truepenny | Due South: The Wild Bunch

Due South, 1.15, "The Wild Bunch"
Original airdate: Feb. 16, 1995
Favorite line:
JUDGE SHERMAN: You're the cop that got Justice Powell committed to County Psychiatric.
RAY: Hey, look, just because a judge gets carried out of court on a stretcher screaming a particular detective's name--
JUDGE SHERMAN: No, no, no, no. I'm very honored. Really. Y'see, I've always wanted to know, just how many members of his immediate family did you actually indict?
RAY: Well, four, including the toddler, but that was an unfortunate error--
FRASER: Your honor, about my wolf?

This episode does not work. It's a pity, because there are things about it I like a lot (which I'll get back to in a minute), but it fails fundamentally because it's unwilling to carry either of its premises through to a logical conclusion.

Premise A: Diefenbaker is a wild animal.
Premise B: Diefenbaker is Fraser's best friend.

Under Premise A, which is the premise under which Diefenbaker is confiscated by Animal Control and sentenced to death, he does in fact have to be put to sleep, or at the least given to a zoo (I don't know the laws on these things, and what would actually happen to a wolf that bit a Chicago Animal Control Officer). If Diefenbaker is a wild animal and the world of the show is going to treat him as one, he cannot be saved. Regardless of the pet-theft ring, he's still bitten two people and is demonstrably not under control. As the judge says, "What you have here is a wild animal living in an apartment--by your own admission, has bitten more than one individual and is responsible for the death of at least one other animal. This is not Lassie!"

(Let's not even talk about the whole responsible pet ownership and why hasn't Maggie been spayed, pray tell? thing, okay? Take it as read.)

But then there's Premise B, which is the show's operating premise: that Diefenbaker is more than just a wolf:

RAY: Wanna talk about it?
FRASER: No.
RAY: Come on. You love that wolf.
FRASER: You loved your car.
RAY: Yeah, but a car isn't a person. I mean, a car is nothing but a hunk of metal--steel, bolts, and leather. ... I mean, I know that. But the wolf, it's the damnedest thing, but it's like there's a person inside of him.

Notice in this episode that both Willie and Fraser talk to Diefenbaker as if he can understand them (and can play Monopoly). This premise allows us to believe that Dief did in fact do all these things in defense of his beloved, the husky Maggie, and that his actions are therefore defensible and pardonable. But if Premise B is true, then the entire episode falls apart, because there is no reason that Diefenbaker couldn't, wouldn't, or shouldn't tell Fraser she's been wrongfully confiscated, instead of biting first Officer Benedict, and then Fraser himself. Especially biting Fraser: if the two of them truly can communicate, all Dief has to do is get him to TURN AROUND. In other words, we've got a classic TSTL (Too Stupid To Live) plot, only muddled because we've got that competing Premise A that suggests the reason Dief doesn't tell Fraser is that he can't. Because he's a wild animal, and Constable Fraser's pathetic anthropomorphizing of him has only harmed the wolf as much as the man. Except that if the show believed that and wanted its audience to believe that, Dief wouldn't be there trying to save Maggie in the first place.*

(There's also a problem wherein this episode seems to have forgotten that Dief is deaf, even though it references him pulling Fraser out of Prince Rupert Sound. If I work at it hard enough, I can rationalize that away, but it does involve real effort.)

If Premise A is true, then Dief is dead. If Premise B is true, then Dief shouldn't have done any of the things he did that put his life in danger. The episode's trying to have it both ways--following and discarding its premises as needed for maximum emotional manipulation and yet still getting to the happy ending--and that just doesn't work. Fraser would tell the writers so, if they would listen to him.

And, as I said, it's a pity, because the things the episode is trying to do are very interesting. The courtroom scene is painful precisely because of the collision of Premise A and Premise B, and the way that, for the duration of that scene, Premise B, which we as the audience have accepted to be the truth, is recast as Fraser's culpable insanity. We're just as guilty as Fraser is, just as helpless. Fraser's anxious, projective monologue about why Dief stayed in Chicago tells us more about Fraser than he would want it to. And the scene in which Fraser is trying to get the nerve to shoot Dief is painful regardless of the contortions required to get us there. (I don't like Lincoln, the second Dief, nearly as well as I like Draco, the third Dief, but I will say for Lincoln that my GOD he's beautiful when he's running.) It's shameless manipulation, but it's also effective, and it's effective because the truth in Fraser is perfectly there. His heart and his duty are at odds; unlike Ray and Willie, he is determined to follow duty, even though we can see it killing him.

Another step in the Destruction of Benton Fraser. They didn't make him go through with it, but just the potential is enough. And compare that scene--Fraser aiming for Dief, who's running for freedom and turns back for Maggie--with the end of "Victoria's Secret"--Ray aiming for Victoria, who's running for freedom and has turned back for Fraser. Only Victoria really is a dangerous wild animal, and instead of shooting his best friend, Fraser is shot ... by his best friend.

The other thing that works very well in this episode is the thematic presence of the Riv, the way the episode proposes, examines, and accepts with qualifications the idea that Fraser : Diefenbaker :: Ray : the Riv. Ray is in mourning for the Riv, very explicitly as if it were a person. And of course the motor pool car only makes it worse:

FRASER: It's a nice glove box. [the latch comes off in his hand] Very spacious. Good seat covers. ... Motor pool?
RAY: I thought we agreed not to talk about it.
FRASER: Ah, of course. Of course. The loss of a loved one is always a shock.
RAY: Fraser.
FRASER: No, I'm sorry, Ray. But I do understand. You'd be hard-pressed to find a finer example of Detroit's automotive engineering than the 1971 Riviera.
RAY: Enough! Okay? Enough. You took the Riv, you drove it all over the countryside, you gave it to a convicted felon, you ran it into a ditch, and you forced me to blow it up. You've done enough.
FRASER: Lives were saved, Ray.
RAY: And yours was spared. ... I loved that car.
[the motor pool car dies]
[Ray does a slow burn at Fraser]
RAY: Not a word.

(One of my favorite Benton Fraser moments of all time is the moment when the bolt on the bench seat gives way, and you can see Fraser deciding not to say anything, in a very distinctly "the customs of your people are strange, but I will honor them" way. That moment alone justifies every penny, Canadian and American both, that Paul Gross ever has made or ever will make from his involvement in Due South.)

The parallel between Dief and the Riv is made explicitly:

RAY: Look, Fraser, even I know that animal's your best friend.
FRASER: Yes, but he is an animal.
RAY: Oh, and the Riviera is just a car?

And then, in the exchange I quoted above, just as explicitly rejected: "a car isn't a person." Ray knows the difference between a wolf and a Buick. The end of the episode circles back, though, to the ways Dief and the Riv both are and aren't alike:

RAY: Oh, I guess it's kind of a nice cyclical thing. You blowin' up the Riv and me saving your wolf. On the other hand, my Riv can't be replaced, and your wolf seems to have tripled.
FRASER: Why can't it be replaced?
RAY: Fraser, '71 Rivieras are extremely rare. I traveled all the way to Buffalo to find that car. They're impossible to find!
FRASER: Huh.
RAY: Huh what?
[Fraser points at the passing green 1971 Buick Riviera with a FOR SALE sign in its window]

It's worth observing the degree to which Ray indulges in revisionist history vis-a-vis Fraser and the Riv. Fraser did not drive the Riv all over the countryside; Ray did. Fraser didn't give the Riv to a felon; the felon took the Riv pretty directly from Ray himself. Fraser didn't drive the Riv into a ditch; Ray did. And Fraser did not blow up the Riv, any more than Ray saved Dief. Joint efforts, both. Ray's emotional calculus is rather reductive.

But the parallel between Dief and the Riv works, just as the horrible double-bind Fraser is caught in works. Fraser's intense sense of personal responsibility is almost enough to carry the episode on its own.

RAY: Is that your father's rifle?
[Fraser nods]
RAY: Why don't you let me do this for you?
FRASER: No. He's my wolf.

But they couldn't think of a way to get Fraser into the double-bind without breaking the rather delicate structure on which our disbelief is suspended. Either Diefenbaker has to die or the entire show has to commit to a level of explicit contrareality that is completely contrary to its ethos. The show is right to refuse both choices, but, therefore, shouldn't have put them in play in the first place.

---
*I'm suddenly very very grateful that Due South never did a "Normal Again" episode (Buffy the Vampire Slayer 6.17). Because, ouch.