Due South 2.9, "The Edge"
Apr. 9th, 2008 01:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepenny"The Edge" (DS 2.9)
Original air date: February 15, 1996
Favorite quote:
[from Fraser's nightmares]
HELMS: You lost him.
BUSH: You failed.
FRASER: But the Prime Minister--!
HELMS: Don't worry. His wife saved him.
BUSH: With an Eskimo sculpture.
Spoilers.
I don't think anyone will be surprised to learn that I love this episode. The surreal shading into the contrareal gets me every time. I love the way Fraser's (and Dief's) dreams bleed into the waking world and that, vice versa, Robert Fraser can move from the waking world into Fraser's dreams. The essence of the matter is in this exchange, which takes place when Fraser is awake:
B. FRASER: Is this a dream or are you still dead?
R. FRASER: Still dead, son. Thanks for asking.
What I particularly like is that the idiom--I think Fraser's meaning is more along the lines of "Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you still dead?"--creates a false either/or statement. Fraser isn't dreaming, but his father is still dead. And still following him.
Structurally, the episode is kind of a mess: Fraser has one plotline, with Macon Lacroix and Helms, Bush, and Casey, while Ray is shunted off into the subplot with Anita Cortez--a subplot which has very little to do with anything except giving David Marciano something to do that week (which I am all in favor of, but the faux-UST is pretty transparent). And even Fraser's plotline is really about two different things. One: his anxieties about aging and failure--which are made even more explicit in Dief's dream than in Fraser's own. Fraser is being ganged up on by twelve-year-old federal agents, but Dief is literally being replaced by a puppy.
The second thing is Macon Lacroix and Fraser's likeness to him. "You and me, we know each other," Lacroix says to Fraser, and the relationship between the two of them is probably the most interesting thing in the episode. They're in competition; Robert Fraser says that explicitly, as well as providing the nominal link back to the other half of Fraser's plot:
R. FRASER: You know, this could be the one.
B. FRASER: The one what?
R. FRASER: Your match, son. Someone who's stronger than you, faster, smarter.
B. FRASER: Dad.
R. FRASER: First you see one. Then you start to notice more. Before you know, you're struggling to keep up with 'em.
B. FRASER: Dad.
R. FRASER: See it as a challenge, son. I'd relish the chance.
But interestingly, the word "match" has more than one meaning. Both "the person who can defeat you" and "the person who is like you." Both Lacroix and Fraser have served their country; both have been repaid for their service (at least as Lacroix sees it) with ingratitude and betrayal. Both are expert outdoorsmen and trackers. ("Sometimes," Fraser says when Lacroix asks him, but nobody's fooled by that.) Both feel alienated from what Lacroix calls "the suits," by which of course he means the people in power, but I think we can expand that just a little to include Helms, Bush, and Casey, who are people in power in a different register. The difference, perfectly plain, is that Fraser is sworn to defend the people Lacroix is sworn to destroy.
And of course, the story Fraser tells when Lacroix has a gun to a head is openly a story about himself as much as it is about Lacroix:
FRASER: You won't survive.
LACROIX: What do you know about survival?
FRASER: Well at the moment, very little, it would seem. Although there was a time when I knew everything. I was always right; I was never wrong. Until one day when I was in the woods with my father. We were tracking a killer in the bush, and then suddenly one set of prints became two. They split right, and they split left. My father said the killer had gone left and retraced his steps. I said he'd gone right and retraced his steps.
RAY: Here he goes again.
FRASER: As it turned out, there was a third option.
LACROIX: Two killers.
FRASER: Exactly. So you see, I was both right and I was wrong. And you can never lose sight of that distinction, because if you do, you're beaten. You won't know where you are or who you are. And the enemy is everywhere and everyone.
LACROIX: I haven't lost sight of anything. I know who I am. I spent three years in the jungle in the service of this country. Now they're taking it from me. The air, the trees, the water. They're taking away my home. Take away a man's home, you take away his honor.
FRASER: They're not taking away your honor. They're taking away your hiding place. If you know who you are, you don't have to hide.
Sight is thematic throughout this episode: things seen, things not seen. "The eyes are the first to go," Robert Fraser says in his son's dream. "You start to miss things that you used to be able to see. Worse still, you start to see things that aren't there anymore." I think there's a bobble in the logical connection between Fraser's story and the moral he draws from it, but I'm willing to forgive that for the broader thematic points about tracking and sight.
And of course, Fraser also is a man who has had his home taken away from him. He has to believe that doesn't mean his honor has been taken as well. Chicago is explicitly contrasted to "home" in Fraser's conversation with Lacroix, and that question about honor--Fraser denies it instantly and absolutely, but he's struggling with the same concern, as his nightmares make clear:
BUSH: A burglar got inside the Prime Minister's residence, Constable, while the PM was at home. And where were you?
FRASER: In Chicago.
HELMS: Do you think it was appropriate for you to be hundreds of miles away in a foreign country when your PM was facing that kind of threat?
FRASER: Of course not.
So while Helms, Bush, and Casey represent Fraser's fears about failure, Macon Lacroix embodies Fraser's anger and sense of betrayal--and his fear that exile does equal dishonor. Fraser defeats his anger, which also defeats his fears. But "reality" remains off-kilter, with the final shot of the child-agents from Fraser's nightmares. Insofar as "magical realism" has a broader application than the works of certain South American writers, this is the sort of thing I'd point to, the destabilizing shuffle between dreams and waking, between surreality and contrareality, the way in which this episode makes sense only on its own terms.
Original air date: February 15, 1996
Favorite quote:
[from Fraser's nightmares]
HELMS: You lost him.
BUSH: You failed.
FRASER: But the Prime Minister--!
HELMS: Don't worry. His wife saved him.
BUSH: With an Eskimo sculpture.
Spoilers.
I don't think anyone will be surprised to learn that I love this episode. The surreal shading into the contrareal gets me every time. I love the way Fraser's (and Dief's) dreams bleed into the waking world and that, vice versa, Robert Fraser can move from the waking world into Fraser's dreams. The essence of the matter is in this exchange, which takes place when Fraser is awake:
B. FRASER: Is this a dream or are you still dead?
R. FRASER: Still dead, son. Thanks for asking.
What I particularly like is that the idiom--I think Fraser's meaning is more along the lines of "Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you still dead?"--creates a false either/or statement. Fraser isn't dreaming, but his father is still dead. And still following him.
Structurally, the episode is kind of a mess: Fraser has one plotline, with Macon Lacroix and Helms, Bush, and Casey, while Ray is shunted off into the subplot with Anita Cortez--a subplot which has very little to do with anything except giving David Marciano something to do that week (which I am all in favor of, but the faux-UST is pretty transparent). And even Fraser's plotline is really about two different things. One: his anxieties about aging and failure--which are made even more explicit in Dief's dream than in Fraser's own. Fraser is being ganged up on by twelve-year-old federal agents, but Dief is literally being replaced by a puppy.
The second thing is Macon Lacroix and Fraser's likeness to him. "You and me, we know each other," Lacroix says to Fraser, and the relationship between the two of them is probably the most interesting thing in the episode. They're in competition; Robert Fraser says that explicitly, as well as providing the nominal link back to the other half of Fraser's plot:
R. FRASER: You know, this could be the one.
B. FRASER: The one what?
R. FRASER: Your match, son. Someone who's stronger than you, faster, smarter.
B. FRASER: Dad.
R. FRASER: First you see one. Then you start to notice more. Before you know, you're struggling to keep up with 'em.
B. FRASER: Dad.
R. FRASER: See it as a challenge, son. I'd relish the chance.
But interestingly, the word "match" has more than one meaning. Both "the person who can defeat you" and "the person who is like you." Both Lacroix and Fraser have served their country; both have been repaid for their service (at least as Lacroix sees it) with ingratitude and betrayal. Both are expert outdoorsmen and trackers. ("Sometimes," Fraser says when Lacroix asks him, but nobody's fooled by that.) Both feel alienated from what Lacroix calls "the suits," by which of course he means the people in power, but I think we can expand that just a little to include Helms, Bush, and Casey, who are people in power in a different register. The difference, perfectly plain, is that Fraser is sworn to defend the people Lacroix is sworn to destroy.
And of course, the story Fraser tells when Lacroix has a gun to a head is openly a story about himself as much as it is about Lacroix:
FRASER: You won't survive.
LACROIX: What do you know about survival?
FRASER: Well at the moment, very little, it would seem. Although there was a time when I knew everything. I was always right; I was never wrong. Until one day when I was in the woods with my father. We were tracking a killer in the bush, and then suddenly one set of prints became two. They split right, and they split left. My father said the killer had gone left and retraced his steps. I said he'd gone right and retraced his steps.
RAY: Here he goes again.
FRASER: As it turned out, there was a third option.
LACROIX: Two killers.
FRASER: Exactly. So you see, I was both right and I was wrong. And you can never lose sight of that distinction, because if you do, you're beaten. You won't know where you are or who you are. And the enemy is everywhere and everyone.
LACROIX: I haven't lost sight of anything. I know who I am. I spent three years in the jungle in the service of this country. Now they're taking it from me. The air, the trees, the water. They're taking away my home. Take away a man's home, you take away his honor.
FRASER: They're not taking away your honor. They're taking away your hiding place. If you know who you are, you don't have to hide.
Sight is thematic throughout this episode: things seen, things not seen. "The eyes are the first to go," Robert Fraser says in his son's dream. "You start to miss things that you used to be able to see. Worse still, you start to see things that aren't there anymore." I think there's a bobble in the logical connection between Fraser's story and the moral he draws from it, but I'm willing to forgive that for the broader thematic points about tracking and sight.
And of course, Fraser also is a man who has had his home taken away from him. He has to believe that doesn't mean his honor has been taken as well. Chicago is explicitly contrasted to "home" in Fraser's conversation with Lacroix, and that question about honor--Fraser denies it instantly and absolutely, but he's struggling with the same concern, as his nightmares make clear:
BUSH: A burglar got inside the Prime Minister's residence, Constable, while the PM was at home. And where were you?
FRASER: In Chicago.
HELMS: Do you think it was appropriate for you to be hundreds of miles away in a foreign country when your PM was facing that kind of threat?
FRASER: Of course not.
So while Helms, Bush, and Casey represent Fraser's fears about failure, Macon Lacroix embodies Fraser's anger and sense of betrayal--and his fear that exile does equal dishonor. Fraser defeats his anger, which also defeats his fears. But "reality" remains off-kilter, with the final shot of the child-agents from Fraser's nightmares. Insofar as "magical realism" has a broader application than the works of certain South American writers, this is the sort of thing I'd point to, the destabilizing shuffle between dreams and waking, between surreality and contrareality, the way in which this episode makes sense only on its own terms.
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no subject
Date: 2008-04-09 10:01 pm (UTC)Also: you're already the number 2 link on Google when searching for "Due South" and The Edge. That's fast spidering!
no subject
Date: 2008-04-09 10:53 pm (UTC)BUSH: With an Eskimo sculpture.
I never know whether I like or dislike that whole exchange. One the one hand, it was a ludicrous incident and should be mocked, but on the other hand, I don't like it when my TV shows use real-world events of any kind.
I realise...
Date: 2009-03-04 11:18 pm (UTC)1) You've made the point before that DS is written with a greater mix of races than many shows. I find it very interesting that, when asked to describe the person behind the window, Fraser NEVER mentions that he is African American. In most cop shows, & from most white people I've ever heard describing a person of colour, race is usually the first characteristic mentioned.
2) New sartorial splendour! I can't say that I notice EVERY time Fraser appears in a sweater & jeans, or some other out-of-uniform combo, but he has THREE distinctly different outfits in this ep: the navy & black "commando" outfit for the opening drill; the plain black suit in the airport (in which he looks oddly unreal, almost like a mannequin); & the waiter's tux in the event scenes. Also, Ray + vest= Love!
I was wondering
Date: 2019-07-10 05:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-31 02:41 pm (UTC)That is a very interesting quote... not least because Fraser's eyes have certainly betrayed him in the past. He's been "seeing things that aren't there anymore" for some time now, since his father first popped up (what is a ghost, if not something that isn't there anymore?) and he's lost his sight in the woods, once in North (when Ray saves him) and even further back than that, when he was six, and his father left him alone in the dark to light a fire. Adult Fraser says he can't remember the fire, but he can remember the dark...
Yes yes, I know that the writers of different episodes didn't bear all those back stories in mind, but I like the way certain themes and images come up in different episodes, and how, as viewers, we can explore the intersections between these different stories.