#alonereed

Scorpio Races fluff below the cut, please beware

It’s from Tim Bradford’s POV. 

We all know the pilot of Whiskey Cavalier is the pilot. It's a straight set up, building the charactes and at the very end building the team. But that's where this wild ride begins. At the very end of the episode, they say that they're going to London to uncover a sleeper cell.

That's a bit weird, given that in "When in Rome" while they're discussing exactly why it is that their team is in danger of being disbanded, Susan says that their first mission was a disaster, a comment upon which Frankie elaborates with details about the mission from "The Czech List." (Notice how I'm using episode titles here instead of short handing with the numbers? Good. Hold that thought.) This can pretty easily be explained away by the beginning of "When in Rome" itself; their training excercises are in London, facing off against a faux terrorist cell. We can use this to understand that the "mission" they're headed on at the end of the pilot is actually a training mission, only this first time they don't know it's a training. We know from "When in Rome" that they've run it at the very least more than once, but it seems by the faux-prime minister's phrasing that they've done it a few times now, so this pretty neatly explains away that discrepancy.

However.

There are some major red flags in "The Czech List" the become glaringly obvious when you stare right at them. First is the fact that in the scene where Hannah and Karen run from the van, Standish can be seen next to Susan in the background as Will and Frankie give chase, and Standish very clearly has a gun. That might not raise any concerns until "When in Rome," when we find out that Standish has not until this point been allowed a weapon. That seems to be just a discrepancy in continuity, but things get weirder.

As @auraispurple pointed out to @alonereed, Will says he stole the lemon verbena soap from the hotel in Rome, which they don't stay in until "When in Rome." This could potentially be explained by saying that they had a long layover or something, but it definitely points at a weird directionality here. @alonereed is right to point out that there's a strange shift between "The Czech List" to "When in Rome"... this shift creates a slight hitch in the character dynamic between the episodes that seems almost just like a show finding its feet at first glance, except...

Something that always sat oddly with me and I think a lot of others is how we get the whole, "Don't make this a big final moment thing, Will, don't" line from Frankie in "The Czech List" and it seems almost too much to soon from Frankie "I don't do emotional attatchments" Trowbridge. But here's the kicker.

This show is overt on some levels and subtle on others. We see Frankie in the pilot with Will as her mark in the bar in Moscow, saying that she (as her cover) is in Moscow for a conference on art history, and we find out in "Mrs. and Mr. Trowbridge" that Will studied art history in college (but majored in English, if David Hemingson's twitter is to be believed), so she's not only done her homework (she even says she read his file, which is thorough enough that she knows he paid off Gigi's student loans) but the writers have done their homework on ironing out their continuity as well. You might be asking what this has to do with the weird tonal hiccups between "The Czech List" and "When in Rome." Well, that's what we're about to see.

In "The Czech List" we see not only the goof with Standish, but also a really pointed joke Will makes just after Stavros is killed, asking whether or not Frankie knows the assassin who had just shot him. Frankie's snarky response is, "I don't know every assassin," a line which seems oddly defensive in response to an oddly pointed question. This might seem like foreshadowing to the reveal of her background in "When in Rome," but if we consider the fact that Will, when he feels betrayed in "Mr. and Mrs. Trowbridge" turns into a Grade A petty bitch (and we all love him the more for it, don't even deny it) exemplified by not only by the situations in which he "accidentally" hits Vasily with the shotgun and then uses the commotion at the wedding as an opportunity to punch him in the face, but also how he lashes out at Frankie and Susan, we can see that his questioning Frankie about the assassin isn't weirdly pointed, it's a deliberate dig at her. This also explains why she's so defensive in her response; this isn't a new conversation for them, but rather a still sensitive topic from it being revealed by necessity in "When in Rome."

The episodes are out of order.

This explains the dissent about methodology that seems to be building quickly to a boiling point in "When in Rome" but worked out with some trust in "The Czech List." We see Will going so far as to take the magazine out of Frankie's pistol, not exactly a move someone does to their partner, and yet there's no real reason for Will to have lost the trust built between them in "The Czech List," if that was actually first, not even the fact that Frankie has had to reveal her rather questionable pre-CIA activities. In "The Czech List" we hear Will say that they have to get Stavros, and specifies, "Alive, Frankie." We know from the pilot that Frankie is willing to do anything for the mission, but that line seems almost too harsh given only that information, until you realize that this is Will "petty bitch" Chase still hurting from thinking he was starting to get to know Frankie and getting that bomb dropped on him in Rome instead. He does pretty clearly start trusting her in "The Czech List," showing it when he listens to her direction on how to talk to Karen. There's a lot of tension in the team in "The Czech List," don't get me wrong, and that can pretty easily be read as building to the blow out in "When in Rome." But on the other hand, it seems easier to see the team's growing pains when we look at "When in Rome" first. A great place to look at this is, as aforementioned, with Frankie's admission of jealousy in the bank vault.

After her fight with Will and their reconciliation under the threat of impending death my chemical bomb, the admission starts making a little more sense. It starts making a LOT more sense if we consider the scene with Isabella, where Frankie admits to having "a soft spot." She's trying to connect with Will, just a little, adding in a backhanded, snarky comment ("you've got hundreds of them") to maintain his distance at arm's legth, but the attempt is there. Her admission in the bank vault is a bigger gesture, again under the threat of death. When it follows the smaller attempt at genuine connection, it makes more sense than it does as a sudden announcement in the episode immediately following the pilot. We also see Will reference having saved her life in France repeatedly in "When in Rome," but not in "The Czech List," as though he's finally dropped it (at least for now).

Furthermore, this order makes the whiplash moving into "Mrs. and Mr. Trowbridge" a little less. We see in "The Czech List" when taken as the third episode ("When in Rome" being the second) how Frankie and Will are beginning to learn how to connect and work together, but not with enough progress to not be fighting over having to pretend to be married to each other. It also shows how Will trusting Frankie in the field is a step forward until their blow out over their cover as spouses takes them a full step back again to where they were in "When in Rome."

After this piece by piece reconstruction took place, @therumour confirmed the episodes are numbered differently than the aired order on their tv, a fact which @whiskeycav then confirmed for us for certain.

However.

Even when we set the episodes in order of the pilot, "When in Rome," "The Czech List," and "Mrs. and Mr. Trowbridge," there's still a bit of a disconnect between Frankie and Will's budding partnership and the Grade A USDA Certified UST™️ in "Mrs. and Mr. Trowbridge." Even as early as what seems to me to have become known in much of the fandom as The Infamously Unnecessary But Excellent Laser Dancing Scene™️, we see a lot of UST specifically with Frankie's attention on Will, something which doesn't quite follow from "The Czech List." There's obviously reshoots/added scenes to piece the episodes in the aired order (like Susan saying their "first mission" in reference to "The Czech List, which is actually episode three), but let's not underestimate our writers here. This is character-driven fiction, where our plots are vital but secondary to the character development, which drives the plot and operates within its structure. They're sure as all hell not ingoring the UST and developing relationship between Will and Frankie-- that's what this whole show is about. We should be seeing some kind of transition there, between "The Czech List" and "Mrs. and Mr. Trowbridge", and it's missing.

There's an episode missing. An episode that hasn't aired yet.

This is confirmed by the fact that "Mrs. and Mr. Trowbridge" is, in fact, episode five. Episode four in the actual run of episodes hasn't aired yet.

Which begs the question: what the hell happens between Will and Frankie in that episode?

TL;DR

1) The episodes are airing out of order, but ironed out with connectivity pieces inserted to make this order make sense.

2) Will Chase is a petty bitch and if you don't love him you're wrong.

3) The writing in this show is so excellent that you can pick out the details and form this kind of analysis, like we did in the group chat, piecing together evidence to form a correct(!) conclusion because they're giving us high enough quality content to work with.

4) The episodes make more sense in the original order, so what exactly is happening here is beyond any of us.

mostly just: “why”

i ask because there’s an office fic that’s set in the depression that is SO. GOOD. and i may have a mighty need for world war II darcy and lizzie

Awww I hope the little dude feels better soon. *hugs*

stars-inthe-sky replied to your post “”

::hughug::

alonereed replied to your post “”

oh nooooo :( hang in there, nephew t! i know this doesn't really help in the moment, but everything really will be okay. he will likely feel like a BA with his cast and maybe you can find some awesome minion stickers to decorate it next time you see him.

i need to hear her When He Sees Me

YES VERY MUCH

alonereed replied to your post “The national tour of Waitress features Lenne Klingaman–Welcome to...”

what! that's amazing! i'm weirdly proud?