Netflix’s Pine Gap season 1, episode 2 recap: Truth is bargaining chip

Trust becomes a bargaining chip in the second episode of the Netflix series, Pine Gap. As Jasmina and Gus grow closer, it’s their political affiliations that affect a burgeoning relationship.

Moses Dreyfus (Mark Leonard Winter) reveals to Ethan James (Steve Toussaint) that the malware in the servers was uploaded as a file from one of 1,200 terminals at the Pine Gap base. He is going to have to sift through the root files of each of the computers to locate the origin.

The new Pine Gap mission director, Jacob Kitto (Stephen Curry), finds Gus Thompson (Parker Sawyers) and Jasmina Delic (Tess Haubrich) at a bar. He reassures Gus that he would have acted against the Swadhinata the same way that Gus did in the pilot episode of Pine Gap, which is when Jas explains that she doesn’t think that the rebel group was the culprit. Kitto looks confounded by this revelation.

As if espionage isn’t hard enough, Ethan’s home situation is a little tense. His wife, Belle (Simone Kessell), is struggling with the move to Alice Springs especially now that both their children are going to school. She’s bored, especially since the couple can’t talk about Ethan’s work. She has uprooted herself from her home in America, leaving behind her job and her network, only to be stuck in the Australian outback. Of course, the next day when Belle plans to go out, one of the boys falls ill and she heavily hints that she doesn’t want to stay home with him, but Ethan doesn’t get it.

Netflix’s Pine Gap season 1, episode 1 recap. light. Related Story

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Kitto asks Jas to look further back through their communication records so that Pine Gap have a wider net to reel in possible evidence about Swadhinata’s involvement in the missile attack on the civilian airplane. While he’s downloading the files, Kitto complains about how slow the system is, prompting Moses to investigate it. As feared, the slower download rate is because of the malware; it was uploaded from the collection room computer terminal, meaning any file that is downloaded from the collection room (located on S-drive), will pick up the malware.

Moses has even figured out that the malware was downloaded onto the servers – using a modified graphics card, an external phone downloaded and a radio frequency. The only way for this complicated gimmick to work is an inside job. He and Ethan narrow down the window of activity to the previous Wednesday, but then Ethan dismisses Moses saying he will handle it from here.

Back at his station, Moses spots a Chinese missile headed for Malaysia. While the Pine Gap agents track it, they find that it isn’t a regular missile – this one has an EMP instead of a warhead, and when it detonates, it cuts all power. We don’t know as yet what impact this will have on the main storyline.

Jas surmises that the crew has been looking at the missile attack from the wrong angle. Perhaps the intended target weren’t the four Americans, but someone else. She is keen to look into the matter, but Kitto reminds her and the team to relax and get ready for a 4-day getaway.

Rudi Fox (Lewis Fitz-Gerald), who appears to be Ethan’s right-hand man, brings the list of people who used the collections room terminal the previous Wednesday. Ethan immediately sees that Moses is on that list, but decides to rule him out temporarily. Of the A-crew and D-crew members who entered the room, one person was in and out 5 times – Jasmina.

Ethan meets with one of his superiors who has bad news for him. Someone in China has infiltrated the Langley and Pentagon systems and now knows everything about their American agents at Harrogate and Pine Gap. It appears a similar virtual attack has taken place at Pine Gap, but the Americans are unable to use the sophisticated surveillance tech to investigate the possible suspects because following Australian policies means the suspects will likely be tipped off. Ethan has to act fast if he wants to keep his job. She has also learnt that Beijing has been talking to an influential Chinese businessman in foreign countries to ‘disturb and distract’, which certainly piques Ethan’s interest.

Despite chafing against each other all throughout the first episode of Pine Gap, Jas and Gus have steadily become closer thanks to their joint investigation. While holidaying in the gorgeous Australian outback, they briefly bond over mountain-climbing and the two of them go home together.

Ethan is increasingly suspicious of the Chinese businessman Zhou Lin (Jason Chong), especially after Lin refers to Belle James as Annabelle. Ethan believes the only way Lin could have known her proper first name would be if he was of China’s ‘friends of the party’ who had been given access to the hacked documents. He shows his Australian counterpart, Kath Sinclair (Jacqueline McKenzie), the list of his suspects so that she understands why he hasn’t gone to the central government yet.

Kitto and Kath call a briefing and inform the Pine Gap agents that the intended target of the missile attack was a man called Thiha Min accused of assaulting Rohingya women. He was aboard under a false name, so the Rohingya – a non-terrorist group according to American documents – got Taliban weapons and launched. When Jas informs them that she’d spotted a communique sent from a different passenger – a journalist – saying the woman had some ‘explosive news’, Kitto insists that the journalist had spotted the Thiha Min and was going to report it.

All this means that there was no failure by A-crew, so Gus immediately turns to Ethan to ask for his job back, but he is shut down.

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Kath and Kitto take Jas aside and tell her to forget about the text from the journalist. Meanwhile, Ethan and Rudi tell Gus that it is obvious a Rohingya member wouldn’t have gone through the trouble (or been able to afford a missile) to take down one person. It’s obvious that the Aussies are up to something. The two separate parties ask Jas and Gus respectively to stay friendly with each other to find out what the other country’s people know.

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