ABC’s Whiskey Cavalier is the latest effort by network television to mix spies, romance, and action into a complete package. Needless to say, I’m a fan of kick-ass entertainment with a little bit of love thrown in, so it naturally attracted my attention from the moment that the first trailer dropped online. Now that a few episodes have graced our television screens, I can confidently develop a verdict on it.
Long story short, Whiskey Cavalier is surprisingly uneven.
You’ve Seen These Characters Before.
As I’ve said in the past, good plots can be elevated to greatness by the characters. Unfortunately, Whiskey Cavalier isn’t quite there yet.
Much like Castle and Take Two before it, the show focuses on the developing partnership of Will Chase (Scott Foley) and Frankie Trowbridge (Lauren Cohan). The actors give their respective roles a good try, but it’s not like you haven’t seen these characters before. Will is supposedly the weepy guy who suddenly turns into a badass for reasons, whereas Frankie is supposed to be a near robot who suddenly reveals her softer side when trouble hits. Under certain circumstances, these two character types can work wonders, but it feels like a pairing that is more likely to end in disaster than some sort of relationship.
To make matters worse, the supporting cast is a mess. Ana Ortiz, Vir Das, Tyler James Williams, and Josh Hopkins are okay at their jobs, but their performances are brought down by the writing. Normally, I would applaud a writing team’s attempt to stuff in a lot of characterization in the first four episodes, but it’s all wrong.
The most notable example that I can think of is the clash between Ortiz’s Susan Sampson and Williams’ Edgar Standish. In “The Czech List”, Sampson throws a fit over how Standish tends to boast and lie in his romantic relationships. However, she completely contradicts herself by encouraging lies of omission when a person is in the process of asking someone out. What gives?
I know that this is supposed to be fiction, but it doesn’t seem like this team would be employed by the FBI, CIA, or any other agency.
The Plots Are Uneven, But They Do The Job.
Apart from the pilot, Whiskey Cavalier adopts a case of the week format that you’ve probably seen in a wide variety of cop shows. The team gets their orders, deploys to an exotic locale, and solves the problem before heading back home. It works rather well for a light and breezy show, but there are a few problems that keep it from achieving greatness.
For one thing, the technical details make very little sense. Many of the weekly storylines deal with European terrorist activity, so why isn’t the team based in, say, Berlin instead of New York City? It seems like it’d be easier to deploy a team that is already permitted to operate inside the European Union.
Better yet, why is the FBI running black operations on foreign soil? We know that they have “legats” in American embassies and consulates, but they generally play second fiddle to the local authorities and share information. Wouldn’t it be better to incorporate the team into the CIA and have them operate that way?
On another note, where are the cool gadgets? In the pilot, Frankie utilizes an exploding tampon in a ridiculous fashion. When I saw that, I thought that the show might be a love letter to vintage spy sagas like Get Smart or Mission: Impossible, but the follow-up episodes return to tradition with a “romantic” twist.
These may seem like petty nitpicks, but such questions can reveal a lot about a given show. And most important of all, it’s easier for an audience to suspend disbelief and get lost in the story when they can see a masterful attention to detail.
Conclusion.
Whiskey Cavalier is not good enough to be appointment viewing, but it’s also not bad enough to completely discard out of hand. The characters are middling, the stories are uneven, and the writers get several details wrong. Then again, there are flashes of a great show in the weekly missions and some of the banter, so you can get some entertainment value out of it.
If the writers can eliminate the problems and get a Season 2, this show may be able to find enough footing for a good run.
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