Due South: Manhunt
Aug. 23rd, 2007 03:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyDue South 1.3, "Manhunt"
Original airdate: Oct. 6, 1994
Favorite line:
RAY: How's it going?
FRASER: I need your help, Ray.
RAY: Does it involve domestic animals?
FRASER: ... Not that I'm aware.
RAY: Then I'm your man.
The name of the game is daddy issues.
This truth is only going to become more self-evident as we proceed, as are the Hamlet analogies, but having set things up in the pilot with Fraser's dead father, betrayed and killed by his close friend (whom we will learn in "Bird in the Hand" (DS 2.4) Fraser wished was his father), the show now spins out another father-analogue, not merely Robert Fraser's friend, but his partner. Frobisher also gives Fraser a piece of his father he hadn't had before, the story of the wallet which Fraser made as a child and his father used until it started to fall apart, and kept using, and went back to find when he lost it.
The episode goes to a great deal of trouble to establish likeness between Frobisher and Fraser; Frobisher's daughter tells Fraser: "You're just like my father. You could track a man five hundred miles over sheer ice, but put either of you within arm's length of a woman and you're completely lost. And put you behind a desk, and you die." Later, Geiger will stab Fraser in the leg just as he stabbed Frobisher. Frobisher's anger at Fraser's offer of help--Look. I'm Buck Frobisher, you little pissant. I've taken more men down than you've ever met. The day I take help from a boy like you is the day I put this [gesturing with gun] to my own head.--is exactly the anger of a man, aging but still proud, forced to accept help from his son. And notice that Frobisher doesn't accept Fraser's help until he can do it on his own terms.
Also, Frobisher has a Mountie mask he hides behind just as much as Fraser does. Frobisher as we first meet him, tired and defeated and angry in his ugly hotel room, is not the same Frobisher we see in later episodes--or in this episode once he's back in his (rented) dress uniform. The uniform is a way for Frobisher, as much as for Fraser, to conceal imperfections and doubts and fallibility. And a way for the show to shift from quite serious drama back into its own surreal world of semi-farce. (Later episodes will undercut the stability of the dress uniform as a genre marker, but in this episode, the uniform is a shield.) And Fraser and Frobisher, once they're both in uniform, understand each other perfectly They know how to relate to each other; they're speaking the same language--which Ray emphatically does not speak.
FROBISHER: One week ago, that man in there stole my self-respect. At least, I let him steal it. Now I want him to know I'm taking it back. Now. I'm going in alone.
FRASER: I understand.
RAY: You understand? Let me suggest another interpretation to you. That is the stupidest reason I've ever heard in my life.
FROBISHER: All right. I won't be long.
FRASER: Oh. One thing. If we should happen to feel that he's also stolen something from us ... ?
FROBISHER: Well, you come, too.
FRASER: Good.
Fraser and Frobisher are performing Mountie-ness, and everybody--even Ray--is much more comfortable than they were when they didn't have those guidelines to follow.
This is one of the few episodes in which the villain isn't motivated by money. Revenge, pure and simple, and there's nothing Capra-esque about it. Again, as with the pilot, evil comes to Chicago from Canada and has to be excised (I'm assuming that Geiger is Canadian because, despite the fact that his killing spree started in Michigan, he's jailed in Canada.) Also, Ray's reaction--And this guy's coming to MY city?--emphasizes Geiger as something foreign.
Another thematic thing that Frobisher brings is the chance for a meta-commentary on partnership, through the elder Fraser's journals. Frobisher and Fraser Sr. will continue to be a touchstone of sorts for Fraser's relationships with his two Rays, and Fraser Sr.'s definition of friendship offered in this episode--there's a very easy way to define friendship. A friend is someone who won't stop until he finds you--and brings you home--suddenly woke up and resonated with me in a lot of different ways. Because one of the things that's really up for grabs in this show is the idea of "home." The other is what it means to be "lost." In the pilot, when Ray can't find where he left his car, Fraser consults his compass: "32 degrees south." Later, Ray literally brings Fraser home, to the Vecchio house, and then follows Fraser home, again literally, to Fraser Sr.'s cabin. In this episode, as Fraser and Dief are leaving Frobisher's hotel, Fraser says to Dief, "Think you can find our way home?" and although he's talking about the apartment on West Racine, the question resonates up and down, and along all four seasons. Home and friendship and what it means to be lost.
Original airdate: Oct. 6, 1994
Favorite line:
RAY: How's it going?
FRASER: I need your help, Ray.
RAY: Does it involve domestic animals?
FRASER: ... Not that I'm aware.
RAY: Then I'm your man.
The name of the game is daddy issues.
This truth is only going to become more self-evident as we proceed, as are the Hamlet analogies, but having set things up in the pilot with Fraser's dead father, betrayed and killed by his close friend (whom we will learn in "Bird in the Hand" (DS 2.4) Fraser wished was his father), the show now spins out another father-analogue, not merely Robert Fraser's friend, but his partner. Frobisher also gives Fraser a piece of his father he hadn't had before, the story of the wallet which Fraser made as a child and his father used until it started to fall apart, and kept using, and went back to find when he lost it.
The episode goes to a great deal of trouble to establish likeness between Frobisher and Fraser; Frobisher's daughter tells Fraser: "You're just like my father. You could track a man five hundred miles over sheer ice, but put either of you within arm's length of a woman and you're completely lost. And put you behind a desk, and you die." Later, Geiger will stab Fraser in the leg just as he stabbed Frobisher. Frobisher's anger at Fraser's offer of help--Look. I'm Buck Frobisher, you little pissant. I've taken more men down than you've ever met. The day I take help from a boy like you is the day I put this [gesturing with gun] to my own head.--is exactly the anger of a man, aging but still proud, forced to accept help from his son. And notice that Frobisher doesn't accept Fraser's help until he can do it on his own terms.
Also, Frobisher has a Mountie mask he hides behind just as much as Fraser does. Frobisher as we first meet him, tired and defeated and angry in his ugly hotel room, is not the same Frobisher we see in later episodes--or in this episode once he's back in his (rented) dress uniform. The uniform is a way for Frobisher, as much as for Fraser, to conceal imperfections and doubts and fallibility. And a way for the show to shift from quite serious drama back into its own surreal world of semi-farce. (Later episodes will undercut the stability of the dress uniform as a genre marker, but in this episode, the uniform is a shield.) And Fraser and Frobisher, once they're both in uniform, understand each other perfectly They know how to relate to each other; they're speaking the same language--which Ray emphatically does not speak.
FROBISHER: One week ago, that man in there stole my self-respect. At least, I let him steal it. Now I want him to know I'm taking it back. Now. I'm going in alone.
FRASER: I understand.
RAY: You understand? Let me suggest another interpretation to you. That is the stupidest reason I've ever heard in my life.
FROBISHER: All right. I won't be long.
FRASER: Oh. One thing. If we should happen to feel that he's also stolen something from us ... ?
FROBISHER: Well, you come, too.
FRASER: Good.
Fraser and Frobisher are performing Mountie-ness, and everybody--even Ray--is much more comfortable than they were when they didn't have those guidelines to follow.
This is one of the few episodes in which the villain isn't motivated by money. Revenge, pure and simple, and there's nothing Capra-esque about it. Again, as with the pilot, evil comes to Chicago from Canada and has to be excised (I'm assuming that Geiger is Canadian because, despite the fact that his killing spree started in Michigan, he's jailed in Canada.) Also, Ray's reaction--And this guy's coming to MY city?--emphasizes Geiger as something foreign.
Another thematic thing that Frobisher brings is the chance for a meta-commentary on partnership, through the elder Fraser's journals. Frobisher and Fraser Sr. will continue to be a touchstone of sorts for Fraser's relationships with his two Rays, and Fraser Sr.'s definition of friendship offered in this episode--there's a very easy way to define friendship. A friend is someone who won't stop until he finds you--and brings you home--suddenly woke up and resonated with me in a lot of different ways. Because one of the things that's really up for grabs in this show is the idea of "home." The other is what it means to be "lost." In the pilot, when Ray can't find where he left his car, Fraser consults his compass: "32 degrees south." Later, Ray literally brings Fraser home, to the Vecchio house, and then follows Fraser home, again literally, to Fraser Sr.'s cabin. In this episode, as Fraser and Dief are leaving Frobisher's hotel, Fraser says to Dief, "Think you can find our way home?" and although he's talking about the apartment on West Racine, the question resonates up and down, and along all four seasons. Home and friendship and what it means to be lost.
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Date: 2007-08-24 04:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-25 07:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-31 03:03 pm (UTC)Interestingly enough, Fraser's character was, in the original script, going to be called Frobisher, but the network didn't like the name. So, the fact that Buck has Fraser's name indicates how deeply the author felt the commonalities between them. Also, of course, Frobisher was one of the original white explorers beyond the Arctic circle, in I believe Elizabethan times? I could be wrong, but I do know that he captured the first so called "eskimo" (I hate that word) and dragged the poor man back as a captive to be gawked at by Europeans. There was a great deal of debate as to whether or not the people of the world were truly human (sons of Adam) or whether they were spawned by Lilith.
Anyway, I digress... the name Frobisher marks Buck's character as being someone who explores dangerous territories, someone who belongs to a court, someone who captures and tracks and maps.
It's not a nice name... to be honest, if it were my name I'd consider changing it, though there aren't many people nowadays who would know or care about it. But it's a very interesting name, and it's interesting to me that it's a secret shared connection between Buck and Fraser, as though on some level Buck actually was Fraser's father.