Due South: "Mountie and Soul"
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truepenny"Mountie and Soul" (DS 3.7)
Original airdate: Oct. 26, 1997
Favorite quote:
DEVLIN: [to Fraser] Where're you from?
RAY: [hastily] This is Constable Benton Fraser, he first came to Chicago on the killers of his father, he's Canadian, you don't wanna know. Bare-knuckle fighter.
FRASER: Ah, no, Ray, I only wrestled bears.
--or--
RAY: Was that like a good "hmm" or a bad "hmm"?
FRASER: It was like a soy sauce "hmm."
Spoilers.
Once again, there are several different things going on in this episode that I want to talk about.
One is the way in which this is a mash-up of "Diefenbaker's Day Off" (hence the icon of Fraser boxing) and "White Men Can't Jump to Conclusions." From the former we get boxing and what it means to lower-class men both black and white--and what it does to those men (and there's a little bit of "Body Language," too): like Lucy's father and Ida's boyfriend, Mason Dixon has clearly taken one too many shots to the head. And from the latter, we get the story of the black lower-class boys looking to sports (basketball, boxing) to give them a way out. Unlike Tyree and Reggie, Levon and Deron are on opposite sides, but the scene with Deron in the hospital shows us how very much alike they are. Deron may be terrifyingly huge and fast, but he's still a kid in that hulking body; like Levon, he needs someone to believe in him, someone to think he can be better than he is.
But this episode isn't just a retread of the earlier two, and that's because of the substitution of Ray Kowalski for Ray Vecchio. It makes a tremendous difference. To begin with, in "WMCJTC," Fraser and Ray happen into Tyree's story purely by accident, and they remain outsiders throughout; the episode is really about Tyree and Reggie. But in "M&S," Ray is as much a protagonist as anyone else--more so, even, since Tyree's role is split between Levon and Deron: it's Deron who has the painful watershed, the honesty about what he is and why he's made the choices he has. It's Ray that we follow through the episode, from the enthusiasm and optimism he shares with Levon at the beginning, to the painful disillusionment at the end. And it's through Ray and his uncomfortable, liminal status with the street gangs, that we understand their world. Ray is our interpreter as much as Fraser's.
I have no opinion, btw, as to the accuracy of what the show is portraying as Chicago street slang ca. 1997. The important thing is that within the reality--or parareality--of the show, Ray's position is consistent. He does speak their language, he does have a certain amount of acceptance--though more so with a little folding green--and Ray, unlike Ray Vecchio, empathizes with Levon, and with Deron, and the others. That's the biggest difference: Ray cares. Whereas Ray Vecchio fastidiously tried to stay separated from the working class male world of gyms and mayhem (belonging far more to the working class/lower middle class male world of pool halls and bookies), Ray Kowalski is part of that world:
FRASER: I wasn't aware that you'd had a boxing career, Ray.
RAY: Ah, it wasn't exactly a career. It was more of a--
FRANNIE: A disaster?
FRASER: A hobby?
FRANNIE: A meltdown.
FRASER: Pastime.
FRANNIE: Nightmare.
RAY: Look, you're both very, very funny. But, yeah, I had to quit when I got married to Stella, 'cause she didn't think it was, um, what's the, uh . . . ?
FRANNIE: Civilized?
RAY: That's it.
The class markers are deployed very carefully (also, of course, gender, as Frannie stands in for Stella in her contempt for boxing--although she forgets herself later). Ray married above himself socially; the boxing had to go. One more way in which Ray stands uncomfortably betwixt and between: between the working class and the upper class (Stella is specifically a Gold Coast girl), between the cops and the gangs, between (as we saw in "The Bounty Hunter") the union and the job. Ray doesn't fit anywhere.
And, of course, neither does Fraser. Where Ray tries to blend, tries to go undercover, as it were, Fraser just settles in to be a sore thumb. This episode, like "WMCJTC," kicks my social embarrassment squid pretty hard, but I appreciate Fraser's strategy. He knows he can't fit in, so he puts on the Mountie like a shield and pretends an ignorance and naivete that we know full well he doesn't have:
LEVON: Hey, Fraser, what's up?
FRASER: Well, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange is up, Ray's hair is up--
RAY: He's Canadian.
LEVON. Oh. Man, shout out.
[Fraser looks at Ray, clearly at a loss]
RAY: Shout out. Funny.
FRASER: Ah.
When Levon actually uses a phrase Fraser doesn't understand, he immediately looks to Ray for help, which leads to the deduction that Fraser knows perfectly well what "what's up" means. He's been playing this game, with both Rays, for years. So this willful obtuseness isn't just Fraser being bull-headed. It's a strategy for coping:
FRASER: Well, I fail to see the difference between that and the wildflower rescue program that I helped organize in--
RAY: You wanna know the difference? In this program, you try to separate your opponent from his head.
FRASER: Ah, pugilism.
RAY: Not pugilism, Fraser. It's boxing.
While on one level, that's a joke about the disjunction between Ray and Fraser's vocabularies, on another level, it's actually, quite seriously, one of the episode's themes. We see it with Deron's brother Jamal:
JAMAL: You won. That's what it's all about, right?
FRASER: Surely it's about more than that. It should be about competition, fair play--
JAMAL: It's about winning. Everybody knows that.
We get distracted from it by a tangent into the dangerous nature of the sport (and I'll come back to that tangent in a minute, because it's got thematic work of its own to do), but it comes back:
FRASER: A corrupt system is no excuse for personal corruption, Mr. Devlin.
DEVLIN: We're talking about winning, here.
FRASER: I thought fighting was about more than just winning.
DEVLIN: Not when you make your living at it.
There's a bigger disjunct at work here than the one between Ray and Fraser's vocabularies, the disjunct between boxing as a sport and boxing as a fight--not just in the literal sense, but in the sense that Devlin, and Deron and Levon and the dozens of young men in Devlin's gym, are fighting for a livelihood--like Reggie and Tyree, trying to find a way out. The emphasis on winning which Fraser deplores--and which is a feature, unfortunately, of almost all American sports endeavors, amateur and professional--is itself a cover for the things that winning means: money, fame. The specter of Sugarman hangs over the episode in a kind of cruel inversion of Isiah Thomas in "WMCJTC." Sugarman is the kid who made it out and didn't look back.
This is an episode without any fairytales in it, and without any real villains. Unlike Lou in "WMCJTC," neither Devlin nor Dixon is evil and neither intends to do harm. They're as sympathetic as Levon, or as Deron--who's terrifying in the ring, but a confused and not at all malevolent soul when interviewed in the hospital. Fraser insists on following the narrative conventions (and notice the use of the word "quest"), but Ray's barely standing after he puts Dixon down (and notice the bruises coming up in the final scene), and he explicitly rejects Fraser's story book interpretations:
RAY: So you look in the ring and you see this large goon trying to beat your partner--and your friend--to death with his bare hands. So what do you generally do?
FRASER: Well, you help.
RAY: Right!
FRASER: Oh! Oh, I see where you're going with this. No. In this particular case, Ray, I knew this was just a continuation of your earlier match, and that you had to go this alone, as part of your mental and spiritual quest.
RAY: Next time?
FRASER: Yes?
RAY: Help.
FRASER: Understood.
There aren't any easy answers, no unambiguously "right" thing to do. No quick fixes, even for the duration of a closing scene. And that central question is never resolved: what should this sport be?
And this thematic discussion of boxing also leads us (and I love the craft in this conversation, as the surface subject--boxing--is used to reveal so much other stuff) to a display of the fault-lines in Fraser and Ray's relationship. Continuity, no--but this is textbook-perfect set up for "Mountie on the Bounty." They start at the same thematic place as the rest of the boxing discussion in the episode:
FRASER: All I'm saying, Ray, is that Jamal had a point.
RAY: On the top of his head.
FRASER: No. The emphasis on winning over everything else tends to exacerbate the dangers of boxing.
RAY: What is that supposed to mean? Is that because I said 'kill him'? This is lingo, this is what I'm talking about. When I said 'kill him,' I, you know, I mean, hit him. Win. Not kill him.
DESK SERGEANT: Detective Vecchio?
FRASER: I know that, and I'm certainly not trying to suggest that you were encouraging a homicide.
DESK SERGEANT: Guys.
RAY: Levon is a good kid, I mean, he wasn't trying to kill anybody, I mean, you box, you get hurt, that's par for the course.
FRASER: Well, if that's the case, perhaps protective helmets would be a good idea.
DESK SERGEANT: Are you booking these guys or are they just part of some colorful parade?
RAY: Yeah, we're booking 'em . . . [to Fraser] Helmets?
But they get sidetracked into something quite different:
RAY: Come on, Fraser, you're not serious about this helmet thing.
FRASER: Well, why not?
RAY: Because it's the sweet science, boom! boom! boom! It's an art. You put a helmet on an artist? I think not.
FRASER: [over Ray's "not"] Well, no, but artists don't tend to get hit in the head on a regular basis. Although, you know, it's widely rumored that Hieronymus Bosch used to repeatedly bang his skull into his easel to stimulate his vision.
RAY: I love that. But think about auto-racing. [into the restroom, neither of them missing a beat] I mean, they make it safe, what is the point?
FRASER: What are you saying, Ray? That the point is the danger?
RAY: No. Boxing is the point! Danger is just a part of it.
FRASER: Well, you know, if they wore protective helmets, it would minimize the danger.
{out of the restroom, still without missing a beat]
RAY: You are so, so, so . . . Canadian!
FRASER: It's just logic, Ray.
RAY: Logic! Exactly! Boxing has nothing to do with logic. It is sport taken to its purest nut. It is muscles, sweat, guts, torque, load . . . I mean, you ever meet a logical person who would bite off another man's ear?
FRASER: It's just another argument for protective helmets. With ear flaps.
RAY: You admit that I'm right or I'll pop you in the head.
FRASER: We're not dealing with logic now, are we?
RAY: Logic schmogic. Admit I'm right or I'll pop you.
FRASER: Oh, well, gee, in that case, Ray, I guess you're right.
RAY: Thank you very much. Levon's got a buddy up on, uh, Vacuum Street--
FRASER: You mean Hoover?
RAY: . . . Hoover! It's gonna be a long night.
The war of logic vs. instinct gets articulated here; also, Ray's response to frustration is the threat of violence--and Fraser's response to the threat of violence is sarcasm. I also love the way Fraser can't help undercutting his own argument with a counter-example. And the fact that they're both completely focused on their argument (the very odd look the well-dressed man exiting the restroom gives them)--in its own way, it's an expression of their friendship.
And the episode also shows us the other fault-line:
RAY: Look, Fraser, don't hang me out to dry like that.
FRASER: Like what, Ray?
RAY: Don't ask if the guy was taking . . . di-ur-ess or whatever, and when I ask him about doing some tests, go, 'Oh never mind, nobody needs to know anyway.'
FRASER: I'm sorry.
RAY: [who clearly wasn't expecting an instant apology] . . . Well, sorry doesn't cut it, Fraser. I'm a detective. A detective's got to have credibility with guys like Mort. You pull a little stunt like that, and I lose face.
FRASER: I think you have a surfeit of face.
Both Rays complain that Fraser embarrasses them, but the grounds of their complaint are different. Ray doesn't want Fraser licking things ("Look, Fraser, I said no tasting stuff in the morgue."), but not because it makes him look bad, which was always Ray Vecchio's reasoning. Ray Kowalski's complaint is actually justified. Fraser does hang him out to dry--not, I think, on purpose, but because Ray is trying to pick up cues that Fraser isn't actually giving. Because Ray is thinking like partners, and Fraser isn't.
Also worth noting: another of Fraser's devastating stealth put-downs.
Issues of language and communication are all over this episode, from Ray's aphasia and trouble with the word "diuretic" to Fraser's inability (whether real or assumed) to negotiate the street gangs' slang. There's a lovely moment where Fraser seems, in fact, to be offering his difficulty in trade for Ray's: Ray's just fallen over "diuretic" again and given up asking Fraser for information, and Fraser picks the conversation up again with, "Ray, maybe you can help me with this lingo thing. Is there by any chance a reference book for it?" He's giving Ray a chance to be the one with superior knowledge. (I also love that Fraser's first instinct is for a reference book--you can take the boy out of the library, but you can't take the library out of the boy.) And, of course, the problem of communication between Fraser and Ray is central--and their opposed approaches, Fraser's verbosity vs. Ray's hyperkinetics.
FRASER: I wish there was something I could do to make you feel better.
RAY: You wanna make me feel better?
RAY: [cont.] What're you doing, Fraser?
FRASER: I'm sparring.
RAY: No, you're not. I'm sparring. You're standing there like a . . . Mountie.
FRASER: Well, I am a Mountie!
RAY: I know that, Fraser, but you gotta try to hit me.
FRASER: Well, I'd really rather not.
RAY: Rather not. I don't care what you'd rather not do, just do it!
FRASER: Why would I want to hit a friend, Ray?
RAY: It's traditional in this sport. C'mon, you just try to hit me. C'mon!
FRASER: No, thank you.
And, of course, when Fraser does hit him, he immediately apologizes. And the follow-up in the locker room:
FRASER: So now you've sparred.
RAY: Yes, Fraser, I have sparred.
FRASER: And d'you feel better?
RAY: Yeah. I feel better.
FRASER: Mentally and spiritually, I presume, because your physical condition is appalling.
RAY: I'm good.
FRASER: Ah. Don't want to talk about it. It's perfectly understandable. After all, the core of pugilism really is more of a mental and spiritual quest, isn't it? Sort of like mountaineering or marathon dancing or the Iditarod.
RAY: Shut up?
FRASER: As you wish.
Fraser talks too much; Ray, in this episode, sometimes has trouble talking at all. Trouble brewing, as Gary Larson captioned more than one cartoon.
I also want to note that the roles in the relationship between Fraser and this Ray are much more fluid. Ray Kowalski, like Ray Vecchio, makes cracks about Canadians and their inferior grip on the realities of life, and Fraser's willing to play along:
RAY: You don't bet, you don't fight . . . what do Canadians do at night, play charades?
FRASER: At night? We sleep.
But Fraser's no longer the only idealist in the relationship, and in fact can now occasionally be the voice of reality:
RAY: No. It can't be Devlin. He's what fighting's all about. He's the best. I mean, he--
FRASER: He's a trainer who badly needed a champion, Ray.
Ray can do world-weary cynicism, like Ray Vecchio:
FRASER: They're wearing headsets, Ray. Seems kind of organized for a street gang, doesn't it?
RAY: Well, this is the USA. This is, you know, they got equal opportunity, they got upward mobility.
And Ray's tough. (Parenthetically, I love the way that Gene Mack, both a trained boxer and a former linebacker, is used against Callum Keith Rennie to emphasize how freaking skinny Ray is. Also, if you'll pardon the fangirl moment, Gene Mack was the desk sergeant in the pilot: "It's not that they're dirty. It's just that I'm starting to question their loyalty." GENE MACK FTW!) But this episode is also showing us several different facets of the man hiding behind that façade: there's the hyperactive kid (Ray, bouncing around the ring as unselfconsciously as a toddler), there's Ray trying to hold his shit together in the morgue:
MORT: Squeamish?
RAY: Human. You wouldn't know anything about that.
There's Ray's loyalty to Levon, and yet his greater loyalty to his duty (Saddest. Miranda. Warning. EVAR.) and the way that conflict just won't resolve for him. And his disillusionment at the proof of Devlin's corruption. Ray is vulnerable, and he's much more willing than Ray Vecchio to lay himself on the line. "I don't risk my neck for anyone" is probably the biggest lie Ray Kowalski ever tells.
And apropos of nothing, I love Dief in this episode with all the plushie-dog-love in the world.
Original airdate: Oct. 26, 1997
Favorite quote:
DEVLIN: [to Fraser] Where're you from?
RAY: [hastily] This is Constable Benton Fraser, he first came to Chicago on the killers of his father, he's Canadian, you don't wanna know. Bare-knuckle fighter.
FRASER: Ah, no, Ray, I only wrestled bears.
--or--
RAY: Was that like a good "hmm" or a bad "hmm"?
FRASER: It was like a soy sauce "hmm."
Spoilers.
Once again, there are several different things going on in this episode that I want to talk about.
One is the way in which this is a mash-up of "Diefenbaker's Day Off" (hence the icon of Fraser boxing) and "White Men Can't Jump to Conclusions." From the former we get boxing and what it means to lower-class men both black and white--and what it does to those men (and there's a little bit of "Body Language," too): like Lucy's father and Ida's boyfriend, Mason Dixon has clearly taken one too many shots to the head. And from the latter, we get the story of the black lower-class boys looking to sports (basketball, boxing) to give them a way out. Unlike Tyree and Reggie, Levon and Deron are on opposite sides, but the scene with Deron in the hospital shows us how very much alike they are. Deron may be terrifyingly huge and fast, but he's still a kid in that hulking body; like Levon, he needs someone to believe in him, someone to think he can be better than he is.
But this episode isn't just a retread of the earlier two, and that's because of the substitution of Ray Kowalski for Ray Vecchio. It makes a tremendous difference. To begin with, in "WMCJTC," Fraser and Ray happen into Tyree's story purely by accident, and they remain outsiders throughout; the episode is really about Tyree and Reggie. But in "M&S," Ray is as much a protagonist as anyone else--more so, even, since Tyree's role is split between Levon and Deron: it's Deron who has the painful watershed, the honesty about what he is and why he's made the choices he has. It's Ray that we follow through the episode, from the enthusiasm and optimism he shares with Levon at the beginning, to the painful disillusionment at the end. And it's through Ray and his uncomfortable, liminal status with the street gangs, that we understand their world. Ray is our interpreter as much as Fraser's.
I have no opinion, btw, as to the accuracy of what the show is portraying as Chicago street slang ca. 1997. The important thing is that within the reality--or parareality--of the show, Ray's position is consistent. He does speak their language, he does have a certain amount of acceptance--though more so with a little folding green--and Ray, unlike Ray Vecchio, empathizes with Levon, and with Deron, and the others. That's the biggest difference: Ray cares. Whereas Ray Vecchio fastidiously tried to stay separated from the working class male world of gyms and mayhem (belonging far more to the working class/lower middle class male world of pool halls and bookies), Ray Kowalski is part of that world:
FRASER: I wasn't aware that you'd had a boxing career, Ray.
RAY: Ah, it wasn't exactly a career. It was more of a--
FRANNIE: A disaster?
FRASER: A hobby?
FRANNIE: A meltdown.
FRASER: Pastime.
FRANNIE: Nightmare.
RAY: Look, you're both very, very funny. But, yeah, I had to quit when I got married to Stella, 'cause she didn't think it was, um, what's the, uh . . . ?
FRANNIE: Civilized?
RAY: That's it.
The class markers are deployed very carefully (also, of course, gender, as Frannie stands in for Stella in her contempt for boxing--although she forgets herself later). Ray married above himself socially; the boxing had to go. One more way in which Ray stands uncomfortably betwixt and between: between the working class and the upper class (Stella is specifically a Gold Coast girl), between the cops and the gangs, between (as we saw in "The Bounty Hunter") the union and the job. Ray doesn't fit anywhere.
And, of course, neither does Fraser. Where Ray tries to blend, tries to go undercover, as it were, Fraser just settles in to be a sore thumb. This episode, like "WMCJTC," kicks my social embarrassment squid pretty hard, but I appreciate Fraser's strategy. He knows he can't fit in, so he puts on the Mountie like a shield and pretends an ignorance and naivete that we know full well he doesn't have:
LEVON: Hey, Fraser, what's up?
FRASER: Well, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange is up, Ray's hair is up--
RAY: He's Canadian.
LEVON. Oh. Man, shout out.
[Fraser looks at Ray, clearly at a loss]
RAY: Shout out. Funny.
FRASER: Ah.
When Levon actually uses a phrase Fraser doesn't understand, he immediately looks to Ray for help, which leads to the deduction that Fraser knows perfectly well what "what's up" means. He's been playing this game, with both Rays, for years. So this willful obtuseness isn't just Fraser being bull-headed. It's a strategy for coping:
FRASER: Well, I fail to see the difference between that and the wildflower rescue program that I helped organize in--
RAY: You wanna know the difference? In this program, you try to separate your opponent from his head.
FRASER: Ah, pugilism.
RAY: Not pugilism, Fraser. It's boxing.
While on one level, that's a joke about the disjunction between Ray and Fraser's vocabularies, on another level, it's actually, quite seriously, one of the episode's themes. We see it with Deron's brother Jamal:
JAMAL: You won. That's what it's all about, right?
FRASER: Surely it's about more than that. It should be about competition, fair play--
JAMAL: It's about winning. Everybody knows that.
We get distracted from it by a tangent into the dangerous nature of the sport (and I'll come back to that tangent in a minute, because it's got thematic work of its own to do), but it comes back:
FRASER: A corrupt system is no excuse for personal corruption, Mr. Devlin.
DEVLIN: We're talking about winning, here.
FRASER: I thought fighting was about more than just winning.
DEVLIN: Not when you make your living at it.
There's a bigger disjunct at work here than the one between Ray and Fraser's vocabularies, the disjunct between boxing as a sport and boxing as a fight--not just in the literal sense, but in the sense that Devlin, and Deron and Levon and the dozens of young men in Devlin's gym, are fighting for a livelihood--like Reggie and Tyree, trying to find a way out. The emphasis on winning which Fraser deplores--and which is a feature, unfortunately, of almost all American sports endeavors, amateur and professional--is itself a cover for the things that winning means: money, fame. The specter of Sugarman hangs over the episode in a kind of cruel inversion of Isiah Thomas in "WMCJTC." Sugarman is the kid who made it out and didn't look back.
This is an episode without any fairytales in it, and without any real villains. Unlike Lou in "WMCJTC," neither Devlin nor Dixon is evil and neither intends to do harm. They're as sympathetic as Levon, or as Deron--who's terrifying in the ring, but a confused and not at all malevolent soul when interviewed in the hospital. Fraser insists on following the narrative conventions (and notice the use of the word "quest"), but Ray's barely standing after he puts Dixon down (and notice the bruises coming up in the final scene), and he explicitly rejects Fraser's story book interpretations:
RAY: So you look in the ring and you see this large goon trying to beat your partner--and your friend--to death with his bare hands. So what do you generally do?
FRASER: Well, you help.
RAY: Right!
FRASER: Oh! Oh, I see where you're going with this. No. In this particular case, Ray, I knew this was just a continuation of your earlier match, and that you had to go this alone, as part of your mental and spiritual quest.
RAY: Next time?
FRASER: Yes?
RAY: Help.
FRASER: Understood.
There aren't any easy answers, no unambiguously "right" thing to do. No quick fixes, even for the duration of a closing scene. And that central question is never resolved: what should this sport be?
And this thematic discussion of boxing also leads us (and I love the craft in this conversation, as the surface subject--boxing--is used to reveal so much other stuff) to a display of the fault-lines in Fraser and Ray's relationship. Continuity, no--but this is textbook-perfect set up for "Mountie on the Bounty." They start at the same thematic place as the rest of the boxing discussion in the episode:
FRASER: All I'm saying, Ray, is that Jamal had a point.
RAY: On the top of his head.
FRASER: No. The emphasis on winning over everything else tends to exacerbate the dangers of boxing.
RAY: What is that supposed to mean? Is that because I said 'kill him'? This is lingo, this is what I'm talking about. When I said 'kill him,' I, you know, I mean, hit him. Win. Not kill him.
DESK SERGEANT: Detective Vecchio?
FRASER: I know that, and I'm certainly not trying to suggest that you were encouraging a homicide.
DESK SERGEANT: Guys.
RAY: Levon is a good kid, I mean, he wasn't trying to kill anybody, I mean, you box, you get hurt, that's par for the course.
FRASER: Well, if that's the case, perhaps protective helmets would be a good idea.
DESK SERGEANT: Are you booking these guys or are they just part of some colorful parade?
RAY: Yeah, we're booking 'em . . . [to Fraser] Helmets?
But they get sidetracked into something quite different:
RAY: Come on, Fraser, you're not serious about this helmet thing.
FRASER: Well, why not?
RAY: Because it's the sweet science, boom! boom! boom! It's an art. You put a helmet on an artist? I think not.
FRASER: [over Ray's "not"] Well, no, but artists don't tend to get hit in the head on a regular basis. Although, you know, it's widely rumored that Hieronymus Bosch used to repeatedly bang his skull into his easel to stimulate his vision.
RAY: I love that. But think about auto-racing. [into the restroom, neither of them missing a beat] I mean, they make it safe, what is the point?
FRASER: What are you saying, Ray? That the point is the danger?
RAY: No. Boxing is the point! Danger is just a part of it.
FRASER: Well, you know, if they wore protective helmets, it would minimize the danger.
{out of the restroom, still without missing a beat]
RAY: You are so, so, so . . . Canadian!
FRASER: It's just logic, Ray.
RAY: Logic! Exactly! Boxing has nothing to do with logic. It is sport taken to its purest nut. It is muscles, sweat, guts, torque, load . . . I mean, you ever meet a logical person who would bite off another man's ear?
FRASER: It's just another argument for protective helmets. With ear flaps.
RAY: You admit that I'm right or I'll pop you in the head.
FRASER: We're not dealing with logic now, are we?
RAY: Logic schmogic. Admit I'm right or I'll pop you.
FRASER: Oh, well, gee, in that case, Ray, I guess you're right.
RAY: Thank you very much. Levon's got a buddy up on, uh, Vacuum Street--
FRASER: You mean Hoover?
RAY: . . . Hoover! It's gonna be a long night.
The war of logic vs. instinct gets articulated here; also, Ray's response to frustration is the threat of violence--and Fraser's response to the threat of violence is sarcasm. I also love the way Fraser can't help undercutting his own argument with a counter-example. And the fact that they're both completely focused on their argument (the very odd look the well-dressed man exiting the restroom gives them)--in its own way, it's an expression of their friendship.
And the episode also shows us the other fault-line:
RAY: Look, Fraser, don't hang me out to dry like that.
FRASER: Like what, Ray?
RAY: Don't ask if the guy was taking . . . di-ur-ess or whatever, and when I ask him about doing some tests, go, 'Oh never mind, nobody needs to know anyway.'
FRASER: I'm sorry.
RAY: [who clearly wasn't expecting an instant apology] . . . Well, sorry doesn't cut it, Fraser. I'm a detective. A detective's got to have credibility with guys like Mort. You pull a little stunt like that, and I lose face.
FRASER: I think you have a surfeit of face.
Both Rays complain that Fraser embarrasses them, but the grounds of their complaint are different. Ray doesn't want Fraser licking things ("Look, Fraser, I said no tasting stuff in the morgue."), but not because it makes him look bad, which was always Ray Vecchio's reasoning. Ray Kowalski's complaint is actually justified. Fraser does hang him out to dry--not, I think, on purpose, but because Ray is trying to pick up cues that Fraser isn't actually giving. Because Ray is thinking like partners, and Fraser isn't.
Also worth noting: another of Fraser's devastating stealth put-downs.
Issues of language and communication are all over this episode, from Ray's aphasia and trouble with the word "diuretic" to Fraser's inability (whether real or assumed) to negotiate the street gangs' slang. There's a lovely moment where Fraser seems, in fact, to be offering his difficulty in trade for Ray's: Ray's just fallen over "diuretic" again and given up asking Fraser for information, and Fraser picks the conversation up again with, "Ray, maybe you can help me with this lingo thing. Is there by any chance a reference book for it?" He's giving Ray a chance to be the one with superior knowledge. (I also love that Fraser's first instinct is for a reference book--you can take the boy out of the library, but you can't take the library out of the boy.) And, of course, the problem of communication between Fraser and Ray is central--and their opposed approaches, Fraser's verbosity vs. Ray's hyperkinetics.
FRASER: I wish there was something I could do to make you feel better.
RAY: You wanna make me feel better?
RAY: [cont.] What're you doing, Fraser?
FRASER: I'm sparring.
RAY: No, you're not. I'm sparring. You're standing there like a . . . Mountie.
FRASER: Well, I am a Mountie!
RAY: I know that, Fraser, but you gotta try to hit me.
FRASER: Well, I'd really rather not.
RAY: Rather not. I don't care what you'd rather not do, just do it!
FRASER: Why would I want to hit a friend, Ray?
RAY: It's traditional in this sport. C'mon, you just try to hit me. C'mon!
FRASER: No, thank you.
And, of course, when Fraser does hit him, he immediately apologizes. And the follow-up in the locker room:
FRASER: So now you've sparred.
RAY: Yes, Fraser, I have sparred.
FRASER: And d'you feel better?
RAY: Yeah. I feel better.
FRASER: Mentally and spiritually, I presume, because your physical condition is appalling.
RAY: I'm good.
FRASER: Ah. Don't want to talk about it. It's perfectly understandable. After all, the core of pugilism really is more of a mental and spiritual quest, isn't it? Sort of like mountaineering or marathon dancing or the Iditarod.
RAY: Shut up?
FRASER: As you wish.
Fraser talks too much; Ray, in this episode, sometimes has trouble talking at all. Trouble brewing, as Gary Larson captioned more than one cartoon.
I also want to note that the roles in the relationship between Fraser and this Ray are much more fluid. Ray Kowalski, like Ray Vecchio, makes cracks about Canadians and their inferior grip on the realities of life, and Fraser's willing to play along:
RAY: You don't bet, you don't fight . . . what do Canadians do at night, play charades?
FRASER: At night? We sleep.
But Fraser's no longer the only idealist in the relationship, and in fact can now occasionally be the voice of reality:
RAY: No. It can't be Devlin. He's what fighting's all about. He's the best. I mean, he--
FRASER: He's a trainer who badly needed a champion, Ray.
Ray can do world-weary cynicism, like Ray Vecchio:
FRASER: They're wearing headsets, Ray. Seems kind of organized for a street gang, doesn't it?
RAY: Well, this is the USA. This is, you know, they got equal opportunity, they got upward mobility.
And Ray's tough. (Parenthetically, I love the way that Gene Mack, both a trained boxer and a former linebacker, is used against Callum Keith Rennie to emphasize how freaking skinny Ray is. Also, if you'll pardon the fangirl moment, Gene Mack was the desk sergeant in the pilot: "It's not that they're dirty. It's just that I'm starting to question their loyalty." GENE MACK FTW!) But this episode is also showing us several different facets of the man hiding behind that façade: there's the hyperactive kid (Ray, bouncing around the ring as unselfconsciously as a toddler), there's Ray trying to hold his shit together in the morgue:
MORT: Squeamish?
RAY: Human. You wouldn't know anything about that.
There's Ray's loyalty to Levon, and yet his greater loyalty to his duty (Saddest. Miranda. Warning. EVAR.) and the way that conflict just won't resolve for him. And his disillusionment at the proof of Devlin's corruption. Ray is vulnerable, and he's much more willing than Ray Vecchio to lay himself on the line. "I don't risk my neck for anyone" is probably the biggest lie Ray Kowalski ever tells.
And apropos of nothing, I love Dief in this episode with all the plushie-dog-love in the world.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-11-22 02:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-22 02:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-22 07:05 am (UTC)Um, I think here you possibly meant "squick", unless you have a pet squid to go along with the fish. *g*
And this was so much fun to read. I especially loved how you picked out the thematic threads that will take us to "Mountie on the Bounty" - emotional, if not actual, continuity FTW!
no subject
Date: 2008-11-22 04:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-22 04:26 pm (UTC)awesome. now I can't stop imagining a cuddly, many-armed creature with bright red cheeks.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-22 02:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-22 04:06 pm (UTC)Also? Your icon is hypnotic.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 12:00 am (UTC)I suspect Levon and Deron's names are from the Latin for "left" and "right", "levo" and "dextro". Deron's name isn't quite on the money allusion-wise, but it's close. This usage would go along with what you pointed out, that Levon and Deron are on opposite sides but much alike.
Licking things....
Date: 2009-03-17 05:12 pm (UTC)I've tried to keep this in mind as I've been watching & now re-watching the series & am not sure I subscribe to it. Both Rays repeatedly comment on how disgusting the habit is, & even though Ray V IS the one who says, early on "I can't take you anywhere," he is also much quicker to accept Fraser's ability & much more unquestioning in his faith in the results. Ray K never misses a chance to comment on how disgusting it is & is more likely to negatively comment on or question Fraser's conclusions which come from his paranormal abilities. So while both are turned off by them, Ray V is, to my mind, the more accepting of the two.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-02 04:48 pm (UTC)I feel gauche bothering you over a years-old post, but what line were you referring to here? I interpreted it as a commentary on Fraser's "I think you have a surfeit of face" statement, am I right?
I was always a little thrown by that line, never certain if we were supposed to take it at face value or not. If you think it's put-down, what do you believe it's in reference to? I thought it might be a criticism of Ray's tendency to front (or "posture") in order to maintain his image, but I'm not sure.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-03 05:02 am (UTC)And, yes, I was referring to that line. I think Fraser means Ray's aggressive "in-your-face" attitude and his braggadocio--the "face" he shows the world, as it were.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-03 06:03 pm (UTC)Also, I think now I finally understand the meaning of your icon above (yeah, I'm a... long-time lurker).