You know a show is desperate to get your attention when the climax of the pilot episode involves an exploding tampon.
Welcome to the silly world of “Whiskey Cavalier.” This ABC midseason replacement combines the kind of slick, formulaic plotting favored by this network since the era of “Hart to Hart” with the stylish international intrigue made popular by the trendy BBC series “Killing Eve.”
With locations in Paris and Prague, the backdrops almost camouflage the corny setup. Take one weepy FBI agent, Will Chase, aka Whiskey Cavalier (Scott Foley, “Scandal”), who’s holed up in his Parisian pad with the usual overdressed set of food containers and empty cans because his girlfriend dumped him. Send him on a mission to stop a rogue Centers for Disease Control employee from wiping out “half of Europe” with a vial of “weaponized Ebola.” Introduce a female CIA agent with a male name, Frankie Trowbridge (Lauren Cohan), who’s there to keep Will — or do we call him “Whiskey”? — from becoming too much of a softie. With the “highest killer capture ratio of anybody at the CIA,” she’s the head to his heart. He reels in the villains with his people skills; she trounces them at the end with her indifference to human beings. But their dynamic works both ways. When she takes a bullet (before the tampon explodes), he plays doctor. His touch is so soothing she only screams once when he digs out the bullet.
Before you can say “sexual tension,” a series is born.
“Whiskey Cavalier” has some problems with its tone. The caper part of the show is essentially lighthearted, with plenty of wisecracking from Foley and Cohan, who probably joined this show to get a break from the zombies on her last show, AMC’s “The Walking Dead” (she played Maggie) — but the violence here is also frequent and graphic. Viewers ready for a romp might be put off by the nonstop gunfire. Viewers who have embraced more sophisticated fare online and on cable will find themselves bored.
There’s nothing wrong with the casting but there’s nothing dynamic about it, either. It’s a hodgepodge of former supporting ABC actors. Foley, aptly described in the script as a “boy scout,” is joined by fellow “Scandal” survivor Bellamy Young as the wife of the Episode 2 villain; “Ugly Betty” veteran Ana Ortiz as Will’s friend at the bureau; and “Quantico” actor Josh Hopkins as another FBI agent who has Will convinced that they’re friends.
“Whiskey Cavalier” may use terms like “retinal scans” in its storylines in order to sound like the espionage dialogue is up to date, but make no mistake: you’ve seen this show a dozen times before.
On network TV, that’s not usually a problem — but this show may have trouble going beyond the 13 episodes scheduled to air on ABC.
