Due South: The Deal
Oct. 19th, 2007 08:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyDue South 1.17, "The Deal"
Original airdate: March 30, 1995
Favorite line:
FATHER BEHAN: He did volunteer for this, didn't he?
RAY: Oh absolutely, Father. You know how it is with Mounties--any excuse to burst into song.
(This is funny for a completely different reason after "All The Queen's Horses" (DS 2.14), but I love it in and of itself, too.)
Spoilers below.
This episode makes an interesting pair with "The Blue Line" (DS 1.16). Again we have the resurgence of a figure from one of our protagonist's pasts--and specifically the resurgence of a memory from early adolescence--again we have the obsession with sports, again we have trouble with organized crime. But "The Deal" emphasizes how fundamentally innocent Fraser and Mark Smithbauer are by showing us the other way that scenario can go. Frank Zuko is corrupt--I would even go so far as to say evil in a very particular, very modern way, such that even his sincere love for certain things (basketball, his neighborhood) becomes twisted and filthy and just one more way of swelling his already grotesquely swollen ego. (I admire Jim Bracchitta intensely for his performance as Zuko, because he makes it chillingly, nauseatingly clear that Zuko is sincere, that he fundamentally cannot see his own wrongness, and that that is why he cannot be reasoned with. There's nothing in him for reason to take hold of. As Fraser says, in one of those devastating put-downs of his that sound so harmless, "I see logic is not one of your hobbies.") Where Fraser remembers Mark not letting anyone go home while there was hockey to be played and that memory shows us that Mark was always kind of insensitive and selfish, Ray's memory of Frank shows us something much worse:
RAY: I went to school with Frank. We used to play pick-up basketball together. There was this one kid, Marco Metronni, couldn't make a basket to save his life. No matter whose side he was on, he always managed to lose the game, and Frank didn't like losing. So one day a couple of Frank's buddies held him down while Frank dribbled a basketball into his face for about a half-hour. Marco just laid there choking on his blood. Never came near a court again.
FRASER: Y'know, we had a schoolyard bully in Tuktoyuktuk once. Sometimes at night I can still remember him coming into the classroom swinging that otter over his head. There was just no reasoning with him.
RAY: And I thought we had nothing in common.
What I particularly like about these two stories is the way they get revisited over the course of the episode. Fraser's gets more detailed:
FRASER: That's an old scar.
ELAINE: Oh. How'd you get it?
FRASER: I'd rather not say. .... [off Elaine's look] Someone struck me with a sea otter.
ELAINE: Huh. I guess that's what happens in a country with gun control.
FRASER: Oh, I believe he shot the otter first.
ELAINE: Huh. That's just cruel.
FRASER: Yes, but, you see, strictly speaking he did adhere to the law, because swinging a live otter is illegal in the Territories.
ELAINE: Huh.
FRASER: Indeed.
ELAINE: So there's nothing the police could do about it?
FRASER: No. Although they did change the law after that incident.
And we see more parallels between Fraser's nameless bully and Frank Zuko, who as an adult has made a fine art out of weaving through the loopholes of the law ("nothing illegal about a voluntary neighborhood association," as Ray says). But Fraser's story doesn't change. Each time we revisit Ray's story, though, we learn something new. First we learn, the second time Ray tells the story to Fraser, that Ray was a witness, that he stood and watched, and then we learn, when Ray finally confronts Frank, that Marco wasn't just a "kid," he was Ray's friend. And that Frank Zuko is his cousin (you can read Frank as a kind of mirror for Ray: everything Ray isn't). The story goes from being an anecdote which reveals Frank's character to showing us something in Ray that is deeply buried and very deeply hurt. And which Ray finally faces down.
These stories are also interesting in this episode because the episode itself is obsessed with stories:
RAY: So we're not really tracking a criminal. What we're tracking here is Pinocchio's dad.
FRASER: Gepetto was a woodcarver, Ray.
RAY: He was not.
FRASER: Well, yes. That's how he made Pinocchio. Out of wood.
RAY: Then who was the shoemaker?
FRASER: I have no idea.
RAY: Well, sure you do. The Brothers Grimm, the poor old shoemaker, can't feed his wife, little elves help him make shoes ...
FRASER: [peering in the window of Joey Paducci's shop] There's very little dust in the windows. He can't have been out of business for long.
RAY: I distinctly remember reading about shoes made by elves.
FRASER: The heavy machinery is still here. If he intended to open a new shop, he would've taken it with him. My guess is, he didn't have that option. He took what he could carry and left.
RAY: You mean to tell me you have no recollection of any shoe-related elf stories?
FRASER: Ray, I would tell you if I did.
Later, Ray demands sarcastically if they're going to go up and down Diversey looking for "Cinderella with freshly-soled shoes," which of course is exactly what they're going to do. And once they bring Joey Paducci in, the bindlestitch provokes another conversation about stories from childhood:
ELAINE: Rumpelstiltskin. Didn't he use one of these?
GARDINO: No, dwarves don't make shoes. They hide under bridges.
HUEY: Those are trolls.
ELAINE: So who made shoes?
HUEY: Glinda, the good witch in The Wizard of Oz.
GARDINO: No, that was magic. They were slippers, not shoes.
There are a couple of things that are important here. One is that nobody can remember what story the shoemaker belongs in; the other thing is the way the fairytale motif emphasizes both the tremendous gap between stories for children, which get conflated and twisted in adults' minds, and the memories of childhood, which are ugly--no helpful elves here--and ineradicable.
And, of course, there's the relationship of fairytales to Frank Zuko:
ZUKO: Constable. You're aware of who I am, aren't you?
FRASER: Well, if by that you mean, have I heard the stories? Yes.
ZUKO: Well, let's say they're all true.
Zuko has a number of fairytale resonances himself, an ogre in his castle, with his gifts that turn out to be all but impossible to refuse (and the team of movers who redecorate Fraser's apartment in his absence are an echo of that story Ray can't quite remember) and his twisted language of "gratitude." But he isn't a fairytale, and that's the most horrible thing about him.
If you think about it long enough, the way the episode dwells on fairytales also undercuts its allegedly happy endings. Fairytales don't survive contact with the real world, which I think is the most fundamental message of the scene in which Fraser is worked over by Zuko's goons. Fraser is something out of a story (in a comment on my "They Eat Horses, Don't They?" post,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sasha_feather described him as a knight errant, which I think is just perfect), and his fairytale goodness cannot save him from three big men with brass knuckles. Fraser 0, Chicago 1. Another milestone in the Destruction of Benton Fraser.
(Like the later episode, "Good for the Soul" (DS 4.8), this one believes in choosing the soundtrack for maximum irony as Fraser gets the shit kicked out of him. In this case it's "Ela Mater" from Anton Dvorak's Stabat Mater.)
It's a fairytale to think that Ray can save the poor little shoemaker by going one-on-one with the ogre. (Notice that Joey completely disappears from the end of the episode.) Zuko cheats. We know that. Although at the same time, the fact that Charlie clearly witnessed the whole thing makes the scene also play on the Chicago level--and may even force Zuko to keep his promise. Maybe.
Other random thoughts:
I adore the meta-riff on the old cliche of the left-handed murderer:
FRASER: Given the angle of insertion, I'd say he's probably right-handed.
RAY: Y'see, now that is the break that we needed. Let's go nail the right-handed bastard.
And the equally meta-riff on the show's own premise:
WELSH: I have to ask you this--don't you have a job of your own?
FRASER: Oh, yes, sir. But I had the early shift this morning.
WELSH: And you have nothing better to do with your life than hang around here and help us solve crimes?
FRASER: No, sir.
It's the show's awareness of its own absurdity that saves it both from sitcom and from movie-of-the-week melodrama.
Frannie's pursuit of Fraser is used very cleverly as a counterpoint throughout the episode, most particularly in the lingerie shop ("It's molded plastic, Benny. It's not going to lunge out at you.") and at the end, when Fraser suddenly learns exactly why he should have put those locks on his door. And the brutal irony of the last line, "Don't be afraid." It's a nice ring-comp with the beginning, where Fraser is positively grateful for the thief because it gives him an escape. At the end, we come right back around. The A plot has been dealt with--leaving Fraser in no shape to jump off a balcony, even if he had one handy--and the B plot is waiting to pick up right where it left off.
They did a fantastic job of lighting David Marciano in this ep so that we get the full effect of his eyes.
The h/c scene between Fraser and Elaine is brilliantly weird, because Elaine clearly knows how it's supposed to go and Fraser is clearly baffled. (I love the way he watches Elaine, very wide-eyed and serious and a little frightened.) He'd like to pick up on her cues, if only to make her happy, but he can't tell what they are.
Ray's hideous striped pajamas = love.
Original airdate: March 30, 1995
Favorite line:
FATHER BEHAN: He did volunteer for this, didn't he?
RAY: Oh absolutely, Father. You know how it is with Mounties--any excuse to burst into song.
(This is funny for a completely different reason after "All The Queen's Horses" (DS 2.14), but I love it in and of itself, too.)
Spoilers below.
This episode makes an interesting pair with "The Blue Line" (DS 1.16). Again we have the resurgence of a figure from one of our protagonist's pasts--and specifically the resurgence of a memory from early adolescence--again we have the obsession with sports, again we have trouble with organized crime. But "The Deal" emphasizes how fundamentally innocent Fraser and Mark Smithbauer are by showing us the other way that scenario can go. Frank Zuko is corrupt--I would even go so far as to say evil in a very particular, very modern way, such that even his sincere love for certain things (basketball, his neighborhood) becomes twisted and filthy and just one more way of swelling his already grotesquely swollen ego. (I admire Jim Bracchitta intensely for his performance as Zuko, because he makes it chillingly, nauseatingly clear that Zuko is sincere, that he fundamentally cannot see his own wrongness, and that that is why he cannot be reasoned with. There's nothing in him for reason to take hold of. As Fraser says, in one of those devastating put-downs of his that sound so harmless, "I see logic is not one of your hobbies.") Where Fraser remembers Mark not letting anyone go home while there was hockey to be played and that memory shows us that Mark was always kind of insensitive and selfish, Ray's memory of Frank shows us something much worse:
RAY: I went to school with Frank. We used to play pick-up basketball together. There was this one kid, Marco Metronni, couldn't make a basket to save his life. No matter whose side he was on, he always managed to lose the game, and Frank didn't like losing. So one day a couple of Frank's buddies held him down while Frank dribbled a basketball into his face for about a half-hour. Marco just laid there choking on his blood. Never came near a court again.
FRASER: Y'know, we had a schoolyard bully in Tuktoyuktuk once. Sometimes at night I can still remember him coming into the classroom swinging that otter over his head. There was just no reasoning with him.
RAY: And I thought we had nothing in common.
What I particularly like about these two stories is the way they get revisited over the course of the episode. Fraser's gets more detailed:
FRASER: That's an old scar.
ELAINE: Oh. How'd you get it?
FRASER: I'd rather not say. .... [off Elaine's look] Someone struck me with a sea otter.
ELAINE: Huh. I guess that's what happens in a country with gun control.
FRASER: Oh, I believe he shot the otter first.
ELAINE: Huh. That's just cruel.
FRASER: Yes, but, you see, strictly speaking he did adhere to the law, because swinging a live otter is illegal in the Territories.
ELAINE: Huh.
FRASER: Indeed.
ELAINE: So there's nothing the police could do about it?
FRASER: No. Although they did change the law after that incident.
And we see more parallels between Fraser's nameless bully and Frank Zuko, who as an adult has made a fine art out of weaving through the loopholes of the law ("nothing illegal about a voluntary neighborhood association," as Ray says). But Fraser's story doesn't change. Each time we revisit Ray's story, though, we learn something new. First we learn, the second time Ray tells the story to Fraser, that Ray was a witness, that he stood and watched, and then we learn, when Ray finally confronts Frank, that Marco wasn't just a "kid," he was Ray's friend. And that Frank Zuko is his cousin (you can read Frank as a kind of mirror for Ray: everything Ray isn't). The story goes from being an anecdote which reveals Frank's character to showing us something in Ray that is deeply buried and very deeply hurt. And which Ray finally faces down.
These stories are also interesting in this episode because the episode itself is obsessed with stories:
RAY: So we're not really tracking a criminal. What we're tracking here is Pinocchio's dad.
FRASER: Gepetto was a woodcarver, Ray.
RAY: He was not.
FRASER: Well, yes. That's how he made Pinocchio. Out of wood.
RAY: Then who was the shoemaker?
FRASER: I have no idea.
RAY: Well, sure you do. The Brothers Grimm, the poor old shoemaker, can't feed his wife, little elves help him make shoes ...
FRASER: [peering in the window of Joey Paducci's shop] There's very little dust in the windows. He can't have been out of business for long.
RAY: I distinctly remember reading about shoes made by elves.
FRASER: The heavy machinery is still here. If he intended to open a new shop, he would've taken it with him. My guess is, he didn't have that option. He took what he could carry and left.
RAY: You mean to tell me you have no recollection of any shoe-related elf stories?
FRASER: Ray, I would tell you if I did.
Later, Ray demands sarcastically if they're going to go up and down Diversey looking for "Cinderella with freshly-soled shoes," which of course is exactly what they're going to do. And once they bring Joey Paducci in, the bindlestitch provokes another conversation about stories from childhood:
ELAINE: Rumpelstiltskin. Didn't he use one of these?
GARDINO: No, dwarves don't make shoes. They hide under bridges.
HUEY: Those are trolls.
ELAINE: So who made shoes?
HUEY: Glinda, the good witch in The Wizard of Oz.
GARDINO: No, that was magic. They were slippers, not shoes.
There are a couple of things that are important here. One is that nobody can remember what story the shoemaker belongs in; the other thing is the way the fairytale motif emphasizes both the tremendous gap between stories for children, which get conflated and twisted in adults' minds, and the memories of childhood, which are ugly--no helpful elves here--and ineradicable.
And, of course, there's the relationship of fairytales to Frank Zuko:
ZUKO: Constable. You're aware of who I am, aren't you?
FRASER: Well, if by that you mean, have I heard the stories? Yes.
ZUKO: Well, let's say they're all true.
Zuko has a number of fairytale resonances himself, an ogre in his castle, with his gifts that turn out to be all but impossible to refuse (and the team of movers who redecorate Fraser's apartment in his absence are an echo of that story Ray can't quite remember) and his twisted language of "gratitude." But he isn't a fairytale, and that's the most horrible thing about him.
If you think about it long enough, the way the episode dwells on fairytales also undercuts its allegedly happy endings. Fairytales don't survive contact with the real world, which I think is the most fundamental message of the scene in which Fraser is worked over by Zuko's goons. Fraser is something out of a story (in a comment on my "They Eat Horses, Don't They?" post,
sasha_feather described him as a knight errant, which I think is just perfect), and his fairytale goodness cannot save him from three big men with brass knuckles. Fraser 0, Chicago 1. Another milestone in the Destruction of Benton Fraser.(Like the later episode, "Good for the Soul" (DS 4.8), this one believes in choosing the soundtrack for maximum irony as Fraser gets the shit kicked out of him. In this case it's "Ela Mater" from Anton Dvorak's Stabat Mater.)
It's a fairytale to think that Ray can save the poor little shoemaker by going one-on-one with the ogre. (Notice that Joey completely disappears from the end of the episode.) Zuko cheats. We know that. Although at the same time, the fact that Charlie clearly witnessed the whole thing makes the scene also play on the Chicago level--and may even force Zuko to keep his promise. Maybe.
Other random thoughts:
I adore the meta-riff on the old cliche of the left-handed murderer:
FRASER: Given the angle of insertion, I'd say he's probably right-handed.
RAY: Y'see, now that is the break that we needed. Let's go nail the right-handed bastard.
And the equally meta-riff on the show's own premise:
WELSH: I have to ask you this--don't you have a job of your own?
FRASER: Oh, yes, sir. But I had the early shift this morning.
WELSH: And you have nothing better to do with your life than hang around here and help us solve crimes?
FRASER: No, sir.
It's the show's awareness of its own absurdity that saves it both from sitcom and from movie-of-the-week melodrama.
Frannie's pursuit of Fraser is used very cleverly as a counterpoint throughout the episode, most particularly in the lingerie shop ("It's molded plastic, Benny. It's not going to lunge out at you.") and at the end, when Fraser suddenly learns exactly why he should have put those locks on his door. And the brutal irony of the last line, "Don't be afraid." It's a nice ring-comp with the beginning, where Fraser is positively grateful for the thief because it gives him an escape. At the end, we come right back around. The A plot has been dealt with--leaving Fraser in no shape to jump off a balcony, even if he had one handy--and the B plot is waiting to pick up right where it left off.
They did a fantastic job of lighting David Marciano in this ep so that we get the full effect of his eyes.
The h/c scene between Fraser and Elaine is brilliantly weird, because Elaine clearly knows how it's supposed to go and Fraser is clearly baffled. (I love the way he watches Elaine, very wide-eyed and serious and a little frightened.) He'd like to pick up on her cues, if only to make her happy, but he can't tell what they are.
Ray's hideous striped pajamas = love.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-10-19 11:17 pm (UTC)I think part of what I love about this episode and Ray in this episode so very very much is that we've seen Ray try to be intimidating before, and he has failed pitifully. He's "all bark and no bite," I think there's even a bit in The Blue Line where he tells someone "I've got my eye on you," and it's the least threatening thing ever. But when it's Ray's neighborhood and Ray's childhood and Fraser getting the shit beaten out of him---Ray comes through in a truly spectacular way. For the first time I can actually see him doing undercover. I think you talked about this before, how Fraser is loyal to this abstract concept of the law and of justice and morality, whereas for Ray, his motivations are personal and concrete.
Also, I totally read that story about the shoemaker and the elves as a kid, and can't remember where.
Also, little crossdressing Gardino! I was sad that he was immediately stomped on by his coworkers for confessing it, especially following on the transvestite deep-voice joke earlier in the episode, but Gardino is just so adorable. I would totally read Huey/Gardino fic if I could find it.
This episode is so much love. (Ray's tacky pajamas, too!)
no subject
Date: 2012-03-31 04:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-15 07:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-16 03:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-26 03:46 am (UTC)months late, dollars short
Date: 2008-03-29 12:41 am (UTC)I have been rewatching the DS episodes because I read some of your essays, and realized I missed Fraser terribly. I cheerfully lay blame for series ownership at your doorstep, and I am grateful. Your comments make it easier to see things happening, and make the show much more interesting for me. I am realizing that I started watching originally part way through the second season, when more things were established, and watching them get underway, like Fraser's current relationship with his dad, yields interesting insights.
Long comment, deep gratitude -
Re: months late, dollars short
Date: 2008-03-29 12:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-21 12:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-31 04:45 pm (UTC)