Counterpart – The Sincerest Form of Flattery

By: Arlene Allen

This episode was a departure from previous episodes as Howard Silk/Howard Prime (J. K. Simmons) is hardly featured in this story that focuses on Quayle (Harry Lloyd) and Clare (Nazanin Boniadi). After episode six’s explosive reveal, we learn all about Clare’s past and how she came to be the mole in Quayle’s office…and in his life.

The episode opens on the house that burned toward the end of last week’s story just as Howard Silk, Emily Prime (Olivia Williams) and Ian Shaw (Nicholas Pinnock) arrive at the scene. It turns out that this is the house was once the school that trained students to become their “shadows” – their counterparts on the other side. Earth 1 despises the other Earth because they hold them totally responsible for killing millions of people with a virus that was somehow brought over. The virus killed Clare’s parents and she was sent to the school as a child.

Clare makes one friend – Spencer (Leo Heim), a young boy with braces (because his counterpart wears braces). He disappears early on and Clare was informed he was “activated.”  When she tears up she is slapped. Clare is urged to never make friends and always be angry.  Clare is then submitted to a procedure that breaks both her legs while awake because her Counterpart had just broken her legs. It’s a difficult scene to watch because Clare is barely old enough to understand what’s happening to her and it seems a cruel procedure. Clare is then given pictures of her Counterpart and her family. This family has been chosen because the father (as we know) is a well connected diplomat in the UN.

Back on Earth Alpha, Quayle is supposed to be getting ready for his birthday and the celebration Clare has planned for him. He’s devastated by the betrayal, to learn Clare has copied and funneled to the other side. He looks for an excuse to send Clare out. He empties his humidor and then tells Clare he’s out and can she please get more. As soon as she’s gone, he calls Howard Prime and they both start going through his office and Clare’s bedroom and her things. The find a cyanide pill mixed in with some other medication. Howard wants to know how she got into the safe and Quayle admits the safe combination is the same as his cell phone password (oops). Quayle is now afraid for his job, but Howard Prime tells him that Clare has been burned and for now he should just play along. But Quayle is too deeply wounded to just slap a smile on his face and act like he’s thrilled for this party.

Flashback to an older Clare, who is now a teacher at the school. She is telling her kids how evil Earth Alpha is, with its smoking, pork eating and heavy reliance on technology. She is mentoring an angry young girl named Ethel. Alexander Pope (Stephen Rea) walks into the classroom and tells her it’s time for her to replace her counterpart. Quayle is about to marry Clare Alpha and it’s the perfect time to place a soldier of the cause close to someone in strategy.

Clare is sent and when Clare Alpha is out she breaks into her apartment and places cameras and bugs everywhere. She meets with her contact, Lambert (Guy Burnet) the ambassador, who gives her a cyanide pill in case she ever gets compromised. He tells her that the pill has to be replaced every year or it will expire and be of no use. Clare then spies on her counterpart day and night, learning Clare Alpha’s moves, voice patterns, habits, likes and dislikes. It turns out Clare Alpha was a virgin until Quayle makes love to her. Lambert offers to help Clare Prime with this “problem,” but she goes instead to a bar and picks up a random stranger.

Unfortunately, Clare Alpha catches Quayle cheating and breaks up with him. Lambert tells Clare Prime now is the time to step in because they can’t lose the connection with Quayle. Clare Prime kills her Counterpart in cold blood, after having two goons wreck her apartment, and then beat Clare Prime up. She then calls Quayle in “distress” and tells him he’s the only one she can turn to and they make up.

Back to the present at his birthday party, Quayle is giving Clare Prime so many dirty looks and making snarky comments to her. You know he’s tipping her off, but he is incapable of playing along. When Quayle makes his toast to Clare for throwing his party, he tries to trap her by bringing up memories he doesn’t think she’ll remember. But Clare Prime is good, very good. However, now everyone knows something is wrong between the couple. Quayle just looks murderous.

When her dad decides he’s not going to smoke the cigar Quayle has given him, he hands it back to Clare Prime. She goes to put the cigar back in the humidor when she notices that a desk drawer is slightly open. She looks in and finds the cigars Quayle hid and she knows he knows. But if she had any doubts, she knows when Quayle confronts her and demands to know when it was she replaced the real Clare, how long she had been duping him. He tells her one of them is going to die before this is over. He tries to get her to take the cyanide pill, but she tells him it expired and that she never got a replacement.

In the final flashback, we see Clare Prime giving birth to their daughter…and she names her Spencer.