Typically Whiskey Cavalier is the type of show you watch when you’ve had a bad day, or when you need a pick me up. This is, after all, a light show, one that makes fun of itself more often than not, and one that’s very much guaranteed to make you laugh. And no, the show hasn’t changed it’s DNA, not really, but this week, Whiskey Cavalier goes dark in “Good Will Hunting,” and I gotta say, it works.
Mostly because the show doesn’t stop being who it is, it just allows Will (and the whole team, by extension) to, well, behave like a normal human being with ups and downs. I mean, his girlfriend, who absolutely no one cared about, but his girlfriend nonetheless, got murdered. He’s got a right to be angry, and he’s entitled to lose it, at least for a little bit.
In fact, I’m kinda relieved he did. Constantly golden retriever good and pure Will is just … a little intimidating. No one is that good and perfect all the time.
The rest of it feels super believable too, yes, even the Susan and Ray of it all, which I saw coming a mile away and which I still don’t like. What especially hits the right notes is Frankie, though, from the fact that a big part of her enjoys ‘edgy Will’ as she called him, to how she finally gets to the point where she realizes that’s not her partner, and she wants the real Will back.
So, let’s go into “Good Will Hunting” and talk balance, partnership and that romance that we’re not sure we can get behind.
THIS IS NOT YOU
Both Susan and Frankie try to get through to Will, and of course, it’s Frankie that finally does, not because his friendship with Susan isn’t important, or because he doesn’t listen to Susan, but because he can hear the truth in Frankie’s words, because he knows he’s been there before, exactly where he is, and if she could get through it, if she could become a better person, so can he.
And not only that, Frankie makes it clear that the reason she’s now a better person, the reason she doesn’t shoot first and ask questions later is Will. His kindness is contagious, and sometimes she wants to resist, but Will makes her better. So she wants to do the same for him. She wants to be his port in a storm, and she wants to be the one who is always there to remind him that he can be better. He is better.
Of course, it takes a while for Frankie to get there, because edgy Will is easier to deal with. Edgy Will doesn’t make her feel things. And that’s what she’s been doing all her life, hiding behind that edgy persona. Will has finally cracked her walls, and though, for second there, she enjoyed him defaulting into the kind of man who wouldn’t make her feel things, the truth is that Frankie has also grown enough to realize both she and Will deserve better.
Ah, balance, how sweet a foundation for an OTP you are.
MISTAKE?
At this point the thing that’s starting to make less sense to me is that Ray actually slept with Gigi, because though we all hated Ray at first, we hated him because he hurt Will, not because of who he was. But, the more time we spend with Ray, the more he seems …well, like a puppy, no the same breed as Will, maybe, but a puppy nonetheless, the kind that you have a hard time imagining could hurt anyone intentionally.
So it’s not that hard for me to understand how Susan, the most perceptive of the group, can be seeing that side of Ray and actually liking it, and it isn’t even hard for me to understand that she’d want to keep it from Will, because of course Will won’t understand, and of course he’ll be hurt, and Susan, for all she understands of human nature, isn’t a perfect individual with all the right answers.
But at this point, if they want me to even come close to shipping this, and I’m still very much far from that, I need them to explain why Ray committed his first sin, and I need that reasoning to be good. Because I absolutely cannot forgive him for doing what he did to Will, no matter how many people in the team he saves, and no matter how many times he acts adorable towards Susan.
I’m too loyal for that.
FOUND FAMILIES
This is where shows like Whiskey Cavalier always get me, with the found family feels, and this episode delivers that to a “T” with a few conversations between Jai and Edgar about, well, loss and what you leave behind when you’re gone.
Jai is, in many ways, Frankie 2.0, and though Will has been the main person affecting Frankie’s change, Jai has had not just Will’s example and Edgar’s friendship, but also the entire team, as an entity, to push him to showing a more human side, and not just showing it, towards reconnecting with that part of him that he’s found easier not to pay attention to.
Of course Emma’s death, though really, she was more a plot point than a person we’re actually actively mourning, would make him reconsider what it means to, well, live, and to have people you care for, and who might care for you. What it means to have a family, and the responsibility, but also, the utter joy and contentment that comes with being part of something.
It’s only been ten episodes, and it usually takes a lot longer, but this team has become a family. And it’s beautiful to see.
Things I think I think:
- +100 points for Emma mentioning more than one Spanish-speaking country OTHER than Mexico.
- Plus, she mentioned Panama, so personally, that’s like +100000000.
- I just realized in this episode that one of the reasons I feel so connected with Will is that I usually also get the “you don’t have to make friends everywhere” spiel.
- But WHY NOT?
- Scott’s Spanish is pretty decent.
- I literally was this gif when Emma died:
- That’s ONE way to solve a “love triangle.”
- Edgar’s whole “I’m not good at learning lessons the first time” is the most on point shit he’s ever said. LOL
- Frankie and Will are so good together that I could watch an episode of just them bantering.
- ONLY CRAZY PEOPLE WANT MAYO WITH THEIR FRIES, I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL.
- KETCHUP OR NOTHING.
- Frankie seeing through Susan is my aesthetic.
- But Susan and Ray trying to lie was hilarious.
- And Frankie and Susan being like bye we’re gonna go save Will while the men stay ALSO is.
- Tina is shady, surprise, SURPRISE. It was either her or Emma, and Emma’s a little dead at the moment.
Agree? Disagree? Share with us in the comments below!
Whiskey Cavalier airs Wednesdays at 10/9c on ABC.
