Who First?

In a comment in a previous blog post, Marie asked who I thought was attracted to the other first, Chance or Ilsa?  Ooo, that’s a hard one.  I think it’s pretty gradual. This isn’t cut and dried and this post became longer and longer the more I thought about it. (and this post has taken weeks to compose!)

Ilsa was enamored by the legend/mystique of Christopher Chance even before she met him. She spent 6 months learning about him and searching for him. She convinced herself she needed him.  So she was invested first, although she didn’t realize it.

And as I’ve said before, once she found him she couldn’t give him up, even when she learned up-close and personal about his past.  She is fascinated and puzzled by him (In The Wife’s Tale he didn’t stand up for himself to the wife whose husband he had killed years before, even though that husband was going to ditch his wife.  But that’s another topic… ).

I love this little coy look she gives after Chance has turned his back in The Return of Baptiste.  She often asks him point-blank if he’s worried about her.  And he always hedges.  Chance is a master at avoidance. Why is she toying with him? (sorry these Blogger uploads are such crappy quality)

from The Return of Baptiste, S2 E4

Marie mentioned the look on Ilsa’s face when Ilsa first sees Maria – and I hadn’t noticed (great catch Marie!), but oh, she has quite the expression.  For a change she doesn’t have Chance all to herself. Maybe she was expecting a 60 year old bald woman...  I think Ilsa is later mad at him because he continually backs Maria over and over even when Maria is so blatantly using him.  Is Ilsa jealous? or pragmatic?

 Of course the complication with Ilsa is her lasting loyalty to Marshall.  If they come back for another season, watch to see if her wedding rings come off.  They need to.  When she said goodbye to Winston and Ames at the end of Marshall Pucci, she seemed like a woman with a great weight lifted off her shoulders.

As for Chance, he is immediately intrigued by Ilsa – but maybe that has more to do with 6 months on an ashram without women.  The fact that he accepted her as a partner proves he is interested in more than a one episode stand.  All through Season 1 he seemed to be looking for a connection, for a soulmate.  He is our lonely hero.  Yet he has such a fight-or-flight response that it’s a miracle he doesn’t run away from Ilsa in the first episode of Season 2.

We know for sure by the time of The Trouble With Harry, he is invested.  Definitely off his A-game because Ilsa is in the thick of things.  But it’s this look after Harry accuses him of having feelings for Ilsa that is so amusing.  It’s just a subtle widening of his eyes but it’s saying volumes - of something.

from The Trouble With Harry, S2 E12

Is this a look of shock because

a)      He’s just realized, yes, he cares for Ilsa and that’s why he’s off his game?

b)      He knows he has feeling but is shocked he hasn’t covered them up well enough?

c)       He is shocked that even Harry has figured it out?

I’m leaning towards c)

Chance wouldn’t have let Ilsa kiss him if there wasn’t something there.   Of course, he is a *guy*, but he knows the difference between what’s right and wrong – after all he let Maria go and turned away from her kiss at the end of A Problem Like Maria.

Of course Winston and Guerrero have figured out there is something going on during Communication Breakdown…  Ames doesn’t get it till we see her sweet look of surprise and approval just before Chance climbs the outside of the building to go after Ilsa in Marshall Pucci.

Chance and Ilsa seem to sort out a lot in Communication Breakdown.  Ilsa knows Chance pretty well by the time they start fighting, so she knows exactly which buttons to push, but Chance learns a huge amount about Ilsa in this episode. Not that he doesn’t do his own button pushing…   He learns that she’ll tramp through the jungle in bare feet,  that she won’t accept help if she’s mad, that she’s not afraid of spiders, that she knows what it’s like to be shot, that she’s not a trophy wife and that she is perfectly capable of saving him if necessary.  She does not curl into a ball and need to be saved, even at the end of Communication Breakdown when she shoots Hector Lopez in self-defense.

I haven’t quite figured out why his anger at Ilsa over the Maria thing evaporated.  Ilsa was trying to control him – or rather she was trying to control the situation after he had failed.  But maybe she earned his respect (yet again) while they were out in the jungle.  She seems to have to do that every few episodes  – but that thought, too, is for another time.

So, I really don’t have an answer to Who First?  Chance is too enigmatic to pin down.   I may have missed something and will continue to watch for clues.

And none of this is addressing whether each of them realizes the other cares.  Of course Chance had an unfair advantage thanks to this exchange with Winston and Guerrero.

from Communication Breakdown, S2 E8

In general, the writing for these two was really good.  There wasn't a lot of on again/off again stuff the really annoys me in other shows.  So once again, thumbs up to Matt Miller for monitoring this so carefully.

So, what do you think?