Due South: You Must Remember This

[truepenny]

Due South 1.11, "You Must Remember This"
Original airdate: Jan. 5, 1995
Favorite line:
FRASER: Ray, I don't mean to press the point, but we're standing behind a 1971 Buick Riviera. They, on the other hand, are hurtling down a hill at roughly forty-seven miles an hour in a six-ton steel-plated military weapons carrier.
RAY: Works for me.
FRASER: Very good.

(I've been forgetting to put up the spoiler warning. So, you know. Spoilers.)



This is far from being my favorite episode, but it's a great deal more interesting in hindsight, when it can be looked at in conjunction with "Victoria's Secret." The story of Ray and Suzanne Chapin is clearly foreshadowing the return of Victoria Metcalf into Fraser's life, and not only because this is the episode where Fraser starts to talk about her.

Significantly, he's talking to himself.

(If there is a moment in the entire run where I hate Ray Vecchio, it's this one:

RAY: How often in a lifetime does this type of thing happen? I mean, has it ever happened to you?
FRASER: Well, I ... uh ...
RAY: No, of course not. You're a Mountie. What does a Mountie know about women?

I know Ray doesn't know what he's dismissing, but that cavalier reduction of Fraser to The Mountie is still cruel. And thoughtlessly cruel, which is almost worse. Ray is remarkably self-centered throughout the episode, which is one of the things the series does believe about love--or more accurately limerence: it makes a person incredibly self-absorbed and selfish.)

This episode also starts asking questions that the series is going to continue to circle and sniff and gnaw on--much like Diefenbaker with a package of chips--about love. What is it, how do you recognize it, what do you do with it? And one of the most interesting things is that the answers this episode apparently gives are lies. Or at least deeply problematic.

One problem with the definition offered is brought up in the episode itself; the fact that it's a definition by men and for men and a definition that considers women as an alien species. "Women don't have signs," Gardino says to Elaine. "Men have signs. Women have biological imperatives. It's true. I read it." And Elaine very rightly identifies this as nonsense: "Jeez. Gardino, it's no wonder your wife left you for a pot-roast." One of the things I like about Due South is that while the male characters may not always be aware that women are human beings just as they are, the show is always aware of it. Fraser is always aware of it.

So that's one big problem with how Ray conceptualizes love: it's all about how the man feels about the woman. That's not love (any more than it's love when it's all about how the woman feels about the man). The show's going to circle back to this point in "Strange Bedfellows," where the flaws in this Ray's arguments are exposed by that Ray's actions. Notice that the story Ray concocts to explain Suzanne's actions makes her dependent on him: "That's why she's sending me signals, Fraser. She wants me to rescue her." Where in reality, Suzanne doesn't need Ray, or anybody else, to rescue her, and wouldn't even if she wasn't an ATF agent.

The other problem with Ray's view of love is that it's heavily invested in the love-at-first-sight model. Love-at-first-sight is something the show is conflicted about, because its format and genre tend to demand that love-at-first-sight work, but it doesn't. (I'll have more to say about this when we get to Fraser's various "romances," but in a nutshell, my feeling is that they aren't so much romance as Fraser's inability to say "no.") And this is where Victoria starts to loom very large, because her relationship with Fraser is entirely a matter of love-at-first-sight, and that love-at-first-sight is a lie. Or, at least, an insufficient truth. Victoria may love Fraser, but she hates him more. And what Fraser feels for her is, I think, at least as much about his alienation, his loneliness and tiredness, as it is about her. I can also see a thematic echo in Diefenbaker's obsession with fast food in this episode: immediate gratification, but it's bad for you. Empty calories instead of nourishment.

We don't know yet, in this episode, that Victoria was a criminal, that she begged Fraser not to take her in and he did anyway, so we won't realize until later what Ray's arc in this episode is setting up.

RAY: I find her, I gotta arrest her, too. End of story.
FRASER: Well, yes.

But that's not the end of the story. Not for either of them. Not for Fraser because Victoria doesn't accept that as the end of the story, and not for Ray, because he does let Suzanne go--or tries to. And seems almost more betrayed by the discovery that she's a fed than he was by believing she was an arms dealer.

My theory about the two Rays is that Ray Vecchio is a foil for Fraser and Ray Kowalski is a mirror, and this may be the clearest moment to see Ray Vecchio as a foil. When faced with the same situation, he chooses--I don't want to call it "love," because calling it "love" is buying into the fairytale that Ray is trying to tell, so let's stay with limerence. He chooses limerence over duty. Fraser, of course, chose duty. And not "of course" because he's "a Mountie. What does a Mountie know about women?" But because he's Fraser and he understands duty and honor as more than just words.

(GARDINO: What are we gonna do, arrest ourselves?
RAY: No, but he will.
FRASER: I'm sorry, I would feel honor-bound.)

Fraser's ethics are not situational, and that can be funny, but the show also understands that it is very very hard.

Comments

[kelliem.livejournal.com]

One of the things I like about Due South is that while the male characters may not always be aware that women are human beings just as they are, the show is always aware of it. Fraser is always aware of it.

Yes! This is very, very true, and it is one of the reasons the later ep, "Some Like it Red" works for me when ... um. Rats. I can't make the rest of this comment without being spoilery. Oh well.

Fraser's ethics are not situational, and that can be funny, but the show also understands that it is very very hard.

Boy, you really are good at this. You just keep nailing point after point about the show, things that I've always seen but never quite been able to articulate.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Rats. I can't make the rest of this comment without being spoilery.

It's okay to be spoilery, behind truepenny's warning. We're up for it. Go on, what were you going to say?

[kelliem.livejournal.com]

See below. :)

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I concur with desperance. I've already watched all four seasons--spoilery is perfectly fine down here behind the warning.

[kelliem.livejournal.com]

Okay, let's see if I can express myself coherently before 8am with minimal caffeine intake so far. :)

Usually when a character is put in drag in a TV show, it's for yuks value. We're supposed to think it's funny and usually the humor involved is a little (or a lot) derogatory or demeaning toward women (and sometimes to the alternatively gendered or sexualitied. Yeah, I know that's not a word). In "Some Like It Red" when Fraser becomes "Ms. Fraser" that pretty much doesn't happen, aside from a few halfhearted attempts at humor from a discomfited Ray Vecchio. Ms. Fraser is not a typical guy in drag. She understand women. She respects women. She demands to be treated fairly. She connects with women in a way that Benton Fraser seems generally unable to do-- not through any fault of his own but because as an attractive, single man, he's never really taken at full value by women, but rather at 'face' value. He's valued for his face.

In a way, it's an interesting role-reversal. Usually it's the attractive woman on a show who is treated by male characters the way Fraser is treated by women. I am sure that was a deliberate choice, and it's meant to be yet another way to show us our culture from another perspective.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

See now, I'm really glad you said that...

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

What I noticed particularly in "Some Like It Red" is that they completely eschew the walking-in-heels jokes. Partly this is obviously Fraser's omnicompetence at work, but partly I think it's because they don't think drag is funny in and of itself. As you say, Ms. Fraser isn't played for laughs; the humor is all about how others react to her: the fact that neither Welsh nor Ray recognize Fraser as Fraser, NOR recognize him as a man in drag, even though those shoulders are a dead giveaway. Partly, yes, that's maintaining the illusion that Paul Gross can pass as a woman, but partly it's making a perfectly serious point about what people actually notice and how much of it is based on superficial markers.

And, yes, they totally do the role-reversal thing, with Fraser getting sexually harassed, hit on, and generally objectified by every woman who sees him. (There's a country that knows what to export.) And although they never make an overt point of it, the fact that Fraser doesn't "ask for it" and has no recourse to make them stop ... is pretty much what sexual harassment is all about.

[kelliem.livejournal.com]

Great icon, btw. ;D And I love the word 'omnicompetence.' That's fantastic!

Partly, yes, that's maintaining the illusion that Paul Gross can pass as a woman, but partly it's making a perfectly serious point about what people actually notice and how much of it is based on superficial markers.

Yea verily. The show plays with that a lot, I think. And thank you for saying Fraser gets sexually harassed. I've been saying that for years.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

They're very careful to play the sexual harassment for laughs--as I think it generally gets played on TV (although I watch so little, I'm probably not qualified to say). But, yes.

(I found the icon through ds_icons, and so feel no hesitation in agreeing that, yes, it is awesome.)

[aukestrel.livejournal.com]

And when you take this ep in conjunction with Invitation to Romance, I think it sheds a lot of light on VS and on F's ... desperation in VS. Not to mention the fact that, had Suzanne not been a fed, Ray'd have been up shit creek and yet it was okay because it was for that "once in a lifetime" love. That, um, Fraser can't possibly know anything about.

Right.

I'm not sure if it's this ep or JIB that makes me angrier wrt to Ray's treatment of Fraser. It's neck and neck, that's for sure.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Romantic love turns Ray into an asshole. QED.

Of course, the way Ray treats Fraser is partly Fraser's fault. It's not fair to sell your Mountie-self as hard as you can and then be upset that your friend doesn't see through you. ("I thought I was in love once, and then later I thought maybe it was just an inner-ear imbalance.") But I think the most revealing moment in "You Must Remember This" is Fraser's confession, in which he sets aside his Mountie-self and tells the real, painful, ugly truth (I love the way they shot that scene, so that Fraser doesn't have to look at the camera either, and also so that it's almost as if he's telling the story to himself) ... and Ray is asleep.

This ties back in with the thing I was saying about "A Hawk and a Handsaw (http://truepenny.livejournal.com/538737.html)" and the importance in that story of waking up. Ray is literally not awake to who Fraser is under his Mountie-self, and he is going to have a very ugly awakening indeed come "Victoria's Secret."

[aukestrel.livejournal.com]

And - looking ahead to RWoB and The Clip Show, it often seems that Ray doesn't WANT to be awake to who Fraser is. :/

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Ray, it seems to me, has a very definite and sharply delineated comfort zone, and he is hostile to attempts to drag him outside it. (Note, though, that when he has no choice, he sucks it up and deals, as in "North." I love Ray tremendously in that episode.) The show manages a very clever irony because Fraser, who is accused of not being in this century and being the last of a breed and so on and so forth, is actually much more liberal and accepting and open-minded than Ray, who bristles with prejudices (against the Chinese in "Chinatown," against BDSM practitioners in "Chicago Holiday," etc.) and does not want to hear anything contrary to his world view. His extreme and over-the-top reaction to Fraser licking things is, I think, emblematic.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It's not fair to sell your Mountie-self as hard as you can and then be upset that your friend doesn't see through you.

...sigh. No, I suppose it isn't.

(I am catching up. Hi.)

[sasha-feather.livejournal.com]

What's the definition of "limerence"? (It's not on merriam-webster.com, and I sadly don't have access to oed.com.)

[jesse_the_k]

Limerence is the crazed (but not pathological) state of being-in-love, also called "being in lust" or "new relationship energy" or "glitter" or "infatuation" or "crushed out." It was coined by Dorothy Tennov, an independent scholar, in her 1977 book Love and Limerence: The experience of being in love, a common item on the bookshelves of 2nd wave feminists.

In an intriguing dialog with a reviewer, she's honest about the book's shortcomings and wistful about the research that didn't happen as a follow-on.

I hope her book might get a closer look 30 years later; I'm certainly goosed by truepenny's use of the word to take another read through it. Perhaps it could offer insight into that elusive state, "squee."

[sasha-feather.livejournal.com]

Thanks Jesse!

[ainsley.livejournal.com]

Thank you for writing these! I just saved this and the VS part one review to del.icio.us.

[libskrat]

Random extra comments:

* Dief's sudden junk-food jones strikes me as an ironic comment on Ray's limerence. She ain't good for ya, Ray.

* The triangulation bit is pretty much correct (though could obviously be done with immensely greater ease and accuracy today). Somebody did their homework. Also, I dig the cell phones as long as your forearm.

* Even David Marciano doesn't seem to believe Ray's limerence. He sells it when Ray's supposed to be concussed, but otherwise, nah.

* My spouse, drily, when Ray is talking about how his inamorata wants him to rescue her: "I think that's called 'confabulation.'"

* Fraser is exactly as jerkwaddy to Dief as Ray is to Fraser in this ep. I groaned at "Run out of donuts, did we?"