Due South: "Heaven and Earth"
Nov. 21st, 2007 12:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyDue South 1.19, "Heaven and Earth"
Original airdate: May 25, 1995
Favorite quote:
FRASER: I'm disturbing you.
RAY: Yes, you are.
FRASER: I should leave.
RAY: Yes, you should.
FRASER: Oh. . . . Ray--
RAY: But you won't.
OR
FRASER: May I, um--
FORD: [pointedly] Leave?
FRASER: Yes, I may.
OR
FRASER: There are more things in Heaven and Earth than have been dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio. Horatio was--
RAY: Hamlet's best friend. I know, I saw the movie.
FRASER: Well, Hamlet sees his father's ghost.
RAY: Yeah, he also kills his uncle and spends entirely way too much time talking to skeletons.
FRASER: Well, I suppose that would follow.
Apparently, in its original broadcast order, "Heaven and Earth" followed "Victoria's Secret" (proving that no matter how vestigial your continuity, the networks will still find a way to fuck it up), but we're going to ignore that as insane troll logic and put it, as the DVDs do, where it obviously belongs. (I suspect, really, that "An Invitation to Romance" should have gone before "The Deal" as a separator between it and "The Blue Line," so that the end of the first season would go "The Deal," "Heaven and Earth," "Victoria's Secret," "Letting Go," but I only just thought of that, and in any case, I digress.)
I think this might have been well served as a two parter, because there just doesn't seem to be enough room for the story between the car chase and the B plot. Garret should be an interesting character with a compelling conflict, but we just don't see enough of him. Likewise, Mary Ann Madison's plight--especially after the refinery blows up and takes the bad guy with it--should be a matter of edge-of-the-seat tension, but it's resolved too quickly for that. We barely have time to realize how badly screwed over she is before Fraser's strong-armed Garret into saving her. And it's a pity, because I really like the elements of the A plot (I have a weakness for unwilling psychics); there just isn't enough room in the episode to make me care about them, because that space is needed for the FBI's posturing and, of course, the slow-motion train-wreck that is the aftermath of the end of "The Deal."
I do like the one piece of thematic resonance between A and B plots: the key to the A plot is Garret learning to accept his visions, and the climax of the B plot is Frannie's outburst at Ray:
FRANNIE: You know what your problem is, Ray?
RAY: No, Frannie, why don't you tell me?
FRANNIE: Yeah, I'll tell you. Your problem is that you're so afraid to dream. You are so afraid to reach out for something that you really want. You know what happens to people like you? They get old, they get alone, and they die. And they never know. Well, that's not me.
What Frannie describes is what's happening to Garret, and the episode does at least suggest at the end that that's going to change, that maybe Garret is done with trying to not know. But it's a little difficult to know what to make of Frannie, because the fact of the matter is, she isn't going to get what she wants. She's never going to get Fraser, and their horribly awkward encounter by the broken water fountain makes that perfectly, brutally clear. Ray's summation is on the nose: "Guys like him don't marry girls like you. That's fairytale. And girls like you get hurt and guys like him don't even know it. And that's life." This is another reason to pair this episode with "The Deal," because, as I said, that episode is all about deflating and questioning the role of fairy tales in the way we make sense of our lives. Fraser is something out of a fairy tale. Frannie isn't and can't be.
And what makes it worse is that Fraser does know. He's witnessing this conversation. He knows, but he doesn't have the first idea what to do about it. This dilemma gets coded and cloaked in the episode by the invocation of chivalry--by which Fraser deflects both Ray and Elaine:
RAY: Okay, the way I see it--
[pause while they remove Dief from the closet]
RAY: Okay, the way I see it, you got two options. You can tell me exactly what happened with my kid sister that night in your apartment, or one of us isn't leaving this closet alive.
FRASER: You're upset.
RAY: That would be correct.
FRASER: Well, Ray, I had no choice. The door just opened; she was standing there, and then when she took off her coat there was very much more of her standing there ...
RAY: Did you sleep with her?
FRASER: I told you I can't tell you that. It wouldn't be chivalrous.
ELAINE: And your grandmother taught you that.
FRASER: Yes.
ELAINE: And you believed her.
But the code of chivalry isn't the actual problem. How do I know that? Because, if that were the problem, why would Fraser tell Ray in the first place? Oh, Fraser explains it as a matter he has to confess to Ray to clear his conscience, but citing the code of chivalry makes complete nonsense out of that rationale; chivalrous behavior would dictate never mentioning the matter at all and your conscience can just go hang. (Note, by the way, that while Fraser is ostentatiously bending over backwards to preserve Frannie's reputation, Frannie is rolling through the station telling everyone she can get her hands on, including Welsh: "Just out of curiosity, where was the wolf all this time?")
So why does Fraser tell Ray?
He tells Ray in order to block Frannie from ever doing it again.
Fraser, in other words, is using his completely GORMLESS persona in order to protect himself, not so much from Frannie as from having to deal with Frannie. (Notice that Fraser and Frannie's courses do not intercept until after Ray has warned her off, at which point, oh look, there's Fraser just standing there by the broken water fountain like Patience on a monument.) When he tells Ray, he knows exactly what sort of response he's going to get, and that's why he does it:
FRASER: It appears that there's a situation that I have unwittingly encouraged, and it's taken a turn that I perhaps foolishly had not anticipated, nor was even aware of as a remote possibility, but insofar as it is a matter of the heart and directly affects someone who is close to both of us--
RAY: Fraser, you got from here to my desk. Make it count.
FRASER: Saturday last, your sister came to my apartment in the middle of the night, dressed in what can only be described as less than requisite attire, and offered herself to me.
RAY: Okay, great. Now beat it.
[Ray does the world's most beautiful delayed double-take]
RAY: My sister?!
FRASER: Yes.
RAY: You slept with my sister?
FRASER: Did she say that?
RAY: No, she did not say that. She is my sister. I do not discuss sex with my sister.
FRASER: So she didn't say ...
RAY: No.
FRASER: Oh. Well. Very well. Forget that I mentioned it.
[Fraser bolts like a rabbit]
By putting Ray on the board, Fraser changes the nature of his problem. The important question is no longer, How does Fraser cope with Frannie's propositioning him? The important question has become, Is Fraser going to tell Ray or isn't he? And since the answer to that one is simply No, it's a much easier question. It no longer becomes about Frannie, because he knows Ray will deal with that; it reduces instead to managing Ray, and that is something Fraser can handle. I don't think Fraser ever has any doubt that the contretemps will end up pretty much exactly where it does:
RAY: So. Francesca.
FRASER: Your sister.
RAY: You're not gonna tell me, are you?
FRASER: No, Ray.
RAY: I'm gonna have to live with this, aren't I?
FRASER: Yes.
RAY: Stupid, right? I mean, if I want anybody to sleep with my sister--and I'm not encouraging this--I'd want him to be you.
FRASER: That's very generous of you, Ray.
And I see Fraser's self-awareness, even a certain amount of self-distaste, in that devastating stealth put-down: "That's very generous of you, Ray." Fraser knows, even if Ray doesn't, that who Frannie sleeps with is none of Ray's business. And thus the Machiavellianism of his telling Ray in the first place is made clear.
"Victoria's Secret" (which proves, incidentally, that Fraser's adherence to the code of chivalry is not quite as adamant as he's making out: chivalry says you do not let the lady go to jail, but Fraser follows justice first) shows us what it is that Fraser has to protect and why. It's true that Fraser does not know how to deal with women, or with passion. It is not true that his inability stems from the sweetly helpless naïveté he presents in "Heaven and Earth." And while Fraser wants to extricate himself from the situation with Frannie (which, hey, he's pulled off very adroitly), I think it's at least as important to him to keep anyone from knowing that the real problem isn't that he doesn't know what to do with a woman. It's that he knows all too well.
Original airdate: May 25, 1995
Favorite quote:
FRASER: I'm disturbing you.
RAY: Yes, you are.
FRASER: I should leave.
RAY: Yes, you should.
FRASER: Oh. . . . Ray--
RAY: But you won't.
OR
FRASER: May I, um--
FORD: [pointedly] Leave?
FRASER: Yes, I may.
OR
FRASER: There are more things in Heaven and Earth than have been dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio. Horatio was--
RAY: Hamlet's best friend. I know, I saw the movie.
FRASER: Well, Hamlet sees his father's ghost.
RAY: Yeah, he also kills his uncle and spends entirely way too much time talking to skeletons.
FRASER: Well, I suppose that would follow.
Apparently, in its original broadcast order, "Heaven and Earth" followed "Victoria's Secret" (proving that no matter how vestigial your continuity, the networks will still find a way to fuck it up), but we're going to ignore that as insane troll logic and put it, as the DVDs do, where it obviously belongs. (I suspect, really, that "An Invitation to Romance" should have gone before "The Deal" as a separator between it and "The Blue Line," so that the end of the first season would go "The Deal," "Heaven and Earth," "Victoria's Secret," "Letting Go," but I only just thought of that, and in any case, I digress.)
I think this might have been well served as a two parter, because there just doesn't seem to be enough room for the story between the car chase and the B plot. Garret should be an interesting character with a compelling conflict, but we just don't see enough of him. Likewise, Mary Ann Madison's plight--especially after the refinery blows up and takes the bad guy with it--should be a matter of edge-of-the-seat tension, but it's resolved too quickly for that. We barely have time to realize how badly screwed over she is before Fraser's strong-armed Garret into saving her. And it's a pity, because I really like the elements of the A plot (I have a weakness for unwilling psychics); there just isn't enough room in the episode to make me care about them, because that space is needed for the FBI's posturing and, of course, the slow-motion train-wreck that is the aftermath of the end of "The Deal."
I do like the one piece of thematic resonance between A and B plots: the key to the A plot is Garret learning to accept his visions, and the climax of the B plot is Frannie's outburst at Ray:
FRANNIE: You know what your problem is, Ray?
RAY: No, Frannie, why don't you tell me?
FRANNIE: Yeah, I'll tell you. Your problem is that you're so afraid to dream. You are so afraid to reach out for something that you really want. You know what happens to people like you? They get old, they get alone, and they die. And they never know. Well, that's not me.
What Frannie describes is what's happening to Garret, and the episode does at least suggest at the end that that's going to change, that maybe Garret is done with trying to not know. But it's a little difficult to know what to make of Frannie, because the fact of the matter is, she isn't going to get what she wants. She's never going to get Fraser, and their horribly awkward encounter by the broken water fountain makes that perfectly, brutally clear. Ray's summation is on the nose: "Guys like him don't marry girls like you. That's fairytale. And girls like you get hurt and guys like him don't even know it. And that's life." This is another reason to pair this episode with "The Deal," because, as I said, that episode is all about deflating and questioning the role of fairy tales in the way we make sense of our lives. Fraser is something out of a fairy tale. Frannie isn't and can't be.
And what makes it worse is that Fraser does know. He's witnessing this conversation. He knows, but he doesn't have the first idea what to do about it. This dilemma gets coded and cloaked in the episode by the invocation of chivalry--by which Fraser deflects both Ray and Elaine:
RAY: Okay, the way I see it--
[pause while they remove Dief from the closet]
RAY: Okay, the way I see it, you got two options. You can tell me exactly what happened with my kid sister that night in your apartment, or one of us isn't leaving this closet alive.
FRASER: You're upset.
RAY: That would be correct.
FRASER: Well, Ray, I had no choice. The door just opened; she was standing there, and then when she took off her coat there was very much more of her standing there ...
RAY: Did you sleep with her?
FRASER: I told you I can't tell you that. It wouldn't be chivalrous.
ELAINE: And your grandmother taught you that.
FRASER: Yes.
ELAINE: And you believed her.
But the code of chivalry isn't the actual problem. How do I know that? Because, if that were the problem, why would Fraser tell Ray in the first place? Oh, Fraser explains it as a matter he has to confess to Ray to clear his conscience, but citing the code of chivalry makes complete nonsense out of that rationale; chivalrous behavior would dictate never mentioning the matter at all and your conscience can just go hang. (Note, by the way, that while Fraser is ostentatiously bending over backwards to preserve Frannie's reputation, Frannie is rolling through the station telling everyone she can get her hands on, including Welsh: "Just out of curiosity, where was the wolf all this time?")
So why does Fraser tell Ray?
He tells Ray in order to block Frannie from ever doing it again.
Fraser, in other words, is using his completely GORMLESS persona in order to protect himself, not so much from Frannie as from having to deal with Frannie. (Notice that Fraser and Frannie's courses do not intercept until after Ray has warned her off, at which point, oh look, there's Fraser just standing there by the broken water fountain like Patience on a monument.) When he tells Ray, he knows exactly what sort of response he's going to get, and that's why he does it:
FRASER: It appears that there's a situation that I have unwittingly encouraged, and it's taken a turn that I perhaps foolishly had not anticipated, nor was even aware of as a remote possibility, but insofar as it is a matter of the heart and directly affects someone who is close to both of us--
RAY: Fraser, you got from here to my desk. Make it count.
FRASER: Saturday last, your sister came to my apartment in the middle of the night, dressed in what can only be described as less than requisite attire, and offered herself to me.
RAY: Okay, great. Now beat it.
[Ray does the world's most beautiful delayed double-take]
RAY: My sister?!
FRASER: Yes.
RAY: You slept with my sister?
FRASER: Did she say that?
RAY: No, she did not say that. She is my sister. I do not discuss sex with my sister.
FRASER: So she didn't say ...
RAY: No.
FRASER: Oh. Well. Very well. Forget that I mentioned it.
[Fraser bolts like a rabbit]
By putting Ray on the board, Fraser changes the nature of his problem. The important question is no longer, How does Fraser cope with Frannie's propositioning him? The important question has become, Is Fraser going to tell Ray or isn't he? And since the answer to that one is simply No, it's a much easier question. It no longer becomes about Frannie, because he knows Ray will deal with that; it reduces instead to managing Ray, and that is something Fraser can handle. I don't think Fraser ever has any doubt that the contretemps will end up pretty much exactly where it does:
RAY: So. Francesca.
FRASER: Your sister.
RAY: You're not gonna tell me, are you?
FRASER: No, Ray.
RAY: I'm gonna have to live with this, aren't I?
FRASER: Yes.
RAY: Stupid, right? I mean, if I want anybody to sleep with my sister--and I'm not encouraging this--I'd want him to be you.
FRASER: That's very generous of you, Ray.
And I see Fraser's self-awareness, even a certain amount of self-distaste, in that devastating stealth put-down: "That's very generous of you, Ray." Fraser knows, even if Ray doesn't, that who Frannie sleeps with is none of Ray's business. And thus the Machiavellianism of his telling Ray in the first place is made clear.
"Victoria's Secret" (which proves, incidentally, that Fraser's adherence to the code of chivalry is not quite as adamant as he's making out: chivalry says you do not let the lady go to jail, but Fraser follows justice first) shows us what it is that Fraser has to protect and why. It's true that Fraser does not know how to deal with women, or with passion. It is not true that his inability stems from the sweetly helpless naïveté he presents in "Heaven and Earth." And while Fraser wants to extricate himself from the situation with Frannie (which, hey, he's pulled off very adroitly), I think it's at least as important to him to keep anyone from knowing that the real problem isn't that he doesn't know what to do with a woman. It's that he knows all too well.
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no subject
Date: 2007-11-21 10:08 pm (UTC)I am more than a little suspicious that this is your doing.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-21 10:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-22 02:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-21 10:43 pm (UTC)On a related note, what do you think of Fraser eavesdropping on Ray and Frannie's conversation? It's such a not-honorable, not-Fraser thing to do that it seems to indicate Fraser being WAY more emotionally invested in the situation with Frannie than I expected---because like you point out, Fraser pretty much already knows what's going to happen, so why does he have to HEAR it too? And it's just one more way to essentially betray Ray's trust. So I don't really understand what I'm supposed to get out of it.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-22 12:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-22 02:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-22 01:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-21 11:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-22 04:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-31 02:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-31 02:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-06 12:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-01 05:54 pm (UTC)My question isn't really "Did he or didn't he." My question is really something more like "I want it to stay ambiguous so that I can believe he didn't, but..."
I'm having two problems with keeping that possibility open. One: If he actually rejected her, why would Frannie show up looking all hopeful and festive until Ray's talk? and Two: We have never, ever seen Fraser get out of an attempted seduction without the help of third-party gunfire.
Please help me imagine a scenario where "nothing happened" but Francesca still thinks she's got a chance. Diefenbaker faked a seizure and had to be taken to the vet???
no subject
Date: 2008-10-01 06:05 pm (UTC)Also, given the physical condition Fraser's in at the end of "The Deal," I don't think he could manage a torrid night of nookie, even if he wanted to. Which is also all the excuse he needs.
I think he must extricate himself from the situation without committing himself one way or another, which is why Frannie--an incurable optimist--isn't despondent and weeping. But that's also exactly why Fraser has to get Ray involved. Because he knows he can't manage that twice.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-01 06:53 pm (UTC)Does she trust Ray so much that his warning is enough to convince her there's no hope? Does she think Fraser told him to tell her (which by your reasoning he kind of did)? Or is Fraser's "Hello" by the water fountain so cold that she realizes Ray was right?
You have to be right. There's no way Fraser would actually go through with it and then act like this.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-01 06:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-03 07:15 pm (UTC)The thing to remember about Fraser is that he needs control. He needs to control the situation, the people around him, and himself. (As an aside, I think that's why he doesn't drink, not a history of alcoholism. He will taste alcohol, as he does in Chicago Holiday, and in Invitation to Romance, he agrees to drink a *bottle* of champagne, if it gets him off the hook with Katherine Burns, even if he never drinks it. No, it's the idea of losing control that frightens him, and it's easier to say "I don't drink" than it is to say "I'm afraid I'll get tipsy and deviate from my own mental script.") A sexually aggressive woman takes some of that control from him, and that destabilizes him. He often begins to give in, because he is human, after all, but he doesn't like it. So, while he knows what Frannie wants (along with the rest of the 27th precinct), he can't surrender to her.