Yknow, Whelan has very quickly sunk to my least favorite character of the the extended/main cast this season. He was protected before because his appearances were limited or sandwiched between stuff I was more interested in so he was a bit forgettable, but with him taking more of a spotlight this season he’s very quickly drawn my wrath.
For a while Roddy was my least fav, because he annoys me and he’s a pig, but there’s scenes like the one in Circus (ep 5, s5) that illustrate that his skills aren’t necessarily overblown, even if he is a complete ass about it. Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t like him, he’s the embodiment of too many men I see on the internet. But I appreciate his character, and I think moments like his interview with Taverner and him in the IT department are such good and interesting scenes that they push him up for me just a bit.
This season has been a non stop shit show of him demonstrating so much incompetence 😭 like the only thing I can think of him being good at was blackmail, which is NOT saying much considering that seems like a pretty damn unlawful way of using his intelligence resources (but hey, I’m not MI5 and the people were full blown bigots so I’m not counting)
But other than that, it’s just thing after thing. And I know we as the audience do have extra context, we see the call about the second honey pot (River go visit your grandfather, I’m scared) and the fact that Tara is more involved with the destabilization strategy than we originally realized (thank you Slough House) but still, he just does and says so much that makes me want to run face first into a wall…
I know this is that purpose of his character, and without him we wouldn’t have a plot, but I still need to rant because my least favorite types of characters have always been those with overblown confidence in their astronomically bad skills. Props to everyone behind his character, you guys are doing a very good job. Taverner, my heart hurts for you, she has to be the only reason this agency is still standing at this point.
ANYWAYS I’m one ep away from finishing s5, so if all of this somehow gets turned on it’s head uhhhh hindsight is 20/20??
Standout characters this season have been Shirley especially for knowing something was going wrong ASAP, Shirley and Catherine for actually preventing an assassination, Taverner for reasons stated above, and Louisa for getting out and not being involved in any of this mess even though I miss her DEARLY. I’ve also liked having more of Flyte and Devon and their crew even if it’s them getting their asses handed to them or just being dragged into Whelan’s messes.
I just really love women.
River please call your grandfather and tell him you love him, I can feel the trauma about to happen. I’m off to watch the last ep…
