The Old Man is an espionage thriller starring Jeff Bridges, John Lithgow, Amy Brenneman, and Alia Shawkat that premiered on FX in 2022. It is available on Disney+'s Star hub for international audiences.
Dan Chase is a retired widower living quietly in rural New York with his two dogs. Worried about the onset of dementia — and already having lost his wife to Huntington's Disease — Dan starts seeing mysterious men seeming to track his movements. However, the threat turns out to be real and the old man turns out to be a deadly fighter because Dan Chase is actually Johnny Kohler, a former CIA operative who disappeared while conducting guerilla operations during the Soviet-Afghan War.
Now on the run, Dan finds himself pursued by Harold Harper — his old CIA handler, now the FBI Assistant Director for Counterintelligence — while trying to figure out who exactly wants him found after all these years. Along the way, he crosses paths with Zoe McDonald, a civilian who accidentally gets caught up in the deadly game of cat-and-mouse.
This series provides examples of:
- Bookends: The first season begins with Dan struggling to get ready in the morning and ends with Faraz Hamzad doing the same in Afghanistan.
- Canine Companion: Dan has two Rottweilers that follow him everywhere and guard him viciously.
- The Chessmaster: Morgan Bote is long-retired, but he still has influence and plays various parties off of one another so well that no one knows what he's up to until it's too late.
- Covert Group with Mundane Front: Julian Carson is a deadly hitman who is called only for special targets. He and Mike, his partner, work as orderlies at a care home in between jobs.
- Family Man: While he jokes about having gone through multiple marriages, Harold has a settled family life that was recently rocked by tragedy.
- Feeling Their Age:
- Dan's introduced having to get up multiple times during the night and struggling to bend down to put on his socks. The older Faraz Hamzad is introduced having the same issues himself.
- Dan and Zoe bond by swapping notes on their various medications.
- Old Soldier: Dan is well into his later years but still a very skilled agent and combatant, killing a much younger man with just his bare hands.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Just prior to the series, Harold lost his son and daughter-in-law in a car accident. He struggles to hold it together for the sake of his orphaned grandson.
- Papa Wolf: Dan will scorch the Earth at the slightest hint that his daughter is in danger. Harold feels the exact same way, having come to consider her as a surrogate child.
- Parental Substitute: Emily states outright that she considers Harold to be a surrogate father. He and his family, meanwhile, brought her into the fold and she's seen as a surrogate daughter, sister, and aunt. This eventually causes Dan to bristle as he feels Harold overstepped his boundaries with Emily.
- The Reveal: Abigail Adams is actually Emily Chase. And later, it's revealed that Emily is actually Faraz Hamzad's biological daughter. Johnny and Belour buried her public existence as deeply as they could.
- Scatterbrained Senior: Dan's wife slowly lost her faculties due to Huntington's Disease. Dan wonders if he's also experiencing the onset of dementia.
- Secret-Keeper: Harold is the only one who knew the details about Johnny and Belour's flight from Afghanistan and kept them to himself for decades. He also knew Abigail Adams' true identity. He only starts admitting bits and pieces under extreme duress.
- Secretly Wealthy: Dan turns out to be a multi-millionaire, thanks to savvy investing, who runs a major company through one of his cover identities.
- Silver Fox: Dan is in his seventies but is still played by the handsome and very charismatic Jeff Bridges and has no issue charming women. A brief scene of him shirtless even reveals he's still in very good shape.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Dan and Harold never really liked each other but they've always worked well together as operative and handler.
- Undying Loyalty: Harold earned Emily's devotion after he put his career on the line to save hers. This causes much anguish within her as she also loves Dan, her father, and doesn't want to have to choose between the two.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Harold delivers one to Dan decades in the making, pointing out that they wouldn't be on the run desperately trying to save Emily if Dan had killed Faraz Hamzad as Harold told him to.
