Are You Feeling Charlie & Emma’s Chemistry in ‘The Firm You Hold’?

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Company You Keep series premiere.]

Why can’t Charlie (Milo Ventimiglia) and Emma (Catherine Haena Kim), whose sparks take them from a resort bar to his penthouse suite again to the bar and to the pool (for 36 hours that do finally embody intercourse), simply keep the place they’re, doing what they’re, being collectively, indefinitely? As a result of, as she places it at one level to him throughout The Firm You Hold, “fantasy is one factor, actuality’s one other.”

These are two individuals who slip within the fact — “I’m a felony,” he says, and he or she replies, “I’m CIA” — amidst their preliminary flirtation on the bar, every arising with wild backstories for themselves. Thus far, these necessary particulars don’t play too large of a task but it surely’s solely a matter of time. As an alternative, the premiere is about them attending to know one another and introducing their lives aside with the tease of her quickly getting on his path as a con man.

They cross paths at a resort bar after each run into some unhealthy luck with love — his fiancée Tina (Bridget Regan) makes off with the household’s rating, her boyfriend’s been dishonest on her for months and asks “are you able to actually say you’re in love with me?” — and discover they not solely take pleasure in one another’s firm but in addition have fairly a bit else in widespread: They deceive their companions, one another, and themselves and get one another on the subject of their households (the fundamentals, not less than). Oh, they usually undoubtedly have chemistry. However a day (and a few) in a resort mattress, bathtub, and pool doesn’t a relationship make (but) and each have actuality to get again to.

Actually, it’s whereas each are busy with different elements of their lives — he and his household on a con, she out with hers — that they cross paths once more, this time at a gala. They dance, however in addition they, once more, lie. He’s not truthful about why he’s there, whereas when she has to depart, it’s for a piece factor. Nonetheless, they’re trustworthy about how they really feel about their households. For him, who he’s is so wrapped up in who they’re it’s arduous for him to see previous it typically. In the meantime, she’s been defining herself towards her household her complete life.

However what Emma doesn’t know is that Charlie’s sister Birdie (Sarah Wayne Callies) sees them collectively and confronts him when she steps away for a name. After what occurred with Tina, Birdie warns him to not let her down once more. And so when Emma returns to him, Charlie turns down her provide to make plans, repeating right here line about fantasy and actuality from their time collectively. She asks if he can actually say he didn’t take into consideration her and doesn’t assume one thing’s there, and he says he didn’t (a lie, he was distracted at one level by pictures of her on his cellphone) and he doesn’t earlier than strolling away.

Later, after the job is completed, when Birdie brings up the woman in entrance of their dad and mom, Charlie shrugs it off. “That is what I’m good at,” he says. However Leo (William Fichtner) and Fran (Polly Draper) refuse to let him assume that method. Fairly than retiring as they’d deliberate whereas he sticks round to fall on the sword for the household — “It’s our fault you went inside, needed to survive that hell. We’re on this spot at present due to our decisions, not yours.” — they’re all in or all out. As a result of, as Fran tells her son, this may’t be his complete world.

ABC/Eric McCandless

And perhaps it gained’t. Charlie then goes to see Emma (who brushes off his query about accidents she sustained on the job) and tells her, “my life, my household, it’s difficult. The extra you already know about me, the quicker you’ll need to run.” However he does need to take her on that date and admits he lied the evening earlier than and there’s something between them. She kisses him. However as a lot as they’d desire to stay the lies, we all know that may’t final.

The premiere additionally introduces a significant foe of each Charlie and his household and Emma and the CIA: an Irish crime syndicate, particularly Patrick Maguire (Timothy V. Murphy) and Daphne (Felisha Terrell). Charlie and his household attempt to con Patrick with the sale of a warehouse; they pose as FBI and clear the syndicate out, however then Tina makes off with the cash, abandoning her engagement ring. “You don’t know what comes subsequent” certainly, as she tells Charlie about their supposed fortunately ever after they’d had deliberate.

To make up for what they misplaced, Charlie seems to be for a rating and units his eye on a pastor responsible of cash laundering. All it takes is a little bit of undercover work, a faux mugging, and duping the pastor into giving them a briefcase along with his cash, and the con is profitable … or so that they assume.

In the meantime, Emma’s been monitoring a drug trafficking ring in Europe about to make a push into the U.S., and that leads her to Maguire — and a photograph of his meet with Charlie (unidentifiable, his again to the digicam). In a joint operation, the FBI is simply too desperate to get Maguire as he’s boarding a aircraft, so Daphne will get away, with Emma getting harm in her try to pursue. But it surely’s Emma who will get the intel on Daphne: She grew up with a single mom and has a regulation diploma, with Maguire bringing her in as a guide. She’s the brains behind the operation, that means arresting Maguire doesn’t change something.

Emma’s proper, as a result of Daphne goes to Charlie to demand the cash he (Tina) stole ($10 million, plus an addition $5 million, for the price of getting Maguire out of jail). How does he know that she gained’t take the cash then deal with them? “That’s the issue with mendacity for a dwelling: You by no means actually know who you may belief, do you?” she factors out. Getting that type of cash will take time, however Daphne advises Charlie to get to what he does finest: stealing as a result of he’s not going to have the ability to lie his method out of this one.

So what did you consider The Firm You Hold and Charlie and Emma’s chemistry? Tell us within the ballot under.

The Firm You Hold, Sundays, 10/9c, ABC