Due South: A Cop, a Mountie, and a Baby
Aug. 29th, 2007 05:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyDue South 1.9, "A Cop, a Mountie, and a Baby"
Original airdate: Dec. 1, 1994
Favorite line:
VINNIE: So what are you saying? The wolf's gonna eat me?
FRASER: Perhaps.
This is an episode with some serious flaws--most of which it shares, oddly enough, with All's Well That Ends Well. Simply put, Vinnie, like Bertram1, is a self-centered selfish dickhead who we are asked to believe has a 180 degree change of heart in the last act. Moreover, we are asked to believe that that change of heart is going to stick. Because otherwise, Jamie would be better off with the extremely rich people who want him.
Characters keep saying, "He'll probably be better off," in such a way that you know you're supposed to understand he won't be, but Vinnie is so massively unsympathetic--and we're not shown anything wrong with the prospective parents who are clearly desperately happy to be adopting a child2--that part of my brain keeps going, well, yeah, he probably would be. Because at the end of the episode, none of Vinnie's problems are solved. He's still unemployed, none too bright, and a complete and total jerk; he still owes Claude ten grand--and there's no suggestion that that debt isn't entirely Vinnie's own doing (i.e., nobody suggests the dice were loaded); he now has Claude severely pissed at him to boot. Vinnie's prospects are looking very bleak, and the best we can hope for is that Louise divorces his ass and gets sole custody. Which destroys the character arc the episode is trying to make us buy: that Vinnie has had a change of heart and redeemed himself.
And why did Louise sign the adoption papers? Well, unfortunately, I think the real reason is that if Louise hadn't signed the adoption papers, the episode would be over half an hour too soon. (In an episode with three--count 'em, three--musical interludes, I think it's safe to say the butter is being scraped over too much bread.) Because given Louise's character, it makes no sense. It is, in point of fact, the last thing in the world she would ever do.
So, yeah. Problems.
On the other hand, the episode is self-aware about its own sentimentality and prepared to undercut it; the little boy who gives Ray Dickensian trauma at the holding center is not the innocent waif he seems:
KID #1: How much did you get?
DICKENSIAN TRAUMA KID: Five big ones.
KID #1: He's good.
KID #2: Real good.
Which brings us very firmly back to Chicago and its operating procedures.
This is an excellent Diefenbaker episode--Dief is clearly a free agent with his own agenda and his own priorities, and yet he and Fraser work together beautifully as a team even as Fraser is insisting they can't work together at all:
VINNIE: Now you wanna get your wolf away from my kid?
FRASER: Oh. Well. That's gonna be difficult.
VINNIE: Why? Is he nuts or something?
FRASER: No, no, no. It's just, he rarely does anything I ask him. We've tried to work through it--God knows I have done my part--but it's something we can't seem to get past.
VINNIE: This is nuts, man.
FRASER: I know, I know. It's a conundrum.
The episode balances Diefenbaker's surrealism very well; they even remember to show him lip-reading "Room Six." And Fraser's refrain, "he never listens," points us toward the metaphorical meaning of Dief's literal deafness.
This episode also has one of my very favorite Fraser/Vecchio conversation:
RAY: So, what? The wolf has a thing about family values?
FRASER: Well, most wolves do. Surely you've heard stories of wolves raising children that were abandoned in the wilderness.
RAY: Those are not historical accounts, Fraser. Those are Disney movies.
FRASER: Myth springs from truth, Ray. Most wolves form very strong loyalties and will kill to defend them. I know. I've experienced it.
RAY: Really?
[Ray looks uneasily at Diefenbaker]
FRASER: Oh, it's all right. He knows you. Just keep your hands where he can see them. [Ray immediately puts his hands on the steering wheel] And make the puffin face.
RAY: I am not gonna make the puffin face.
FRASER: Make the puffin face.
RAY: I don't even know what a puffin is.
[Fraser demonstrates the puffin face]
RAY: Oh, you look ridiculous.
FRASER: No, I don't.
RAY: Oh yes you do.
Two things going on in this conversation. One is Fraser's sense of humor. Fraser often makes jokes that he's the only person in the room who gets, or even notices ("Been waiting long?" Mackenzie King asks him in "Diefenbaker's Day Off." "Actually, yes," says Fraser, who's just been tipped by a gentleman mistaking him for a doorman, "but I seem to have profited by it."), which means that most characters seem to think he doesn't have a sense of humor at all. He uses that to wind Ray up (as he also does at the end of the episode), and it fills me with delight.
The other thing going on is the idea of myth and where it comes from. Because later, we see that Fraser is becoming a myth himself:
LOUISE: They say that you believe in people. That you're the only one in the neighborhood without locks on his door.
FRASER. Well, yes, that's not entirely intentional.
RAY: Someone stole them.
The story is taking on a life of its own.
---
1There are ways to solve the problem of Bertram, but a director had better be willing to put his or her back into it.
2I suppose it's rather shallow and materialistic to treat the adoption of a child like the purchase of 10 kilos of heroin--but if there's supposed to be some kind of moral judgment there, somebody needed to go ahead and be explicit about it already.
Original airdate: Dec. 1, 1994
Favorite line:
VINNIE: So what are you saying? The wolf's gonna eat me?
FRASER: Perhaps.
This is an episode with some serious flaws--most of which it shares, oddly enough, with All's Well That Ends Well. Simply put, Vinnie, like Bertram1, is a self-centered selfish dickhead who we are asked to believe has a 180 degree change of heart in the last act. Moreover, we are asked to believe that that change of heart is going to stick. Because otherwise, Jamie would be better off with the extremely rich people who want him.
Characters keep saying, "He'll probably be better off," in such a way that you know you're supposed to understand he won't be, but Vinnie is so massively unsympathetic--and we're not shown anything wrong with the prospective parents who are clearly desperately happy to be adopting a child2--that part of my brain keeps going, well, yeah, he probably would be. Because at the end of the episode, none of Vinnie's problems are solved. He's still unemployed, none too bright, and a complete and total jerk; he still owes Claude ten grand--and there's no suggestion that that debt isn't entirely Vinnie's own doing (i.e., nobody suggests the dice were loaded); he now has Claude severely pissed at him to boot. Vinnie's prospects are looking very bleak, and the best we can hope for is that Louise divorces his ass and gets sole custody. Which destroys the character arc the episode is trying to make us buy: that Vinnie has had a change of heart and redeemed himself.
And why did Louise sign the adoption papers? Well, unfortunately, I think the real reason is that if Louise hadn't signed the adoption papers, the episode would be over half an hour too soon. (In an episode with three--count 'em, three--musical interludes, I think it's safe to say the butter is being scraped over too much bread.) Because given Louise's character, it makes no sense. It is, in point of fact, the last thing in the world she would ever do.
So, yeah. Problems.
On the other hand, the episode is self-aware about its own sentimentality and prepared to undercut it; the little boy who gives Ray Dickensian trauma at the holding center is not the innocent waif he seems:
KID #1: How much did you get?
DICKENSIAN TRAUMA KID: Five big ones.
KID #1: He's good.
KID #2: Real good.
Which brings us very firmly back to Chicago and its operating procedures.
This is an excellent Diefenbaker episode--Dief is clearly a free agent with his own agenda and his own priorities, and yet he and Fraser work together beautifully as a team even as Fraser is insisting they can't work together at all:
VINNIE: Now you wanna get your wolf away from my kid?
FRASER: Oh. Well. That's gonna be difficult.
VINNIE: Why? Is he nuts or something?
FRASER: No, no, no. It's just, he rarely does anything I ask him. We've tried to work through it--God knows I have done my part--but it's something we can't seem to get past.
VINNIE: This is nuts, man.
FRASER: I know, I know. It's a conundrum.
The episode balances Diefenbaker's surrealism very well; they even remember to show him lip-reading "Room Six." And Fraser's refrain, "he never listens," points us toward the metaphorical meaning of Dief's literal deafness.
This episode also has one of my very favorite Fraser/Vecchio conversation:
RAY: So, what? The wolf has a thing about family values?
FRASER: Well, most wolves do. Surely you've heard stories of wolves raising children that were abandoned in the wilderness.
RAY: Those are not historical accounts, Fraser. Those are Disney movies.
FRASER: Myth springs from truth, Ray. Most wolves form very strong loyalties and will kill to defend them. I know. I've experienced it.
RAY: Really?
[Ray looks uneasily at Diefenbaker]
FRASER: Oh, it's all right. He knows you. Just keep your hands where he can see them. [Ray immediately puts his hands on the steering wheel] And make the puffin face.
RAY: I am not gonna make the puffin face.
FRASER: Make the puffin face.
RAY: I don't even know what a puffin is.
[Fraser demonstrates the puffin face]
RAY: Oh, you look ridiculous.
FRASER: No, I don't.
RAY: Oh yes you do.
Two things going on in this conversation. One is Fraser's sense of humor. Fraser often makes jokes that he's the only person in the room who gets, or even notices ("Been waiting long?" Mackenzie King asks him in "Diefenbaker's Day Off." "Actually, yes," says Fraser, who's just been tipped by a gentleman mistaking him for a doorman, "but I seem to have profited by it."), which means that most characters seem to think he doesn't have a sense of humor at all. He uses that to wind Ray up (as he also does at the end of the episode), and it fills me with delight.
The other thing going on is the idea of myth and where it comes from. Because later, we see that Fraser is becoming a myth himself:
LOUISE: They say that you believe in people. That you're the only one in the neighborhood without locks on his door.
FRASER. Well, yes, that's not entirely intentional.
RAY: Someone stole them.
The story is taking on a life of its own.
---
1There are ways to solve the problem of Bertram, but a director had better be willing to put his or her back into it.
2I suppose it's rather shallow and materialistic to treat the adoption of a child like the purchase of 10 kilos of heroin--but if there's supposed to be some kind of moral judgment there, somebody needed to go ahead and be explicit about it already.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-08-31 01:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-29 04:54 am (UTC)I can believe her signing the papers six weeks before, and lying about it, but not that she can't take it back even when the police are there.
I'm pretty sure that Dief has Claude pinned until he presumably gets arrested.
(Also, I was in All's Well That Ends Well when I was fourteen. The guy playing Bertram was awful, though the Helena was pretty good. Oddly enough, when we bought our house, sixteen years later, we discovered he was living next door. Stranger than fiction.)