Anakin Skywalker returns to Coruscant and heads straight for the home of his wife, Senator Padmé Amidala. The two of them are happy to finally spend an evening alone with each other.
Meanwhile at the Jedi Temple, the Council is suspicious of Senator Rush Clovis of Scipio, who has strong ties with the Intergalactic Banking Clan. They have asked Senator Amidala, who once had a close relationship with Rush when they entered the Senate together, to spy on Clovis but she has refused. They are trying to ask Anakin to speak to her, but he ironically has been ignoring their calls to spend time with Amidala.
Anakin finally heeds their summons and agrees to help with more than a little jealousy after finding out about the relationship between the two. He re-approaches Padmé, but is unwilling to allow her to approach Clovis again. They get into an argument and Padmé chooses to take the mission after all, partially out of anger at Anakin.
Padmé meets with Clovis in a senatorial café and learns that he is heading to Cato Nemoidia to deal with members of the Trade Federation. He invites her to come with him, hoping to rekindle their relationship.
As they board the transport to Cato Nemoidia, one of the pilots turns out to be a disguised Anakin along with R2-D2.
On Cato Nemoidia, Clovis and Padmé meet with the Trade Federation senator Lott Dod. The Banking Clan is indeed investing in a massive droid factory on Geonosis, the planet where the Clone Wars first began. After being shown to her room, Padmé walks around the estate, where she nearly walks in on their meeting with Poggle the Lesser. She just misses getting a good look at the hologram of the factory and is escorted back to her room after by Clovis. Dod and Poggle plot to poison Padmé in order to use an antidote as leverage against Clovis for a greater share of the profits from the factory's operation.
At dinner, Dod spreads poison on the lip of a goblet before offering it to Padmé. After the meal, it starts to take effect. She shakes it off as Clovis sends C-3PO away to escort her around the grounds. As Threepio returns to their quarters, he runs into Anakin. During the tour, Padmé gets Clovis to bring her a drink as the poison continues to slowly affect her. She goes to the alcove where she saw Dod and Poggle speaking with Clovis and manages to reactivate the hologram, containing the coordinates of the factory, and take the hologram disc. Just as Clovis returns, followed shortly by an angry Anakin, Padmé collapses from the poison into Clovis' arms and is just barely able to get the holodisc to Anakin. Anakin gives the disc to Artoo and rushes back.
Meanwhile, Clovis confronts Lott Dod, who accuses Padmé of being a spy. Clovis finds the disc missing and confronts Padmé about it, who readily admits to it. He tries to convince a newly-arrived Anakin to exchange the disc for Dod's antidote. Anakin forces him to help carry Padmé back to her ship. Confronted by Dod and his aides, Clovis pulls a blaster on the senator and forces him to give him the antidote. Anakin takes Padmé and the antidote onto her ship and takes off with the plans, leaving Clovis to face an angry Lott Dod.
Tropes:
- Alliterative Title: "Senate Spy".
- Blatant Lies: Padmé insisting she's not mad the next morning after Anakin left their date night to report to the Jedi Council.Padmé: General Skywalker (in an icy tone) You finally found some time for me.Anakin: Are you still mad about last night?Padmé: Why would I be mad? I'm not mad.
- Call-Forward: At one point, Anakin uses "klick" (slang for kilometer) in the context of a unit of time ("[I had to report to the Council] seven klicks ago"). Famously, in A New Hope, a similar goof was made by Han Solo (boasting of making the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs, which is also a unit of distance).
- Crazy Jealous Guy: Anakin, although he mostly manages to keep his temper in check.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Clovis' feelings for Padmé are entirely genuine, and he unhesitatingly sacrifices himself to save her.
- Impractically Fancy Outfit: The dress Padmé wears to dinner, with its ridiculous tiny front-only bodice and detached sleeves with large skin-revealing holes in them, would require copious glue or tape to stay on and be incredibly uncomfortable and difficult to move in without having a wardrobe malfunction.
- Ironic Echo: "Duty comes first, especially in wartime."
- Murder the Hypotenuse: At the end, Anakin leaves Clovis to Lott Dod and his Separatist droids. Anakin has displayed jealousy and barely-concealed rage towards Clovis throughout the entire charade.
- Multitasked Conversation: After Padmé steals a data disk containing plans for the Separatists' new droid foundry, Clovis abruptly returns to the library with the drink she sent him for. After drinking, she gives Clovis a hug when he asks for her hand, just as Anakin arrives in response to her signal. Padmé signals him to retrieve the disk by waving it in her hand while saying "I've been waiting for this moment all night", which Clovis, unaware of the Jedi behind him, takes as a romantic overture.
- Noodle Incident:Anakin: I had to hitch a ride on a cargo freighter.
Padmé: What happened to your military transport?
Anakin: Ahhh… it blew up. - Old Flame: Rush and Padmé were very... close once.
- The Password Is Always "Swordfish": The passcode for the holotable containing the droid factory plans is "Padmé". It seems that Clovis has had feelings for her for a long time.
- Poison and Cure Gambit: Lott Dod attempts this by poisoning Padmé so he can use her as leverage against Clovis.
- Poor Communication Kills: Padmé at first refuses to spy on Clovis only because the Council didn’t mention he was potentially The Mole. When Anakin accidentally mentions this casually, she immediately changes her mind.
- Sexy Backless Outfit: The dress Padmé wears to dinner to try and take advantage of Clovis' feelings for her has no back, detached sleeves, and the bit of bodice it has seems to be held on with tape and the Force.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: Dod poisons Padmé by poisoning a goblet before she drinks from it.
- Throw 'Em to the Wolves: Motivated mostly by jealousy, Anakin leaves Clovis to face Lott Dod, Poggle, and a squad of battle droids alone, even after Clovis had helped him and kept up his end of the bargain. Certainly an action worthy of the future Darth Vader, but Anakin never actually said he'd give Clovis the disk, only threatened to tell Lott Dod that Clovis had lost it.
- Ungrateful Bastard: After Clovis risks his life to get the antidote for Padmé, Anakin ditches him, leaving him to the mercy of the Nemoidians. In a later episode, Padmé scolds Clovis that he “did nothing” when she was poisoned, so Anakin obviously lied to her about how he got the antidote. Still, you get the impression that Clovis would do it all again, because he cares about Padmé that much. Maybe she’s with the wrong guy.
- Unlimited Wardrobe: Padmé changes her outfit four times over the course of the episode.
- Whole-Plot Reference: Pretty much the entire plot of the episode is a reference to Alfred Hitchcock's 1946 film Notorious, with Padmé taking the role of Alica (a woman sent to spy on an enemy of her government, where she encounters an Old Flame, gets poisoned, and needs to be rescued), Anakin taking the role of Devlin (a man who recruits a woman to work as a spy, has a romantic relationship with the woman, and ends up rescuing them in the end) and Clovis taking the role of Sebastian (a member of an enemy group of the heroes' government, who was once in a romantic relationship with a woman who's now been sent to spy on them, chooses to help save her after she's been poisoned, and ends the story walking back to his allies knowing they plan to kill him for his failure, though in Clovis' case, later episodes would establish he wasn't killed).
