If Whitchapel had gotten renewed where do you think they would have gone with Chandler and Kent considering their interaction in the last ep?
Whitechapel, oh, Whitechapel. (All of this is being done from memory, so my quotes/order might be a little lacking…)
Kent. I trust that we’d have got an explicit in-canon reference to Kent’s feelings and or sexuality. We’ve got inference by the truckload, including Kent throwing away that lady’s phone number in Series 4, quite a lot of the interactions in Series 2, the jealousy of Series 3 (just at random), and then what Sam Stockman said about Kent’s relationship with Chandler. It seems nigh on impossible that they could have built on the end of Series 4 -exploding police vans and all- without referencing that little interaction. (Which, by the way, was adorable.)
Thematically Kent had ‘recovered’ from not wanting other people to be happy because he wasn’t happy himself, which came to a head by allowing himself to be happy (aka, the Freudian slip of asking Chandler out for a drink “with me”/”with us”.). So unless they were planning on yoyo-ing with Kent as a ‘baddie’ again then they’d have concluded that arc by having him explicitly unpack exactly what his feelings were. I’d probably expect it to have been introduced by Mansell & Riley first of all, good-naturedly taking the piss out of him and him playing along, before any actual plot development on that matter.
Basically I think Kent would have been less angsty, back to his Series 2 characterisation as opposed to the jealous, demon-bambi that we had in Series 3 & 4. Who quite possibility would be slightly less hero-worshiping due to his personal understanding of himself, as well as four series worth of character development.
Chandler on the other hand is more complicated. We’ve got RPJ interview evidence that Chandler, at least for series one, was being acted as an asexual character - who had little explicit romantic identity. (I seem to recall there was at least one “I’m not gay” in Series 1, but firstly, there’s no dichotomy between straight/gay and secondly, Chandler had absolutely no romantic or sexual characterisation in the first two series.) And then came about series three and an effect I like to call ‘Joseph Chandler and the three love interests’. To my shame I can’t actually remember Chandler’s reaction to Kent asking him to join “me”/”us”, but I seem to recall that he did agree to join them for a drink before the van exploded. Chandler certainly isn’t adverse by Series 4 to being friends with his team. Whether he’d oblivious or not, that’s another matter.
So, to answer your actual question!
I expect that Series 5 would have included friendly, jokey references to Kent’s ‘crush’ which would not have been denied. Halfway through Series 5 we’d have had a scene between Chandler and Kent featuring an explicit reference to either a) Kent’s feelings or b) the interaction at the end of Series 5. Whether or not anything romantic would have come from that, I don’t know, but I think it would have caused a strain on the team for a while with Chandler finally fully aware of Kent’s admiration. And then the final episode would have contained the climax of both whichever murder mystery was underway, and this Chandler/Kent subplot.
… Unless of course Chandler retired at the end of Series 4 in disgrace, in which can I can see him having gone off and retired at the coast and running a small bed-and-breakfast on his own and not answering the phone when caller ID says either ‘Anderson’ or ‘Miles’. (In which case we’d have a new DI, Miles would retire, one of the team would have been bumped up to DS over the break and Kent would be back crying in the carpark again.)
Heya since you asked I'm sending an ask your way. :P How've you been?
Hello! That’s very kind of you. I find the world needs more kind people, so keep it up. ;) I’ve been struggling a bit, but trying to find ways to keep moving forward. That’s life, right? You keep on trucking.
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