Due South: "The Man Who Knew Too Little"
Sep. 19th, 2007 09:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyDue South 1.14, "The Man Who Knew Too Little"
Original airdate: Feb. 9, 1995
Favorite line::
DANNY "THE BULL" BROCK: If you two don't shut up, I'm pulling the car over right now, and I'll shoot you both.
Warning: spoilers. (Also? Parentheses.)
The Man Who Knew Too Much is a pair of Hitchcock movies (1934 and 1956, and I'm not a Hitchcock buff, so I have no idea what's going on with that--and how nice to see you again, Mr. Hitchcock! You might as well sit down and get comfy, because you're in this show for the long haul). There's also a G. K. Chesterton series of stories about the Man Who Knew Too Much, but those have nothing whatsoever to do with the Hitchcock films, and I'm inclined to regard it as a correlation without causation.
The Man Who Knew Too Little is Ian MacDonald, a compulsive liar, and the episode does a good job of forcing us to empathize without ever sympathizing with him. I find him interesting mostly as a foil for Fraser:
RAY: Fraser, this man is not your problem. He's an accused felon and a compulsive liar.
IAN: I am an innocent victim of circumstance.
RAY: Shut up. You know what your problem is, Fraser? You can't go around compulsively telling people the truth. They just don't want to hear it.
(How often does Ray say that to Fraser? "You know what your problem is?" It's almost definitional for their relationship.)
So Ian is the opposite of Fraser; Fraser's naive honesty is very much to the fore here:
FRASER: Well, I explained the situation to him, and he was extremely helpful.
RAY: Did he rent you a car?
FRASER: No. But he doesn't have any.
RAY: Whaddya mean, he doesn't have any? There's gotta be a hundred cars on this lot.
FRASER: Unfortunately, they're all reserved. I didn't realize Spiro Agnew's birthday was that widely celebrated.
[Ray heaves a sigh from his toenails]
FRASER: Also, I thought it was in November.
And again:
FRASER: I'm sure I can find someone who will lend me a car.
RAY: How many people have we asked?
FRASER: Well, basically everyone I know. It does seem rather curious that they've all decided to leave town at exactly the same time.
It finally even gets to be too much for Ian:
IAN: Do you believe everything people tell you? Huh? How do you get through a day?
RAY: [to Fraser] Did I tell you he was yanking your chain?
FRASER: My mistake.
Of course, Ian is angry partly, as Fraser has deduced, because in this instance he was telling the truth, and partly, I suspect, because Fraser is reminding him of his mother, whom he describes later as "the most gullible person in the world." The subterranean kinship between Ian and Fraser shows most in their parents: beloved but helpless mothers (one being dead and the other being, as Ian says, gullible), and absent, manipulative fathers: both Fraser and Ian grow up to be what their fathers want. Fraser's father wants a Mountie son, essentially a clone of himself. Ian's father wants a liar; Ian's compulsive lying (in a piece of psychology that's obvious, but on the other hand left mostly implied) started because his father was using him to lie to his mother.
And fathers are weirdly present in this episode, because Ray Vecchio has finally had enough:
FRASER: My father said something that's always stuck with me, Ray.
RAY: Your father never shut up, did he?
FRASER: He said, a man with no future will always run to his past.
RAY: And when did this come up, Fraser? Were you sitting around at breakfast when he came up with these things, or did he come running into your room and just blurt them out?
FRASER: Ray. There's no need to be sarcastic.
RAY: No, I'm just curious. How did he work these things into everyday conversation? Did he say, "Son, did you see the size of that moose? And by the way, a man with no future will always run to his past"?
FRASER: Ray. I'm sorry about your shoe. I thought you didn't want it anymore.
RAY: You know what my father used to say? A man without a car is nothing. And I don't want to be nothing anymore, Fraser. It's hard on my socks.
There are a couple of things going on here. One is a very genuine question about Fraser's (oh so dysfunctional) relationship with his father: what does family life look like in their family? We've seen Ray's family; it's no wonder he can't imagine it. And the ridiculousness of his scenarios emphasizes just how alien Fraser's experience of family must have been. There is no way to put Robert Fraser's aphorisms into a normal family context, and that tells us a great deal about Fraser and his loneliness. And then there's Ray's relationship with his father, and just how bitterly unhappy that relationship was.
The other thing here is Ray's relationship with his car.
Characterization for Ray Vecchio is very much a make-it-up-as-you-go-along kind of deal. (Which will be expressly NOT the case with Ray Kowalski.) Ray Vecchio--this is my theory--started out as a type: loud, cynical Chicago cop to be a foil for Benton Fraser. Fraser's got all the depth and ambiguity going in. It's thanks to David Marciano that Ray is a real person from the beginning, not just a stereotype; and thus bits of Ray's psychology tend to explode like unexpected landmines, or--if you prefer a less violent metaphor--to bloom like stop-motion flowers, all at once. (See also Zuko comma Irene.) He's been driving the Riviera since "Free Willie" (DS 1.1)--here we pause a moment to sigh over the Mercedes he's got in the pilot, as we sigh over the first Diefenbaker--but this is the first time we have been told about Ray's passion for the Riv:
FRASER: Ray, you know, I appreciate this offer, I really do, but you have some kind of special bond with this vehicle. Now, I'm not saying I understand it, but I do respect it.
RAY: Shut up before I change my mind. Now in the care and operation of this vehicle, there is one thing to remember and hold above all else. Never--I repeat, never--use the lighter. Of all the original parts in this car, it was the most difficult to replace. It took me seven years to find that lighter. And since I've owned it, it's never been depressed.
FRASER: Then how do you know it works?
RAY: I know in my soul. Do not adjust the passenger seat, open up the glove box, or use anything other than the preset radio buttons.
FRASER: I'll take good care of your car, Ray.
The thing is, Ray knows just as well as we do that Fraser is--not lying, but that he's wrong. Where in "You Must Remember This" (DS 1.11) I was very critical of Ray's relationship with Fraser, this episode testifies to the profound friendship between them. Ray knows Fraser can't be trusted with the Riv--in the same way you can't trust a baby not to have candy taken away from it--but he's prepared to give it to him anyway. And he's tested. Three times, actually. And every time he passes the test. He lets Fraser borrow the Riv; he may rip at Fraser after Ian steals the Riv, but he doesn't blame him or desert him; and when push comes to shove, Ray shoots the Riv because Fraser asks him to:
RAY: I only got one bullet left.
FRASER: That's all we're gonna need.
RAY: Yeah, if we can get 'em to line up straight.
FRASER: No, no. When I was flipping through the service manual of your car, I discovered that your gas tank is only eleven inches from your rear fender.
RAY: You opened my manual?
FRASER: Only for three seconds. Now, one bullet surely can penetrate the tank and spark an explosion.
IAN: I was right?
RAY: Yeah, luckily you're both gonna take that information to the grave.
FRASER: What we need to do is get the other two close enough to be hit by the explosion.
RAY: Well, there's two guys behind their car. Why can't I just shoot it?
FRASER: Well, I didn't read their manual, Ray.
(This is also a beautiful example of Fraser's parareality being used in service of the plot in such a way that it becomes meta. Only Fraser could flip through a service manual for three seconds and both FIND and RETAIN the critical information he's going to need--unexpectedly--later. It's the worst kind of lazy writing--the narratively convenient coincidence--except that they make it so outrageous and implausible that it becomes something else, something I love Fraser for instead of condemning the show for. Nice work if you can get it, as the song says.)
The episode sets up Ray's passion for the Riv expressly in order to force him to sacrifice it. (And, you know, I'd like to see the set up spread out over three or four episodes, but Due South does not work that way, and it's unfair to judge it as if it did. There is a difference, which critics often miss, between doing something badly and choosing not to do it. One is grounds for critique. The other is grounds for saying, "Okay, guess I'd better find another yardstick." You may argue with the text's choice, but that needs to be separate from your critique of the text, because it's unfair, purposeless, and frustrating to judge a text by rules it isn't playing with.) And we're going to see, in his relationship with the next two Rivs, that instead of interiority, Ray's psychology is externalized and projected onto his relationship with his car. (It is NOT AN ACCIDENT that the second Riv gets blown up in the same episode that Irene Zuko is introduced and killed.) This is echoed but modulated in Ray Kowalski (who has a fully developed character when he appears for the first time and thus has interiority. Ray explodes like an unexpected land-mine (e.g., Beth Botrelle), but that's part of who he is, part of his own dysfunctional psychology, not a product of the writers deciding with no warning, foreshadowing, or set up, to give Ray Vecchio, e.g., a tragic love for Frank Zuko's previously nonexistent sister.) The G.T.O. is an important symbol in Ray's relationship with his father. But. That relationship is not expressed through the car itself. It's expressed through Ray's father's incredibly awkward attempts to reach out to his son via the car.
So the Riv is an externalization of Ray Vecchio's unexpressed interior life. It is a symbol of Ray, even (as the deaths of both the second and third Rivs play up). And it shows us that Fraser is not the only one willing to martyr himself for a cause he thinks is right. Ray's causes are different, personal. Fraser will sacrifice himself for an abstraction; for Ray it's about the people he loves.
Ray will sacrifice his Riv for Fraser. Greater love hath no man.
Original airdate: Feb. 9, 1995
Favorite line::
DANNY "THE BULL" BROCK: If you two don't shut up, I'm pulling the car over right now, and I'll shoot you both.
Warning: spoilers. (Also? Parentheses.)
The Man Who Knew Too Much is a pair of Hitchcock movies (1934 and 1956, and I'm not a Hitchcock buff, so I have no idea what's going on with that--and how nice to see you again, Mr. Hitchcock! You might as well sit down and get comfy, because you're in this show for the long haul). There's also a G. K. Chesterton series of stories about the Man Who Knew Too Much, but those have nothing whatsoever to do with the Hitchcock films, and I'm inclined to regard it as a correlation without causation.
The Man Who Knew Too Little is Ian MacDonald, a compulsive liar, and the episode does a good job of forcing us to empathize without ever sympathizing with him. I find him interesting mostly as a foil for Fraser:
RAY: Fraser, this man is not your problem. He's an accused felon and a compulsive liar.
IAN: I am an innocent victim of circumstance.
RAY: Shut up. You know what your problem is, Fraser? You can't go around compulsively telling people the truth. They just don't want to hear it.
(How often does Ray say that to Fraser? "You know what your problem is?" It's almost definitional for their relationship.)
So Ian is the opposite of Fraser; Fraser's naive honesty is very much to the fore here:
FRASER: Well, I explained the situation to him, and he was extremely helpful.
RAY: Did he rent you a car?
FRASER: No. But he doesn't have any.
RAY: Whaddya mean, he doesn't have any? There's gotta be a hundred cars on this lot.
FRASER: Unfortunately, they're all reserved. I didn't realize Spiro Agnew's birthday was that widely celebrated.
[Ray heaves a sigh from his toenails]
FRASER: Also, I thought it was in November.
And again:
FRASER: I'm sure I can find someone who will lend me a car.
RAY: How many people have we asked?
FRASER: Well, basically everyone I know. It does seem rather curious that they've all decided to leave town at exactly the same time.
It finally even gets to be too much for Ian:
IAN: Do you believe everything people tell you? Huh? How do you get through a day?
RAY: [to Fraser] Did I tell you he was yanking your chain?
FRASER: My mistake.
Of course, Ian is angry partly, as Fraser has deduced, because in this instance he was telling the truth, and partly, I suspect, because Fraser is reminding him of his mother, whom he describes later as "the most gullible person in the world." The subterranean kinship between Ian and Fraser shows most in their parents: beloved but helpless mothers (one being dead and the other being, as Ian says, gullible), and absent, manipulative fathers: both Fraser and Ian grow up to be what their fathers want. Fraser's father wants a Mountie son, essentially a clone of himself. Ian's father wants a liar; Ian's compulsive lying (in a piece of psychology that's obvious, but on the other hand left mostly implied) started because his father was using him to lie to his mother.
And fathers are weirdly present in this episode, because Ray Vecchio has finally had enough:
FRASER: My father said something that's always stuck with me, Ray.
RAY: Your father never shut up, did he?
FRASER: He said, a man with no future will always run to his past.
RAY: And when did this come up, Fraser? Were you sitting around at breakfast when he came up with these things, or did he come running into your room and just blurt them out?
FRASER: Ray. There's no need to be sarcastic.
RAY: No, I'm just curious. How did he work these things into everyday conversation? Did he say, "Son, did you see the size of that moose? And by the way, a man with no future will always run to his past"?
FRASER: Ray. I'm sorry about your shoe. I thought you didn't want it anymore.
RAY: You know what my father used to say? A man without a car is nothing. And I don't want to be nothing anymore, Fraser. It's hard on my socks.
There are a couple of things going on here. One is a very genuine question about Fraser's (oh so dysfunctional) relationship with his father: what does family life look like in their family? We've seen Ray's family; it's no wonder he can't imagine it. And the ridiculousness of his scenarios emphasizes just how alien Fraser's experience of family must have been. There is no way to put Robert Fraser's aphorisms into a normal family context, and that tells us a great deal about Fraser and his loneliness. And then there's Ray's relationship with his father, and just how bitterly unhappy that relationship was.
The other thing here is Ray's relationship with his car.
Characterization for Ray Vecchio is very much a make-it-up-as-you-go-along kind of deal. (Which will be expressly NOT the case with Ray Kowalski.) Ray Vecchio--this is my theory--started out as a type: loud, cynical Chicago cop to be a foil for Benton Fraser. Fraser's got all the depth and ambiguity going in. It's thanks to David Marciano that Ray is a real person from the beginning, not just a stereotype; and thus bits of Ray's psychology tend to explode like unexpected landmines, or--if you prefer a less violent metaphor--to bloom like stop-motion flowers, all at once. (See also Zuko comma Irene.) He's been driving the Riviera since "Free Willie" (DS 1.1)--here we pause a moment to sigh over the Mercedes he's got in the pilot, as we sigh over the first Diefenbaker--but this is the first time we have been told about Ray's passion for the Riv:
FRASER: Ray, you know, I appreciate this offer, I really do, but you have some kind of special bond with this vehicle. Now, I'm not saying I understand it, but I do respect it.
RAY: Shut up before I change my mind. Now in the care and operation of this vehicle, there is one thing to remember and hold above all else. Never--I repeat, never--use the lighter. Of all the original parts in this car, it was the most difficult to replace. It took me seven years to find that lighter. And since I've owned it, it's never been depressed.
FRASER: Then how do you know it works?
RAY: I know in my soul. Do not adjust the passenger seat, open up the glove box, or use anything other than the preset radio buttons.
FRASER: I'll take good care of your car, Ray.
The thing is, Ray knows just as well as we do that Fraser is--not lying, but that he's wrong. Where in "You Must Remember This" (DS 1.11) I was very critical of Ray's relationship with Fraser, this episode testifies to the profound friendship between them. Ray knows Fraser can't be trusted with the Riv--in the same way you can't trust a baby not to have candy taken away from it--but he's prepared to give it to him anyway. And he's tested. Three times, actually. And every time he passes the test. He lets Fraser borrow the Riv; he may rip at Fraser after Ian steals the Riv, but he doesn't blame him or desert him; and when push comes to shove, Ray shoots the Riv because Fraser asks him to:
RAY: I only got one bullet left.
FRASER: That's all we're gonna need.
RAY: Yeah, if we can get 'em to line up straight.
FRASER: No, no. When I was flipping through the service manual of your car, I discovered that your gas tank is only eleven inches from your rear fender.
RAY: You opened my manual?
FRASER: Only for three seconds. Now, one bullet surely can penetrate the tank and spark an explosion.
IAN: I was right?
RAY: Yeah, luckily you're both gonna take that information to the grave.
FRASER: What we need to do is get the other two close enough to be hit by the explosion.
RAY: Well, there's two guys behind their car. Why can't I just shoot it?
FRASER: Well, I didn't read their manual, Ray.
(This is also a beautiful example of Fraser's parareality being used in service of the plot in such a way that it becomes meta. Only Fraser could flip through a service manual for three seconds and both FIND and RETAIN the critical information he's going to need--unexpectedly--later. It's the worst kind of lazy writing--the narratively convenient coincidence--except that they make it so outrageous and implausible that it becomes something else, something I love Fraser for instead of condemning the show for. Nice work if you can get it, as the song says.)
The episode sets up Ray's passion for the Riv expressly in order to force him to sacrifice it. (And, you know, I'd like to see the set up spread out over three or four episodes, but Due South does not work that way, and it's unfair to judge it as if it did. There is a difference, which critics often miss, between doing something badly and choosing not to do it. One is grounds for critique. The other is grounds for saying, "Okay, guess I'd better find another yardstick." You may argue with the text's choice, but that needs to be separate from your critique of the text, because it's unfair, purposeless, and frustrating to judge a text by rules it isn't playing with.) And we're going to see, in his relationship with the next two Rivs, that instead of interiority, Ray's psychology is externalized and projected onto his relationship with his car. (It is NOT AN ACCIDENT that the second Riv gets blown up in the same episode that Irene Zuko is introduced and killed.) This is echoed but modulated in Ray Kowalski (who has a fully developed character when he appears for the first time and thus has interiority. Ray explodes like an unexpected land-mine (e.g., Beth Botrelle), but that's part of who he is, part of his own dysfunctional psychology, not a product of the writers deciding with no warning, foreshadowing, or set up, to give Ray Vecchio, e.g., a tragic love for Frank Zuko's previously nonexistent sister.) The G.T.O. is an important symbol in Ray's relationship with his father. But. That relationship is not expressed through the car itself. It's expressed through Ray's father's incredibly awkward attempts to reach out to his son via the car.
So the Riv is an externalization of Ray Vecchio's unexpressed interior life. It is a symbol of Ray, even (as the deaths of both the second and third Rivs play up). And it shows us that Fraser is not the only one willing to martyr himself for a cause he thinks is right. Ray's causes are different, personal. Fraser will sacrifice himself for an abstraction; for Ray it's about the people he loves.
Ray will sacrifice his Riv for Fraser. Greater love hath no man.
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no subject
Date: 2007-09-19 07:47 pm (UTC)MKK
no subject
Date: 2007-09-19 08:06 pm (UTC)Hurrah!
no subject
Date: 2007-09-20 02:29 am (UTC)AND (spoiler alert) I LOVE how in "One Good Man," Ray and Fraser's relationship is explicitly contrasted with his relationship with his ex-wife, again expressed through the car. Ray was unwilling to let his ex-wife drive the car OR to not buy the car with their savings, whereas now he's grown and realizes that both people's desires and dreams must be considered and given space in a relationship, as evidenced by his willingness to once again sacrifice the Riv to make Fraser happy.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-27 03:41 am (UTC)