Thank God for Tim and Rumy here.

Rikk's reaction may seem disingenuous, but it's not. He really has no interest in the internal politics that obsess Katherine, so he sees Kath's position and the Club's reaction to the crisis as entirely separate issues. Kath's "I see" with the freakishly long balloon tail was a nice experiment with the subjective time taken by dialogue, but these days I'd probably just use an ellipsis.