Due South: They Eat Horses, Don't They?
Aug. 24th, 2007 10:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyDue South 1.4, "They Eat Horses, Don't They?"
Original airdate: Oct. 13, 1994
Favorite line:
LEGGETT: [leering after Stephanie Cabot] You know what she needs, don't you?
FRASER: Well, yes. A world where people don't value life by the pound.
This, I think, is the episode where Due South hits its stride. We have fully developed and interconnected A & B plots, we have mystery and detecting, and the surreal begins to edge out the parareal as the show's dominant mode, and it does so (this is the thing that fills me with delight) by taking Fraser's pararealism just that one step farther.
RAY: You know what really annoys me? Why am I covered in crud and you look like you just got back from a hand laundry?
FRASER: I don't know. I've always been this way.
There's also a certain amount of surreality in Fraser's early morning ride with Stehpanie Cabot through the completely deserted streets of downtown Chicago, and in the moment where one of the otherwise characterless villains, faced with Ray and Fraser's apparent demise, blurts out, "God I have this dream about dying wrapped in frozen meat." This episode is also where they begin to play openly with the meta level:
FRASER: No matter what you say, you cannot base an investigation on a theory developed from the casting of a television series.
RAY: You're just mad because I was right.
FRASER: No, I'm not mad. It just doesn't make any sense.
RAY: Oh and putting horsemeat on your nose does?
FRASER: That was different.
RAY: You're telling me.
They're not going as far as contrarealism yet, but they are certainly paving the way for it.
The serious social and emotional commentary is all in the B plot: casual institutional racism; Mrs. Gamez's difficulties with her landlord; the completely unexplained--though commented on--absence of Mr. Gamez; Fraser again making a promise it seems impossible for him to keep And the Inuit story he tells Mrs. Gamez (which it seems to me is also an alternate retelling of "Manhunt") brings the thematic question of "home" and "lost" right back into the forefront.
FRASER: ... So when his enemy finally found him, Nakuk had nothing to protect him, and he was lost.
MRS. GAMEZ: That's a sad story.
FRASER: Yes, it is.
I find it really interesting here that Fraser says Nakuk (I am totally, by the way, guessing on the spelling, and if I've got it wrong, I apologize) is lost, not killed or defeated. He's suggesting, of course, that by running Mrs. Gamez will lose herself, in the same way Buck Frobisher lost himself. But it also seems that being lost is much more final and dreadful than being killed (which will turn out to be true in another six episodes); for me, the word has something of the same resonance here that it does in Tolkien, where it becomes possibly the most terrible word in the English language.
Original airdate: Oct. 13, 1994
Favorite line:
LEGGETT: [leering after Stephanie Cabot] You know what she needs, don't you?
FRASER: Well, yes. A world where people don't value life by the pound.
This, I think, is the episode where Due South hits its stride. We have fully developed and interconnected A & B plots, we have mystery and detecting, and the surreal begins to edge out the parareal as the show's dominant mode, and it does so (this is the thing that fills me with delight) by taking Fraser's pararealism just that one step farther.
RAY: You know what really annoys me? Why am I covered in crud and you look like you just got back from a hand laundry?
FRASER: I don't know. I've always been this way.
There's also a certain amount of surreality in Fraser's early morning ride with Stehpanie Cabot through the completely deserted streets of downtown Chicago, and in the moment where one of the otherwise characterless villains, faced with Ray and Fraser's apparent demise, blurts out, "God I have this dream about dying wrapped in frozen meat." This episode is also where they begin to play openly with the meta level:
FRASER: No matter what you say, you cannot base an investigation on a theory developed from the casting of a television series.
RAY: You're just mad because I was right.
FRASER: No, I'm not mad. It just doesn't make any sense.
RAY: Oh and putting horsemeat on your nose does?
FRASER: That was different.
RAY: You're telling me.
They're not going as far as contrarealism yet, but they are certainly paving the way for it.
The serious social and emotional commentary is all in the B plot: casual institutional racism; Mrs. Gamez's difficulties with her landlord; the completely unexplained--though commented on--absence of Mr. Gamez; Fraser again making a promise it seems impossible for him to keep And the Inuit story he tells Mrs. Gamez (which it seems to me is also an alternate retelling of "Manhunt") brings the thematic question of "home" and "lost" right back into the forefront.
FRASER: ... So when his enemy finally found him, Nakuk had nothing to protect him, and he was lost.
MRS. GAMEZ: That's a sad story.
FRASER: Yes, it is.
I find it really interesting here that Fraser says Nakuk (I am totally, by the way, guessing on the spelling, and if I've got it wrong, I apologize) is lost, not killed or defeated. He's suggesting, of course, that by running Mrs. Gamez will lose herself, in the same way Buck Frobisher lost himself. But it also seems that being lost is much more final and dreadful than being killed (which will turn out to be true in another six episodes); for me, the word has something of the same resonance here that it does in Tolkien, where it becomes possibly the most terrible word in the English language.
