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Whiskey Cavalier
Whiskey Cavalier has been my "light watching while arting" show for the last couple of weeks, and oh man that's a show I have a weird and mixed reaction to. On the one hand, the things I don't like about it, I really don't like about it, including the characters killing and torturing people right and left in the name of ~stopping terrorism~ (and being narratively rewarded for it), the show so blatantly ignoring narrative plausibility for the kind of people the characters are supposed to be and the hierarchy they're supposedly in that I've occasionally been pretending they're hitmen or con artists instead of government agents because it makes more sense that way (seriously, the things I hate about the show 90% evaporate if they'd made them criminals who occasionally do off-the-books jobs for the US government instead), and there's a thing which is a major spoiler but also something people might want to be warned for, namely one of the most blatantly played-straight-for-hero-angst girlfriend-fridgings I've seen this side of 90s superhero comics.
But then the things I liked, I really really liked! The show has a gleeful commitment to doing All The Tropes, often in a very iddy-for-me kind of way, and in just a single 13-episode season, we got accidental baby acquisition, the characters having to go undercover at a college (so, college AU), Canadian Shack (a very nice Alps-chalet version, but still), the episode with the criminal mastermind who puts their HQ on lockdown and exploits all their emotional weaknesses against each other, the "everyone buys each other presents for a secret santa and struggles with it" episode, one character getting kidnapped by black-market organ dealers and tortured/threatened with organ removal while the others are forced to listen via his radio but can't communicate back, an episode in which a character gets injected with slow-acting poison that only the villain has the antidote to (well, technically nanites, but that's the trope) ...
It's also a very stylish and pretty show, filmed mostly on location in (mostly Eastern) Europe, so instead of the usual American-TV trope of New York or LA or Vancouver standing in for Bulgaria or Prague or Paris, they're actually in Bulgaria or Prague or Paris, and it gives the show a unique look that's different from typical US TV spy stuff. There are fight scenes set to fun and eclectic music; there's a lot of delightful interpersonal stuff and neat arcs for some of the characters, a very strong team-as-family theme, plus a side romance that I ended up being really delightfully sold on (while being thoroughly annoyed by the main protags' "slap slap kiss kiss" version, at least in the early episodes, though it sold me harder once the show stopped hitting so many tropes I hate, e.g. "one of them has to seduce someone for a mission and the other is jealous about it while their friends give them terrible advice like 'the heart wants what it wants' and not 'it's WORK, you jealous moron'" and just had them be friends).
I can't really figure out if I recommend it because the things I hated, I really hated, but then the things I liked, I really liked. Sadly it is a) cancelled after just one season, and b) has next to no fandom, and what fandom there is, seems to be almost entirely focused on the ship I don't care about. But I'd love to talk about it if anyone else has watched it!
But then the things I liked, I really really liked! The show has a gleeful commitment to doing All The Tropes, often in a very iddy-for-me kind of way, and in just a single 13-episode season, we got accidental baby acquisition, the characters having to go undercover at a college (so, college AU), Canadian Shack (a very nice Alps-chalet version, but still), the episode with the criminal mastermind who puts their HQ on lockdown and exploits all their emotional weaknesses against each other, the "everyone buys each other presents for a secret santa and struggles with it" episode, one character getting kidnapped by black-market organ dealers and tortured/threatened with organ removal while the others are forced to listen via his radio but can't communicate back, an episode in which a character gets injected with slow-acting poison that only the villain has the antidote to (well, technically nanites, but that's the trope) ...
It's also a very stylish and pretty show, filmed mostly on location in (mostly Eastern) Europe, so instead of the usual American-TV trope of New York or LA or Vancouver standing in for Bulgaria or Prague or Paris, they're actually in Bulgaria or Prague or Paris, and it gives the show a unique look that's different from typical US TV spy stuff. There are fight scenes set to fun and eclectic music; there's a lot of delightful interpersonal stuff and neat arcs for some of the characters, a very strong team-as-family theme, plus a side romance that I ended up being really delightfully sold on (while being thoroughly annoyed by the main protags' "slap slap kiss kiss" version, at least in the early episodes, though it sold me harder once the show stopped hitting so many tropes I hate, e.g. "one of them has to seduce someone for a mission and the other is jealous about it while their friends give them terrible advice like 'the heart wants what it wants' and not 'it's WORK, you jealous moron'" and just had them be friends).
I can't really figure out if I recommend it because the things I hated, I really hated, but then the things I liked, I really liked. Sadly it is a) cancelled after just one season, and b) has next to no fandom, and what fandom there is, seems to be almost entirely focused on the ship I don't care about. But I'd love to talk about it if anyone else has watched it!
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i feel you re: the kidnapping and torturing, but tbh i vilify the USA in my head? it's not a good thing, but it's a thing i do. so whenever stuff like that comes up, i'm just like o rite, Murica.
Big Feel on it hitting the found family feels Hard.
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I think my favorite character eventually ended up being Jai, the Indian guy, not only because his character arc is really neat but also because the thing he specializes in (he's their gadget/tech guy) is something that he is genuinely competent at, and I will take my competence kink where I can find it on a show where they are this bad at almost everything. XD
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that would make Way more sense actually. like seriously, have these morons never had ops training worth a damn?????
omg vir das!!! tbh i watched past ep1 bc jai was desi, and if what you're saying is true, he might end up being the throughline for me for this show.
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Also I feel like your strategy of watching Something while you Art is primarily responsible for your current amount of fandoms :P
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It was a perfect thing to watch while Arting though! Light and engaging but not too engaging. I have a bit of a hit or miss way of picking things to do this with - I need to be into it enough that I don't get bored, but not so into it that I'm going to fall head over heels - e.g. I started watching Iron Fist for this, and well, look how that turned out.
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Who knows, though; if I start trying embroidery or some other kind of handcraft this summer, maybe I'll give it a second chance. Maybe it'll pass the "Entertaining enough to leave on while I rip out that seam I just messed up" test.
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That being said, it has really nice found-family feels and a lot of humor that's fun.
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