Due South: Chinatown
Aug. 26th, 2007 10:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyDue South 1.6, "Chinatown"
Original airdate: Oct. 27, 1994
Favorite line:
RAY: Do you do this a lot? Try to solve cases by gnawing on ammunition?
FRASER: Well, I admit, it is a calculated risk, Ray, but I am a professional. This is not for amateurs.
We're going to see this structure again--honest small businessman crosses mob boss, Fraser and Ray get involved, etc. We are, in fact, going to see it in "The Deal," which makes Ray's prejudiced remarks about the Chinese a particularly ironic piece of foreshadowing. The only thing they understand is a show of force, Ray? Indeed.
The A plot is supported by what I wouldn't so much call the B plot as the B theme, which is the triangular and complementary relationships between Fraser, Ray, and Diefenbaker.
It's quite clear that Fraser considers Ray and Diefenbaker equally his friends; he'd be just as upset at having to leave Ray outside the restaurant as he is at leaving Dief. Later, when Fraser says in exasperation, "I can't have the both of you sulking," there's no insult involved--and Ray doesn't take it that way. Fraser has two friends, one of whom is a wolf. That's all there is to it as far as he's concerned. And as we slide further and further into surrealism, the show leaves it completely open as to whether Fraser is crazy, or whether he's entirely correct.
While Ray doesn't entirely buy Dief as an equal, he also doesn't entirely not buy it. The hints of rivalry between Ray and Dief are very much the rivalry between friends for the attention of a friend they share.
RAY: He should feel excluded. He's a dog!
[Dief grumbles]
FRASER: Well, there you go. Now you've done it. Satisfied?
RAY: [smirking] Strangely, yes.
Or, later, Ray's evocation of Roy Rogers: "Why do I feel more and more like Dale Evans? Hey, Roy! Wait for me!" Dale Evans was Roy Rogers' wife--but of course his most famous sidekick is Trigger.*
What I think is interesting is the way that Ray also seems to view his relationships with Dief and Fraser as very much the same. I've been thinking about this from a different angle, because I've been thinking about Ray's constant refrain that Fraser is humiliating him, and how different it is from Ray Kowalski's ostensibly similar complaint. But Kowalski complains when Fraser contradicts him or undercuts him in front of witnesses; Vecchio complains because Fraser gets him into situations that affront him. Very much the same way the owner of a large and boisterous dog may complain about the mortification of the situations the dog drags him into. "Okay. Have you humiliated me enough for one night, or do we need to cruise the neighborhood so you can smell out a robbery?"
Or, one might be tempted to think, the way a man would complain about the behavior of his wolf.
FRASER: Y'know, you let a wolf save your life, they make you pay and pay and pay.
RAY: That's why I don't own a wolf.
Notice that what Fraser's talking about--letting a wolf save your life--and what Ray's talking about--owning a wolf--are not the same thing. (The only time we've seen Dief on a leash thus far, it's when Ray is walking him in "They Eat Horses, Don't They?")
Fraser's tracking abilities, based as they are on scent and hearing, are not unwolf-like. Ray complains about the things he puts in his mouth (in very much the same way, I might add, that I remonstrate with the cats for eating dust bunnies). The first supply closet incident offers a moment of what, if this were a formal literary analysis, I'd call conflation:
RAY: I'm sitting in a dark closet with a Mountie, being licked by a deaf wolf ... That was the wolf, wasn't it?
FRASER: Yes, Ray.
RAY: Oh thank God.
The almost subtextual suggestion: on some level, Ray is afraid he can't tell Fraser and Diefenbaker apart.
Ray definitely sees Fraser as a force of nature, something unaccountable. More than human, less than human, or both at once. And he's doing his best to be friends with that force of nature, but you can't blame him if he finds it hard going.
---
*I've only seen one movie with Roy Rogers and Trigger in it--Son of Paleface. ("A four-legged friend," sings Roy, "a four-legged friend, He'll never let you down, He's honest and faithful right up to the end, That wonderful one, two, three, four-legged friend.") Trigger is definitely anthropomorphized and considerably smarter than anyone else in the movie except possibly Jane Russell. There's a fantastic scene in which Trigger and Bob Hope fight over the bed covers. So the parallel between Roy-Dale-Trigger and Fraser-Ray-Diefenbaker holds up pretty well.
Original airdate: Oct. 27, 1994
Favorite line:
RAY: Do you do this a lot? Try to solve cases by gnawing on ammunition?
FRASER: Well, I admit, it is a calculated risk, Ray, but I am a professional. This is not for amateurs.
We're going to see this structure again--honest small businessman crosses mob boss, Fraser and Ray get involved, etc. We are, in fact, going to see it in "The Deal," which makes Ray's prejudiced remarks about the Chinese a particularly ironic piece of foreshadowing. The only thing they understand is a show of force, Ray? Indeed.
The A plot is supported by what I wouldn't so much call the B plot as the B theme, which is the triangular and complementary relationships between Fraser, Ray, and Diefenbaker.
It's quite clear that Fraser considers Ray and Diefenbaker equally his friends; he'd be just as upset at having to leave Ray outside the restaurant as he is at leaving Dief. Later, when Fraser says in exasperation, "I can't have the both of you sulking," there's no insult involved--and Ray doesn't take it that way. Fraser has two friends, one of whom is a wolf. That's all there is to it as far as he's concerned. And as we slide further and further into surrealism, the show leaves it completely open as to whether Fraser is crazy, or whether he's entirely correct.
While Ray doesn't entirely buy Dief as an equal, he also doesn't entirely not buy it. The hints of rivalry between Ray and Dief are very much the rivalry between friends for the attention of a friend they share.
RAY: He should feel excluded. He's a dog!
[Dief grumbles]
FRASER: Well, there you go. Now you've done it. Satisfied?
RAY: [smirking] Strangely, yes.
Or, later, Ray's evocation of Roy Rogers: "Why do I feel more and more like Dale Evans? Hey, Roy! Wait for me!" Dale Evans was Roy Rogers' wife--but of course his most famous sidekick is Trigger.*
What I think is interesting is the way that Ray also seems to view his relationships with Dief and Fraser as very much the same. I've been thinking about this from a different angle, because I've been thinking about Ray's constant refrain that Fraser is humiliating him, and how different it is from Ray Kowalski's ostensibly similar complaint. But Kowalski complains when Fraser contradicts him or undercuts him in front of witnesses; Vecchio complains because Fraser gets him into situations that affront him. Very much the same way the owner of a large and boisterous dog may complain about the mortification of the situations the dog drags him into. "Okay. Have you humiliated me enough for one night, or do we need to cruise the neighborhood so you can smell out a robbery?"
Or, one might be tempted to think, the way a man would complain about the behavior of his wolf.
FRASER: Y'know, you let a wolf save your life, they make you pay and pay and pay.
RAY: That's why I don't own a wolf.
Notice that what Fraser's talking about--letting a wolf save your life--and what Ray's talking about--owning a wolf--are not the same thing. (The only time we've seen Dief on a leash thus far, it's when Ray is walking him in "They Eat Horses, Don't They?")
Fraser's tracking abilities, based as they are on scent and hearing, are not unwolf-like. Ray complains about the things he puts in his mouth (in very much the same way, I might add, that I remonstrate with the cats for eating dust bunnies). The first supply closet incident offers a moment of what, if this were a formal literary analysis, I'd call conflation:
RAY: I'm sitting in a dark closet with a Mountie, being licked by a deaf wolf ... That was the wolf, wasn't it?
FRASER: Yes, Ray.
RAY: Oh thank God.
The almost subtextual suggestion: on some level, Ray is afraid he can't tell Fraser and Diefenbaker apart.
Ray definitely sees Fraser as a force of nature, something unaccountable. More than human, less than human, or both at once. And he's doing his best to be friends with that force of nature, but you can't blame him if he finds it hard going.
---
*I've only seen one movie with Roy Rogers and Trigger in it--Son of Paleface. ("A four-legged friend," sings Roy, "a four-legged friend, He'll never let you down, He's honest and faithful right up to the end, That wonderful one, two, three, four-legged friend.") Trigger is definitely anthropomorphized and considerably smarter than anyone else in the movie except possibly Jane Russell. There's a fantastic scene in which Trigger and Bob Hope fight over the bed covers. So the parallel between Roy-Dale-Trigger and Fraser-Ray-Diefenbaker holds up pretty well.
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no subject
Date: 2007-08-26 09:22 pm (UTC)"Well, the moral of this story is, of course,
Don't love your mother, pardner, save it for your horse.
I guarantee you will be filled with great remorse
If you give your mom the love you should be saving for your horse!"
no subject
Date: 2007-08-28 01:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-31 04:19 pm (UTC)