With the popularity of Ted Lasso, I'm genuinely just so glad that we got such a phenomenal show that has made an impact on so many people, and of course now we've also gotten the first season of Shrinking, which also knocked it out of the park.

But I still mourn Whiskey Cavalier every time I watch an episode of either of those.

There hasn't been a whole lot of tv I've actually enjoyed in the past several years, and these three feel like an absolute trifecta, but WC feels like the holy ghost at this point because there is SO MUCH of it in Ted Lasso and Shrinking-- it's so many of the same writers/directors/producers, but they're also just so similar right to their foundations. All three interrogate tv tropes and relationships (of all kinds!!!!!) and mental health through comedy, and Ted Lasso and Whiskey Cavalier actually interrogate an entire genre. I'd say that WC is more on that side than Ted Lasso even is, because although they definitely interrogate some of the tropes of sports fiction (toxic masculinity, anyone?), WC actually parodies spy fiction while playing itself as straight.

It just makes me absolutely feral to think about what more of Whiskey Cav would have looked like. A second season? A third? The development of the show from the original(-ish, one of the drafts) pilot to what was actually filmed shows so much growth and an acknowledgement that they could really work with what they had-- it turned from a show about a guy (hence the name) to a show about an entire team. Frankie took the spot as the second main character with Will once they cast Lauren Cohan (I don't think that happened before she was cast but I may be wrong) and another character was completely rewritten into Jai when Vir Das was cast. They had an entire plan for how to flip the TV trope of the will-they-won't-they relationship to a how-will-they-make-it-work relationship!!!!!! It would have been so good!!!!!! The amount of character development we got in just one season was far above and beyond anything else I've seen besides Ted Lasso and Shrinking, and honestly I think more actually happened specifically because they didn't have the assurance of more seasons (good thing they didn't assume, I guess) to build on things like the Ted Lasso Method™ but they still managed to do it without rushing it.

Honestly I feel like I could make a venn diagram of how all three of these shows all overlap and it would be hilarious. Excellent theme songs by well known artists without it feeling cheap? ✅✅✅ Excellent episodic music by well known artists also without it feeling cheap? ✅✅✅ Really well executed character development for ALL of the characters? ✅✅✅ Interrogation of tv tropes? ✅✅✅ More specifically, hilariously camp villains who still manage to take advantage of tropes to work? ✅✅ Incredibly well developed character relationships OF ALL KINDS that don't all hinge on only one romantic relationship as the centerpoint of everything? ✅✅✅ Queer characters who don't exist for the butt of a joke or solely as token queer characters? ✅✅✅ Every line is delivered with perfect comedic (or dramatic) delivery and timing? ✅✅✅

Anyway, this has been a barely coherent and very meandering way of saying that the fact that ABC put the episodes out of order really screwed things up, but Whiskey Cav really hit its stride there with the second half of season one and absolutely nailed the vibe they'd been working towards with the foundational episodes that came before them, and I just get SO ANGRY when I watch Ted Lasso and Shrinking despite the fact that they're both so good and I enjoy them so much because it makes me think about just how good a second (and third, damn it) season of Whiskey Cavalier would have been.