Due South: "Asylum"
Jun. 18th, 2009 10:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepenny"Asylum" (DS 3.11)
Original air date: November 16, 1997
Favorite quote:
ROBERT FRASER: Close the door, son. Anyone would think you were born in a barn.
BENTON FRASER: I was.
--or--
FRASER: You know, I once spent thirteen hours hanging like this underneath a suspension bridge with a mountain cat swiping at me from above. She tore my lanyard, ripped my epaulet . . .
RAY: And what happened?
FRASER: Well, fortunately the nuns at Fort McLeod practiced invisible mending.
Spoilers.
Although generally the quotes I use from episodes are my own transcriptions, in this write-up--in the interests of doing the write-up, rather than bogging down yet again over minutiae--I have used this transcript site, modifying the punctuation, and occasionally spelling, to suit myself.
What we learn from this episode is that Ray's hair should never be flat.
Important thematic question of episode: trust.
Ray obviously trusts Fraser implicitly and instinctively. He runs to Fraser when he's in trouble; he lets Fraser treat his head wound; he lets Fraser ARREST him and does not protest.
And Fraser equally trusts Ray:
FRASER: Ray had nothing to do with this murder, and I can personally vouch for his integrity.
CAHILL: I'm supposed to take your word on that?
FRASER: Yes, sir.
(I love Fraser's water-is-wet delivery here.)
The thing in question is Ray's trust in himself:
FRASER: Ray? Where are you going?
RAY: Hey, I can't wait around for Cahill and his goons to come and arrest me. I got to do something.
FRASER: Do what, Ray? And where? Everyone in this city on both sides of the law is looking for you.
RAY: Well, yeah, that may be, but I gotta do something.
FRASER: Yes, you do. You have to trust me.
RAY: Trust you, Fraser? I don't even know if I trust me. You know, I don't think I whacked Volpe. But I can't remember details. That might have been my finger on the trigger.
FRASER: You didn't shoot that man.
RAY: How do you know? How do you know? How can you be so sure?
FRASER: Because I know you. You're my partner. And you're my friend.
RAY: . . . Was that hard to say?
FRASER: Not in the least.
RAY: Are you going to call your dog off?
FRASER: I'm afraid I can't do that. Come on, let's go watch some curling.
That's something we see over and over again about Ray: he doesn't trust himself and he finds it hard to believe that Fraser does. And it's important that Fraser's trust in Ray, like his trust in Ray Vecchio, is validated.
We see Fraser's concept of duty undergoing a slight modulation; his father tells him, "Your heart is where your duty lies, son. Your head is just along to help with the driving." This is not at all what Bob was saying in "Dead Guy Running," but it's a much better way of resolving Fraser's altruism with his conscientiousness.
As usual in Due South, storytelling is foregrounded, and especially the way that details have to be used or discarded to artificially create the appearance of an organic whole. There's the irrelevant detail undercutting the story, as in Bob's story of Ellesmere Island:
B. FRASER: Tom Goforth, what happened to him?
R. FRASER: Tom? Tom, I believe, moved to Winnipeg and went to work in a record store, but that's not relevant to this situation.
There's the irrelevant detail trumping the story, as in Fraser's story about the mountain cat and the suspension bridge:
FRASER: You know, I once spent thirteen hours hanging like this underneath a suspension bridge with a mountain cat swiping at me from above. She tore my lanyard, ripped my epaulet . . .
RAY: And what happened?
FRASER: Well, fortunately the nuns at Fort McLeod practiced invisible mending.
There's the story we never learn about the Chinese family in the Consulate; likewise the story we never learn about Joe (and the way that Joe doesn't need to be told the story of the episode):
FRASER: Excuse me. Uh, you are . . . ?
JOE: Joe.
FRASER: And you would be . . . ?
JOE: Dead.
FRASER: And my father is . . . ?
JOE: Fishing.
FRASER: I see. Well, could you just . . . ? Well, tell him I stopped by. Oh, and could you tell him it, uh . . . ?
JOE: It worked?
FRASER: Yes. Thank you kindly.
There's Turnbull's list of extradition precedents:
HUEY: Fraser, you can't do this.
TURNBULL: Actually, he can. Regina versus Monburquette, 1967. A confidence trickster was extradited to Alberta to face charges that he bilked pensioners in a phony mattress scheme. Also, in 1984, Regina versus Horowitz. A man with a very large--
FRASER: Thank you, Turnbull.
TURNBULL: Sir.
We watch Cahill constantly trying to spin events into the story he wants to tell, with the avid assistance of the TV crew (and I love the throwaway joke in naming the reporter Shelley Byron). And the plot of the episode is Fraser working to unpick the details of the story Cahill and Kilrea are trying to tell, most obvious and notable in the case of Officer Tibbet:
TIBBET: Yeah, I was on edge, but I wasn't as much on edge as I was the last time.
FRASER: The last time?
TIBBET: Yeah, when I shot the kid. . . I was exonerated, you know.
Because of Ray's amnesia, the act of story-telling is both vital and under careful scrutiny throughout the episode, along with questions about how to tell a good story and how to tell a true story--and how to make the true story more compelling than a constructed one.
This seems like a good moment at which to talk about the Consulate as over-determined space. It is, in no particular order:
1. Fraser's place of employment.
2. Turnbull's place of employment.
3. Thatcher's place of employment.
4. Fraser's residence.
5. the Canadian Consulate.
6. Fraser's access to Bob's office.
7. Canada.
8. a locus of weirdness (inevitable for any building which is both (1) and (2)).
9. a plot device.
10. a maze of twisty little passages all alike.
11. a building weirdly unsuited to being a government office. It's so obviously a house, with the reception desk looking so unreconciled and out-of-place in the middle of the front hall.
12. a fortress.
13. a building with secrets and taboos. Bob's office is a secret; the upstairs is taboo, particularly the Queen's Bedroom.
14. an asylum--both in the sense of a refuge and in the sense of a madhouse (see (8)). The literal way in which it is a political asylum for Ray highlights the way in which it is an emotional refuge for both Fraser and Turnbull, an outpost of Canada (where they can watch curling and have access to proper Canadian plumbing) in an alien and frequently hostile city. (I wonder, now that I think about it, if Fraser's semi-joke about Turnbull's cardboard box in "I Coulda Been A Defendant" links up to Fraser's own use of his office as a home. In both cases, a vastly inadequate living space is to be preferred to a Chicago apartment. Is Turnbull's cardboard box on Consulate premises?)
Notice how efficient this is--much more so than the situation in Seasons 1 & 2, in which Fraser's living quarters and place of employment were kept separate. Also, it's a sign of the different dynamics between Fraser and his Rays: Ray Vecchio, the bossy older brother, would never have let Fraser keep living in the Consulate. Ray Kowalski, the bratty younger brother--who also cares infinitely less about appearances and what people are "supposed" to do--apparently accepts it as Fraser's choice. (I really think the apartment hunting exchange in "Spy vs. Spy" was cannibalized from a Ray Vecchio script, because it makes no sense in the context of Seasons 3 & 4.)
The Consulate's status as Fraser's residence has been discussed before, in "Bounty Hunter":
JANET: You live here?
FRASER: Yes. Well, until I find something more permanent, which I imagine will be pretty much--
JANET: Like this?
FRASER: Yes, I suppose so.
JANET: Well, you don't need much.
FRASER: No.
JANET: It's very peaceful.
"Asylum" returns to the question and a little more seriously, because Welsh obviously CANNOT GET OVER Fraser's choice of office:
WELSH: You spend all day here?
FRASER: I go out for lunch.
RAY: Look, Lieutenant, I am telling you, I had nothing to do with that murder.
WELSH: I believe you.
RAY: You do?
WELSH: We know there's a rat in Major Crime. He must have been leaking to Volpe because no matter what we threw at Volpe, he was able to walk. [to Fraser] There must be twenty rooms in this house. Why'd you pick this one?
FRASER: The others are much less intimate.
Welsh doesn't even know that Fraser's office is also his bedroom, but he clearly thinks the situation is insupportable. I suspect "The others are much less intimate" is another of Fraser's jokes that nobody else gets, especially as it's hard to imagine that Fraser has this office for any reason other than that Thatcher assigned him to it.
But the episode foregrounds the question: why is Fraser living in his office? And the episode also provides the answer: because it is an asylum.
Original air date: November 16, 1997
Favorite quote:
ROBERT FRASER: Close the door, son. Anyone would think you were born in a barn.
BENTON FRASER: I was.
--or--
FRASER: You know, I once spent thirteen hours hanging like this underneath a suspension bridge with a mountain cat swiping at me from above. She tore my lanyard, ripped my epaulet . . .
RAY: And what happened?
FRASER: Well, fortunately the nuns at Fort McLeod practiced invisible mending.
Spoilers.
Although generally the quotes I use from episodes are my own transcriptions, in this write-up--in the interests of doing the write-up, rather than bogging down yet again over minutiae--I have used this transcript site, modifying the punctuation, and occasionally spelling, to suit myself.
What we learn from this episode is that Ray's hair should never be flat.
Important thematic question of episode: trust.
Ray obviously trusts Fraser implicitly and instinctively. He runs to Fraser when he's in trouble; he lets Fraser treat his head wound; he lets Fraser ARREST him and does not protest.
And Fraser equally trusts Ray:
FRASER: Ray had nothing to do with this murder, and I can personally vouch for his integrity.
CAHILL: I'm supposed to take your word on that?
FRASER: Yes, sir.
(I love Fraser's water-is-wet delivery here.)
The thing in question is Ray's trust in himself:
FRASER: Ray? Where are you going?
RAY: Hey, I can't wait around for Cahill and his goons to come and arrest me. I got to do something.
FRASER: Do what, Ray? And where? Everyone in this city on both sides of the law is looking for you.
RAY: Well, yeah, that may be, but I gotta do something.
FRASER: Yes, you do. You have to trust me.
RAY: Trust you, Fraser? I don't even know if I trust me. You know, I don't think I whacked Volpe. But I can't remember details. That might have been my finger on the trigger.
FRASER: You didn't shoot that man.
RAY: How do you know? How do you know? How can you be so sure?
FRASER: Because I know you. You're my partner. And you're my friend.
RAY: . . . Was that hard to say?
FRASER: Not in the least.
RAY: Are you going to call your dog off?
FRASER: I'm afraid I can't do that. Come on, let's go watch some curling.
That's something we see over and over again about Ray: he doesn't trust himself and he finds it hard to believe that Fraser does. And it's important that Fraser's trust in Ray, like his trust in Ray Vecchio, is validated.
We see Fraser's concept of duty undergoing a slight modulation; his father tells him, "Your heart is where your duty lies, son. Your head is just along to help with the driving." This is not at all what Bob was saying in "Dead Guy Running," but it's a much better way of resolving Fraser's altruism with his conscientiousness.
As usual in Due South, storytelling is foregrounded, and especially the way that details have to be used or discarded to artificially create the appearance of an organic whole. There's the irrelevant detail undercutting the story, as in Bob's story of Ellesmere Island:
B. FRASER: Tom Goforth, what happened to him?
R. FRASER: Tom? Tom, I believe, moved to Winnipeg and went to work in a record store, but that's not relevant to this situation.
There's the irrelevant detail trumping the story, as in Fraser's story about the mountain cat and the suspension bridge:
FRASER: You know, I once spent thirteen hours hanging like this underneath a suspension bridge with a mountain cat swiping at me from above. She tore my lanyard, ripped my epaulet . . .
RAY: And what happened?
FRASER: Well, fortunately the nuns at Fort McLeod practiced invisible mending.
There's the story we never learn about the Chinese family in the Consulate; likewise the story we never learn about Joe (and the way that Joe doesn't need to be told the story of the episode):
FRASER: Excuse me. Uh, you are . . . ?
JOE: Joe.
FRASER: And you would be . . . ?
JOE: Dead.
FRASER: And my father is . . . ?
JOE: Fishing.
FRASER: I see. Well, could you just . . . ? Well, tell him I stopped by. Oh, and could you tell him it, uh . . . ?
JOE: It worked?
FRASER: Yes. Thank you kindly.
There's Turnbull's list of extradition precedents:
HUEY: Fraser, you can't do this.
TURNBULL: Actually, he can. Regina versus Monburquette, 1967. A confidence trickster was extradited to Alberta to face charges that he bilked pensioners in a phony mattress scheme. Also, in 1984, Regina versus Horowitz. A man with a very large--
FRASER: Thank you, Turnbull.
TURNBULL: Sir.
We watch Cahill constantly trying to spin events into the story he wants to tell, with the avid assistance of the TV crew (and I love the throwaway joke in naming the reporter Shelley Byron). And the plot of the episode is Fraser working to unpick the details of the story Cahill and Kilrea are trying to tell, most obvious and notable in the case of Officer Tibbet:
TIBBET: Yeah, I was on edge, but I wasn't as much on edge as I was the last time.
FRASER: The last time?
TIBBET: Yeah, when I shot the kid. . . I was exonerated, you know.
Because of Ray's amnesia, the act of story-telling is both vital and under careful scrutiny throughout the episode, along with questions about how to tell a good story and how to tell a true story--and how to make the true story more compelling than a constructed one.
This seems like a good moment at which to talk about the Consulate as over-determined space. It is, in no particular order:
1. Fraser's place of employment.
2. Turnbull's place of employment.
3. Thatcher's place of employment.
4. Fraser's residence.
5. the Canadian Consulate.
6. Fraser's access to Bob's office.
7. Canada.
8. a locus of weirdness (inevitable for any building which is both (1) and (2)).
9. a plot device.
10. a maze of twisty little passages all alike.
11. a building weirdly unsuited to being a government office. It's so obviously a house, with the reception desk looking so unreconciled and out-of-place in the middle of the front hall.
12. a fortress.
13. a building with secrets and taboos. Bob's office is a secret; the upstairs is taboo, particularly the Queen's Bedroom.
14. an asylum--both in the sense of a refuge and in the sense of a madhouse (see (8)). The literal way in which it is a political asylum for Ray highlights the way in which it is an emotional refuge for both Fraser and Turnbull, an outpost of Canada (where they can watch curling and have access to proper Canadian plumbing) in an alien and frequently hostile city. (I wonder, now that I think about it, if Fraser's semi-joke about Turnbull's cardboard box in "I Coulda Been A Defendant" links up to Fraser's own use of his office as a home. In both cases, a vastly inadequate living space is to be preferred to a Chicago apartment. Is Turnbull's cardboard box on Consulate premises?)
Notice how efficient this is--much more so than the situation in Seasons 1 & 2, in which Fraser's living quarters and place of employment were kept separate. Also, it's a sign of the different dynamics between Fraser and his Rays: Ray Vecchio, the bossy older brother, would never have let Fraser keep living in the Consulate. Ray Kowalski, the bratty younger brother--who also cares infinitely less about appearances and what people are "supposed" to do--apparently accepts it as Fraser's choice. (I really think the apartment hunting exchange in "Spy vs. Spy" was cannibalized from a Ray Vecchio script, because it makes no sense in the context of Seasons 3 & 4.)
The Consulate's status as Fraser's residence has been discussed before, in "Bounty Hunter":
JANET: You live here?
FRASER: Yes. Well, until I find something more permanent, which I imagine will be pretty much--
JANET: Like this?
FRASER: Yes, I suppose so.
JANET: Well, you don't need much.
FRASER: No.
JANET: It's very peaceful.
"Asylum" returns to the question and a little more seriously, because Welsh obviously CANNOT GET OVER Fraser's choice of office:
WELSH: You spend all day here?
FRASER: I go out for lunch.
RAY: Look, Lieutenant, I am telling you, I had nothing to do with that murder.
WELSH: I believe you.
RAY: You do?
WELSH: We know there's a rat in Major Crime. He must have been leaking to Volpe because no matter what we threw at Volpe, he was able to walk. [to Fraser] There must be twenty rooms in this house. Why'd you pick this one?
FRASER: The others are much less intimate.
Welsh doesn't even know that Fraser's office is also his bedroom, but he clearly thinks the situation is insupportable. I suspect "The others are much less intimate" is another of Fraser's jokes that nobody else gets, especially as it's hard to imagine that Fraser has this office for any reason other than that Thatcher assigned him to it.
But the episode foregrounds the question: why is Fraser living in his office? And the episode also provides the answer: because it is an asylum.
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no subject
Date: 2009-06-18 07:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-18 07:35 pm (UTC)Truer words were never spoken.
'But the episode foregrounds the question: why is Fraser living in his office? And the episode also provides the answer: because it is an asylum.'
That is a great observation.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-18 09:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-19 01:26 am (UTC)It's interesting to think of Fraser choosing to live in his office because he feels safe there. I think you're right, along with the fact that Fraser can live in his office without it driving him crazy because his physical needs are so few. Fraser is the anti-materialist, definitely.
A common idea is that Fraser doesn't think he deserves anything better, but I believe that his self-esteem is higher than that. On the personal relationships side of things, maybe not, but I find it hard to accept that Fraser thinks so little of himself that he deliberately deprives himself of a bigger place/a place of his own. He simply doesn't see the need for it. It's more Zen than guilt trip (although Fraser does guilt trips very well in other cases).
no subject
Date: 2009-06-19 01:41 am (UTC)RAY: Oh, nice place.
FRASER: It was Constable Turnbull's but he decided he didn't need anything quite so fancy.
RAY: Oh, so where does he live now, a cardboard box?
FRASER: Uh-huh. A very nice one, though.
[edited because I disagree with the transcript site (http://www.realduesouth.net/Transcripts/)'s punctuation and because, like Fraser, I can't leave an infelicity uncorrected]
I think Turnbull is frequently a caricature of Fraser, an exaggerated reflection of the ways in which Fraser is, as Ray says, a freak. So, yes. Fraser, like Turnbull, decided he didn't need anything as fancy as an apartment and now has a very nice box.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-19 02:56 am (UTC)One of the transcript sites deliberately made errors in punctuation so that if someone copied/pasted to another site, the original transcriber would know it was her work even if the copier took credit for it. I'm not sure if it was this one, though.
I think Turnbull is frequently a caricature of Fraser, an exaggerated reflection of the ways in which Fraser is, as Ray says, a freak.
I think you're right. On the other end (or at least somewhere in the mix) of the Fraser spectrum is Diefenbaker, who is the hedonistic, anti-Spartan, anti-Zen aspect of Fraser. Dief is Fraser's id as much as Turnbull is Fraser's Fool.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-19 03:44 am (UTC)My theory is complicated and idiosyncratic, and I think an equally good case can be made for Dief as the Id--or as Fraser's wildness, which we see in both the pilot and in "Burning Down the House," certainly not tamed, but abiding by a truce with civilization (as represented by Chicago).
I like the idea of Turnbull as the Fool, in the Shakespearean sense.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-20 03:25 am (UTC)And I have always wanted to know what was going on with that Asian family.
obviously....
Date: 2009-06-23 04:49 pm (UTC)I do love all the fan-wank in this episode, from the pitch-black closet scene to the strip tease to Thatcher's "coincidental" moaning everytime she heard Ray's name. Somebody had FUN putting this together.
Oh, &...
Date: 2009-06-23 04:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-25 06:33 am (UTC)One of the moments that stands out for me from this episode (the other being, "But I am not empty-trousered") is Turnbull and Fraser's "SWEEP!" I love the little moments when Benton actually does connect with someone else, even if it's just a fleeting shared interest in sports.