So watching the newest Spy x Family, I see everyone squealing over Uncle Franky (don’t get me wrong I am too) but I also think his outsider’s perspective is kind of sad. When Anya is waiting for Yor and Loid to get home, the line he says there struck me.
“Hey, do you like your mom and dad?”
Like that’s a weird question to ask a young child who, hopefully, should love their parents. But Franky I think is acutely aware that they aren’t Anya’s real parents and the Forger family is fake. Franky has worked with Twilight for years, knows him very well and has presumably seen him make and drop identities like one would an article of clothes. We’ve even had Franky directly accusing Loid of being too clinical, focusing only the mission. I think Franky believes that once Operation Strix is completed, that he’ll leave and Anya and move on to the next assignment.
I think that idea has colored a lot of Franky’s interactions with Anya. Yes, he’s also a big kid and wants to run around and be silly. But I also believe he’s trying to give this girl a sense of happiness and family presumably before she’s dropped off at the nearest orphanage once her usefulness is outlived. Like we all know Loid is catching feels but he’s a Good Actor and it might not be readily apparent to his coworker. Idk it must be so sad for Franky to watch this little family interact, to sweep up a child so clearly desperate for love and family in a spy operation, only to realize it won’t last.
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im watching frank castle edits (he is so hot) and im dying to read some badass scenes with him and jane. i think that if they would start to get along, they would be really lethal combination. do you plan something like this?
YESSSSSS, I definitely have some stuff planned with Jane and Frank after he's out of jail fuck having him in prison is inconvenient but it won't be for long, and especially him getting to work alongside Hound!Jane as they hunt Certain People TM down (I have one scene in mind that, if I pull it off, will be fucking awesome and kickass for the both of them; been working on that one for MONTHS). Because yeah, when you think about it, the way they both operate would flow fairly well together and their hunting styles aren't all that different. They also both, technically, want the same thing: Cyrus and all his people dead, and Jane would absolutely resonate with his own drive to get vengeance. They'll be friends by the end, though there'll be some tugging back and forth a bit between Matt and Frank over her for a little while - not in the romantic sense, but in a morality sense, since Frank's going to encourage very different instincts in her than Matt will, and there's still the thorny murder-y issues that her and Matt are avoiding discussing. Then again, Frank nudging her like that isn't going to go the way Frank thinks it will either...
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I desperately want to hear your thoughts on Frankie and Face (also can't wait to see that rant about Face and his father)
First, thank you for enabling me to rant about this. Literally rubbed my hands together when I got your ask and was like ‘my time has come I am going to go OFF about this'
^^ actual footage of my last three braincells upon receiving this ask.
(this got so long. it’s below the cut to spare everyone)
(I’ll preface this by saying I’m mostly looking at this from an in-universe perspective, not really criticizing the writing choices or why the writers/directors did certain things)
I’m going to briefly talk about season 5 as a whole because I think it’s linked to the thoughts I have on Frankie.
I actually didn’t dislike season 5. It’s far from my favorite, but I feel like it is misunderstood to some extent (especially in fanfics). Or maybe I just like my interpretation of it. Either way, it wasn’t a bad season, and it provided a lot of interesting character moments by putting them all in situations we hadn’t really seen before.
However, the entire tone changed, the dynamics changed, and the overall story and interactions just felt a little... off.
Frankie is... fine as a character.
If he were the protagonist/sidekick of some other show, he would be fine, he’d probably even be an interesting character.
But he just doesn’t work in the A-Team. At least not in the way that the writers seemingly intended.
The team, for four seasons, has operated as a single cohesive unit. You can TELL that these men have worked together for years, you can tell they’ve been though war and hardship together. This also means that it’s very clear that each of them has a purpose within the unit.
Hannibal is the leader and everyman in a sense, Murdock is the pilot and backup, B.A. is the muscle, Face is the con-man. That doesn’t mean the roles aren’t occasionally interchangeable or they don’t have other jobs or abilities, because they absolutely do, but at a very basic level, they all have a job and a place and it works well within the dynamic.
Then we get to season 5 and several things happen. First, the tone is different from the outset, the stakes are higher, there’s not so many fun missions or lightheartedness. The team isn’t just helping out the little guy anymore, they’re following orders from a man none of them seem to really respect, and doing jobs that none of them really seem to want to be doing.
At the beginning, through the trial, we really get to see the team’s loyalty to each other on display. This is great. But while the stakes remain high through the season, the dynamics go through a shift.
Starting, I think, with Frankie. First, we see Hannibal taking Frankie under his wing, almost as a mentor (a dynamic that we’ve most often seen between Face and Hannibal in the past).
We’ve never heard of this guy, suddenly Hannibal trusts him so we’re supposed to trust him. This MIGHT have worked if it was handled a little differently. As it is, it feels cheap and contrived. (especially since Frankie is just really full of himself from the first introduction)
Murdock was right when he pulled Frankie aside and told him “It’s my team, not our team.”
So Frankie is taken into the team as a fifth member. The problem is, there’s no place for him within the cohesive unit that we’ve been presented with for the past four years.
And since there’s no real place for him, it became necessary to create one. The issue is that his place tends to overlap A Lot with Face’s. From his skillset to his relationship with the other characters - particularly Hannibal.
The other additions to the team in the past (Amy for example) have added their own skillset/perspective/etc. They added something that the others couldn’t. Which I just felt wasn’t the case for Frankie.
We have scenes where Face is teaching him to pick a lock or to scam people, which at first is a little endearing. Like, okay, Face gets to teach someone else the ‘tricks of the trade,’ if you will. But very quickly, we start to get scenes where it’s just Frankie doing all these things that Face always handled.
Frankie is redundant, and the narrative makes no attempt to give him his own niche. This leaves Face as a redundancy himself.
And to be fair, it’s not even just Frankie, it’s the rest of the team too. ‘The Spy Who Mugged Me’ is a great example of that. And, objectively, I like this episode. It’s a fun story and it’s neat to see Murdock taking on a role that’s so opposed to the one he usually has.
But once again, it is Face’s role; one that he’s not being allowed to fill, which leaves him basically as an extra.
And here we do see quite a strong reaction from Face, after Murdock leaves him out on the balcony all night (I love Murdock but I just want to shake him for this tbh). He hasn’t been allowed to fulfill his role on the team, and then when he’s completely removed from the equation, nobody even notices. Might just be my interpretation but he feels sort of reserved this whole season. Like he’s drifting a little bit, with no reassurance that he really is vital to the operation of the team. Something that I think he needs more than any of the others.
He tries to leave in season 5. Something he’s done once before, though the circumstances were different.
This is an interesting decision, because it means he’s giving up the pardon, despite being the one constantly looking for the normal life it would provide.
That being said, I personally don’t think he ever intended to actually leave. I think we were seeing him at the end of his rope, realizing that this isn’t quite what he wanted, and this was, in a way, an act of desperation. To see if his team would try and stop him, or to see if they would follow him. What he was proposing was basically to go back to the way things were. Being on the run, helping people THEY wanted to help, instead of performing glorified chores for Stockwell, and watching his place on the team be given over to an outsider.
B.A. said early in the series that Face would be in jail if it wasn’t for Hannibal, and I think this is absolutely true. Face is the most vocal about wanting a normal life, but I think he’s the one least suited to it in many ways. He’s never had a normal life. I don’t think he would know how to stop. He enjoys it, just like the rest of them do.
With Frankie there, I think he probably recognized that he was potentially replaceable and that, if they get the pardons, he might lose his team for good.
I got the sense that they were all in a sort of survival mode in the last season. They cut it really close with the trial and their ‘executions’ and then they’re offered a chance at the pardons. I got the sense of “none of us are happy about it, but we’re going to suck it up and make the best of it because what other choice do we have?” Maybe Hannibal realized he could have got them all killed and that’s still a very real possibility, so the focus now HAS to be on getting the pardons, and he’ll deal with the fallout later (Face, Murdock’s mental state, etc.). Unfortunately, that means we have the team at a low point in many ways.
Now, I have my own headcanons about what happened after the finale (which I will either make a post about at some point or write a fanfic about), but I think at some point, the balance these characters has is pushed completely off kilter, forcing them (Hannibal mainly) to take a step back and evaluate where they are and what needs to change. Recognizing that their operation worked because their dynamic worked, not just as a team but really as a family, and that maybe the pardons aren’t really worth all the trouble they’ve caused.
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