‘The Ipcress File’ Recap: ‘Episode 5’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

Caution: This article contains spoilers for Episode Five of ‘The Ipcress File’. To revisit the previous episode, click here.
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When we last settled in to discuss the fascinating and wondrous AMC+ series, The Ipcress File, we talked at length about how… the show outright surprised us. For this grand homage to the spy drama of yore, completely and utterly changed gears. In part by taking our heroes down quite the dark path, one that put them in the midst of a genuinely dangerous situation. One set up by the Americans no less, making them appear to be the villain of this story after all, and to top it all off… Harry Palmer was taking the fall for everything and it really appeared as though he was going to endure genuine harm, thanks to the revenge that others wanted to impart upon him.

If anything, that particular tale… more or less left the audience unsure of where this story was going to go and well, it just so happens, that the next episode in this phenomenal series, continued to push us into unfamiliar and uncomfortable territory. A feat it accomplished in part, by putting Major Dalby in quite the dark place. Because the fallout of the failure of his mission, combined with the fact that the woman he saved was ready to go back to Russia to save her brother from being persecuted by the government… pushed him to do bad things. Such as make a deal with his Russian counterpart to offer up British Intelligence in exchange for keeping that dear brother safe and well… that wasn’t the only shocking and ugly storyline present here.

For Harry as it turned out, was deemed to be… an asset of sorts. For President John F. Kennedy’s order to end the nuclear testing program in the United States of America… motivated the shame shady men that kidnapped Harry to begin with, to make him a clone of Professor Dawson mentally, so he could do their bidding. Which brought him to an undisclosed location where he was brutally subjected to the same torture and mind control methods that corrupted the good professor, at the hands of Chinese operatives no less, and well… it doesn’t get much more hopeless than that. Since good was corrupted and a hero was in an enemy’s hands, leaving all of us to wonder just how dark this story was going to get.

But thankfully… there were bright spots to be found in this tale, courtesy of Jean and Harry, ironically. Because the return of a rattled Professor Dawson, pushed Jean to learn everything she could about IPCRESS and in doing so, she was able to break Dawson out of his funk and begin to get answers about what the hell is going on with this program. As for Harry, well… he simply refused to let this mind control process turn him into a mindless thug, and he went the extra mile to harm himself to keep the hypnosis from taking hold and for his efforts, he was able to maintain his own mind and escape at just the right moment. A move that outright shocked him… since he came to learn he was in England all along. 

Which of course, raises more questions than answers about the program and its reach, but what matters more… is that this episode took us on a stunning ride. One that both defied classic and modern tropes when it comes to the spy drama. Because you rarely see heroes fall in this manner and go to such lengths to keep another person safe. Not to mention, we simply haven’t a clue who can be trusted at this point, outside of Jean and Harry, since everyone else has some kind of agenda, and that’s bold. As is the revelation that bad forces are operating in England under the nose of Dalby’s unit and MI6 for that matter as well and really, in the end, all this incredibly bold episode does, is leave us counting down the minutes to what should be an unconventional and amazing season finale. Until next time.  

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