Emotional Triumphs and Twists in ‘The Old Man’ Season 2 Episode 4 Recap

Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for The Old Man Season 2 Episode 4.

To say Dan Chase (Jeff Bridges), Harold Harper (John Lithgow), and Emily Chase (Alia Shawkat) are really in it now would be a massive understatement. Yes, The Old Man Season 2 Episode 3 ended with the Taliban threat to Faraz Hamzad’s (Navid Negahban) village dispersed, at least for now, but this is officially far from the simple extraction the old men were envisioning. Where does this leave them now? Let’s dive in.

The episode doesn’t actually open with Chase, Harper, or Emily, but rather with Khadija (Jacqueline Antarmian) watching Hamzad undergo surgery to remove the bullet from his gut, while her son Tarik (Amir Malaklou) tries to smooth things over with the Ministry, saying he doesn’t believe Omar (Artur Zai Barrera) was genuinely acting on their behalf. While it’s likely Omar was acting on the Taliban’s behalf, at least to some extent, Tarik hands the ministers underlings the ready-made excuse to save face, but it’s an excuse they aren’t willing to take, and they hang up on him.

To make matters worse, Khadija learns that her brother’s injuries are too severe to be overcome, a fact he seems to sense as well, as he asks his sister and nephew to have Parwana — aka Emily — brought to him, saying he wouldn’t be here if not for her. Tarik finds her in the room where they’re keeping Faruza’s (Sara Seyed) body for burial, comforting Farouk (Michael Sifain), who didn’t want to leave his mother’s side. With the family now assembled, Tarik tells them they have approximately 72 hours to evacuate the village before the Taliban arrive to kill anyone who remains.

Outside the village, Chase and Harper wait by the chopper that is set to evacuate them, where Harper barters with an increasingly antsy pilot to wait just a little longer for Emily to join them. He’s worried the soldiers will just leave them behind anyway, but Chase reminds him that Emily knows how time-sensitive their extraction is, and is confident she’ll make it in time. Whatever worries Chase might have had for his daughter in the aftermath of her taking Omar’s life soon turn into worries of a different sort, when she arrives at last to tell them she’s staying behind. She explains that the government is breathing down their necks now that all the assets have dried up thanks to Morgan Bote (Joel Grey), who is furious his plan to get Chase to turn himself in didn’t pan out. She begs them both to go speak to Bote and get him to get the village off the sanctions list, something both men insist is impossible. She does eventually win them over, reminding them of the men they really are, and they wordlessly agree to give it a try.

With all the chaos that’s been happening over the past three episodes, we haven’t really had a chance to see the three of them in conversation just with each other, and this scene is a nice reminder of the dynamics that really form the emotional backbone of the series. While Shawkat delivers her plea, Bridges and Lithgow do so much emotional heavy lifting of their own without saying a single word. Each character has a complicated, emotionally-charged past with the others, and this scene is a great reminder of that.

Chase tells Bote that he did tell him Emily wasn’t his daughter — kind of. From a certain point of view, if you will — and acknowledges that while his former associate can’t walk back his decision completely now, there has to be something else he can do to help the people in the village, even temporarily. His passionate plea seems to get through to Bote at last, and he tells him to come back the next day to see if he’s come up with something else. Chase takes this poorly and looks ready to deliver that beatdown Harper was so afraid of, but Zoe intervenes and pulls him outside. Harper manages to get one last jab at Bote before he leaves, and the oldest old man of them all finally admits that, at least in part, this is driven by his anger at Chase.

Once Chase and Harper leave, Zoe heads back inside the house and goes looking for Bote. He correctly predicts that she’s come to ask him to help them, and it sounds like he’s on the verge of caving when Chase’s dogs begin barking, and an intruder appears in the hallway. Bote manages to shoot him, but in trying to call out — either to Chase or the police, or a secret third option, it’s unclear — he is shot and killed in turn. The gumnan is about to find Zoe when Chase arrives and orders the dogs to attack the gunman. He suspects Zoe and Bote got a little too close to Pavlovich’s plans, a suspicion that proves correct when we see someone has sent the man in question a picture of Bote’s dead body. But Pavlovich’s interest doesn’t stop there, as he asks his associate about the other two, the “real” targets, whose deaths will tie up loose ends.

The first four episodes of The Old Man Season 2 are out now. New episodes air on FX every Thursday and are available to stream next day on Hulu.