Due South: "Strange Bedfellows"
Oct. 7th, 2008 05:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepenny"Strange Bedfellows" (DS 3.4)
Original air date: October 5, 1997
Favorite quote:
FRASER: Chainsaw.
RAY: Massacre.
FRASER: Closet.
RAY: What kind of question's that?
Spoilers.
The only successful romance in the Due South canon is that of Robert Fraser and Caroline Pinsent. Each of our three main characters--Benton Fraser, Ray Vecchio, Ray Kowalski--fails, and fails more than once. I want, though, to separate out the romances contained in an episode (Janet Morse in "Bounty Hunter," Suzanne Chapin in "You Must Remember This," Luanne Russell in "A Likely Story") from the romances that are part of the fabric of the characters' lives, women with whom Fraser and Ray and Ray have history: Victoria Metcalf, Irene Zuko, Stella Kowalski.
All three of these relationships are debacles. Stella and Ray are lucky; at least nobody has to get shot.
I have, as I've said before, a theory about Bob and Caroline's marriage: that it was a partnership and that's why it was successful. Victoria is incapable of acknowledging anyone as her partner, and I don't know if Fraser could see his way out of the cloud of limerence to be a partner to her even if she could. (I think he could if he was given the chance, but it's a moot point.) Ray Vecchio has this stupid nostalgic yearning to go back to high school so he can be Irene's protector--which, hey, Ray? Didn't actually work when you were in high school, so why'd you think it was going to work now? And I think "Strange Bedfellows" demonstrates pretty clearly (as did "Eclipse") that Ray Kowalski has Stella on a pedestal:
RAY: Just like the first night I met you. Most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.
STELLA: I was twelve.
Ray worships Stella, and his love for her is sincere, but there's no partnership there. Ray's inferiority complex at work. Except, ironically, when they dance--and notice that that's Ray's only way through Stella's defenses. If he can get her to dance, he's more than halfway home.
And Ray has another problem: he can't let go. His compare-and-contrast buddy in this episode is Dwayne Weston, the abusive stalker/bomber/all around asshole, and one thing Weston does is reassure us that Ray isn't that bad:
RAY: Was I ever like that?
STELLA: No. You always knew the line.
But at the same time, as both Stella and Ray obviously recognize, he's coming a little too close. There's too much similarity between what Weston says to Diane: "We belong together. We gotta get back together," and what Ray has the wits not to say to Stella: "I want you. You know we were put on this planet to love one another. We can't throw that away. That's something you know and I know." Weston appeals to Ray's fellow feeling: "You know what this is like. You're a man. You know how this feels." And we know, and Ray knows, that he does know.
And this ties back into things I've already said about the show's critique of romantic love, in "You Must Remember This" and "Starman" in particular: that it presents and criticizes the self-centered self-absorption of its male characters' approach to women, their arrogant belief that any woman they deign to favor with their attention is automatically theirs. It's a very selfish emotion--as Victoria's love for Fraser is selfish--about possession and power. In both those episodes, the power is revealed to belong to the woman, and not in the tiresome Petrarchan way in which she can withhold or bestow her favor, but literal power. Suzanne's a Fed; she can save Ray's bacon or hang him out to dry. Audrey is a scientist, not a helpless victim. She hasn't been snatched by aliens, leaving it up to Ian to rescue her; she's hunting aliens (not in the literally predatory sense, but still). Fraser wants to protect Victoria, when he should be seeking protection from her. Irene is the exception; she doesn't have power, but you know, I think she's on the verge of going out and getting some, if Ray and Frank squabbling over her like two dogs with a bone hadn't gotten her killed first.
And Stella does not need Ray to protect her. That's perfectly clear. Stella needs protecting like a wolverine needs a hat for Easter. It's Fraser doing his duty as a peace officer who saves her from the bomb both times; insofar as Ray has any part in protecting her, it's really only as Fraser's partner. Stella can take care of herself. "I worry about her," Ray says, and we believe him, but then he follows it up with, "I think about her all the time," and we're right back to the obsessive asshole Dwayne Weston.
Ray's saving grace is that he knows he's wrong:
WESTON: I want my wife back. She turned my wife against me. She ruined everything. When she's gone, everything will be the way it used to be.
RAY: No, no, you can't erase it like that. The things that were said, the things that weren't said. When it's over, it's over. You gotta accept that and live with it.
Later, Fraser asks him, "Did you mean that?" and Ray says, "No, I was lying." But we need to remember that Ray lies about himself like a reflex action.
And, of course, whatever it was that went wrong in Ray and Stella's marriage (RAY: All of a sudden, I don't know how to talk to you. STELLA: It's not all of a sudden, Ray. It took years.), it wasn't something easy:
RAY: I could stay the night.
STELLA: You could.
RAY: It'd be perfect.
STELLA: It'd be a mistake. You could stay, we could make love, it'd be great, like a thousand times before. Tomorrow we'd be right back where we were this morning, maybe a couple more regrets.
RAY: I love you.
STELLA: Love you, too. Always will. But you know I'm right.
Which won't prevent her giving in/seducing Ray in another couple lines. The inability to let go is at least partially mutual, and that of course makes it all the harder. But it doesn't invalidate the critique of Ray's approach.
As always in Due South, there are class issues at work. We see that in the contrast between the black men in suits who are Orsini's retinue and the black men not in suits who are protesting against him. We see it in Orsini's unthinking class bigotry:
STELLA: I'm prosecuting her husband for spousal abuse.
ORSINI: Doesn't look the type.
RAY: The type? I don't get that. What "type"?
STELLA: [with all the menace in the world] Ray.
RAY: Hey, I know I'm just the bodyguard/ex-husband here, but I'm allowed to have an opinion.
STELLA: You always have an opinion.
FRASER: And this one may be valid. After all, there's a general perception that abused women come from a certain stratum of--
And Stella hands Fraser and Ray their heads on a plate. But there's also a piece of legerdemain in the dialogue, specifically's Fraser's redirect. Because when Orsini says "doesn't look the type," it's far more likely that he's referring to the husband. And, of course, if we want to look around for the "type" of a wife-beater, Ray Kowalski is standing right there with his blatantly lower class accent and his aggression issues. Stereotype ahoy.
And, of course, the show's point is that the stereotype is wrong. Ray's got issues, but he clearly is not and never has been abusive to Stella, just as Damon Reese may look like a criminal, but it's the smooth talkers in their suits who are committing crimes left and right. (I think it's interesting that Joe Mendelson dresses like Damon Reese, but talks like Orsini's aide.) And the real threat in the episode is the middle-class white nobody.
Notice the swiftness with which Fraser's supernaturally good hearing assimilates into Ray's worldview:
RAY: Don't tell me you can actually hear them.
FRASER: Yes, I can.
RAY: [without batting an eye] Okay, what are they saying?
FRASER: Well, I'm trying not to eavesdrop.
Ray doesn't have the previous Ray's concrete-solid preconceptions about the way the world works. He can accept Fraser in a way that Ray Vecchio resisted strenuously. But Ray and Fraser's relationship continues to be difficult. Ray is very quick to reject any suggestion that he cares about Fraser:
RAY: Say hypothetically something happens and you gotta take a bullet for the guy? Do me a favor. Don't.
FRASER: You know, Ray, it's really nice to know you feel concern for me.
RAY: I wasn't thinking about you, Fraser.
FRASER: Oh, no, of course not.
He's all sharp edges, like a porcupine--although notice that he does confess to Fraser just how torn up about Stella he is. And of course he ditches him at the end, in an echo of the end of "Burning Down the House":
FRASER: You want to get something to eat?
RAY: Nah, Fraser, I think I'd like to be alone.
It's not that easy, Fraser. And Fraser, to his credit, isn't hurt by this. He understands that Ray's struggling. And he knows that he doesn't know how to help. (Fraser tries to comfort either Ray with an awkward pat on the back, drink once.). At the end of the episode, as Ray is dancing with a ghost Stella in his apartment, Fraser is still looking for answers, even if clearly in the wrong place:
BENTON FRASER: Did you ever have a partner who needed your help, but you didn't know how to help him?
ROBERT FRASER: Yeah, there was the time Clete Brockelmeyer got stuck down a forty-foot crevasse, and I only had a twenty-foot rope. That the kind of thing you're talking about?
B. FRASER: No, I was thinking more along the lines of trouble with a woman.
R. FRASER: All right. We threw Snuffy Briggs in a snowbank a couple of times to cool his ardor. First time it didn't work. Second time he got pneumonia and it took him out of circulation for a month.
B. FRASER: . . . Great help, Dad.
R. FRASER: Good.
Fraser wants to help Ray. Here's the difference between romantic love and partnership: protecting someone and helping them are two quite different things.
Original air date: October 5, 1997
Favorite quote:
FRASER: Chainsaw.
RAY: Massacre.
FRASER: Closet.
RAY: What kind of question's that?
Spoilers.
The only successful romance in the Due South canon is that of Robert Fraser and Caroline Pinsent. Each of our three main characters--Benton Fraser, Ray Vecchio, Ray Kowalski--fails, and fails more than once. I want, though, to separate out the romances contained in an episode (Janet Morse in "Bounty Hunter," Suzanne Chapin in "You Must Remember This," Luanne Russell in "A Likely Story") from the romances that are part of the fabric of the characters' lives, women with whom Fraser and Ray and Ray have history: Victoria Metcalf, Irene Zuko, Stella Kowalski.
All three of these relationships are debacles. Stella and Ray are lucky; at least nobody has to get shot.
I have, as I've said before, a theory about Bob and Caroline's marriage: that it was a partnership and that's why it was successful. Victoria is incapable of acknowledging anyone as her partner, and I don't know if Fraser could see his way out of the cloud of limerence to be a partner to her even if she could. (I think he could if he was given the chance, but it's a moot point.) Ray Vecchio has this stupid nostalgic yearning to go back to high school so he can be Irene's protector--which, hey, Ray? Didn't actually work when you were in high school, so why'd you think it was going to work now? And I think "Strange Bedfellows" demonstrates pretty clearly (as did "Eclipse") that Ray Kowalski has Stella on a pedestal:
RAY: Just like the first night I met you. Most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.
STELLA: I was twelve.
Ray worships Stella, and his love for her is sincere, but there's no partnership there. Ray's inferiority complex at work. Except, ironically, when they dance--and notice that that's Ray's only way through Stella's defenses. If he can get her to dance, he's more than halfway home.
And Ray has another problem: he can't let go. His compare-and-contrast buddy in this episode is Dwayne Weston, the abusive stalker/bomber/all around asshole, and one thing Weston does is reassure us that Ray isn't that bad:
RAY: Was I ever like that?
STELLA: No. You always knew the line.
But at the same time, as both Stella and Ray obviously recognize, he's coming a little too close. There's too much similarity between what Weston says to Diane: "We belong together. We gotta get back together," and what Ray has the wits not to say to Stella: "I want you. You know we were put on this planet to love one another. We can't throw that away. That's something you know and I know." Weston appeals to Ray's fellow feeling: "You know what this is like. You're a man. You know how this feels." And we know, and Ray knows, that he does know.
And this ties back into things I've already said about the show's critique of romantic love, in "You Must Remember This" and "Starman" in particular: that it presents and criticizes the self-centered self-absorption of its male characters' approach to women, their arrogant belief that any woman they deign to favor with their attention is automatically theirs. It's a very selfish emotion--as Victoria's love for Fraser is selfish--about possession and power. In both those episodes, the power is revealed to belong to the woman, and not in the tiresome Petrarchan way in which she can withhold or bestow her favor, but literal power. Suzanne's a Fed; she can save Ray's bacon or hang him out to dry. Audrey is a scientist, not a helpless victim. She hasn't been snatched by aliens, leaving it up to Ian to rescue her; she's hunting aliens (not in the literally predatory sense, but still). Fraser wants to protect Victoria, when he should be seeking protection from her. Irene is the exception; she doesn't have power, but you know, I think she's on the verge of going out and getting some, if Ray and Frank squabbling over her like two dogs with a bone hadn't gotten her killed first.
And Stella does not need Ray to protect her. That's perfectly clear. Stella needs protecting like a wolverine needs a hat for Easter. It's Fraser doing his duty as a peace officer who saves her from the bomb both times; insofar as Ray has any part in protecting her, it's really only as Fraser's partner. Stella can take care of herself. "I worry about her," Ray says, and we believe him, but then he follows it up with, "I think about her all the time," and we're right back to the obsessive asshole Dwayne Weston.
Ray's saving grace is that he knows he's wrong:
WESTON: I want my wife back. She turned my wife against me. She ruined everything. When she's gone, everything will be the way it used to be.
RAY: No, no, you can't erase it like that. The things that were said, the things that weren't said. When it's over, it's over. You gotta accept that and live with it.
Later, Fraser asks him, "Did you mean that?" and Ray says, "No, I was lying." But we need to remember that Ray lies about himself like a reflex action.
And, of course, whatever it was that went wrong in Ray and Stella's marriage (RAY: All of a sudden, I don't know how to talk to you. STELLA: It's not all of a sudden, Ray. It took years.), it wasn't something easy:
RAY: I could stay the night.
STELLA: You could.
RAY: It'd be perfect.
STELLA: It'd be a mistake. You could stay, we could make love, it'd be great, like a thousand times before. Tomorrow we'd be right back where we were this morning, maybe a couple more regrets.
RAY: I love you.
STELLA: Love you, too. Always will. But you know I'm right.
Which won't prevent her giving in/seducing Ray in another couple lines. The inability to let go is at least partially mutual, and that of course makes it all the harder. But it doesn't invalidate the critique of Ray's approach.
As always in Due South, there are class issues at work. We see that in the contrast between the black men in suits who are Orsini's retinue and the black men not in suits who are protesting against him. We see it in Orsini's unthinking class bigotry:
STELLA: I'm prosecuting her husband for spousal abuse.
ORSINI: Doesn't look the type.
RAY: The type? I don't get that. What "type"?
STELLA: [with all the menace in the world] Ray.
RAY: Hey, I know I'm just the bodyguard/ex-husband here, but I'm allowed to have an opinion.
STELLA: You always have an opinion.
FRASER: And this one may be valid. After all, there's a general perception that abused women come from a certain stratum of--
And Stella hands Fraser and Ray their heads on a plate. But there's also a piece of legerdemain in the dialogue, specifically's Fraser's redirect. Because when Orsini says "doesn't look the type," it's far more likely that he's referring to the husband. And, of course, if we want to look around for the "type" of a wife-beater, Ray Kowalski is standing right there with his blatantly lower class accent and his aggression issues. Stereotype ahoy.
And, of course, the show's point is that the stereotype is wrong. Ray's got issues, but he clearly is not and never has been abusive to Stella, just as Damon Reese may look like a criminal, but it's the smooth talkers in their suits who are committing crimes left and right. (I think it's interesting that Joe Mendelson dresses like Damon Reese, but talks like Orsini's aide.) And the real threat in the episode is the middle-class white nobody.
Notice the swiftness with which Fraser's supernaturally good hearing assimilates into Ray's worldview:
RAY: Don't tell me you can actually hear them.
FRASER: Yes, I can.
RAY: [without batting an eye] Okay, what are they saying?
FRASER: Well, I'm trying not to eavesdrop.
Ray doesn't have the previous Ray's concrete-solid preconceptions about the way the world works. He can accept Fraser in a way that Ray Vecchio resisted strenuously. But Ray and Fraser's relationship continues to be difficult. Ray is very quick to reject any suggestion that he cares about Fraser:
RAY: Say hypothetically something happens and you gotta take a bullet for the guy? Do me a favor. Don't.
FRASER: You know, Ray, it's really nice to know you feel concern for me.
RAY: I wasn't thinking about you, Fraser.
FRASER: Oh, no, of course not.
He's all sharp edges, like a porcupine--although notice that he does confess to Fraser just how torn up about Stella he is. And of course he ditches him at the end, in an echo of the end of "Burning Down the House":
FRASER: You want to get something to eat?
RAY: Nah, Fraser, I think I'd like to be alone.
It's not that easy, Fraser. And Fraser, to his credit, isn't hurt by this. He understands that Ray's struggling. And he knows that he doesn't know how to help. (Fraser tries to comfort either Ray with an awkward pat on the back, drink once.). At the end of the episode, as Ray is dancing with a ghost Stella in his apartment, Fraser is still looking for answers, even if clearly in the wrong place:
BENTON FRASER: Did you ever have a partner who needed your help, but you didn't know how to help him?
ROBERT FRASER: Yeah, there was the time Clete Brockelmeyer got stuck down a forty-foot crevasse, and I only had a twenty-foot rope. That the kind of thing you're talking about?
B. FRASER: No, I was thinking more along the lines of trouble with a woman.
R. FRASER: All right. We threw Snuffy Briggs in a snowbank a couple of times to cool his ardor. First time it didn't work. Second time he got pneumonia and it took him out of circulation for a month.
B. FRASER: . . . Great help, Dad.
R. FRASER: Good.
Fraser wants to help Ray. Here's the difference between romantic love and partnership: protecting someone and helping them are two quite different things.
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no subject
Date: 2008-10-08 01:12 am (UTC)That's all too common a behavior, and it's great to see Due South recognizing and undermining it.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-08 03:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-08 03:35 am (UTC)(Also, I love your icon.)
no subject
Date: 2008-10-08 01:34 pm (UTC)That should have been "these have made my night." I'm not completely incoherent :)
no subject
Date: 2008-10-08 04:08 am (UTC)And, of course, if we want to look around for the "type" of a wife-beater, Ray Kowalski is standing right there with his blatantly lower class accent and his aggression issues. Stereotype ahoy.
So true! (I love Due South so much, and you've highlighted one of the big reasons. Stereotypes get turned on their ear all the time in dS.) How ironic is Ray's real name in that context: Stanley Kowalski, the very symbol of the wife-beaters. In fact, isn't the singlet or tank top called a wife-beater because Brando's Stanley Kowalski was wearing one in that famous scene in Streetcar? Oh, and Ray yells "Stellllaaaa!" after her when she gets out of his car and goes into Orsini's house. Hee!
As an F/K aficionado, I also adore the quote you pulled out at the top. Another moment I find fascinating is Ray's informing Fraser that he is not prudish, and giving this assertion as evidence: "Who, me? No. Me, I'll try anything." Except when he said "I hadn't realized you were so prudish," Fraser hadn't been talking about what Ray would be willing to do in bed at all. But it's nice of Ray to volunteer the information--hee!--especially in this episode, in which he voluntarily walks away from a potential sexual encounter with Stella not once, but twice, and apparently begins the process of getting over her.
I love your comparison/contrast of romance and partnership, of course. Very well stated. Unfortunately for Caroline and Bob, their partnership ended in tragedy (although Call of the Wild eventually reverses that tragedy by supernatural means). Fraser's and Vecchio's partnership ended in the abandonment of Fraser (for honorable reasons, but it's still abandonment, just like Fraser's abandonment by his father--for law-enforcement duty). Fraser's and Ray Kowalski's, though...well, they ride off into the sunrise, apparently happily ever after. I think theirs is the loving partnership that finally succeeds.
(I think the blooper reel frame from which I made my icon was also from that episode. :)
no subject
Date: 2008-10-08 09:55 am (UTC)I also love how you see the 'flaws' in Fraser's character. That you see him :)
no subject
Date: 2008-10-08 10:32 am (UTC)I only just got up, and I didn't want to. I have to get going to my 8:30 class, and I don't want to. But this sentence has made things just a little bit better in my world.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-08 04:53 pm (UTC)(8:30 class? Ouch.)
no subject
Date: 2008-10-09 05:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-10 02:29 am (UTC)What channel/time is this freakin' show on anyways? Lol
no subject
Date: 2008-10-10 04:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-11 02:50 am (UTC)Suddenly I feel...TV-clueless, and that's a first, believe me. Oh well, don't have a workable TV and since analogue TV will be eliminated come February 19th....I guess I'll look for that DVD O.o *crosses fingers*
no subject
Date: 2012-04-01 12:40 am (UTC)Benny's memories, though obviously tainted, include the fact that they only saw his father once every sixteen weeks,and "some of those times you slept out with the dogs." If I only saw my husband once every four months, and some of those times literally sent him to sleep in the dog house, I would probably not have the happiest of marriages!
Benny won't remember the good times of his parents' marriage, but he does remember the bad times quite clearly, and it seems there were enough of them that it made a profound impact on him, even within the space of six short years. "You weren't around long enough to call her by name..." I think abandonment is a profound issue in the stories dS tells about relationships. Lovers abandon each other, for any number of reasons. As you say, Ray and Stella are lucky, they don't have to shoot each other to realise that it's over.
Actually, the only succesful relationship you see is that of Ray Kowalski's parents. Ma Vecchio had a drunken abuser for a husband, Fraser's parents were absent or sleeping in the dog house (and how on earth did Bob burn the cabin down? There's a story in that!) Even minor characters like Welsh have a failed relationship going on behind the scenes... early on we know he's married and his wife makes his sandwiches (They Eat Horses, Don't They?) We see him, presumably with her, briefly in North. Then he's making his own sandwiches (and Ray's trying to scrounge cold cuts) and then he's telling his brother that the apartment he's living in isn't much bigger than a trailer.
Of course there is Frannie with her fairy tale dreams that are doomed to failure. There's Elaine, consciously critiquing her crush on Fraser...
Any love story is, in due South, "A Likely Story", to quote an episode which deliberately examines story telling (ghost and 'romance' fiction versions of the princess myth.) As Ray says, "That's some dark story Fraser..."