'COBRA' Recap: Season 3 Episode 4

COBRA airs Thursdays at 9:00 pm and is available to stream. Recap the previous and following episodes.
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While Victoria and Robert are happy to be in a romantic relationship with each other after so many decades of being close, Victoria knows that they must be exceptionally careful to prevent people from finding out and causing a political maelstrom. She tries to slip out in the middle of the night after they first sleep together in order to go home for a change of clothes, but Robert convinces her to stay until morning. While out and about in the professional world, they sneak a kiss behind a closed door.

Robert needs the distraction. His daughter Ellie won’t answer his phone calls in the wake of the death of her friend, Polly, after being struck by a policeman at a protest. When Ellie finally does pick up, she tells Robert that she’s ashamed of him. Anna’s friend, the opposition politician Francine Bridge, is publicly blaming Robert’s government’s controversial civil disturbance bill for Polly’s death, and Robert fears that he has blood on his hands.

The identity of the policeman has been leaked, but he is still on the police force. Anna argues that he should be suspended and criminally investigated, but Joseph pushes back: PC Gilbert has an honorable record of service. Robert insists on the suspension and criminal investigation, and sends Joseph out to announce them.

The decision seems wise when Eleanor surfaces an old assault charge against Gilbert involving the exact same injury as that inflicted on Polly. The case went to court, but then the charges were suddenly dropped, giving the sense of a cover-up.

Other things demand Robert’s attention. Princess Yadira has sent a video message appealing directly to Robert for his help, saying that her brother and father have kidnapped and imprisoned her, and that she fears for her life. Archie and Victoria say that nothing can be done, especially because Robert is about to announce the launch of a massive carbon capture project financed by Yadira’s brother Samir.

Robert wants to try to clandestinely save Yadira without Samir’s country knowing the U.K. was involved. He commissions Eleanor and Victoria to prepare a report on such a plan’s viability, and tells Archie he can have plausible deniability if he thinks it’s such a bad idea.

As Robert speaks at the groundbreaking of the carbon capture project, news comes in that police at PC Gilbert’s station are undertaking an unofficial strike by calling in sick, in protest of the suspension and criminal investigation. A reporter asks Robert about it, and Robert call Gilbert a violent thug.

But new information about the policeman has surfaced: the other attack for which he faced charges was actually against his sister’s abusive boyfriend – and his sister was responsible. She hit her boyfriend with her brother’s weapon, and he took responsibility to protect her.

The unofficial strike begins spreading to other police stations, leaving places understaffed. Vigilante groups begin forming to protect businesses as news of the strike spreads. The government discusses canceling major public events, in case they don’t have enough officers to man them. But they can’t cancel a vigil being held that night for Polly, since they didn’t plan it. Audrey offers to attend to keep an eye on things.

Victoria wants to supplement the police with the army, but Robert is strongly opposed to that idea. To head off the strike, Robert again sends Joseph out to announce that it is illegal and the strikers will be punished. But Joseph is tired of being Robert’s scapegoat and resigns before making the announcement.

At the vigil, an attendant begins taunting a young police officer, who eventually brandishes his bully stick. Audrey quickly intervenes, calling for back-up and chastising both the officer and his opponent while attempting to de-escalate things and prevent chaos.

Francine and Ellie are also both at the vigil. As things get heated, Francine pulls Ellie away from the crowd and introduces herself. She asks about Nate, the activist with whom Ellie had been trapped in a tunnel. Francine explains that she thinks Nate is a spy who infiltrates protest movements by endearing himself to women in them – she has even found news photographs of him at protests for different causes, with different women close by his side.

Eleanor shares Francine’s belief. She has found that one activist with whom Nate was involved received what looks like a hush money payment through several shell companies that trace back to her old friend Zelda’s security company. Zelda tells her over a drink that her company has nothing to do with Nate, and Eleanor warns her to be careful.

Zelda later calls an employee named Ray and tells him there has been a change of plans for Nate. Ray had promised an increasingly desperate Nate, who’s hiding in a remote cabin, that he would take him to an airport to fly him to safety in Switzerland the next day. Now, Ray and some other men enter the cabin with guns drawn – but Nate is gone. No longer trusting his handler, he has fled on his own. 

Eleanor presents a plan to help Yadira escape, but the odds that it will succeed are low, and the chances that the U.K.’s involvement could stay secret even lower. Anna reluctantly agrees with Victoria and Archie that it’s too risky, so Robert doesn’t try to carry it out. Victoria later approaches Archie to discuss Robert’s recent decision-making – and his seeming weakness.

Intelligence later suggests that Yadira tried to escape on her own and was captured. She may have been killed in the process. Robert is distraught, and disappointed that he wasn’t courageous enough to try to save her. He looks for comfort in Anna’s arms in a secluded passageway, and a security officer peeks around the corner and snaps a photo of them holding each other.

The police commissioner tells Robert that he is responsible for the regrettable situation with the police. Not only did he order the suspension and criminal investigation of a respected officer; he also made the police’s job harder by passing the civil disturbance bill. Tensions are high; many officers who are still working have been assaulted in the past 24 hours.

Robert offers a restricted reinstatement of PC Gilbert to his duties and no punishment for the strikers if they return to work. He can blame Joseph for all the missteps. It works.

But there’s another growing crisis. (There always is.) Polly’s father, Dan, has called in a favor. Now he and two other men steal a ballistic weapon from the weapons expo Polly was protesting. They demand a ransom from the government, or else they’ll start firing the weapon.