Due South: Pizza and Promises
Aug. 25th, 2007 09:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyDue South 1.5, "Pizza and Promises"
Original airdate: Oct. 20, 1994
Favorite line:
FRASER: Stupid rookie mistake
RAY: What d'you mean?
FRASER: These last two blocks, I've been tracking a Lhasa Apso.
RAY: You've been tracking a Lhasa Apso?
FRASER: I know. If word of this gets back to the Territories, I'll never live it down.
RAY: Mounties can be so cruel.
FRASER: You can't imagine.
Muchas gracias, btw, to everyone who has commented. It gives me warm fuzzies to know that people are enjoying these posts.
I am developing a sneaking suspicion that somebody involved with the writing of Due South was a major Tony Curtis fan. "Some Like It Red" (DS 2.12) is, of course, bouncing off of Some Like It Hot, and Fraser himself has a great many similarities with my favorite Tony Curtis character, the Great Leslie in The Great Race*, particularly his effect on women (which Leslie accepts with a great deal more panache--and gusto--than poor Fraser ever manages), his impeccable heroism, and his unnatural cleanliness. And, in this particular episode, his pronunciation of the word "au-to-mo-bile."
Does this mean anything? Hell no. But it amuses me.
::
Fraser is, of course, the master of the passive-aggressive guilt trip, but the thing about his relationship with Ray Vecchio is that he doesn't even need to be. Ray does all the work himself:
[in the Riv]
FRASER: That's odd.
RAY: What's that?
FRASER: Oh, it's probably nothing.
RAY: Oh no. I am not getting involved in this one, Fraser. Unlike you, I refuse to feel guilty about something beyond my control.
FRASER: No, I understand Ray. I understand fully.
RAY: Good. [Ray pulls out] I mean, the kid should've got insurance! I'm not gonna turn Chicago upside down just to justify your twisted sense of honor.
FRASER: Oh, I don't expect you to. Every individual must follow their own moral code.
RAY: What's that supposed to mean?
FRASER: Just what I said, Ray. You're right. You have no responsibility here. Look, why don't you just let me off. Then you can go home.
RAY: Fine.
[Ray pulls over]
[Fraser gets out]
FRASER: Thanks.
RAY: I'm going!
FRASER: Good night, Ray.
[Ray drives off]
[Ray comes back]
RAY: Forty-seven thousand cars are stolen each year in this city. How're you gonna find one?
FRASER: I don't think you want to know, Ray.
RAY: You're right, I don't. Good night.
FRASER: Good night.
[Ray drives off]
[Ray comes back]
RAY: Okay. How?
FRASER: When the Inuit go fishing, Ray, they don't look for the fish.
RAY: I hate myself.
[Ray turns off the Riv and gets out]
This Ray is all bark and very little bite--there are notable exceptions, but never with Fraser. (Ray Kowalski is going to be a different matter.) And he will, in fact, follow Fraser through Chicago all night and still be with him when he finds Dief and the Comet.
This episode is right back to the theme of people pretending to be something they're not, of going undercover. (Wave to Kowalski, everybody.) "Rule number one of undercover work," Ray tells Fraser, "if you don't believe it, they don't believe it." Tex Markles says, "Most people come in here, give me a line of bull, trying to convince me they're something they're not." He's in fact pleased by Fraser's transparent honesty--although we should note that that's only because he doesn't ask the right questions and because Fraser may not be able to lie, but he can obfuscate with the best of them.
Fraser's problem, I think, is that he has no idea how to be anybody but himself. The only lies he tells as Miss Fraser in "Some Like It Red" are told by appearance--as he in fact explains to Melissa. But being a used car salesman, pretending to be someone who wouldn't pick up litter, is beyond him.
"You're trustworthy, aren't you, Billy Bob?" Tammy Markles asks him, and he replies desperately, "I'm trying not to be." (Flash forward to both Janet Morse and Denny Scarpa.) But he can't do it.
But at the same time--because things with Fraser are never that simple--this episode also features a resurgence of what I've been calling his Batman voice. In the tracking scene (where it kicks in around "I don't think you want to know, Ray") it seems to be a cover for the fact that most of his mind is somewhere else. Batman is the voice of Fraser's autopilot. But it also manifests in the scene with Lenny:
LENNY: Things always come back around and around and around.
FRASER: You know, Lenny, I'm a man who believes in destiny, but it's a destiny of your own choosing. Just because a trail leads one way doesn't mean you can't cut your own path.
LENNY: Looks like mine leads right over a cliff.
FRASER: Cliffs are for climbing, Lenny. That's why God gave us grappling hooks.
[Lenny gives Fraser a WTF? look]
There are several things going on here. One is that Lenny has just articulated a motif of the show: things always do come back around and around and around for Fraser. And for his Rays. Most obviously, it's foreshadowing Victoria, but there are plenty of other examples. (Gerard!) Secondly, there's an echo here of the advice Fraser tells us his father gave him back in the pilot: "Never follow a man over a cliff." And thirdly, there's the fact that the Batman voice seems to be very fond of platitudes--slightly whacked platitudes even--and giving advice and generally behaving like Robert Fraser.
Fraser feels that his father was the perfect Mountie. I've already associated the Batman voice with the performance of Mountie-ness. So my tentative conclusion is that one of the places the Batman voice emerges is when Fraser is trying, consciously or unconsciously, to emulate his father.
---
*The fact that I imprinted on this movie at a very early age may explain a great deal about my sense of humor, especially my taste for slapstick and semi-surreal goofiness.
ETA: One other thing ...
I got distracted by the character stuff and forgot to comment on the clever thing they're doing genre-wise.
Fraser being an amazing tracker: parareal, feeding into the Natty Bumppo stereotype.
Fraser being able to track Dief by scent-markings: surreal
Fraser being misled by a Lhasa Apso for two blocks: the premise taken to its logical conclusion--coming out the other side of the surreal into the realism of the contrareal. (The strongest contrarealism is the kind that uses strict realism on its strictly unreal subjects.)
Original airdate: Oct. 20, 1994
Favorite line:
FRASER: Stupid rookie mistake
RAY: What d'you mean?
FRASER: These last two blocks, I've been tracking a Lhasa Apso.
RAY: You've been tracking a Lhasa Apso?
FRASER: I know. If word of this gets back to the Territories, I'll never live it down.
RAY: Mounties can be so cruel.
FRASER: You can't imagine.
Muchas gracias, btw, to everyone who has commented. It gives me warm fuzzies to know that people are enjoying these posts.
I am developing a sneaking suspicion that somebody involved with the writing of Due South was a major Tony Curtis fan. "Some Like It Red" (DS 2.12) is, of course, bouncing off of Some Like It Hot, and Fraser himself has a great many similarities with my favorite Tony Curtis character, the Great Leslie in The Great Race*, particularly his effect on women (which Leslie accepts with a great deal more panache--and gusto--than poor Fraser ever manages), his impeccable heroism, and his unnatural cleanliness. And, in this particular episode, his pronunciation of the word "au-to-mo-bile."
Does this mean anything? Hell no. But it amuses me.
::
Fraser is, of course, the master of the passive-aggressive guilt trip, but the thing about his relationship with Ray Vecchio is that he doesn't even need to be. Ray does all the work himself:
[in the Riv]
FRASER: That's odd.
RAY: What's that?
FRASER: Oh, it's probably nothing.
RAY: Oh no. I am not getting involved in this one, Fraser. Unlike you, I refuse to feel guilty about something beyond my control.
FRASER: No, I understand Ray. I understand fully.
RAY: Good. [Ray pulls out] I mean, the kid should've got insurance! I'm not gonna turn Chicago upside down just to justify your twisted sense of honor.
FRASER: Oh, I don't expect you to. Every individual must follow their own moral code.
RAY: What's that supposed to mean?
FRASER: Just what I said, Ray. You're right. You have no responsibility here. Look, why don't you just let me off. Then you can go home.
RAY: Fine.
[Ray pulls over]
[Fraser gets out]
FRASER: Thanks.
RAY: I'm going!
FRASER: Good night, Ray.
[Ray drives off]
[Ray comes back]
RAY: Forty-seven thousand cars are stolen each year in this city. How're you gonna find one?
FRASER: I don't think you want to know, Ray.
RAY: You're right, I don't. Good night.
FRASER: Good night.
[Ray drives off]
[Ray comes back]
RAY: Okay. How?
FRASER: When the Inuit go fishing, Ray, they don't look for the fish.
RAY: I hate myself.
[Ray turns off the Riv and gets out]
This Ray is all bark and very little bite--there are notable exceptions, but never with Fraser. (Ray Kowalski is going to be a different matter.) And he will, in fact, follow Fraser through Chicago all night and still be with him when he finds Dief and the Comet.
This episode is right back to the theme of people pretending to be something they're not, of going undercover. (Wave to Kowalski, everybody.) "Rule number one of undercover work," Ray tells Fraser, "if you don't believe it, they don't believe it." Tex Markles says, "Most people come in here, give me a line of bull, trying to convince me they're something they're not." He's in fact pleased by Fraser's transparent honesty--although we should note that that's only because he doesn't ask the right questions and because Fraser may not be able to lie, but he can obfuscate with the best of them.
Fraser's problem, I think, is that he has no idea how to be anybody but himself. The only lies he tells as Miss Fraser in "Some Like It Red" are told by appearance--as he in fact explains to Melissa. But being a used car salesman, pretending to be someone who wouldn't pick up litter, is beyond him.
"You're trustworthy, aren't you, Billy Bob?" Tammy Markles asks him, and he replies desperately, "I'm trying not to be." (Flash forward to both Janet Morse and Denny Scarpa.) But he can't do it.
But at the same time--because things with Fraser are never that simple--this episode also features a resurgence of what I've been calling his Batman voice. In the tracking scene (where it kicks in around "I don't think you want to know, Ray") it seems to be a cover for the fact that most of his mind is somewhere else. Batman is the voice of Fraser's autopilot. But it also manifests in the scene with Lenny:
LENNY: Things always come back around and around and around.
FRASER: You know, Lenny, I'm a man who believes in destiny, but it's a destiny of your own choosing. Just because a trail leads one way doesn't mean you can't cut your own path.
LENNY: Looks like mine leads right over a cliff.
FRASER: Cliffs are for climbing, Lenny. That's why God gave us grappling hooks.
[Lenny gives Fraser a WTF? look]
There are several things going on here. One is that Lenny has just articulated a motif of the show: things always do come back around and around and around for Fraser. And for his Rays. Most obviously, it's foreshadowing Victoria, but there are plenty of other examples. (Gerard!) Secondly, there's an echo here of the advice Fraser tells us his father gave him back in the pilot: "Never follow a man over a cliff." And thirdly, there's the fact that the Batman voice seems to be very fond of platitudes--slightly whacked platitudes even--and giving advice and generally behaving like Robert Fraser.
Fraser feels that his father was the perfect Mountie. I've already associated the Batman voice with the performance of Mountie-ness. So my tentative conclusion is that one of the places the Batman voice emerges is when Fraser is trying, consciously or unconsciously, to emulate his father.
---
*The fact that I imprinted on this movie at a very early age may explain a great deal about my sense of humor, especially my taste for slapstick and semi-surreal goofiness.
ETA: One other thing ...
I got distracted by the character stuff and forgot to comment on the clever thing they're doing genre-wise.
Fraser being an amazing tracker: parareal, feeding into the Natty Bumppo stereotype.
Fraser being able to track Dief by scent-markings: surreal
Fraser being misled by a Lhasa Apso for two blocks: the premise taken to its logical conclusion--coming out the other side of the surreal into the realism of the contrareal. (The strongest contrarealism is the kind that uses strict realism on its strictly unreal subjects.)
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no subject
Date: 2007-08-25 07:59 pm (UTC)Count me in as one more person who's finding your DS posts fascinating. :D
no subject
Date: 2007-08-25 10:48 pm (UTC)I promptly had to go to Amazon.co.uk to buy The Virtu and The Mirador in hardcover to express my appreciation of your awesomeness. *grin*
Really looking forward to your commentry on Victoria's Secret!
no subject
Date: 2007-08-26 08:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-26 03:28 pm (UTC)Just wanted to post a quick note to say how much I am enjoying reading your pieces on Due South. We've just watched season 1 again recently and have the other two seasons ready to start soon!
(I posted a brief thought about the series a little while ago - the fact that in many ways Due South is actually a very cleverly disguised superhero series. There is more than a little bit of Superman in Fraser - but interestingly, no Clark Kent.)
Due South as Superman
Date: 2007-08-29 06:16 pm (UTC)I have been lurking and really enjoy the Due South discussion. Completely surprised that other people actually loved the series too!
bookzombie-
But Frasier *is* Clark Kent! Clark Kent perfectly willing to believe that *anybody* could be Superman, if they were pure of heart and purpose. (Even Clark Kent never thought that)
Aside- bookzombie what a great moniker! I am still looking for one, and am truly envious of that.
ktm
no subject
Date: 2007-09-01 08:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-03 07:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-31 03:23 pm (UTC)Which, of course, it does at various points...
Oooh, I love this analysis.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-31 03:39 pm (UTC)That's true, but as you discuss elsewhere, "himself" is not who he thinks it is. He believes himself to be Mountie, defines himself by his job, by his back story (I first came to Chicago... killers of my father... liaison officer... Canadian consulate...) He hits those markers hard... he's someone who seeks justice, he is defined by work, by ethnicity (alien in Chicago) etc etc.
But we know (and he fears) that he is NOT supermountie. He's found the killers of his father, and he may be Canadian, working for the consulate, but the unexplored reasons for his remaining in Chicago are that he's persona non grata, expunged and expelled from his native Canada, despised by the RCMP, only tolerated when he's in a foriegn country. They don't define him as Mountie. His Mountie construct is purely personal, harking back to that child's picture of his father on horseback which Fraser finds amongst his father's belongings, way back in the pilot. Life disappoints Fraser, so he reconstructs it, his own self disappoints Fraser, so he reconstructs it. He really doesn't know how to be anybody else, because to be anybody else... like himself perhaps, would scare him witless. Perhaps literally.
So, when his facade cracks all manner of darknesses bleed out. We learn, for example, that he doesn't actually love going to work just to do paper work and stand sentry, and be the consulate's whipping dog. He gleefully takes the day off when Victoria comes around, and you get the feeling that he's been wanting to pull a sickie for years. We learn, for example, that he doesn't like living as he does. How many times do people comment on his apartment... 'you live like this?' And Frannie's wordless criticism, when she comes around and decorates. And Fraser's final commentary on it, when he has amnesia. "I live like this? Am I being punished?" Which begs the question... why is he punishing himself, and for what?
Of course he doesn't want to be supermountie, with no material or emotional needs, of course he doesn't want to be nothing but work and duty. And of course the uniform itches... the whole situation itches. But he doesn't know how to be anyone else... so he puts up with it. Even when it's killing him.