David Bianculli

Blue Moon is about lyricist Lorenz Hart, Nouvelle Vogue is an homage to director Jean-Luc Godard, and the making of his 1960 revolutionary French new wave film, Breathless.

Join us.

Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller.

Sam Brigger is our managing producer.

Our senior producer today is Roberta Schorach.

Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Hertzfeld, and Deanna Martinez.

For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm David Bianculli.

Wow.

The Diplomat is one of those rare TV series that manages to get even better every season.

Season one, introducing and establishing Kerry Russell as diplomat Kate Wyler, was really strong and impressively intelligent.

It had to be, if it was to work.

Any one of the characters who populate the diplomat, the politicians, the support staff and advisors, even the spouses and significant others, would, in most environments, be the smartest person in the room.

Except, as with the classic NBC series The West Wing, they're all in the same room.

This means the arguments had to be equally strong on both sides, and the jokes and snide comments had to crackle and pop.

Check and double-check.

Kate's push-and-pull relationship with her husband Hal, played by Rufus Sewell, was the highlight of season one.

Season two upped the ante by reaching deeper into the West Wing bag of tricks and hiring Allison Janney, who played C.J.

Craig on that show, to play Vice President Grace Penn on The Diplomat.

And the season two cliffhanger, a brilliant one, had Hal telling Kate that he had just been on the phone with the president, informing him that his own vice president had been involved with planning a covert attack on a British military vessel.

And when the president heard that news, he dropped dead of a heart attack.