#as she returns to her paper on traumatic stress lmao what is life | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

alisarb · 4 years

Text

Thoughts on Frenchie and Kimiko (deleted scene + 2x04)

Okay so tHINGS have happened since we last saw each other, folks, so let’s get cracking immediately.

Spoilers for The Boys season 2 until 2x04, stop reading if you haven’t seen it yet!

Before I delve into last episode’s events, I’d like to talk a bit about two deleted scenes that I think still play a vital part into context for the kiss scene in 2x04. Get for a LONG meta post.

The events that lead up to that kiss are influenced by everything we saw last season and that I talked about in a previous post: Kimiko opening and sharing her trauma with The Boys because she trusts Frenchie, Frenchie telling her and only her about his dad and his traumatic childhood, how their relationship is defined by freedom and absolute liberty to choose without judgement, etc.

Then, on season 2, we see that Kimiko has begun to interact with the other members of the gang a lot more (Hughie approaches her from behind to praise her on her writing practice and she smiles), and that everything has been going a bit roughly since Butcher left, holing up in the back of a store with some sketchy guys that Frenchie knows.

It’s obvious from the beginning of the season that Frenchie has been stressed and frustrated since everyone is highly wound up, but the moment Kimiko goes to him to show him the origami piece he stops to pay her attention and smiles.

One of the main points of this season is that Kimiko is finding a voice, a way to communicate. Unfortunately, another main point of this is that Frenchie is struggling to understand her.

He doesn’t get what the paper means, or why she keeps talking about “a boy and a girl.”

This boy, as it turns out, is her brother, who was also taken from the terrorist group into America and injected with Compund v, turning him into a Supe like her sister.

The conversation between the two of them is very telling. At one point, she asks if it hurt when they injected him, and he says: “I wanted to die.” She replies: “Me too”, and goes on to say that Vought had turned her into a monster.

A few scenes earlier, Kimiko goes into the store with Frenchie and brutally murders one of the employees. Frenchie looks completely horrified at the excessive force and shocked at Kimiko for “returning to her old habits”, in a way, but then realizes that he belongs to the Shining Light Liberation Army.

These two things help us understand her personality: when we first meet her, she’s locked in a cage and is completely feral and savage (understandably so). She’s only able to form a bond with Frenchie, and uses violence towards people without much remorse.

However, this season she doesn’t seem so prone to it, and I think the change in her character is what surprises Frenchie at the store.

Now, before we go into 2x04, let’s talk about the deleted scenes.

The first deleted scene: Cherie

I’ve tried to record the scene but to no avail, so I’ll describe it for those who don’t have Prime Video since I can’t find it uploaded anywhere else.

The scene is presumably set at the beginning of 2x02. We see M.M working on his dollhouse when suddenly some voices can be heard arguing in the background: Frenchie and Cherie. Frenchie sounds angry and tense and Cherie talks in a playful, passive-aggresive manner.

Frenchie: You’re getting on my nerves. You need to shut up.

Cherie (laughing, playful): You shut up. Just fucking say the truth then.

Frenchie (tense): Bye-bye...

Cherie (now visibly angry too): That’s all I’m asking. Say the fucking truth.

Frenchie (shouting): Okay, you can stop right there, okay?

Cherie: You wanna fuck her? Fuck her! Just (I didn’t get that part lmao)

Frenchie: We are not-! I would never sleep with her!

Cherie: Why!? Then what does she do, then? I mean, I see the way you look at her!

Frenchie: It’s difficult, it’s difficult to explain, okay? She’s special!

Okay, I won’t transcribe the whoooole conversation because IT’S LONG but I’ll describe the rest and quote the final part:

Cherie gets offended because, oh, Frenchie can fuck her hard and rough just fine but she’s too “magic and special.” Then Frenchie tries to explain (through C.I Joe characters wtf Frenchie) that him and Kimiko are like soulmates: they can “read each other thoughts”, and they think and feel the same, they are the same.

This mirrors what Karen Fukuhara, who plays Kimiko, said in a recent interview (posted a week before 2x04) when asked about the nature of their relationship:

“It could be love, romantic love. It could be like paternal love, because in the comics, she is portrayed as a younger girl, I think, when you first see her. Or it could be something deeper than friendship, something that we call “twin flame,” something that ties two people together kind of like a magnet, soulmates, if you will.”

Cherie grabs him and asks him how does he know what the fuck she’s thinking if she doesn’t say a word. Maybe he’s just projecting what he wants to believe into her for this very reason (VERY TELLING OF THE KISS SCENE).

Then, she turns around to leave and runs right into Kimiko. Cherie touches a strand of her hair and tells her: “I don’t think you’re too magic to fuck” before she leaves.

Kimiko looks at Frenchie confused as fuck, ofc.

The lovely @daddy-winter asked me what I thought because they’ve been announcing for a while now that their characters will drift apart this season, and I think this scene is key in understanding that.

Their relationship has been interpreted in many ways throughout the show, and this scene marks it clearly as romantic, as it shows Cherie being jealous or at least annoyed with how much attention he’s giving Kimiko. This also resembles a scene in S1 when she demands to know when he’ll be with her again. Then it takes a turn when Frenchie tells her he’d never sleep with her (which seemes to be disproved when he later tries to kiss her).

The way I see it, this scene was too open-ended, and at the same time, gave away too much of what’ll happen with them. I also don’t think it’s truly fitting with Cherie’s character since she later learns Frenchie tried to kiss Kimiko and is not excessively annoyed nor surprised (CHERIE KNEW FROM THE BEGINNING AND I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL).

We don’t see all the glimpses into their relationship and everyday life. In fact, when S2 begins we’re taken already into present day with no clarifications as to how much time passed (it doesn’t seem like more than a few weeks) or what has happened in that time (except for Butcher disappearing and them hiding with the gun smugglers). But we get this scene, which, as another user commented, is incredibly romantic in the way Frenchie straight-up affirms he would never sleep with Kimiko.

And now we get to the dreaded 2x04 and the terribly terribly timed kiss.

2x04 and dumbass Frenchie’s fucked up timing

The third episode ended with the death of Kimiko’s brother by Stormfront (played brilliantly by Aya Cash, btw) and her staring at the TV with boiling anger and grief.

The fourth episode begins pretty much the same way, and it reminds us of an earlier version of Kimiko: disheveled, huddled up under a table and staring at the TV in a dark room.

Frenchie, who was first introduced as a character way too comfortable with taking pills, stops getting high in S1 (coincidentally when he meets Kimiko). Then, all of a sudden, we start 2x04 with him snorting coke and getting high as a kite (Butcher’s words, not mine). The stress of the situation could be triggering enough on its own, but as we talked about at the beginning of this post, he’s seen relaxing instantly when Kimiko is around. However, the minute they start drifting away even the slightlest (them not being able to communicate, her isolating herself to grieve her brother) he feels the need to consume again.

That’s how he finds her: high, tense, and emotionally destroyed. An explosive mix, to say the least. He goes up to her to comfort her, but does the stupidest thing he could do: he goes in for a kiss. Of course, she pushes him away swiftly, and is shocked and angry.

The timing is terrible: she’s grieving her brother and the last thing she needs is to deal with this right now, especially when the show has already established that she’s emotionally fragile and not ready for more than slight contact (and just with Frenchie).

Once again referring to Karen’s interview, when asked about her brother’s death and whether or not it will be a setback in her character’s development:

“But then because of this loss, it’s going to create rifts within her relationships, especially with Frenchie. In a way, it’s not necessarily Frenchie’s fault or anything he does. Actually, scratch that. He does do something. But Frenchie’s not the source of the pain, you know? The source of the pain is the death, and she doesn’t deal with it. I mean, nobody deals with death the right way. The rest of the season is her grappling with how to deal with loss and grief”.

Later in the episode, Frenchie goes to Cherie (for the first time in presumably a long time) and they sleep together. Afterwards, she asks him to tell her what’s wrong and he admits to trying to kiss Kimiko. He affirms he was just “trying to make her feel better.” I’ve seen some discussions about how this means the relationship could still be platonic and he didn’t know any other way to do it, but I want to offer a different approach.

We already know Kimiko is inexperienced. I mean, it’s not explicitly said but we can all assume she probably doesn’t know a lot about normal, functional relationships apart from the one with her brother. Everything she’s known outside of that is violence, abuse and cruelty.

But we forget Frenchie is just as inexperienced.

They both come from abuse, and even though he prides himself in being succesful with women, Frenchie has never been in love. He doesn’t know how to properly love someone or communicate with them. Yes, he has had sex, but he doesn’t know anything about intimacy (sexual or otherwise). Kimiko was the one to show him, and the only way he can think of to comfort her is sexually, as it seems to be the thing that works for him (that, and drugs). This is confirmed when he later goes to sleep with Cherie to drown his sorrows, probably still high or drunk or both.

His face in Cherie’s bed as he tries to convey his feelings is heartbreaking. He just doesn’t know how to function in such a situation, and he’s terrified that he destroyed their bond by going too fast.

There’s another deleted scene set in 2x04 where Kimiko is in her room watching Stormfront’s speech and she finds a mouse wandering about. She feeds him, as it probably reminds her of her brother (her nickname for him was Mouse because he used to feed mouses in the camp that didn’t have a mom). Then later, she tries to feed it again and finds it dead under her bed, caught in a mousetrap. She breaks down and goes to Stormfront’s rally as Frenchie keeps pounding her door, pleading her to let him in. He hears the noise and forcibly opens the door, only to realize she’s gone.

The next we see of them is already at Stormfront’s rally, where he saves her from literally killing herself. As Frenchie says, she will not survive. Stormfront is more powerful and dangerous and she’s probably too weak anyway to fight her again. She looks at him and it’s clear there’s no resentment from before in her eyes. Kimiko feels safe with Frenchie, and she feels love for him:

Look at this and tell me they don’t love each other, I DARE YOU

But her grief and her vengeance are too much of an obstacle right now. She needs to leave and sort it out. It’s a clever, intelligent move for her character and for once I’m so glad the writers are aware that female characters are more than their romantic interest. She gets annoyed at him when he tells her “let’s go home”, for the simple reason that he’s not understanding her. He does it out of pure concern for her, but also comprehensible selfishness: he loves her and doesn’t want her to die. But by doing that, he’s belittling her need to get revenge for her brother. In this matter, Kimiko feels alone for the first time, and it mirrors the S1 scene where he offers her a choice to leave and find her brother. Now, he just can’t bear to see her go (of course now she’s in a lot more danger, but still).

This episode is so perfectly described in a post by @pineapplesperhaps: it is about love. From the title (Nothing Like It in the World) to the whole plot: the women talking about it and relationships in a ‘When Harry met Sally’ style (about communication, which is sorely lacking between them this season); every character’s story this episode is marked by love in this, in all of its forms: Hughie and Starlight, Butcher and Becca, Homelighter and milk. And then himself. Thinking about it, let’s not bring that up ‘cause it was too disturbing. Also please stop writing scenes about Homelander and milk I can’t bear it anymore wRITERS-

Karen mentions in the interview that there’s an episode this season about Frenchie’s background story that will also cause another shift (not rift, mind you) in their relationship. I’m so excited about it.

I think their drifting apart was inevitable and necessary to a degree for them to be able to come together in a healthy way. Kimiko is learning who is she as a free person, as a Supe, as a member of The Boys, and it’s hard to do so while figuring out the complex relationship with Frenchie. I don’t think she didn’t want him to approach her romantically, but the timing, as everyone has pointed out, was terrible to say the least. They are both new to this kind of bond and need to find the common ground necessary to get closer.

I am hopeful that this rift will only make their bond stronger and help them move forward with their relationship. The show has already established that Frenchie feels attraction towards Kimiko (as much as you want to comfort someone you don’t kiss them if you see them as a little sister or a daughter; besides, in the deleted scene with Cherie, she asks him if he sees her as those things and he denies it), and I think it’s pretty clear those feelings are returned, just expressed differently. The way all their physical interactions in the show have been initiated by Kimiko prove this.

To conclude this essay about the pairing that will probably kill me, I want to recommend a fanvid of them with a song that perfectly describes them: x&y by Coldplay. The lyrics talk about a lover the singer tries to comfort after a terrible loss but being ultimately unable to do so.

Trying hard to speak And fighting with my weak hand Driven to distraction It's all part of the plan When something is broken And you try to fix it Trying to repair it Anyway you can

I dive in at the deep end You become my best friend I wanna love you But I don't know if I can I know something is broken And I'm trying to fix it Trying to repair it Anyway I can

This is the video, it’s perfect and beautiful.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk and please keep up the fanfiction, you’re the ones that keep me going till Friday arrives.

#frenchie #kimiko #frenchie x kimiko #kimiko x frenchie #the boys #the boys season 2 #the boys spoilers #the boys spoilers season 2 #i will literally die next week #when i tell you i GASPED when he went in for a kiss #like i knew he was into her fuck holy fuck the writers are not playing #we all know kimiko is the one that's going to kiss him next time

50 notes · View notes