Nicolas Bro as Folke in The Asset. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2024
Summary
The Asset gets a little morally murky in Episode 2, pushing Tea to risky limits and reframing her relationship with Ashley.
There’s a longstanding joke about how easily men make friends, but The Asset holds that the same is true for women. As it turns out, if your taste is expensive enough, and you’re both into extremely high-priced jewelry that you have to drink champagne to justify purchasing, you can become besties in a heartbeat. This constitutes the cold open of Episode 2, “Back from Dubai”, but it also underpins the entire premise. It’s why Tea Lind was chosen to go undercover in the first place.
Ashley visits Tea’s fake jewelry store for a couple of minutes one time, and she ends up dropping a hefty amount of Miran’s money on a new piece, and being invited to a swanky, invite-only members’ shindig. What was in that champers? Either way, it’s an early win, and Folke tries to fold it into another by pushing for a wiretap on Ashley’s phone. With an agent in place, it’s easier to justify, especially after the last one ended up dead.
Ashley and her friends love the idea of her being an influencer and collaborating with exclusive jewelers on Instagram, but Miran is less sold on it. It’s hard enough keeping Bambi in check — peep the slightly understated scene in which he cleans up his apartment — so the last thing he needs is his girlfriend drawing unnecessary attention. But Ashley’s counterpoint seems fair to me. They already live a high-profile luxury lifestyle. What difference would it make? Mind you, neither of them knows that Tea is planning to swipe Ashley’s phone so she can sneakily install some monitoring software on the original.
The phone sequence shows how well The Asset can build and sustain tension. A call from Miran interrupts the installation of the software, so Tea is forced to think on her feet to delete the message that contained it. She manages that, just, but the software isn’t installed. The crosscutting between Tea and Ashley in the store and Folke and Yasin watching through the CCTV is classic stuff, but well executed and properly nail-biting. As a taster of the weapons-grade stress inherent in undercover work, it certainly does the job.
Then again, being a drug dealer isn’t exactly stress-free either. Like the premiere, Episode 2 of The Asset makes a point of reiterating this by lending almost equal focus to Miran’s operation and home life. He’s being leaned on heavily, and it’s clear that Bambi is being threatened to incentivise him. Ashley continuously going rogue and cavorting with a new friend drives him to distraction. There’s a whiff of the abuser about Miran, but he doesn’t quite fit that mould (yet). He’s suspicious and controlling, sure, but he also seems to genuinely love Ashley and Bambi, and one gets the sense his overstepping is rooted in fear for their safety. Fear of his own making, of course, but you know what I mean.
Despite the so-called failure with the phone software, Tea nonetheless gets invited out with Ashley and her friends, and the whole thing feels slightly reminiscent of The Hunting Wives to me. Catty best friends? Check. Trying to fit in while keeping some — very big — secrets? Yep. There’s even a latent undercurrent of sexual tension, and, of course, some literal tension in Tea trying to avoid drinking and taking drugs, getting a hold of Ashley’s phone again, and not arousing suspicions in front of Miran, who turns up with his friends unexpectedly and tells Tea in no uncertain terms to take a walk.
Here in “Back from Dubai”, you can see the flaws in Folke’s recruitment logic. Tea has a sniff of Class As and almost falls apart, understandably. Jensen is concerned she’s in over her head, but Folke’s insistence on Tea being perfectly suited for the mission rings false. He’s clearly happy to use Tea until the wheels fall off, and isn’t especially concerned about what might happen to her, the same way he didn’t seem all that bothered when the previous agent died horrifically in the premiere.
You can see the deliberate ambiguity. Is Folke a good guy by definition, because he’s trying to take down a bad guy at all costs? Is someone like Bambi, who seems to be in a prison he can’t escape from and didn’t volunteer for, technically a villain just by association? Is Tea’s utility as an undercover agent worth her potentially losing everything she has dedicated the last six years of her life to building? All big questions with no easy answers that’ll presumably be explored as we go. But if nothing else, Episode 2 of The Asset puts paid to the idea that Miran is basically a nice guy under a lot of pressure. With the surveillance software now installed on Ashley’s phone, the crew can all hear him abusing her when he gets home. She isn’t just a mark anymore — she’s a victim. And it’s unlikely Tea will be able to see her as anything else from this point on.
