Surprised myself by running long in the tags, so under the cut it is. (After five weeks of making ~80-90 gifs from the behemoths that are “Homecoming” and “Karma to Burn”, of course it’s the inconsequential episode in which Finn only has six scenes that I end up rambling about?!).

I feel like this is one of the early episodes that really didn’t help with people who were slow to warm to Finn. Because sure, this is her first outing running a shift, and she begins it by immediately ordering everyone else out. But consider this:

It’s funny and I love her so there.

Okay but seriously, her tone and words are much actually softer in the aired version than the script:

Step on my finger, you're dead. Mark it. Then get out. In fact -- (loudly, to the room) I need everybody out. Everyone. Outside.

vs.

Woah! If you step on my finger, I’ll kill you. Ten inches in front of your left foot. Could you mark it? Thanks. Hey guys? Could I just have an hour to be alone so I can work the blood?

Sure, it still results in wide eyes and ‘is she serious?’ glances from the team, and the aired version omits a nice part from the script I would like to have seen:

Nick steps up.

NICK: C'mon, you heard her. Let's clear out of here.

People start to move.

I’m not saying Finn isn’t bossy (I’m forgiving, not blind), and I think it’s relevant that she was only eleven episodes in at this point, so I get it. A relative newcomer, using her first outing in a position of power to order out the established characters, and from a hallowed location like Frank’s Diner – the scene didn’t do her favours.

It’s probably also relevant that she’d had relatively little one-on-one screen time with Sara, Greg, or Nick at this point. Obviously most of her screentime prior to this was shared with DB, and after that maybe at a push Morgan? Who was still a relative newcomer herself. But Finn and Nick did have the excellent dumpster diving scene in “Homecoming” in which she opened up about the Cooley backstory, and Nick seemed to share her frustrations, so even though the dialogue didn’t make it to air, I get why he would have been the one to have her back.

(I don't really ship it, but oh boy that flirty little scene at the newspaper machine complete with lip licking, UMMM.)

I guess I just think a lot of the early criticisms of Finn were centered around her being bossy/not a team player, and if you use this specific scene as evidence then I get it, but there’s so much more to her than that.

ANYWAY, I also want to dive in to the other really interesting element of this episode, which is the slightly off-kilter dynamic with Russell. Obviously we’re coming straight off the back of “Karma to Burn”, and the events of that episode leave a lot to unpack. The whole reason Finn is running the case is because Russell has taken time off to be in Seattle with his family. And so when Morgan gets an “all hands”, Russell gets “I’ve got it handled.”

Does she have it handled? …Eh, at this point she doesn’t have a total handle on how it unfolded, and she may or may not have pissed off some of the team, but does Russell have to jump in and tell her she misrepresented the situation, and he’s worried?

Sure, he’s not rude about it. There’s no antagonism, no chastisement except for the repeated insistence she looks stumped - and maybe I’m only reading into it because I would forgive Julie Finlay anything, up to and including stealing evidence and losing my granddaughter in the ventilation shaft of a sex club. But still. They spin the scene out between them, Finn reveals she has a better handle on it than he gave her initial credit for… and it’s light, it’s teasing, and maybe he’s using that approach because he knows the challenge brings out the best in her.

But still.

Is there the tiniest undercurrent of:

RUSSELL: You look stumped.

FINLAY: I’m not stumped. I’m thinking.

--------------------

RUSSELL: I don’t need you to think, I need you to be smart Finn.

Is any part of that still echoing in her head, or just in mine?

I think the former, just a little. And I think it’s there in the way he makes a point at the end of telling her thank you. Of telling her good work on this one. And the tiniest note of surprise in her thanks.

Man, that last scene. It’s a good one. They don’t say a lot, and some of what they do say is absolutely the opposite of what they mean. Case in point:

FINLAY: Is Barbara okay?

RUSSELL: Yeah.

Of course she’s not, Finn. Is Russell okay? Is Maya? Is Katie? Are you? (As if Julie “I’m fine” Finlay would reply in anything but the affirmative).

But the thing is, the crux of it, the heart of it, the number one thing that pulled me out of the tags and into writing this unhinged character analysis is that THIS is the single fakest piece of Frussell dialogue ever set in print:

Of course he does. He needed her when he fired her. He needed her when he wrangled with HR to re-hire her. He needed her when she went off-piste and nearly got herself killed trying to save his granddaughter. The man needs her so much that one day, a few years from this moment, when she’s hurt so badly she can’t wake up, he’ll walk away from his job, his family, his life, because he doesn’t know how to be without her.

But it's the end of the episode, so the answer is no.