Drama
Alien: Earth
FX’s ‘Alien: Earth’ is just the latest graphically violent entry in the already graphically violent ‘Alien’ franchise.
Spies are a reclusive bunch. It’s pretty much part of the gig. You need to be able to blend in, even disappear. Drawing attention to yourself isn’t just unwise: It’s potentially lethal.
Apparently Will Chase and Frankie Trowbridge both missed the first day of spy school.
Will and Frankie, the two agents who head up a super-secret spy team, can be described a great many ways, but subtle is not among them.
Will is about as subtle as his codename, Whiskey Cavalier, would suggest. He saunters into danger as if he’d consumed way too much of the stuff. Not that he’d ever drink on the job, mind you. (Well, not much.) In fact, the agent has a reputation of being something of an Eagle Scout around the agency—and an emotional Eagle Scout at that. He watches rom-coms. He tears up at weddings.
“They look so happy, don’t they?” He says between shootouts, as he watches a couple of strangers tie the knot.
“You want to stick around?” Frankie asks him wryly. “Catch the bouquet?”
Frankie—a no-nonsense CIA agent—is no Scout. Nor does she have use for weddings, or romance, or even flowers. The only blossoms she cares about are the blooms of blood that spread across a terrorist’s white dress shirt after she shoots him.
Or, at least, so she says. For now. Even as Frankie recoils from relationships, and Will heals from an extraordinarily bad breakup, it’s clear that the two spies share some chemistry. Even their adversaries can feel it. “There’s a lot of sexual tension in this car,” one handcuffed hacker tells them as he stews in the back seat.
With the help of a few coworkers—former NSA computer whiz Edgar Standish, top-notch profiler Susan Samson and CIA gadget expert Jai Datta—Will and Frankie aren’t so much secret agents as agents of chaos, making the world a little safer one spectacular shootout and rollicking car chase at a time.
Even James Bond might tell these two to tone it down a bit.
As the era of prestige TV stretches on, and as premium cable channels and streaming services pepper viewers with deeply unsettling dramas (I’m looking at you, True Detective), ABC has decided to engage in a bit of counter-programming and double down on what network TV has always done best: giving viewers a little escapism.
Whiskey Cavalier is Exhibit A. This light spy thriller is all flash and pop and witty banter—an hour-long exercise in thought-free entertainment. Cars careen around corners. People get thwacked and cracked in the noggin. Bad guys get shot and die, and it all feels about as consequential as deciding what sort of toothpaste to buy.
But even purposefully inconsequential shows carry consequences. In fact, wrapping problematic content in such a light, frothy package might arguably make it more problematic. At least in True Detective, actions have consequences. Not so much here.
The show isn’t overtly sexual, but we may see some skin and suggestive romance, depending on the episode, and that “sexual tension” between its two stars will likely grow with time. The violence doesn’t push any boundaries, but we still see plenty of it, resulting in everything from bloody wounds to sudden death. Language can be a mite harsh, too. This show doesn’t strain networks’ censors, but neither does it commit to keeping things clean for discerning families.
You could say that Whiskey Cavalier is a bit like an aged glass of its namesake drink. It goes down easy enough. But it just might burn something awful.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at letters@pluggedin.com, or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
After saving the world from a weaponized Ebola outbreak, FBI agent Will Chase speeds off to Moscow to apprehend an apparent traitor who may be trying to sell top-secret information to the highest bidder. But he runs into problems when he learns that CIA agent Frankie Trowbridge is after the same guy—and she’s determined to bring him in without Will’s interference.
Will is suffering from a bad breakup, and we see flashbacks of his more intimate moments (kisses, insinuations that she’s undressing) with his longtime girlfriend. Frankie sneaks off to a back room with a mercenary, and it’s suggested that they sleep together. (We don’t see anything explicit.) Both flirt at a bar while undercover, and when they get into a car together, the “traitor” in the back seat (Edgar Standish) remarks on the “sexual tension” he picks up on.
When Frankie handcuffs Will and locks both Will and Edgar in the trunk of a car, Will has Edgar search his front pockets for the handcuff key. Edgar has trouble finding the keys, but does feel plenty else. One of Will’s FBI friends says that he stayed at a woman’s apartment the night before.
Several people are shot and killed. One gunshot victim loses lots of blood in route to a French cottage, where she undergoes an emergency operation to remove a bit of cloth from the wound. We see a knife briefly cut into the wound (along with a lot of blood) and hear the patient scream in pain. A guy is killed when a knife blade lands in his chest. Someone pulls out someone else’s tooth with a pair of pliers. People get in some serious fights. We see fists and feet fly, and we hear some suggestive cracking and crunching noises.
A man with a rocket launcher blows up a helicopter. Frankie throws explosive devices, including one disguised as a tampon. One guy gets violently hit by a car—bouncing off the windshield and sailing over the roof. (There’s another instance of car-to-person contact, too, though not as brutal.) Someone whacks his head on a dashboard.
We hear references to sports bras and jockstraps. Characters drink alcohol (including bourbon that’s “old enough to vote,” according to the bartender). Characters steal cars (including a police car), a phone and a hat. We hear “a–” about four times, and we hear some sporadic use of words such as “b–ch,” “d–n” and “h—,” too. God’s name is misused once.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
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