about twenty seconds worth of civility left in me

French Twist opens with a young couple (Cindy and her boyfriend David, a skateboarder with a broken leg) witnessing a fake doctor stabbing someone, and Cindy realizing she took a photo of the crime

It's a really short cold opening, especially in comparison to the extra-long one in Florence Italy, the previous episode.

It then cuts to the Eiffel tower and a suspicious exchange of francs, and Leonard Cohen (yes, that Leonard Cohen) on the phone speaking strangely all-caps Vice-font subtitled French

My first reaction upon rewatching this episode was "...have I ever seen this episode before?" (Yes, but I only remembered like, a third of it)

We learn at the hospital David is recovering at that Cindy's picture is on the front page of all the Miami papers, which seems like a categorically insane choice even for the shadiest of newspapers. Teen girl takes photo of criminal! Here's her face, name, and address! Hope no one kills her! : )

The paper itself is more coherent than the usual made-for-tube-TV writing is, but it does repeat one paragraph thrice

The Canadian police wants Sirat Bandi (the murderer) alive, and as such they send INTERPOL to Miami. The actual crime parts of this episode are... loosely sketched, so how all of this really makes sense is glossed over somewhat.

Danielle (and not Daniel, as Castillo said-- which is bizarre, because Danielle and Daniel are spelled and pronounced differently in French, too), the INTERPOL agent, arrives and is very obnoxious to Sonny and tells him a bunch of things he already knows, such as "Bandi will try to kill Cindy" and "the picture in the newspaper was a bad idea"

Rico, meanwhile, has to babysit Cindy, which means that for the third episode in a row he is in the position of "witness, confessor, bodyguard, and/or playmate to teen girl destined for tragedy"

Why are we doing this to him

Cindy asks him if he has a girlfriend (because all teenage girls think Rico is going to be into them, apparently) and he asks, "Officially?" She said, "Well, unofficially I guess you got about 150." Rico snorts and says, "I wouldn't bet on it." Cindy then shifts her line of questioning slightly and asks, "What about your partner-- god, he is soooo good-looking." Rico smiles and answers, "I guess you'd have to ask my partner."

He's cagey and evasive in this conversation, and the questioning is structured in such a way that there's some really wonderful plausible deniability. Cindy is asking, theoretically, "What about your partner, (does he have a girlfriend)?" but she says it right after asking if Rico has a girlfriend and he won't give her an answer-- meaning it could also be interpreted as a subtle, "What about your partner, (are you involved with *him,* then)?"

Rico's answer to that question-- "I guess you'd have to ask my partner--" is spoken softly and warmly, and Rico is very smiley as he says it. The same plausible deniability follows here-- on a surface level, what he's saying is "I guess you'd have to ask my partner (if he has a girlfriend)," but it could be taken instead to mean "I guess you'd have to ask my partner (if he considers us to be involved)"

Cindy takes a photo of Sonny, who is irritated by that, and then she jokes about Danielle being his girlfriend, which seems to even further irritate him. Then, because again, teen girls are down bad for Rico, she like... breathes on Rico's neck??

Sonny, who seems very ready to be rid of Danielle, tells her she better check into her room before "they give it away," and then he circles behind Rico and, uh, also kind of breathes on his neck.

Then, on the way out the door, he smiles and says to Rico, acting like Cindy is their baby and he and Rico are parents, "there's cold cuts in the fridge, wake her up for her 3 o'clock feeding," and then touches his stomach.

It's such a sweetly specific little line-- it makes me wonder if maybe Caroline said exactly that to Sonny once when Billy was a baby and she had to leave him for the night for some reason.

While Cindy is on the phone complaining about being trapped, Rico winds and steals her film, and then goes to... sleep(?) on the couch in his suit.

Normal people sleep like this, right?

Cindy tells her friend on the phone she "doesn't see" Sonny or Rico taking her to the prom while what sounds like cheap sitcom music plays in the background.

The same music plays over Bandi tapping the hospital phone.

Cindy sneaks out. Rico, who may be a bit burnt out on Troubled Teens, does not notice. He wakes up just in time to hear the car pull away and calls Switek to meet him at the hospital, where Cindy is making out with her boyfriend. He grabs her and drags her out of David's room, but they end up getting shot at anyway because David, trying to be romantic, has gotten up on the hospital roof to wave goodbye, and Cindy and Rico get distracted. Cindy is seemingly shot in either the arm or the leg (although this is not at all addressed because at this point she basically evaporates from the narrative-- I suspect they probably were originally going to kill her off, and then someone remembered what the previous two episodes were about and was like "hmm, maybe we don't have three Dead Teen Girl episodes in a row?"), and Bandi rappels down the side of the hospital and escapes

The next day, Danielle throws Tubbs under the bus, and Sonny says "if you have something to say about my partner, don't." There's a particular "hunting prey" kind of wide-eyed, tight-pupiled, intense stare Sonny does sometimes when he is quietly angry, and he does it here.

Back at Daniell's hotel, which is really cool with some really nice tiles and pillars and OH HOLY FUCKING SHIT WHAT IS THAT

The everloving fuck is this mural of like, a Birch Homunculus fighting(? fucking???) a... white clay golem??? Bird??? Snowman??? And why does it make me think of Seasons Greasons??

Uh. Anyway. Danielle says it's getting late, and Sonny, still very irritated, as he has been for the vast majority of the episode, is like, YUP, and leaves, and then she enters her hotel room, and to absolutely no one's surprise, we learn she is an assassin.

Sonny sits on board the Vitus and slowly feeds Elvis, and Rico comes over to flirt.

He tells him he has an allergy to crocodiles, and Sonny grumpily corrects him-- "Alligator. All-i-gator." I know in my heart that this is Rico's version of Sonny being like "DID YOU KNOW YOU'RE A VEGETARIAN : )" to him.

They discuss how incredibly fucking suspicious Danielle is and Rico says "You know, I've been thinking about tapping her phone?" and Sonny points out that that means he already is tapping her phone. Rico laughs and says "You and I been working too long together, you know all my moves."

Sonny does not seem to react to this in the way Rico is hoping for; Rico laughs and is clearly trying to be cute about it, and Sonny gets weird and sighs and stares off into the middle distance. Is he thinking about the tendency for his partners to die? For his relationships to burn out? Is he taking the "too long" joke seriously, given the crack about Rico returning to New York in the previous episode?

Whatever it is, Rico is clearly intending for it to be a bonding moment, a little joke between them, and Sonny instead has a moment of very uncomfortable self-reflection.

So why is Danielle wearing a table runner

Castillo tells everyone they should check out a lead: Bandi has been seen at a local hotel. Danielle says, very mildly, that it could be a trap, and suggests they don't go through with the operation. Rico gives her a very dirty look.

It is in fact a trap; they trip a wire in the hotel room that causes an explosion.

Also, the cool ass hotel Danielle is staying in still exists and is still incredibly cool-- it has not been made sterile and white between the 80's and now, which is insanely awesome and very unexpected. However, it is also like $700 a night minimum, which is... less awesome.

Sonny lurks on a balcony in the hotel and sees Danielle talking to some men in tuxedos; he drags her away with a very I Am Disappointed In You expression. He posits that she knows more than she's letting on, and that she knew about the bomb at the hotel, and her response is basically, "well, you didn't listen to me, so, hey."

Rather than continuing this conversation, she comes onto him, and he sort of... silently lets her while making a : | face for a while before deciding to roll with it. Which is... dumb! But that's Sonny for you. The man loves having sex with an obvious double agent.

After they fuck he goes back to his questions, and prods, "You have told me everything?" to which she pointedly does not respond.

Rico calls and Sonny picks up; Rico is initially sort of cute and flirty on the phone-- let me point out how exactly his call-to-Sonny pose (left) mirrors his phone sex at work pose in Yankee Dollar (right):

He starts with a little smile, his hand up near his mouth, and then moves his hand to rest on the lower part of his stomach, his thumb brushing against his skin through the fabric of his shirt.

When he realizes that Sonny is blowing him off, his smile goes brittle and flat; he blinks, his eyebrows go up in surprise, he swallows, and then he tells Sonny to "enjoy" before blinking again and looking at the receiver like he's going to get any answers from it.

He is not happy about this turn of events.

The next time he sees Sonny, he immediately starts telling him about how Danielle has been talking to Francois Zolan (Cohen) on the phone, and how he's so squeaky clean that it's actually kind of suspicious. Sonny basically brushes him off.

Immediately after this, Rico returns to the office and flirts really poorly with Trudy (although it's so bad that it makes her smile, so it may be purposefully terrible) and asks her to run Danielle Hier's background as a criminal, specifically.

Which is to say: throughout the episode, Rico keeps trying and failing to to make Sonny laugh or get them on the same side together, realizes Sonny is having sex with someone else, tries to convince him to stop, and when that doesn't work, decides that this woman must be a criminal and that he's going to find the evidence that it's true. He is so fucking jealous.

Vice Squad convinces the two buyers from the hotel to pick up from the police station to make the deal; meanwhile, Rico investigates the hotel. Someone knocks on the door and he goes with his gun to answer it; Sonny overheads over the phone that a "black guy" is looking for Bandi and gets very nervous. However, when Rico enters the room, all he finds is a dead (and naked!) valet.

Back at the station, the boys meet in the bathroom, and Rico reveals that Danielle got the hotel and room number of Bandi's location from her boss and chose not to tell them. He also awkwardly fiddles with the sink and tells Sonny it's his call.

Sonny appears to have decided to tell Castillo, because we then see Castillo pissed at Rico with Sonny glowering in the background. Castillo tells his detectives that Danielle needs to have a chance to explain herself and Sonny leaves.

Danielle visits the Vitus and tries to flirt; Sonny reveals that he knows about Zolan's information and she once again deflects, saying the whole thing was his plan, anyway. She continues flirting and he brushes her off, saying they need to "take a rain check;" she tries to be cute saying, "it isn't raining" and Sonny just silently stares at her in response. He drinks some beer and waits until she leaves.

We cut to Danielle in a hot tub, and a shiny black shoe landing squarely on the side of the tub. Danielle says she was hoping for someone else, and it's revealed that the person who has broken into a hotel room to menace a nude woman is fucking Rico, and not, y'know, a French assassin.

He is incredibly fucking hot being evil. It's great.

He reveals that he knows what she is, is not okay with her "messing with his best friend," and then tells her he needs her to leave.

When she doesn't seem frightened or willing to acquiesce, he moves from veiled threats to more direct ones, telling her that if she doesn't leave, she's going to be "out in the cold, with no warm place in sight." He tells her to have a nice trip HOME, and then leans over her so his jacket whacks her in the eye and then hits the drain button on the bathtub. We hear it gurgle as he gets up to walk away.

And then it is revealed that ALL OF THIS IS HAPPENING UNDER A SCARY GIANT KABUKI MASK

IT'S SO LARGE. IF THAT FELL ON YOU IN THE TUB YOU WOULD DIE.

Anyway.

We truly do not give Rico enough credit for how insane breaking into a woman's hotel room, menacing her while she is nude in the bath (over a man, no less!), and then bitchily draining the bathtub is. Like. If Rico were a woman, this would've ended in a bubble bath cat fight.

This whole scene also gets to the heart of my feelings about Rico actually being kind of a bad person at his core-- one who has learned that it is better and that he prefers to be nice, and one who has learned to control the worst of these impulses most of the time-- but not when he's under a certain amount of strain/anger/jealousy, etc. It's a big part of what makes him an interesting character; he would love for people to believe he is merely a friendly, easy-going, supportive-best-bud type (and he is, in a lot of ways, most of the time), but there is a part of him that is suspicious, bitter, and mean. Like, Rico would seriously consider slashing someone's tires if they had wronged him (or more acutely, Sonny) in the right way.

The deal is on the cusp of going down, and Rico goes to the Vitus (why is Sonny like, not at work ever in this episode?) and reveals to Sonny that Danielle is not just wanted, but wanted for terrorism, because she BLEW UP A GREENPEACE BOAT. He tells Sonny he's sorry, and you get the sense that he does mean it, but wishes he just didn't have to be having this conversation.

When our intrepid crew goes to do the bust, they wear some truly incredible outfits-- Gina in particular is wearing an outfit that seems to have been cobbled together from six separate closets, a couple of trash cans, and the pound. (This is also basically the only time we see Gina this episode, so I guess at least she's making an impact?)

Bandi realizes the deal is a set up, and moves to shoot one of the buyers from the hotel; Sonny pushes him into the water and dives onto a boat. Bandi runs off with Tubbs running behind him. He goes up a drawbridge and jumps off; Danielle shoots him on the other side. Tubbs confronts her as Sonny climbs the drawbridge. She hands off her gun to Tubbs and says she doesn't need it (Rico wearily refers to her as "a nightmare" here, which is a hilarious understatement), but this is a lie to put him off guard-- she goes to shoot him and Sonny, trailing behind, sees and shoots her first.

I don't have the same level of irritation with French Twist as I do with, say, Definitely Miami, but I think this is another of the mid-S2 episode where the plot just doesn't hold up to much scrutiny. I like the set dressing, I think Cindy is super cute, and I love jealous Rico, but Danielle is almost comically suspicious, and Sonny's decision making in this episode is actually somehow worse than in Definitely Miami. At least in that one we can blame his Stupid Wiener on heatstroke; in this one he just keeps having a ten thousand yard stare as he does dumb shit, like he knows he's being stupid but can't help it. To top it off, he doesn't seem to like Danielle at all-- he just sleeps with her, almost like he thinks he has to for some reason. (This does very much become his modus operandi in Season 3, but that particular type of self-harm feels a little early, here.) The complete disappearance of Cindy mid-episode is also very odd, and all of the INTERPOL/assassins/"French CIA"/"Deuxième Bureau" business isn't actually resolved at all. It's not a glaringly bad episode, but there's a reason I couldn't place it within my memories from its opening moments-- it's a little all over the place, and its pieces don't really gel into one coherent whole.

But then again, we also get Rico telling Sonny's most recent paramour to Get The Hell Out Of His Town And Away From His Man on the heels of an Aretha Franklin song with these fucking lyrics:

You thought I'd be naive and tame (You met your match) But I beat you at your own game, oh