Keep Still Slow Horses, S04E05

Workplace sexual harassment!

Bonus frowny face;

Im gonna lose it over the way people are so prescriptive about shipping

"Why are you focusing on romance when the show doesn't --" because I want to, i dont need the show to do anything, im not trying to get into the writers room im on ao3, you don't have to panic because i'm engaging with media different than you

"You cant ship them together because [something in canon]" what on gods green earth would be the point of fanfic if all it did was respect canon?

"That's never going to be canon" okay! I dont need it to be! Once again, hence the fanfic! 99.9% of things ive shipped in my life were not canon and had no chance of becoming canon and tbh that makes it more fun for me

"Stop shipping [pairing] theyre obviously platonic" or "why are people shipping A and B when A and C is right there?" This isn't a competition, i'm not trying to prove anything to you, im shipping the characters who make my heart pang and if you dont share that perspective we're all going to be okay

OP, thank you for seeing this and saying this.

Guess what, FRANK? The reason you can work so hard at being a doctor is because your wife gets up every time a kid is puking at 2 am and every morning 365 days a year to make then breakfast. She makes sure there's milk in the fridge, toilet paper in the bathroom, and clean underwear in your drawer. She sends your mother her favourite flowers for Mother's Day and writes your name on the card. And she probably quit her consulting job at McKinsey to do all that.

And that's why he actually doesn't deserve Mel. He doesn't understand or respect the woman he already has. Addiction? Yeah, whatever. Call me when he goes to rehab for being a sexist jerkoff.

honestly this is the only thing he deserves an ass beating for. everything else he can recover from

rewatching the pitt and i neeeeed more details about collins and her relationship with robby. noah said that they broke up around the time adamson died which was 4 years prior. collins is r4 so that would mean they started dating before she started her residency (which i assumed was the case cause if it was a attending/resident romance perlah and princess would know about it). based on actor's age alone she's older than langdon so safe to assume she didn't have a typical pre-med undergrad straight to med school route. so what was her route? what was her career before med school/residency? how did they meet? and did she apply to the residency programme at robby's hospital because of their relationship? only for it to end soon after she started working there? i need details!

Slow Horses, S02E02 - From Upshott with Love

You need help. What about you, man? What about you? I'm not the only one who's a little fucked up here, Robby. Why don't you look in the mirror?

My first thought when they revealed his addiction was that he's almost definitely been driving his small children around and taking care of them while impaired (from drugs and/or withdrawal). He's deffo got pills hidden in his house. His wife, justifiably, is probably going to go mental when she finds out and realizes all the implications. This is going to create massive trust issues, completely aside from whatever other marital problems they may have.

Then, add on to the child endangerment that it seems he is the sole or primary breadwinner. So his addiction may also threaten the financial stability of his whole immediate family.

This is all before you even get into his apparent lack of respect for unpaid caregiving/the strain on a marriage of two kids under four/they got married young maybe before they really knew themselves and what they wanted out of life/why the fuck is anyone in their life circumstances even talking about a Birkin bag.

I honestly admire Frank/Abby supporters because it shows a remarkable faith in forgiveness, love, and the institution of marriage.

let's speculate wildly about langdon's marriage, shall we!

a needlessly thorough breakdown of a single scene from 1x02 and what i think it might say about langdon, his addiction, and the state of his marriage

under the cut bc i get rambly!!

so a lot has been said about frank and abby's marriage based on the hints we get here and there in the first half of the season. i've even gone as far as saying they have a canonically bad marriage, which may be a little harsh, but i don't think anyone watching with a keen eye can say in good faith that the langdon marriage has been presented to us as particularly healthy or uncomplicated.

he works a physically and emotionally demanding job for long hours and mediocre pay, and we can infer that she either works from home or is a stay-at-home mom to their two young children. he clearly feels some measure of guilt about the way he preforms the roles of husband and father, trying to make up for his shortcomings with gifts and grand gestures, while ultimately being shown to be ignorant, almost to the point of contempt, of his wife's needs.

and this is all before we (and abby!) find out that he's been putting his life, liberty and livelihood in jeopardy with his substance abuse.

so, i think it's fair to say that we can expect langdon's marriage to be a significant point of contention when we pick back up for season 2.

of course, almost everything that we can say about abby langdon at this point is pure speculation. we haven't met her! we don't even get to hear her voice on the phone! we're only getting bits and pieces of this woman, mainly filtered through langdon's unreliable flawed perspective. so if we want something based in canon to say about the way langdon thinks about abby, his kids and his marriage, we'll have to look at some characters we actually get to see on screen.

we may not get to see abby and tanner, but we do have amanda and tyler:

(and also drew, but he's kinda whatever to my points here.)

tyler is the four-year-old boy from episodes 1 & 2 who comes in lethargic and unresponsive—mel asks for langdon's assistance on the case, and they find out that tyler is sick because he ingested some of his dad's pot gummies. this causes a lot of tension between tyler's parents, amanda and drew, who get defensive when they find out they've been reported to the department of children youth and families (pittsburgh's version of CPS/DCFS). the parents argue, robby breaks it up as the Voice of Reason, mel frets about potentially tearing apart a family, and langdon with his "fellowship in cynicism" argues (correctly) that they're white and therefore won't face drug charges or have their kid taken away. we find out later from kiara that tyler is going to be fine, but that his parents "might need counseling."

and the shift from hell continues!

(side note: i'd actually forgotten, but the STEMI with me, mel moment comes right on the heels of kiara updating mel about tyler!!)

so it's a relatively 'easy' case, and it comes very early in the season, the first time we see mel and langdon working together one-on-one. it's almost forgettable compared to everything that happens later, and it's only after what we learn about langdon's addiction that the last scene with tyler and his parents starts to feel thematically important.

basically, langdon's reactions in this scene are really interesting.

it all starts normally enough with mel and langdon updating the parents on tyler's status, and answering amanda's questions about the potential long-term affects of THC on her son's brain. on my first watch, i was mostly attuned to mel, and her reaction (that langdon totally clocks!!) to amanda's derogatory worries about her son getting autism. but on rewatch, it's what comes next that really stuck out to me.

langdon starts the interaction very polite and professional with both parents, but when amanda gets upset about the mandatory reporting, he immediately gets very defensive, taking on almost the kind of tone we later see him use on santos. he starts talking to her like she's crazy, escalating the situation and making amanda even more upset. he even reaches out in a kind of placating move and she tells him to keep his fucking hands off her, leading to this shot:

which. yes. is the basis of this whole post. but come on. this isn't zoomed in by me, this is the shot as it appears in the show. a mom justifiably angry about her husband's drug use and the way it's endangered her child, juxtaposed against a defensive langdon's wedding ring and the bracelet from his own four-year-old son. you could write a fucking thesis on this shot alone. i mean, i basically am. but never mind.

and langdon's reactions to amanda only get more tense when she starts going off on drew, telling him to stop speaking for her child and that he needs to "get a fucking hotel."

look at the way this is blocked! poor mel is running off to get help, but the guys in the background are framed together in opposition to amanda, and they're both looking at her like she's crazy. in fairness, she is very much freaking out here, but she's also scared for her son, she no longer trusts her husband, and she's just been told that the police may be getting involved. langdon doesn't know it yet, but he's getting a little sneak preview of what his night with abby is gonna turn into!

and when robby comes in to play moderator and calm everyone down, langdon is again alone in the shot with amanda, making a series of increasingly freaked out/guilty expressions as she tells robby that she wants to stay with her son instead of her husband because she doesn't want him around:

patrick ball's acting in this whole scene is so subtle and nuanced as langdon low-key wigs the fuck out in this situation. he is visibly shaken after everything goes down and has to physically psych himself up to get back in the game as robby leaves.

so much about the way this is shot, acted, and edited feels vitally important to langdon's characterization in retrospect. and the defensive way he reacts specifically to the woman in this situation leads me to believe that, at least in the immediate aftermath of abby finding out about everything, langdon is gonna be a fucking nightmare. and while i don't think it would be fair to assume that abby is gonna react exactly like amanda does in this situation, i do think the similarity of the names (abby/amanda & tanner/tyler) and the fact that the boy is the exact same age as langdon's son does invite us to draw a comparison.

long story long, i love that while we get to see first hand how langdon's addiction makes him react defensively and lash out at santos and robby, the show also gives us this glimpse into how langdon and his wife will react to his addiction becoming public in his domestic sphere.

#which could mean absolutely nothing at all

+bonus

All of this. I am so obsessed with imagining their relationship before the series starts.

Also, River is all about River in a lot of ways. And he's sad about Spider's death because it's not only the final death of what their *relationship* once was, it's also a symbol of him losing who *he* once was. Or who he thought he was going to be.

I think that the insane yearning and obsession they have for each other is driven a lot by how needy they both are for a certain kind of success and recognition. They recognize each other as fellow travellers. They also have those feelings you have when you have a crush on someone and it's kind of about how you think that person has something amazing about them that makes you want to bask in their aura but also you kind of resent them because you're envious of their sparkle.

The seething disdain they feel for each other after the Falling Out is a reflection of their disappointment in how the other has failed to live up to the (still nascent) image they projected and the grimy mirror that holds up to their own respective reflections.

Instead of Britain's most dangerous field asset, River is a fuck up who can't follow basic instructions (for his surveillance assignment - hence Stanstead/King's Cross). Instead of an astute political operative climbing the ranks and pulling strings behind the scenes, James is babysitting a bunch of filing cabinets and only gets trotted out when some woman with actual power needs a biddable warm body for her own purposes. They both suck and they hate looking at the other man and being reminded of the abjectness of failure, of falling short, of being so desperately close but so far. It's embarrassing watching the other one hanging from the cliff by his fingernails while he puts on a show like he's still climbing the mountain.

I think the saddest thing about their relationship is that these boys never even really knew each other. And they couldn't because they didn't even know themselves. They were too young and trying too desperately to outrun themselves and become perfect, unassailable, lovable.

They're both so deeply lonely. And then Spider dies and River is even more alone. They ended up hating each other but James also understood what it was like to live with that black hole in the centre of himself and there was a type of company in that, even after the love was gone.

river and spider are just such a tragedy to me. the way they both (in the books) are just. constantly wistfully thinking about Back When They Were Friends… and it’s about more than just their friendship in a lot of ways, it’s that Back Then was when they still had bright unbounded futures, back when they thought they’d wander straight into influential spots at the service and be bestest friends forever while they changed the world and got everything they ever wanted.

and like. the thing is, that is already gone. they’re never getting that back. even if they somehow put all their bitterness and history aside and became close again, it wouldn’t be the same as before… they’ll never get that youthful optimism that (in my head at least) defined their pre-series relationship back. that version of their friendship is gone forever already.

but then spider dies and, well. now it’s really really gone. now even the hope of a “different from before but close enough to what they had once” reunion is gone.

just. agh. this idea of like. that, that version of their relationship, the version that they miss, is already dead and buried before the series starts and there’s no getting it back. there’s already no getting it back. but they still keep hoping (or at least, river keeps hoping, though i think spider does too) that it somehow, against all rules of logic, WILL come back anyway. until spider dies and river has to face that that hope, while impossible before anyway, it now for real actually impossible impossible…

heartbreaking, man. they’re such a tragedy.

The Pitt – 1.03: 9:00 A.M.