Jack Lowden As River Cartwright Slow Horses – S01E06

JACK LOWDEN Slow Horses 3.04 "Uninvited Guests"

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

#which could mean absolutely nothing at all

+bonus

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

Reblogging for #2

some more for the collection while i finish writing the fic!

Thoughts inspired by @saulbetter's recent posts.

This show is kind of sold or discussed as "spies! but they suck at being spies!" But the thing that all the slow horses actually have in common isn't that they're bad spies, it's that they're people without social capital. They actually range from competent to excellent at the technical aspects of their work (Ho, Catherine, Marcus, Shirley, Coe, and even River are all good at the hard skills of their jobs. We are told Louisa screwed up but in both show and books she is shown to be one of the most reliable performers on the team). But they don't have friends or patrons to protect them when things go sideways.

The reason they're the rejects is because they're loners who struggle to connect with other people for all their various reasons (childhood trauma, job-related PTSD, addiction, personality disorder, inherent temperament). So they're playing checkers when their internal opponents at Regent's Park are playing chess. To the extent that they even realize that the social/political game exists (Ho and Catherine mostly don’t), they're bad at it (Coe, Lech) and/or think they shouldn't have to play it (Marcus, Shirley). River impressively manages to be deficient in all three aspects: totally naive to the politics of advancement within the Park, bad with people, and so committed to his own view of himself as a Boy Scout that he thinks he shouldn't have to sully his hands with any of it.

This is why the show is such a brilliant office drama. This one is for all the folks who are good on paper but bomb in interviews, for all the people who are promoted based on their technical mastery and then shit the bed as managers because they're illiterate at reading people. This is why it's such a stroke of genius that River's ascendant career is cut off at the knees by tailing Taverner. He's so full of himself and such a try hard that he mistakenly thinks doing an unrequested extra credit assignment about his boss makes him clever instead of creepy, annoying, and red flagged as a potential troublemaker.

Unfortunately, because Mick Herron is unable to let the story or the characters grow, this excellent premise results in some deep weirdness later in the book series. (Weirder than the deadbeat dad child soldier sex cult plotline, you say? Idk, you be the judge.)

Book spoilers under the cut.

First, let’s talk about Lech Wicinski. (I know, no one wants to talk about Lech Wicinski, but he is the curly-haired insomniac introvert of my heart so I’m going to talk about him.) I love Lech but parts of his origin story are so stupid. He’s just a normal guy who is comfortable in his niche and relatively unambitious and gets screwed by ambitious people’s big ego shenanigans, which he falls into by accident when he unthinkingly steps outside his work comfort zone for a minute. So far, so good. But then, while he’s desperately trying to save his job and reputation, he’s also… not? Like, why would this sort of overly serious but otherwise very normal young-ish middle class man immediately and inexplicably decide not to seek medical treatment for a profoundly disfiguring injury? Why does he never even actually try to show to his fiancee that the revelation that causes the breakdown of their relationship was completely fictitious? It makes no sense! Except, the author is lazily destroying Lech’s social capital to make it make sense that he’s now a slow horse for life. 

Similarly, River can’t have Sid in S1 because she is a bright and well-rounded person while he is cute but also an idiot nepo baby manchild. So do the books resolve this imbalance by allowing River to grow - or even just change - in response to various challenges like dashed career aspirations, finally meeting his psychopath biodad, the steep mental decline of his beloved father figure, etc? No. Instead of letting River at least attempt to grow up, the books put River and Sid on a level by cutting Sid down instead - putting her in protection (ie. cutting all her social ties) and giving her a traumatic brain injury that hollows out her previously bright personality. Heaven knows we’re all miserable now. Sure do hope they fix that plotline for the show! I love them as endgame and I honestly think the show could do something so satisfying and poignant with them finally finding their missed connection but the books make the way they finally get together so creepy and sad.

Jack Lowden as River Cartwright Slow Horses – S01E04 – Visiting Hours

Look, I love Kingdon but Abbot x Walsh is actually my OTP for this show.

coming out as an abbot x walsh truther

kingdon isn't popular just because Mel is a popular character, Langdon is conventionally attractive, the two of them get a lot of scenes together, and the actors have chemistry

their relationship is thematically relevant to the show

the pitt is about burnout in the high stress environment of an ER post-COVID and making connections, both to do the work well and to survive it

between doctors and nurses and between them and the patients and the patients to the social worker as needed

and there are connections between other pairs of people, super young Javadi is paired with mature student McKay for a while which does open Javadi's eyes to life she's been sheltered from, Javadi gets a crush on Mateo who invites her to the park at the end of the day, Dana is the first to figure out Collins' pregnancy on her own and also speaks with Javadi on her new crush, Robby and Collins come together for a deep conversation after her miscarriage and before he sends her home, Mohan helps the sickle cell patient and the mercury poisoned influencer, Santos overtly tries to make connections to the two med students and is ultimately successful with Whitaker but she also gets protective over the daughter whose mother poisoned her father with progesterone and gets another patient to open up about their suicide attempt while Javadi over identifies with the baseball kid, lots of little new connections or longer formed ones

and then there's Mel on the verge of caretaker burnout as the only one supporting her sister

and Langdon who is basically on a different planet from his wife and gets outright rejected by Robby when he asks if they're friends

both so desperate for connection, someone on their level

and they click, they're the only ones that show up excited to be there (Mel more so than Langdon but he's not nearly as dismayed as Collins by the board when they first come in), Langdon offers Mel opportunities like the crike and Terrence, and compliments her successes and checks in with her and tells her to take breaks as needed while Mel seeks him out for his opinion and keeps up with him

they are the connection in the show, they just met and they make each other better at the job, if only all the doctors and nurses could get along this well, right?

except Langdon is an addict, through Robby the show implies the job broke something in him before the cameras even showed up and what Robby sees as a betrayal from Langdon contributes in turn to Robby's collapse on his worst day, and the parallels and what ifs come out

what if Robby had been as attentive to Langdon as Langdon was to Mel? What if Robby had allowed the connection instead of rejecting Langdon? What if Mel had shown up earlier? Would she have just burned herself out faster?

Langdon and Mel are the high point so Robby and Langdon yelling at each other and trying to tear each other down and talking more at each other than to each other can be the low point

Langdon and Mel improving their relationship in future seasons, moving beyond a day one spark to having more time and experience to deepen their relationship and making each other better doctors in the process is proving the themes of the show, that you need support and connection to do the job well and survive it

so of course people want to extend that into their personal lives so Mel is not alone with her sister and Langdon isn't in a crumbling marriage so they can have connection and support and be better people in their personal lives and not just professionally

Langdon and Mel are also shown as foils to Robby and Collins who once dated and Mel's single with a sister pushing her to make a romantic connection when the connection she's made is with Langdon and Langdon seems well on the way to divorce even before the addiction reveal

and the actors have a lot of chemistry