There are cliffhangers – and then there is the end of the first season of The Old Man. After hours of car chases, gun fights and unlikely fisticuffs as the ex-CIA op Dan Chase (Jeff Bridges) attempted to evade capture by the US authorities, having been in hiding since returning from Afghanistan in the late 80s, we arrived back in Afghanistan in the present day. There, his daughter, an FBI agent called Emily (Arrested Development’s Alia Shawkat), whose career depends on concealing her real identity from her beloved boss Harold Harper (John Lithgow), had been abducted by the rebel leader Faraz Hamzad. Why? Because she is actually his daughter, Parwana. Dazed and unaware of her true parentage, she exited a car near Hamzad’s compound. And: finis.
There is an arrogance and an insecurity to the end-of-season cliffhanger. It presumes another instalment is on the cards – and that viewers will wait (maybe years) for the big reveal – but it reeks of desperation: a sense that the only thing keeping people watching is the promise of answers (in this case, what Hamzad is planning to do with Emily and how she will react to news of her father’s identity).
Unfortunately, The Old Man’s arrogance and insecurity isn’t limited to its abrupt endings. With an awkward script – replete with reams of clunky expository dialogue – and jarringly improbable plot developments, the show relies exclusively on withholding information.
Yet rather than being moreishly mystifying, The Old Man is an exercise in infinite confusion. Its inordinately complex premise doesn’t help. From the start, we are scrambling to catch up with 30-plus years of professional entanglements and clandestine foreign policy set against a geopolitical situation involving the US, Russia, the Taliban and a lithium mine. Even a counterintelligence chief who was present for most of the backstory doesn’t know what is going on. “What are we missing here?!” demands Harper halfway through season two – a sentiment expressed, more or less, by virtually every character in every scene.
In fairness, The Old Man began intriguingly enough. Chase – a gruff loner with two exceedingly vicious rottweilers and, considering his pained amble, an unbelievable talent for physical combat – is haunted by the mental decline of his late wife and concerned that he, too, is becoming paranoid. But no: someone really is out to get him.
This is the point at which things become tediously obscure. It turns out that US intelligence agencies are after Chase at Hamzad’s behest, but have no idea why. We, like most of the show’s characters, don’t know why the US is so keen to indulge a warlord’s demands.
Meanwhile, Harper – whose son and daughter-in-law have recently died in mysterious circumstances – is tasked with tracking down Chase, owing to the pair’s professional history (Harper aided Chase’s illegal support of Hamzad during the Soviet-Afghan war, but it is unclear who knows). Emily – whom Harper knows as Angela Adams – is also on the case, secretly feeding information to her dad to help him escape.
Can things get any more complicated? Season two proves that they absolutely can. Chase and Harper are on a bleak buddy road trip to rescue Emily when their truck is ambushed. The pair are apprehended by locals who get this close to murdering them before a friendly Afghan, Omar, vouches for them. Except that he is a Talib spy desperate to know who Emily really is. Over the rest of the first half of the series, Emily/Angela/Parwana – who enters Hamzad’s home barking her FBI credentials – acclimatises very quickly to life with her biological family.
Alongside the baffling plot and infuriating drip-feed of information – at one point, a relative asks Emily if she has any children; “No … not really,” is her gnomic reply – the other major problem with The Old Man, and the difference between season one (passably entertaining) and season two (practically unwatchable), is the dissolution of the stakes.
In the debut outing, it was clear we were meant to be rooting for Chase, while empathising with the grieving Harper. Now, everyone seems fatally flawed – even Emily – and the body count is so high that the idea of being invested in a character’s survival feels almost quaint. The Old Man is bursting with puzzling alliances and long-buried secrets – but the biggest mystery of all is why we should care about any of it.
• The Old Man is on Disney+ now
