “Back in My Day” skit on NBC’s “Late Night,” and reminisce about the way things used to be.

TV wasn’t always like this

The old days of television — let’s randomly focus on 1973, the era of “The Waltons,” “Sanford and Son” and “M*A*S*H” — had numerous flaws, but it was a breeze in terms of brain storage. Back then, comedies and dramas airing on three major networks churned out 20 to 25 episode per season, most of them self-contained with very few plot points that lasted beyond one episode.

From around late May to early September, reruns were the norm, which meant you actually could watch some of your favorite episodes twice and imprint them in your mind. That’s why so many boomers can recall as much about John-Boy Walton’s family as their own. Go ahead, ask me about mom Olivia’s bout with polio and how John-Boy found a new treatment that helped her walk again.

Nowadays, elaborately crafted shows with seasons lasting only 6 to 10 episodes take much longer to film, given their high production standards. You can’t expect HBO’s “House of the Dragon,” with its design values and special effects, to take the same amount of time to create as a 1970s cult favorite like “Kung Fu,” which itself represented a big leap forward in terms of visuals and imagination for a TV Western.

It’s not surprising, really, that the length of time between seasons can now be 12 months or more. Sometimes, the delays are longer the result of circumstances like the 2020 pandemic lockdown or the 2023 actors and writers strikes.

To be fair, my grumbling about “The Old Man, which weaves a complicated backstory into the main narrative about an ongoing attempt to capture Jeff Bridges’ silver-haired former spy, is mostly selfish, given what Bridges had overcome to reach season two.

As Bridges, 73, told People magazine, he spent five month in the hospital and came close to dying while battling COVID-19 at the same time he was being treated for cancer that now is in remission. Bridges recovered and came back ready for another season of physically demanding fight scenes, which possibly makes him the baddest badass senior-discount qualifier of all time.

But while I’m grateful for a chance to see Bridges acting again after such a traumatic journey, I needed a little more assistance as a viewer in order to fully enjoy the return of “The Old Man.” Seeing the entire first season again wasn’t a practical answer. Who can carve out that many hours from doomscrolling on social media about the future of the country? Not me.

A refresher course for viewers

Which brings me to something that I hope can solve TV’s timing crisis: longer, better recaps.

 On Oct. 17, “Severance” executive producer and director Ben Stiller brought this issue up by tweeting: “For TV fans … I know it takes a lot to go back and watch a whole season of a show in preparation for a new season. … But in terms of recaps, what shows have done one that you feel helped get you caught up on a whole season in a fun and timely way? Just curious.”

Of the more than 600 replies, there were some good suggestions, including praise for the recaps done by USA’s “Mr. Robot” and Apple TV+’s “Slow Horses.” One commenter linked to a YouTube clip of Jimmi Simpson’s six-minute summary of season one of HBO’s “Westworld,” an example of lively, speed-talking recapping at its finest — and an example that earned a thank you from Stiller himself.

Also mentioned was ABC’s “Lost,” which helped viewers keep track of its massively convoluted plot points throughout its 2004-2010 run by airing multiple hourlong specials consisting of clips that recapped past storylines.

Clip episodes are a device that has been used by other series, but they were perfected by “Lost” as a way to track the twists and turns in the lives of the show’s airplane crash survivors stranded on a mysterious island. There was no skimping on the details. This was recapping at its most in-depth. The first-ever “Lost” clip episode — narrated by Brian Cox and airing in April 2005 near the end of the first season — was described quite accurately as “a public service” by the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

Personally, I’m in favor of clip episodes for every TV series that has substantial time gaps between seasons. They don’t have to consist of only clips, of course. There could be interviews with actors, producers and directors woven into the episode, a few bloopers to lighten the mood, an interactive online quiz, live “Mystery Science Theater 3000”-style commentary on the proceedings, you name it.

For “Severance,” a clip episode introducing season two could be framed as a training film tied to the show’s premise that employees of Lumon Industries have their work memories severed from their personal lives and vice versa. Let the narrator be Mr. Milchick (portrayed by the great Travis Tillman) and kick things off with Milchick leading a “music dance experience,” the odd, equally creepy and groovy perk for staffers that’s basically a two-person dance party.

Stiller probably already is working on something inventive like this. I think he gets it. Nobody has the mental bandwidth to store the facts of a 3-year-old season of a series like “Severance” in today’s troubled world. Consider that in 2022, the year “Severance” was becoming a critical hit, the United States reached its millionth COVID-19 death, the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, Queen Elizabeth died, the FBI seized boxes of classified documents from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, Elon Musk took over as the boss of Twitter and Will Smith slapped Chris Rock on live TV during the Oscar ceremony, among many, many other significant events.

No wonder we’re all so exhausted. I’ll be there for “The Diplomat” when it arrives this week with fresh content. There’s no clip episode planned. But I hope Netflix provides a decent-sized “previously on” briefing before asking viewers to jump back into the fictional foreign policy fray. To put it diplomatically, it’s the least they can do.

Contact Detroit Free Press pop culture critic Julie Hinds at jhinds@freepress.com.

‘The Dipomat’

Second season arrives Thursday on Netflix

Rated TV-MA

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