Due South: "Letting Go"
Dec. 5th, 2007 09:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyDue South 1.22, "Letting Go"
Original airdate: June 1, 1995
Favorite quote:
R. FRASER: She's a lovely girl.
B. FRASER: She's not a girl, she's a therapist!
R. FRASER: Then one of us is going blind.
Spoilers.
This episode, aside from being an homage to Rear Window, is about Fraser making the choice to be the Mountie. And although I don't think the outcome of that choice is ever seriously in doubt, no matter what Fraser says, I think it's also important that the episode shows it as a choice, that it separates out the qualities that make Fraser a natural and inveterate puzzle-solver from the devotion to duty and justice that characterizes him throughout the series. And that it lets us see the tired, bitter man whom Fraser normally keep carefully hidden. The underpinnings of Due South are bleak, and this episode shows us the effort it takes Fraser to rise above that, like a ballerina pirouetting on bleeding feet.
The first thing we notice, in the purgatorial interlude with the fly, is that Diefenbaker is back--it's a tremendous relief to see that Fraser has his guardian again--and it's no surprise that Fraser's first lines in the episode are, in fact, a remonstration with Dief:
As ever, Dief serves here as an externalization of Fraser's Ego, both to be chided and to point out Fraser's own failings. (How often do Fraser's conversations with Dief include some variation on "this is different"?) Notice also the perfectly futile exhortation to listen, which Dief can't--pointing to the fact that Fraser never does.
So we see to begin with that Fraser's curiosity is innate; he's not going to close his eyes. His first encounter with Jill shows that deduction for him is a reflex:
JILL: I'm the--
FRASER: Physiotherapist.
JILL: You recognize me?
FRASER: . . . No, actually, that was deduction.
JILL: You deduced me.
FRASER: . . . Yes, uh, yes I did. You see, your hands, although small, are--
JILL: Excuse me.
FRASER: Um, uncommonly muscular, as are your triceps, biceps, deltoids, pectorals, latissimus dorsi, and abdominal rack. Um. This is not something you'd ordinarily encounter in a nurse, unless she was accustomed to heavy lifting. Also there is--
JILL: Um, may I?
FRASER: --about you the scent of eucalyptus, which is a very, um, common ingredient in muscle liniments. And that is mixed with, uh, I would say chlorine, which I would imagine would be from the whirlpool, um, and on top of that, there is, uh, coconut. Hand lotion.
JILL: Shampoo.
FRASER: Ah. There. You see. Well, all of that's very consistent with a physical therapist who has very . . . very clean hair.
JILL: That's quite a talent.
FRASER: I'm sorry.
Fraser obviously enters into his explanation to distract himself from Jill's inventory of his body, and possibly also as a way to take back some of the control that she is taking from him. (Constable Fraser? Does not like to be touched.) Hence, I think, the apology. He knows that what he just did was invasive. And what I like about Jill (who is actually my favorite of all of Fraser's semi-, quasi-, and pseudo-love interests, for many reasons including the fact that, although various gestures are made by other characters--Ray, Bob, Jill herself--toward Fraser having a romantic interest in her, he doesn't, and she doesn't evince any romantic interest in him; their relationship is perforce intimate, but on a completely different basis) is that she throws it right back at him. She doesn't let Fraser have the conversational upper hand (which, as I commented on in the pilot, he habitually and automatically maneuvers for), and she insists that he recognize her as an equal. She can play Fraser's game just as well as he can:
JILL: You're a policeman, right?
FRASER: Yes. From Canada. A Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman.
JILL: Ah. That would explain the bowed knees.
FRASER: Bowed?
JILL: I'd say five-eighths of a centimeter. Quarter horse? Sixteen hands?
FRASER: As a rule.
JILL: Well, you've got quite a few mementos here. Left leg's been broken and reset . . . hmm, twice. Second one was pretty nasty. Fell what, fifty, sixty feet?
FRASER: Fifty-seven.
JILL: Off a building?
FRASER: Off a cliff.
JILL: Somebody pushed you.
FRASER: I jumped, actually.
JILL: Oh, that would do it. Oh, serious knife wound, seven inch blade, serrated edge. What was he hunting?
FRASER: Me.
JILL: And this is recent. A minor laceration, it's small but deep. Glass door?
FRASER: Tempered.
JILL: Ouch. And this is . . . interesting. It's old, maybe twenty years, there's plenty of scar tissue, so it was deep. It's an object, but something soft, with teeth and hair maybe? This is gonna sound really silly, but were you ever--
FRASER: It was an otter, I was ten, it was dead, somebody hit me with it, can we move on?
Jill pushes Fraser out of his comfort zone, and the episode does a nice job of paralleling that with her job as his physical therapist. And she recognizes what it is that he's trying not to be, no matter how hard he tries to deflect her:
FRASER: Miss Kennedy, is it your custom to incite all your patients to break and enter?
JILL: No. Do you usually ignore a crime that's taken place right in--
FRASER: I am not a police officer in this jurisdiction. And even if I did have the authority to investigate, I'm . . . I'm taking a leave of absence.
And Jill very kindly calls him on this for the nonsense that it is. She ignores all his warning signals (including his beautifully phrased "fuck off" speech); she never backs off. And she forces him, by putting herself in danger, to re-engage with the world. (Notice that Dief goes with her when she goes to break into Dr. Carter's office.) When push comes to shove, Fraser's choice turns out not to be much of a choice at all. He can't remain merely an audience to Dr. Carter's passion play. He can't leave Jill in danger. And even without those prompts, he can't quite leave the mystery alone. His father is tactless as ever, but not wrong, when he describes Fraser as "moping":
R. FRASER: You're just mad because I didn't get here sooner.
B. FRASER: No, relieved is more like it. If you had come sooner, I might not've been able to tell which one of us was actually . . .
R. FRASER: Dead?
B. FRASER: Yes.
R. FRASER: Well, it's not a dirty word, son. 'Sides, there's worse things than being dead.
B. FRASER: Oh really? Like what?
R. FRASER: Well, you for instance. You wouldn't catch me moping around here because I was shot.
B. FRASER: I suffered massive nerve and muscle damage. I was lucky to survive.
R. FRASER: I'd've been back on the post next morning.
B. FRASER: I hardly think so.
R. FRASER: You've been lying around here for three weeks. You can't stay in this bed forever, you know.
B. FRASER: I don't plan to. This is called recovery. I'm recovering.
R. FRASER: Hmm. . . . She got you good, didn't she?
B. FRASER: No.
Bob, like Jill, recognizes that it isn't Fraser's physical injuries that are the problem (and recognizes that the idea about rebuilding the cabin is avoidance, plain and simple: "Whatever for?"). And I love the recursive appearance of Fraser's grandmother (with flannel pajamas--another reference back to the cold and warm imagery surrounding Fraser and Victoria's relationship, with a suggestion perhaps that fire (candles) is not the only way to get warm, but also, interestingly, agreeing that Fraser does need more warmth) to reinforce the point:
FRASER'S GRANDMOTHER: You're babying him, Robert.
R. FRASER: He's been shot, Mother!
FRASER'S GRANDMOTHER: Can't stay in bed forever.
And her reappearance, in reflection where Fraser may or may not be able to see her (again at a remove from Fraser's reality, just as in her first appearance, Bob can see her but Fraser can't), bestowing approval on his taking an interest--it's not about his physical immobility; it's about his mind, and whether that's going to recover or not. The "Letting Go" of the title is about Fraser letting go of Victoria, but also of his letting go of his own hurt, his own sense of devastation. This episode is all about the aftermath of the catastrophe. After your world ends, what do you do? And what Fraser comes to realize is that you have to pick yourself up and go on, that this stasis of suffering is, as Bob says, worse than death. "Letting Go" is about what happens after the story is over, about what happens after you survive your own tragic ending.
Another thing "Letting Go" is about, almost inevitably, is the construction of stories. How do you make a narrative out of your observations? Fraser does it to Jill in deducing her occupation; Jill does it to Fraser in cataloguing his scars. They argue about it over Dr. Carter and her blackmail photos:
FRASER: You're being unreasonable.
JILL: I am being perfectly logical. What we saw was a rich doctor with a drug habit who's about to be blackmailed.
FRASER: No. What we saw was a woman opening an envelope and burning the contents. We have no evidence an actual crime took place.
And of course, the episode also calls attention to its own deliberate parallelism, the way it's creating stories to echo and reflect stories that have gone before:
FRASER: He's betrayed her. She's going to kill him.
RAY: Benny. Not every woman with long dark hair tries to kill their lover.
FRASER: Oh.
As Fraser says, "I think appearances can be deceiving"--even though he's right, and Dr. Carter is going to try to kill her lover, in fact, the proper parallel isn't between Dr. Carter and Victoria. It's between Dr. Carter and Fraser; her faithless intern is Victoria. "The lies just roll off those beautiful lips," Dr. Carter says, and that's as perfect a nutshell description of Victoria as you could wish. And of course the climax makes the parallel glaringly plain:
INTERN: She's trying to kill me.
FRASER: Yeah, I can see that. You hurt her. I understand that.
CARTER: You don't understand anything.
FRASER: Oh, I understand that sometimes you can love someone so much you're willing to do almost anything for them. The power of that kind of love can be very frightening.
CARTER: I don't care.
FRASER: Oh, I think you do care. I think you care so much that when he betrayed you, you tried to do the only thing that made sense. You tried to destroy yourself. Don't let him do this to you.
He's talking to her, but of course he's also talking to himself, and this, I think, is the raw bleeding root of Fraser's actions on the train platform. Victoria betrayed him; the only thing that made sense was to destroy himself, and the best way to do that, and the way most immediately to hand, was to go with her. It looks like romance, but it's really the opposite. This is why it's important--and emphasized both in "Victoria's Secret: Part 2" and in the fragmented flashbacks at the start of "Letting Go"--that Fraser is aware of Ray and the other cops as he starts his run. He knows they're watching. He knows there are witnesses, and this will make his self-destruction, the immolation of Constable Benton Fraser, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, complete.
He just doesn't count on Ray and Ray's loyalty, which is dogged to the point of being blind, and blind to the point of literally mis-seeing, of seeing a gun in Victoria's hand when there wasn't one. And Ray's loyalty continues to refuse to allow Fraser to destroy himself, even in the bitter, ashy aftermath:
RAY: Three weeks. Twenty-one days. Staring at beige walls with beige linoleum, day in and day out.
FRASER: Y'know, you can leave, Ray. I mean, you don't have to come here every day.
RAY: I know that.
FRASER: I mean, you have a job. You should go to work.
RAY: I do go to work.
FRASER: When?
RAY: When you're asleep. You do that a lot, you know.
FRASER: Oh. Still, I think--
RAY: Look. You start your physical therapy, get your sea legs back, in the meantime we get through this the only way I know how . . . baseball.
And Ray persists, in the face of Fraser's sarcasm ("This is great, Ray. Thanks.") and his apathy, and his perfectly disguised passive-aggressive remarks:
RAY: Can I get you anything?
FRASER: No, you've done more than enough already.
Ray clowns, he makes elaborate plans, he forces Fraser to humor him, he says in every way he can think of that he's not giving up:
RAY: You know, I think it'll be good that we go up there for a while . . . Try to put Victoria behind us. You know, it'll be like a do-over, y'know, a fresh start. Right?
FRASER: Right.
Even though Fraser is doing a rotten job, at that very moment, of putting Victoria behind him, with his odd little waking dream of her letting go of a snow globe (hello, symbolism). Ray even squares up and says the things that have to be said (although notice he only says them when he's safe from all possibility of eye-contact):
RAY: Victoria was not your fault. Could've happened to anybody. You were blindsided.
FRASER: I was going with her, you know.
RAY: I know.
Ultimately, Ray's loyalty leads to him throwing himself between Fraser and a bullet (just as Fraser's devotion to abstract justice is leading him to put himself between the faithless intern and the bullet), and whether it's that that act of self-sacrifice is sufficient for Fraser to forgive Ray or whether it's that that act of self-sacrifice is sufficient for Fraser to believe Ray forgives Fraser, it is definitely the case that it is only in the aftermath, the last scene of the episode, that the Mountie actually comes back, and Ray and Fraser's friendship can be reinscribed on their relationship:
FRASER: Does it hurt?
RAY: Of course it hurts.
FRASER: Thanks.
RAY: For what? Getting shot?
FRASER: Yeah.
RAY: Yeah, I figured you'd like that.
FRASER: Well, I'm not proud about that, but I'll admit I did get a certain perverse pleasure out of it.
RAY: Aha! Y'see, you were mad at me.
FRASER: Well, you shot me in the back.
RAY: Well, that was an accident!
FRASER: Well, I know. So was yours. I mean, it was an accident, wasn't it?
RAY: Yeah, of course it was.
FRASER: Well, there you go. Enough said. Even steven.
RAY: Even steven? . . . Just give me those binoculars, will you? Even steven. Nobody says even steven anymore.
FRASER: Really?
RAY: Yes.
FRASER: Why?
RAY: It's juvenile.
FRASER: Oh dear.
The give and take is back, the vaudeville cross talk, Fraser's convincing impersonation of a just-born-yesterday naif, his willingness to clown for Ray. And it's not until he gives that again that we realize what it is that Ray has been working so hard for all episode and just how much of Fraser has been missing.
It's good to have the Mountie back.
Original airdate: June 1, 1995
Favorite quote:
R. FRASER: She's a lovely girl.
B. FRASER: She's not a girl, she's a therapist!
R. FRASER: Then one of us is going blind.
Spoilers.
This episode, aside from being an homage to Rear Window, is about Fraser making the choice to be the Mountie. And although I don't think the outcome of that choice is ever seriously in doubt, no matter what Fraser says, I think it's also important that the episode shows it as a choice, that it separates out the qualities that make Fraser a natural and inveterate puzzle-solver from the devotion to duty and justice that characterizes him throughout the series. And that it lets us see the tired, bitter man whom Fraser normally keep carefully hidden. The underpinnings of Due South are bleak, and this episode shows us the effort it takes Fraser to rise above that, like a ballerina pirouetting on bleeding feet.
The first thing we notice, in the purgatorial interlude with the fly, is that Diefenbaker is back--it's a tremendous relief to see that Fraser has his guardian again--and it's no surprise that Fraser's first lines in the episode are, in fact, a remonstration with Dief:
Listen. Just because you can see them, and their blinds are open, is not to be taken as an invitation. It's unethical. It's also against the law. . . . Asides from which, you'll go blind. . . . Fine, don't listen. . . . No, you see, this is different. I have a wound that leaves me no choice but to face the windows . . . well, yes, I could close my eyes, but I'm not about to do that, because I'm not actually prying.
As ever, Dief serves here as an externalization of Fraser's Ego, both to be chided and to point out Fraser's own failings. (How often do Fraser's conversations with Dief include some variation on "this is different"?) Notice also the perfectly futile exhortation to listen, which Dief can't--pointing to the fact that Fraser never does.
So we see to begin with that Fraser's curiosity is innate; he's not going to close his eyes. His first encounter with Jill shows that deduction for him is a reflex:
JILL: I'm the--
FRASER: Physiotherapist.
JILL: You recognize me?
FRASER: . . . No, actually, that was deduction.
JILL: You deduced me.
FRASER: . . . Yes, uh, yes I did. You see, your hands, although small, are--
JILL: Excuse me.
FRASER: Um, uncommonly muscular, as are your triceps, biceps, deltoids, pectorals, latissimus dorsi, and abdominal rack. Um. This is not something you'd ordinarily encounter in a nurse, unless she was accustomed to heavy lifting. Also there is--
JILL: Um, may I?
FRASER: --about you the scent of eucalyptus, which is a very, um, common ingredient in muscle liniments. And that is mixed with, uh, I would say chlorine, which I would imagine would be from the whirlpool, um, and on top of that, there is, uh, coconut. Hand lotion.
JILL: Shampoo.
FRASER: Ah. There. You see. Well, all of that's very consistent with a physical therapist who has very . . . very clean hair.
JILL: That's quite a talent.
FRASER: I'm sorry.
Fraser obviously enters into his explanation to distract himself from Jill's inventory of his body, and possibly also as a way to take back some of the control that she is taking from him. (Constable Fraser? Does not like to be touched.) Hence, I think, the apology. He knows that what he just did was invasive. And what I like about Jill (who is actually my favorite of all of Fraser's semi-, quasi-, and pseudo-love interests, for many reasons including the fact that, although various gestures are made by other characters--Ray, Bob, Jill herself--toward Fraser having a romantic interest in her, he doesn't, and she doesn't evince any romantic interest in him; their relationship is perforce intimate, but on a completely different basis) is that she throws it right back at him. She doesn't let Fraser have the conversational upper hand (which, as I commented on in the pilot, he habitually and automatically maneuvers for), and she insists that he recognize her as an equal. She can play Fraser's game just as well as he can:
JILL: You're a policeman, right?
FRASER: Yes. From Canada. A Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman.
JILL: Ah. That would explain the bowed knees.
FRASER: Bowed?
JILL: I'd say five-eighths of a centimeter. Quarter horse? Sixteen hands?
FRASER: As a rule.
JILL: Well, you've got quite a few mementos here. Left leg's been broken and reset . . . hmm, twice. Second one was pretty nasty. Fell what, fifty, sixty feet?
FRASER: Fifty-seven.
JILL: Off a building?
FRASER: Off a cliff.
JILL: Somebody pushed you.
FRASER: I jumped, actually.
JILL: Oh, that would do it. Oh, serious knife wound, seven inch blade, serrated edge. What was he hunting?
FRASER: Me.
JILL: And this is recent. A minor laceration, it's small but deep. Glass door?
FRASER: Tempered.
JILL: Ouch. And this is . . . interesting. It's old, maybe twenty years, there's plenty of scar tissue, so it was deep. It's an object, but something soft, with teeth and hair maybe? This is gonna sound really silly, but were you ever--
FRASER: It was an otter, I was ten, it was dead, somebody hit me with it, can we move on?
Jill pushes Fraser out of his comfort zone, and the episode does a nice job of paralleling that with her job as his physical therapist. And she recognizes what it is that he's trying not to be, no matter how hard he tries to deflect her:
FRASER: Miss Kennedy, is it your custom to incite all your patients to break and enter?
JILL: No. Do you usually ignore a crime that's taken place right in--
FRASER: I am not a police officer in this jurisdiction. And even if I did have the authority to investigate, I'm . . . I'm taking a leave of absence.
And Jill very kindly calls him on this for the nonsense that it is. She ignores all his warning signals (including his beautifully phrased "fuck off" speech); she never backs off. And she forces him, by putting herself in danger, to re-engage with the world. (Notice that Dief goes with her when she goes to break into Dr. Carter's office.) When push comes to shove, Fraser's choice turns out not to be much of a choice at all. He can't remain merely an audience to Dr. Carter's passion play. He can't leave Jill in danger. And even without those prompts, he can't quite leave the mystery alone. His father is tactless as ever, but not wrong, when he describes Fraser as "moping":
R. FRASER: You're just mad because I didn't get here sooner.
B. FRASER: No, relieved is more like it. If you had come sooner, I might not've been able to tell which one of us was actually . . .
R. FRASER: Dead?
B. FRASER: Yes.
R. FRASER: Well, it's not a dirty word, son. 'Sides, there's worse things than being dead.
B. FRASER: Oh really? Like what?
R. FRASER: Well, you for instance. You wouldn't catch me moping around here because I was shot.
B. FRASER: I suffered massive nerve and muscle damage. I was lucky to survive.
R. FRASER: I'd've been back on the post next morning.
B. FRASER: I hardly think so.
R. FRASER: You've been lying around here for three weeks. You can't stay in this bed forever, you know.
B. FRASER: I don't plan to. This is called recovery. I'm recovering.
R. FRASER: Hmm. . . . She got you good, didn't she?
B. FRASER: No.
Bob, like Jill, recognizes that it isn't Fraser's physical injuries that are the problem (and recognizes that the idea about rebuilding the cabin is avoidance, plain and simple: "Whatever for?"). And I love the recursive appearance of Fraser's grandmother (with flannel pajamas--another reference back to the cold and warm imagery surrounding Fraser and Victoria's relationship, with a suggestion perhaps that fire (candles) is not the only way to get warm, but also, interestingly, agreeing that Fraser does need more warmth) to reinforce the point:
FRASER'S GRANDMOTHER: You're babying him, Robert.
R. FRASER: He's been shot, Mother!
FRASER'S GRANDMOTHER: Can't stay in bed forever.
And her reappearance, in reflection where Fraser may or may not be able to see her (again at a remove from Fraser's reality, just as in her first appearance, Bob can see her but Fraser can't), bestowing approval on his taking an interest--it's not about his physical immobility; it's about his mind, and whether that's going to recover or not. The "Letting Go" of the title is about Fraser letting go of Victoria, but also of his letting go of his own hurt, his own sense of devastation. This episode is all about the aftermath of the catastrophe. After your world ends, what do you do? And what Fraser comes to realize is that you have to pick yourself up and go on, that this stasis of suffering is, as Bob says, worse than death. "Letting Go" is about what happens after the story is over, about what happens after you survive your own tragic ending.
Another thing "Letting Go" is about, almost inevitably, is the construction of stories. How do you make a narrative out of your observations? Fraser does it to Jill in deducing her occupation; Jill does it to Fraser in cataloguing his scars. They argue about it over Dr. Carter and her blackmail photos:
FRASER: You're being unreasonable.
JILL: I am being perfectly logical. What we saw was a rich doctor with a drug habit who's about to be blackmailed.
FRASER: No. What we saw was a woman opening an envelope and burning the contents. We have no evidence an actual crime took place.
And of course, the episode also calls attention to its own deliberate parallelism, the way it's creating stories to echo and reflect stories that have gone before:
FRASER: He's betrayed her. She's going to kill him.
RAY: Benny. Not every woman with long dark hair tries to kill their lover.
FRASER: Oh.
As Fraser says, "I think appearances can be deceiving"--even though he's right, and Dr. Carter is going to try to kill her lover, in fact, the proper parallel isn't between Dr. Carter and Victoria. It's between Dr. Carter and Fraser; her faithless intern is Victoria. "The lies just roll off those beautiful lips," Dr. Carter says, and that's as perfect a nutshell description of Victoria as you could wish. And of course the climax makes the parallel glaringly plain:
INTERN: She's trying to kill me.
FRASER: Yeah, I can see that. You hurt her. I understand that.
CARTER: You don't understand anything.
FRASER: Oh, I understand that sometimes you can love someone so much you're willing to do almost anything for them. The power of that kind of love can be very frightening.
CARTER: I don't care.
FRASER: Oh, I think you do care. I think you care so much that when he betrayed you, you tried to do the only thing that made sense. You tried to destroy yourself. Don't let him do this to you.
He's talking to her, but of course he's also talking to himself, and this, I think, is the raw bleeding root of Fraser's actions on the train platform. Victoria betrayed him; the only thing that made sense was to destroy himself, and the best way to do that, and the way most immediately to hand, was to go with her. It looks like romance, but it's really the opposite. This is why it's important--and emphasized both in "Victoria's Secret: Part 2" and in the fragmented flashbacks at the start of "Letting Go"--that Fraser is aware of Ray and the other cops as he starts his run. He knows they're watching. He knows there are witnesses, and this will make his self-destruction, the immolation of Constable Benton Fraser, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, complete.
He just doesn't count on Ray and Ray's loyalty, which is dogged to the point of being blind, and blind to the point of literally mis-seeing, of seeing a gun in Victoria's hand when there wasn't one. And Ray's loyalty continues to refuse to allow Fraser to destroy himself, even in the bitter, ashy aftermath:
RAY: Three weeks. Twenty-one days. Staring at beige walls with beige linoleum, day in and day out.
FRASER: Y'know, you can leave, Ray. I mean, you don't have to come here every day.
RAY: I know that.
FRASER: I mean, you have a job. You should go to work.
RAY: I do go to work.
FRASER: When?
RAY: When you're asleep. You do that a lot, you know.
FRASER: Oh. Still, I think--
RAY: Look. You start your physical therapy, get your sea legs back, in the meantime we get through this the only way I know how . . . baseball.
And Ray persists, in the face of Fraser's sarcasm ("This is great, Ray. Thanks.") and his apathy, and his perfectly disguised passive-aggressive remarks:
RAY: Can I get you anything?
FRASER: No, you've done more than enough already.
Ray clowns, he makes elaborate plans, he forces Fraser to humor him, he says in every way he can think of that he's not giving up:
RAY: You know, I think it'll be good that we go up there for a while . . . Try to put Victoria behind us. You know, it'll be like a do-over, y'know, a fresh start. Right?
FRASER: Right.
Even though Fraser is doing a rotten job, at that very moment, of putting Victoria behind him, with his odd little waking dream of her letting go of a snow globe (hello, symbolism). Ray even squares up and says the things that have to be said (although notice he only says them when he's safe from all possibility of eye-contact):
RAY: Victoria was not your fault. Could've happened to anybody. You were blindsided.
FRASER: I was going with her, you know.
RAY: I know.
Ultimately, Ray's loyalty leads to him throwing himself between Fraser and a bullet (just as Fraser's devotion to abstract justice is leading him to put himself between the faithless intern and the bullet), and whether it's that that act of self-sacrifice is sufficient for Fraser to forgive Ray or whether it's that that act of self-sacrifice is sufficient for Fraser to believe Ray forgives Fraser, it is definitely the case that it is only in the aftermath, the last scene of the episode, that the Mountie actually comes back, and Ray and Fraser's friendship can be reinscribed on their relationship:
FRASER: Does it hurt?
RAY: Of course it hurts.
FRASER: Thanks.
RAY: For what? Getting shot?
FRASER: Yeah.
RAY: Yeah, I figured you'd like that.
FRASER: Well, I'm not proud about that, but I'll admit I did get a certain perverse pleasure out of it.
RAY: Aha! Y'see, you were mad at me.
FRASER: Well, you shot me in the back.
RAY: Well, that was an accident!
FRASER: Well, I know. So was yours. I mean, it was an accident, wasn't it?
RAY: Yeah, of course it was.
FRASER: Well, there you go. Enough said. Even steven.
RAY: Even steven? . . . Just give me those binoculars, will you? Even steven. Nobody says even steven anymore.
FRASER: Really?
RAY: Yes.
FRASER: Why?
RAY: It's juvenile.
FRASER: Oh dear.
The give and take is back, the vaudeville cross talk, Fraser's convincing impersonation of a just-born-yesterday naif, his willingness to clown for Ray. And it's not until he gives that again that we realize what it is that Ray has been working so hard for all episode and just how much of Fraser has been missing.
It's good to have the Mountie back.
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Date: 2007-12-05 09:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-11 07:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-04 01:06 pm (UTC)The moment of truth comes the moment Jill pulls closed the screen around Fraser. That moment of blind panic on Fraser's face is worth every penny, Canadian or American, of Paul Gross' pay. He knows what's coming, and he launches the preemptive strike to cover his own discomfort. It's reflex, all right, but it isn't deduction. Picture a child facing a really big rectal thermometer. Fraser knows that she's going to examine him and he panics. Geek that he is, and I do love that about him, his reaction to panic is recitation. Brilliant and endearing.
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Date: 2008-12-30 07:58 am (UTC)It's funny, because even though I know that "it's good to have the Mountie back" is the reaction we're supposed to have, and I can understand it, my own reaction is almost the opposite. The Fraser we see in this episode is kind of a jerk - he's irritable, he's snippy, he's uncooperative - but he's so much more human than Fraser normally allows himself to be. After the freedom and happiness and actual facial expressions of "Victoria's Secret, Part 1," it's hard for me not to see the Mountie as a kind of prison that Fraser locks himself into every day. I like that he gets his friendship with Ray back, I like that he regains his love for his work, but it bothers me to see his genuine, human, fallible personality getting tamped back down at the end and covered over with the deadpan Mountie shtick. Of course, this may have something to do with the fact that I first saw Paul Gross in Slings & Arrows, where he has such expansive gestures and about fifteen billion different facial expressions, and the only times I recognize him in Due South are when Fraser goes off the rails.
- KSC
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Date: 2010-02-22 06:31 pm (UTC)I alos find myself wondering if Jill Kennedy is meant in some ways to echo with Katherine Burns. In that on the one hand, we have Fraser being the Mountie to the hilt and being conversationally overpowered anyway by someone doing a very different schtick (which clearly is a schtick, we see Katherine without it when she and Fraser are in the dump truck), and on the other, we see a much more realistic connection where Jill doesn't let Fraser get the upper hand by turning the bits of his schtick he tries on her right back at him in exactly the same register, as with the deduction exchange you quote. (Although how much of this is my OCDish tendency wanting "An Invitation to Romance" to serve any structural role in the series as a whole, I do not know.)
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Date: 2012-03-31 12:34 pm (UTC)As a side note, we know that Fraser puts on his "mountie" armour on a daily basis, that it's a choice he makes rather than who he is. In another post of yours you speculated that his relationship with alcohol might be similar, in that his abstinence might not be due to his innocence, but because he is an "ex drinker."
There is a moment when Fraser says "I don't know what I see," and Ray, with a look of concern, says "those painkillers will do that to you." (I think I've quoted it correctly.) Fraser looks as though he's thinking about it for a beat, then he knocks the tablets in their little paper dispenser straight into the bin. It's as though he's suddenly thought, "oh yeah... that again."
Of course, this later serves to reinforce that he does in fact know what he sees... when he's trying to get help from security, who are giving him the run around, and says, "no, I'm not medicated!"
But it does seem to point to me that Fraser has to make choices very deliberately, and his choice not to take painkillers, and not to drink are based on a fear of what might happen if he does.
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Date: 2014-12-17 08:45 pm (UTC)Oh, thirteen-year-old me! *shakes head*
I bought the series on DVD last week and just finished up season one, and oh my god how in the crap did I misread the Victoria thing? Was I really that naive at 13? (Answer: duh.) But also, I love how the first half of Victoria's Secret plays out. You're seeing it through Fraser's eyes, buying into his delusions. Oh, look! She's paying him back! Oh, look! She's cleaning the apartment so he can sleep in! It isn't as though they're intentionally misleading you into thinking she's something she's not. Rather, they let Fraser's unwavering devotion to her lull you into a false sense of security. Because by this point, you as a viewer have an unwavering faith in him. From the first episode, when he loans a $100 bill to a stranger who later repays him, we've been shown that Fraser's trust in people, while not always wise, always turns out for the best. And that's where they kick us in the proverbial gonads. Because it isn't Victoria who leads Fraser astray, but Fraser himself who makes a conscious choice to believe what he believes, whether he knows better or not. Brilliant.
Back to the episode at hand, I love what you said re: Victoria's Secret about how Fraser tries to force Victoria to be trustworthy by trusting her. I see a lot of that reflected in this episode, too, with Ray and Fraser. Ray refuses to let Fraser give up by not giving up on him. The only difference being you can't always control what someone is going to do with what you give them. There was no guarantee for Ray that Fraser would come around. It was a gamble, and ultimately it came down to that choice. And Victoria was never gong to choose to not betray Fraser, something I think dawned on him during those four weeks in the hospital.
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Date: 2018-02-28 06:30 pm (UTC)I have noticed Ray only saying emotional things when he can avert his eyes in quite a lot of other episodes too!
Thank you for this excellent analysis!