Due South: "Seeing Is Believing"

[truepenny]

"Seeing Is Believing" (DS 3.5)
Original air date: October 12, 1997
Favorite quote:
WELSH: Let's give it a shot
FRASER: Ah. Well, good. Sir, if you'd be so--
WELSH: No, no, no. Use it on him. [pointing at Ray]
RAY: No! I'd love to, Fraser, but, um, I got bad eyes.
FRANNIE: Oh, okay! Do it on me!
FRASER: Francesca, you weren't there.
FRANNIE: Oh. Well, does that matter?
FRASER: Oddly, yes.

Spoilers.



A couple random things I've noticed and don't have any better place to put:

1. The imagery of fire as destruction in "Burning Down the House" does of course track back to "Victoria's Secret," in which Fraser's father's cabin burns down. And Fraser Sr.'s story--

ROBERT FRASER: Your mother and I had a cabin north of the Clyde River. Burned right to the ground. A kerosene error. My fault. Your mother and I slept in an igloo for four months while I rebuilt it. The longest time we spent together.
BENTON FRASER: I didn't know that.
R. FRASER: Well, you weren't born yet, son. In fact, all that time spent in that igloo sort of started the ball rolling, conceptually speaking.

--both reinforces that and brings in a new motif, that of creation following, and in fact dependent upon, destruction. If that cabin north of the Clyde River hadn't burned down, odds are very good Benton Fraser would never have been born. "Something good may come of it," Bob says of the destruction of Fraser's apartment building, and if we take that as a wider principle in the episode, which also sees, if not the destruction, the abrupt removal of Fraser's friendship with Ray Vecchio ( it's cold out here, warm me up--snow and fire imagery again, although Ray Vecchio's fire is tame and benign), then, yes, something good does come of it: Ray Kowalski.

2. Fraser never tries to touch his father. On one level, this is probably a budgetary decision: demonstrating Fraser Sr.'s incorporeality is expensive. But it's also a character detail. Buck tries to hug Bob. Fraser never does. Their conversation in "Bird in the Hand" tells us why:

B. FRASER: I never loved anyone as much as I loved you.
R. FRASER: No, stop that kind of talk right now!
B. FRASER: And I could never, ever say it.
R. FRASER: Well, if you did, I would've hit you.... Ah, 's my fault. Shouldn't've left you with your grandmother all that time. You don't know until it's too late the effect that women can have on you. For years, you're living a perfectly normal life, then one day, right out of the blue, you start thinking about feelings and emotions. That was my mistake. Not yours, son.

Fraser was raised, pretty clearly, not to touch people and not to demonstrate affection. Bob can blame Fraser's attempts to break out of that straitjacket on Fraser's grandmother, but "Letting Go" shows us that's not true, either. Fraser's grandmother believes in warm pajamas, not "babying."

"No man is an island," but Benton Fraser is pretty close. He never tries to touch his father--he never tries to touch anyone. It's all one way the other way (see, for example, Ida in "Body Language" or even Mrs. Gamez in "They Eat Horses, Don't They?" who confesses her fear of wrinkling him before she hugs him). Which makes the moments when he does reach out all the more important.

---

There's only one place I can start in this episode, and that's with Fraser breaking character. This is the only time in the series we see Fraser use his parareal powers for selfish ends, and boy howdy is it jarring.

Which means it needs to be examined very carefully.

Firstly, Fraser doesn't maneuver himself into this position of power on purpose: it's an accident. But, secondly, the instant he realizes what's happened, he takes advantage of it: "Ray, when you hear me say the word 'cauliflower' ..." So this isn't planned, but it's also obviously extremely pressing.

And what is it Fraser wants?

RAY: Well?
FRASER: Well, what?
RAY: Look Fraser, you're making me nuts. You give me a hint here, or I swear I'll clock you right--
FRASER: Cauliflower.
RAY: I'm sorry, Fraser, for being so abrupt. I hope you will accept my heartfelt apology.
FRASER: Certainly. Think nothing of it.

Fraser wants Ray to be polite. He may also want a way to derail Ray's temper (and notice, pursuant to the motif I've been tracking, that Ray is in the middle of a threat of physical violence when Fraser cauliflowers him), but mostly what he wants is politeness. An apology, and his own chance to accept that apology without being interrupted.

And he wants something quite similar from Inspector Thatcher:

THATCHER: Fraser.
FRASER: Duty calls.
RAY: Bellows, more like.
THATCHER: Constable, I'm losing my patience. We need to get back to the Consulate--
FRASER: Eggplant.
THATCHER: Unless, of course, you'd like to stay and talk to your friend for a little while longer. In fact, why don't you stay as long as you'd like.
FRASER: Thank you kindly, sir.

He wants permission to hang out with Ray (and I find it deeply touching that that seems to be the pinnacle of his ambition as an evil genius) and he wants Thatcher to speak to him politely.

That's it. Yes, this is petty, but it's also something that maybe Fraser shouldn't have to resort to post-hypnotic suggestion to get. Bar Fraser Sr.'s ghost and Diefenbaker, these are the two people Fraser is closest to (which in itself is a somewhat horrifying realization), and neither one of them treats him like his feelings matters. Thatcher may daydream about his body and she may, as by implication she claims, care about him enough to do anything to protect him, but that's not how she treats him, witness her continued refusal to discuss or deal with their encounter in "All the Queen's Horses." And it's not that Fraser wants her to confess her love--he has this chance to make her say whatever he wants, and what he wants is for her to be considerate. And to let him hang out with Ray.

And Ray? Ray may touch Fraser, but he's still shying back from any verbal expression of affection. Which Fraser understands perfectly:

RAY: I love you, Fraser!
FRASER: And I you, Ray.
RAY: No, not literally. I mean symbolically or something.
FRASER: No, I know. Thank you.

Fraser doesn't misunderstand what Ray means; he's taking the opportunity to wind Ray up, to make him uncomfortable. Fraser clearly likes Ray very much (see above re: the pinnacle of his ambition), but Ray also, very obviously, frustrates the hell out of him. Ray blows hot and cold; he's wrapped in layer after layer of barbed wire and sarcasm. The other key thing about the post-hypnotic apology suggestion is the use of the word "heartfelt." Because Ray Kowalski is hard as hell to pin down.

If we read carefully and pay attention to the subtext, what Fraser's aberration here shows us is just how much pressure Fraser is under and just how unhappy he would be if he let himself feel it. This is a break in character in some ways worse than what we see in "Victoria's Secret" and "Letting Go," because he hasn't dropped the Mountie facade. If anything, he's more Mountie-ish than ever--his answer to Ray's layers of barbed wire. What this lapse reveals is what the superhero part of Fraser would be like if he didn't have Fraser's ethics and depth of empathy to hold him down.

---

There's also a lot of other stuff going on in this episode, with the murder that Ray, Welsh, and Thatcher all witness and all reconstruct incorrectly. (Quick recap, if it's been a while: Ray thinks Keith murdered Mike Bennet for Judy, Thatcher thinks Judy murdered Bennet to protect Keith, Welsh thinks they both murdered Bennet as a mob hit.) Neither Welsh nor Thatcher are particularly good observers--they're both completely wrong about what's going on between the victim and the two suspects--but Welsh at least hangs onto the salient fact about the victim: his mob connections. It makes his version of the crime they're trying to reconstruct perfect nonsense, but he's right.

Both Thatcher and Ray assume that the contested relationship is between Judy and Bennet rather than Keith and Bennet. They assume Judy is the linch-pin, because the only kind of break-up they can imagine is a romantic one, whereas Keith is actually trying to break up with Bennet professionally. Ray is closer to being right--about the situation, if not the crime: he insists, correctly, that Judy and Keith are lovers. Where he goes wrong is in trying to make a story to fit the murder he thinks he saw, and of course, drawing the material for that story from his own life. Ray identifies with the victim and thus we learn another piece of the puzzle of Ray and Stella's divorce:

RAY: [imagining himself as Bennet] Is this about kids? Is that what this is about? 'Cause I can wait. And you can get your career set up and we can have kids later. Lots of 'em.

I don't personally think that the issue of children was the breaking strain on Ray and Stella's marriage; Ray's offer to wait (which I'm assuming is based on a real argument) looks like a desperate band-aid, an appeasement against everything else that's going wrong. Because, of course "that" is not what "this" is about. As Welsh points out, Ray's over-investment makes nonsense of the situation they witnessed:

WELSH: How do kids fit into this?
RAY: I don't know! It might've been part of their problem.
WELSH: No, no. I think it's part of your problem.
RAY: [instantly defensive] What problem?
WELSH: The problem that put your marriage in the dumpster.
RAY: What does that have to do with this?
FRASER: Uh, Ray, if I may, I think what the lieutenant is suggesting--and [looking at Thatcher] this is by no means uncommon among police officers--you may be projecting some of your own life, some of your personality, into your deductions about the criminals.
WELSH: That's exactly what I'm suggesting. You two keep looking for things that aren't there, like passion and romance. Forget about it! They don't exist. The world is full of creeps.

(Tangentially, notice, again, that Welsh's relationship with Ray Kowalski is substantively different than his relationship with Ray Vecchio. Vecchio and Welsh would never get into this kind of personal exchange, and the follow-up is just as telling:

RAY: Are you saying they both had their hands on the knife?
WELSH: Who cares? Look, you load a gun, you cock the trigger, you give the gun to Thatcher, she uses it on Fraser. I find out your hand was on the gun, you both go away.
THATCHER: I would never shoot a fellow officer.
WELSH: That's 'cause you never had Ray working under you. You'd change your tune.
RAY: What?
WELSH: Hey, I'd shoot you.

Welsh uses Ray's given name (which he also does in "Strange Bedfellows"), and he's teasing him. Welsh is still an authority figure, and Ray always responds to him as such, but that's no longer accompanied by thinly veiled hostility. Instead there's a kind of affection which suggests--although we get no explicit confirmation of this idea--long familiarity. It's the sort of relationship Ray Vecchio should have had with Welsh if it weren't for Ray's own issues making that impossible.)

Right. Where were we?

This exchange gives us Harding Welsh's worldview in a nutshell--and Welsh is also projecting, because while he's right about the motive behind Bennet's death, he's also completely wrong about Judy and Keith. They are in love, and in fact they aren't "creeps." Keith is trying to go straight, and Judy is trying to help him.

Which brings us around to Thatcher, who has the most elaborately wrong theory of the three of them and who is projecting even more egregiously than Ray. We know Thatcher is wrong, even before Fraser figures out the real solution, because Frannie agrees with her, citing Sword of Desire to back her up. Sword of Desire is shorthand for every romantic cliché you can think of; Frannie's uncritical acceptance of it tells us everything we need to know about what she thinks she wants from Fraser. But if a theory makes sense based on Sword of Desire, we know it's going to be wrong. Due South has already demonstrated to us very plainly what it thinks of romantic clichés.

Thatcher is thinking of Fraser in terms of a romance hero:

RAY: Did you actually see the knife in her hand?
THATCHER: Well, no, but I was a little distracted. Constable Fraser was running after the shoplifter. You know, the uniform . . . the motion . . . the legs, driving like pistons . . . pumping like steel . . . [coming back to herself with a bump] Something red going fast always catches the eye.

Thatcher can't get any of the details right: Fraser was in pursuit of a purse-snatcher, not a shoplifter. And her slow-motion daydream is more ridiculous than sexy. And, hello, treating Fraser like a beautiful piece of beef. Which is also what her imaginary, projective reconstruction of the crime does: Fraser's role is to stand still and look serious (as of course he does on guard duty) while Thatcher, identifying with Judy whom she believes to be the murderer, sticks a knife in Bennet). She complains about the sexism of Ray's version:

RAY: But she had nothing to do with it, lieutenant. I mean, she was probably the cause of it, but--
THATCHER: Oh, I see! Just because she's a woman, she can't be the killer, she can only be the motive.
RAY: Well, it's good to be the motive. Very good to be the motive.

But her own is no better--particularly when Frannie gets a hold of it.

Also, poor Ray. "It's good to be the motive." It's good to have someone care about you that much--and Stella clearly doesn't. There's a parallel between Ray and Stella and Frannie and Fraser; Ray and Frannie both make overtures; Stella's response is immediate and unequivocal:

RAY: Hi, Stella.
STELLA: Back off, Ray.

Fraser's too polite to do the same, but oh I bet he wishes he could. (Parenthetically, although mostly in this episode I just want to drown Frannie in a bucket, I adore the do-si-do she does around Fraser to stay in Welsh's office as he's trying to close her out. This is an example of Seasons 3 and 4's greater interest in body language and stage business, and it fills me with delight.)

Back, though, to Thatcher. Her reconstruction of the crime mostly reveals that her feelings are still (as she describes them to Buck in "All the Queen's Horses") confused. She starts by trying to deny a romantic attachment between Judy and Keith:

THATCHER: She and the young man were friends.
RAY: Lovers.
THATCHER: Friends!
RAY: Lovers.
THATCHER: It is possible for a man and a woman to develop a personal Platonic relationship based on friendship, a shared sense of values, a mutual respect . . .
RAY: Yeah, on Mars, maybe.
FRASER: Oh, no, here on Earth as well, Ray. I think it happens all the time.
FRANNIE: Doesn't sound like much fun to me.

Fraser's championing of the idea is fairly pointed; he would be happy to have that kind of relationship with Thatcher. (And Frannie's rejection of it--"doesn't sound like much fun to me"--tells us everything else we need to know about what she thinks she wants from Fraser.) But the problem is that Thatcher can't toe her own line. We're back to Fraser as a beautiful piece of beef--as someone to be protected. And we just saw in "Strange Bedfellows" that the desire to protect, rather than help, is anathema to friendship and mutual respect. By the time Thatcher tries to explain herself, she's twisted this theoretical Platonic friendship into something else:

THATCHER: What I'm trying to say is that it is possible to feel so strongly for another person that you would do anything to protect them. Even kill for them.
FRANNIE: Yes! She killed to protect Pool Boy because he was protecting her. Oh man! This is even more beautiful than Sword of Desire.

Frannie endorses it; it has to be wrong.

And Fraser's struggle to figure out what Thatcher wants--she suggested Platonic friendship, he jumped on it; her momentary fugue, ending as it does with her hand on Fraser's cheek, indicates that her feelings are not all that Platonic; Fraser sends up a trial balloon by mentioning the train and gets immediately shot down. She doesn't want his love, either. It's not Thatcher's fault she's confused, but it's unkind and irresponsible of her to take it out on Fraser.

---

And let's go back to Ray for a few final points.

1. Ray's reaction to another demonstration of Fraser's parareality is much the same as his reaction in "Strange Bedfellows": "Betcha couldn't do that twice." And Fraser's a competitive son of a bitch: "I never gamble, Ray. But--" [he sends the second knife after the first with perfect accuracy]

2. Ray would like some equality in this partnership, please. "Look, Fraser, just once I would like to say, 'Rack that bad boy and cover me.'" ETA: And I forgot to mention the thing that made me notice this line in the first place: obviously by now Ray and Fraser have been partners for quite a while, long enough for them to have been in this situation repeatedly.

3. Although he won't or can't say it, Ray does care about Fraser, as his reaction to Fraser's showdown with Johnny demonstrates: "Fraser, he'll put a cap in you! No!" Ray is clearly frightened for Fraser, and notice the transmutation of fear for Fraser to anger at Fraser to aggression toward Johnny:

FRASER: [to Ray] That was close.
RAY: [wordless noise of rage] [to Johnny] On the ground! I will beat you to death with this empty gun!

4. Most of this episode has had Ray in his brash, hyperactive, in-your-face mode, but at the end, we get something different:

RAY: I sure called that wrong.
FRASER: You called a lot of it right.
RAY: You think maybe I saw it a certain way because of, you know, me and Stella?
FRASER: Well, we all have our perspectives, Ray. There's nothing wrong with that.
RAY: There is if you almost put the wrong person in jail.
FRASER: That's right, but we did find the truth, and that's what counts.
RAY: Right.

(Notice also the gentle and respectful way Ray handles Fraser's hat. Look at what Ray does, not at what he says.)

Here's the self-doubt, but also the thoughtfulness, that underlies the brashness. Ray's finally dropped his defenses. And Fraser, to give him credit, is being genuinely supportive, trying to be honest without making things worse. He may take advantage of unexpected hypnosis, but he doesn't take advantage of Ray's vulnerability.

5. Notice again the symbolic nature of Ray's glasses:

FRASER: Ray, have you considered contacts?
RAY: [scrabbling his glasses onto his face] Too much fuss.
[a pause for gunfire]
RAY: Have you considered a gun?
FRASER: Too many legalities.

The need for Ray's glasses is yoked to his gun.

6. And finally:

RAY: Did you get anything out of me?
FRASER: Well, it would appear that you were abducted by aliens at the age of ten.

This is such a weird little exchange that although I don't have much useful to say about it, I can't let it go without comment. Ten is pre-Stella, so it antedates everything we know about Ray thus far, and it speaks to my sense of Ray as an outsider, as someone alienated. This (whether a literal alien abduction or something else, some other experience that feels to Ray like having been abducted by aliens--I tend to cross-connect it to his comment in "Mountie on the Bounty" about being "damaged, not stupid," but that may be the pattern recognition wetware getting a little out of hand) may mark the beginning of Ray's estrangement, his feeling of being a "con job." And, too, it suggests another reason for Ray's desperation to hang onto Stella.

Comments

[melpemone.livejournal.com]

Yay! I had been looking forward to your analysis of this episode so much, and it's as magnificent as I'd hoped. This is a very odd episode, and often cited as an example of Paul Gross' alleged tendency to sacrifice characterisation for comedy, but as you've demonstrated, Benton's actions are canonically justifiable - and I agree, oddly touching. Thanks for this!

In all seriousness, have you considered publishing these? Your essays are better than any shallow episode guide. And I'd buy it. Twice.

[innocentsmith.livejournal.com]

The "abducted by aliens" line is one of my all-time favorite moments of throwaway weirdness (the other one that comes to mind being the way, in "Dead Men Don't Throw Rice," Fraser cheerfully produces with no explanation whatsoever a bouga toad, apparently from his pocket. And no one even asks - because, presumably, they all know him well enough to know there would be a technically possible but insanely implausible explanation which would just make their heads hurt. *loves*). It's just so very, very random, and gives me happy early X-Files associations.

But what I always wonder about it is, from a character perspective: WTF was Fraser doing rummaging around in Ray's childhood memories? Unless hypnotized!Ray just burst out with it as soon as Fraser started questioning him...it has nothing whatsoever to do with the crime in the mall. So what on earth was Fraser asking Ray about while he was under?

Ray forgives Fraser for this incident pretty readily (though I wonder if he didn't get wind of the "cauliflower" business later on from the rest of the bullpen) but if you're tracking the faultlines in their relationship leading up to MotB, that would be a hell of a good reason for Ray to be a little freaked out, especially subconsciously.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I don't, honestly, think it's a particularly successful episode. It feels very jumbled, and the blocking is bad (CKR spends too much time in the foreground with nothing to do). And I certainly think the power-corrupts-even-Fraser moment could have been handled better (I would have liked some follow-through, for one thing), but I do think that it's not completely incommensurate with Fraser's frustrations with Ray and Thatcher as we see them in the rest of the episode.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Insofar as I have a theory--and this is wandering off into rampant speculation rather than analyzing what the show actually presents--I'd guess that either Ray blurts it out due to some kind of inadvertent word association or Fraser, in his frustration, asks some question about what makes Ray tick or why he is the way he is.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi, I've been reading these analyses for quite a while now, and I thought I'd better comment for once.

'Seeing is Believing' has long been one of my least favourite Due South episodes, therefore I was shocked by how much I enjoyed reading your thoughts on it. I am constantly surprised by the depth and intelligence of these season three episodes. I originally considered season three to be a decline in quality from the earlier seasons; since reading your recaps I've had cause to revise that opinion. I love what you have to say about pararealism in Due South, and how moments that I had previously thought of as throw-away silliness actually contribute to characterisation - and often in a poignant way.

Oh, and word to the increased use of body language in seasons three and four. That's something even I noticed on first viewing. I love the gentle way Ray handles Fraser's hat. Actually, I pretty much love everything Ray does body-language wise.

[innocentsmith.livejournal.com]

*nods* Makes sense. (I'm a fangirl: I'm all for rampant speculation.)

I do so love these episode analyses of yours. I make an embarrassing little squeak of glee each time a new one shows up on my flist.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I don't object to rampant speculation--I just like to label it clearly when I indulge. *g*

And thank you!

[love-jackianto.livejournal.com]

I really love your Metas- you always bring up such interesting points. I can't wait to see what you have to say about The Ladies Man (it's one of my favourite due South episodes).

'Ray like having been abducted by aliens--I tend to cross-connect it to his comment in 'Mountie on the Bounty' about being 'damaged, not stupid,'
Oh I like that parallel. I've always thought that that comment meant that Ray had some kind of accident as a child (that's why he has trouble remembering words).

[theodosia.livejournal.com]

Unlike some, this would at least be among my top ten episodes or maybe top three, because it ticks along like a comic watch, all about character and perception, and character perception.

It also has my top Frannie visual, where she perches on top of Welsh's bookcase looking adorable.

[pennski.livejournal.com]

Thank-you! I really enjoy the way you examine the essence of these episodes.

[bigmamag.livejournal.com]

I was rewatching this episode when I noticed something of interest. When Ray is trying to jumpstart his memory, he leans his head back and when Welsh asks, "We boring you detective?" Ray responds, "No, I just see it better this way." Then ding, I remembered lots of times when Fraser did the same thing, most notably in "Chinatown", and then in "White Men Can't Jump to Conclusions" when he actually tries to get Ray to close his eyes and remember the noises they heard when the murder happened, and eventually Ray actually does hear the noise without balking. But unlike Ray Vecchio, Ray Kowalski didn't learn this from Fraser; it was his own way of doing it. I think this goes back to the fact that Ray Kowalski is a freak and outsider himself, so some of Fraser's unusual methods and beliefs are a part of Ray too or Ray just accepts the odd quirks of others because he himself is odd.

[j-s-cavalcante.livejournal.com]

Hi, IS! I am enjoying your responses to these wonderful analyses almost as much as I'm enjoying the original posts themselves. I'm sorry I missed them when they were posted. It must have been a rough week in art school. Anyway, you should do more meta yourself! These are quite fascinating discussions.

The bouga toad! I know! Of course no one will ask!

And Ray's alien abduction--so very wacky, but also an enticing tidbit we could mine for its fanfic possibilities.:) I love all these little pieces that at first appear not to fit anywhere.

[innocentsmith.livejournal.com]

Hey, JS! Wow, thanks, that's high praise. (Though now I'm getting worried I've been doing too much soapbox-standing in truepenny's posts, here - I do have a terrible tendency towards tl;dr, but I don't want to be hogging the comment section of these posts.) Um, maybe I will? I do have things I'd love to pontificate about, I'm just a little backed up.

The bouga toad is total win. I wonder if anyone's ever written that fic, of how Fraser got ahold of it? Although an explanation might just kind of spoil it.

Ray's alien abduction--so very wacky, but also an enticing tidbit we could mine for its fanfic possibilities

Someone really needs to write the casefic crossover with The X-Files with Ian McDonald turns up and is talking about aliens again, and maybe the Lone Gunmen are involved somehow, so Mulder and Scully show up, and Fraser makes some comment about Ray's abduction so that Mulder wants to put him under hypnosis again, and there's a running joke where every time someone has the x-files explained to them they're all, "Oh, you must be here about Fraser." And Ray and Scully totally hit it off and have fun bitching about how annoying it is being partnered with a nutcase polymath, while Fraser and Mulder seem like they should be best buddies but actually keep getting into arguments about obscure folklore and esoterica, and meanwhile Ian can't figure out why RayK isn't RayV, and everyone refuses to listen to him about it because he's a compulsive liar, and...yeah. Someone other than me should definitely write that. <_<

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't think you're doing too much soapbox-standing, and they are, after all, my posts. Other people saying smart things is always a plus.

[j-s-cavalcante.livejournal.com]

I was going to say that, from the evidence of the dialogue between you, I'll bet truepenny doesn't mind. But I don't have to, because: look! *points up* truepenny doesn't mind. :)

About the casefic crossover idea, that does sound appropriately wacky. Ian McDonald! It would be interesting to see him interact with RayK. (Do you remember that Fraser used the "Oh, look! Turtles!" trick on Ian, too? *ponders*)

Anyway, I'm relieved to say that even if my WIP file weren't rearing up on its hind legs and threatening me with bared fangs, I would not be able to write such a thing. I have only seen a couple of eps of X-files, and that was years ago. I think YOU should write it. :)

Um, maybe I will? I do have things I'd love to pontificate about, I'm just a little backed up.

*buys front-row tickets* I adore meta...I don't do it much. I can chime in with bits and pieces, and I have many such bits and pieces in my notebooks, but I can't sustain an analytical mode of thinking for very long these days. I prefer to air all my thinky thoughts (I totally typed "hinky thoughts" first, and maybe that's more accurate, anyway)...I prefer to air them, such as they are, in fiction. But I LOVE reading and discussing other people's analyses.

truepenny's are outstanding, and your responses are quite excellent as well. *admires*

[j-s-cavalcante.livejournal.com]

...Ray Kowalski is a freak and outsider himself, so some of Fraser's unusual methods and beliefs are a part of Ray too or Ray just accepts the odd quirks of others because he himself is odd.

So true! I love that unspoken but often-shown truth about RayK--that he is, in his own way, almost as big a freak as Fraser.

Then ding, I remembered lots of times when Fraser did the same thing,

Oh, yeah! The boom-bang-bing! thing. Neat observation! Except Ray K "closes his eyes" with his whole body, if you know what I mean. He's leaning back in the chair, all draped over it. Ray's nods and shrugs, and so on, are also full-body gestures. Perfect body language for a guy who, when he commits, commits totally, heart and soul. I don't think it's any accident that in canon we continually see him leaping into large bodies of water or through plate glass...for Fraser (or because of Fraser).

[innocentsmith.livejournal.com]

*blushes* Well. Hey, thanks. Um. *endeavors to think of anything smart to comment on in the latest recap...*

[innocentsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the repeat of the turtles motif is intriguing. I just have no idea how to interpret that, but there's got to be something that could be done with it.

I prefer to air all my thinky thoughts (I totally typed "hinky thoughts" first, and maybe that's more accurate, anyway)...I prefer to air them, such as they are, in fiction.

*snickers at "hinky thoughts"* Yeah, to some extent, me too. (Though I do have lurking on my desktop a half-finished post titled "Martha Fraser: Action Librarian" which I should really drag out and finish one of these days.) Basically I should be writing more. I'm just kind of backed up: hopefully I'll have more time and brainspace after I finish the grad school app.

Anyway, I'd be more than glad to read your thinky or hinky DS thoughts anytime, doll. ^_^

[(Anonymous)]

I may be wrong, but I think there's also a bit in Slings & Arrows where Paul Gross as Geoffrey inexplicably yells "TURTLES!" At least, in his disastrous interview with Basil in Season 1, he simultaneously bellows and hisses something that sounds to me like "turtles," but it's hard to tell for sure. I don't know if this is of any help.

[innocentsmith.livejournal.com]

...Paul Gross is apparently a weird, weird guy. o_O (And this is why we love him.)

BTW, if I neglected to fully say it before? Great recap. I especially love the insight on Pike, and the way his mis/interpretation of Ray is like Fraser in Eclipse, giving Ray himself, but less positively. Awesome.

ETA: ...And, um, I responded to this comment with the idea that it was in the Spy vs. Spy recap post, which, apparently, no. (I'm sorry, it's Saturday night, these things happen.) Nevertheless, both are great recaps! ...Yeah. *hides face, totters off to bed*

Wow...

[themadblonde]

I am completely & totally hypnotised by your icon. Might you be willing to let me share, please? If not, just know it is greatly admired.

[peoriapeoria.livejournal.com]

Oh, where is this post of Martha Fraser:Action Librarian?

Extremely late to the party...

[desireearmfeldt]

Hello! I stumbled across this series of posts while searching for a quote, and am reminded that I also loved your similar series on the Lord Peter Wimsy books, which someone pointed me to a while back. Anyway, in addition to adding my voice to the chorus of "these are great!" :) I can't help throwing in a couple of cents-worth...

I'm firmly in the camp of "this episode drives me nuts because it sacrifices character for comedy" -- in particular, I hate how Thatcher gets thrown under the comedy bus, although really, all of S3/4 is like that: they seem to be trying to make her Fraser's love interest, but are so halfhearted about it that it makes no sense at all. (This is especially weird for me because I've watched S1 and S3/4 but haven't done S2 yet, where I have the impression she's a bit more successful as a love interest?) I really want to like this episode, it's the sort of episode I ought to like, but they don't have the courage to play it slightly straighter, which I think would make it a lot more effective and not less funny. That said, as you point out, there are a lot of wonderful details in the episode...

I'm not sure I agree that Ray K is hard to pin down: yes, he's got defense mechanisms, but they're pretty transparent and he also both says and shows his real thoughts and feelings quite easily, especially to Fraser, right from the beginning (in the first episode he attempts to spill his guts but Fraser misses it; in the second episode he spills even more of his guts -- but he's also pretty consistent about stuff like the moment you call out in point #4). I expect Fraser knows by now that a lot of the barbed wire is just a show; Fraser is, after all, much much better than Ray at actually hiding his thoughts and feelings from everyone, all the time, though he uses the opposite strategy to do so.

One could, I suppose, frame the post-hypnotic suggestion (in Ray's case) as a tease -- because Fraser and Ray's relationship does include one-up-man-ship/mockery-based teasing. And though no one likes being put down, Ray seems mostly OK with that sort of teasing; so he might take the post-hypnotic suggestion the way he'd take a practical joke -- okay, you zinged me, I'm annoyed, now I've forgotten about it. (Someone wrote an essay about Ray V being based on shame/face issues and Ray K being based on guilt issues, and I think that's dead-on: Ray K only nominally cares about being embarrassed or losing face.) This argument doesn't work for Thatcher, of course -- and Fraser's suggestion to Thatcher treats her entirely like an antagonistic boss, not like someone he has any feelings for at all, which is really her consistent role in S3/4.

(By the way, probably you and most of your readers know this, but many of the ideas about Ray's hypnosis that commenters brought up are dealt with in a lovely fashion in dira sudis's fic Relax, which I highly recommend.)

Commenting on a several-years-old thread...

[desireearmfeldt]

The Ladies' Man (which I also love) is a great example of Due South daring to play it straight, let the comedy flow from the characters and the wordplay without throwing in gratuitous goofiness or undercutting the drama & characters in any way. (In contrast to Seeing Is Believing, which is not, admittedly, a high-drama episode, it's meant for comedy. But IMO, SiB should have been, and was trying to be, all about comedy-drawn-from-characters and instead just ended up going for goofiness and cheap laughs when it didn't need to. I love the episode this could have been; as-is, about half of it makes me mad while I love the other half.)

For me, this is epitomized by that final shot of Ray crying. No comedy, no embarrassment, nothing comes after it: we end with a guy, honestly, straight-up, crying. Few ostensibly-comedies that I've come across dare to do that.

(By contrast, Slings and Arrows makes a plot point of a man (Geoffrey) weeping, but refuses to ever show a man weeping without the comic/embarrassment treatment; and I would say S&A is in general somewhat more balanced towards the drama side of the comedy/drama continuum than DS, truepenny's plumbing of DS's hidden depths notwithstanding. :) )

Re: Commenting on a several-years-old thread...

[love-jackianto.livejournal.com]

'For me, this is epitomized by that final shot of Ray crying. No comedy, no embarrassment, nothing comes after it: we end with a guy, honestly, straight-up, crying. Few ostensibly-comedies that I've come across dare to do that. '
I loved that scene too. Ladies Man really was a great episode.

[bghost.livejournal.com]

Innocent Smith... I really hope that you've got that Action Librarian thing finished, because I SO want to read it!