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truepenny"Mountie on the Bounty, Part I" (DS 3.12)
Original air date: March 15, 1998
Favorite quote:
FRASER: Gentlemen! There's something I'd like to get off my chest.
CREW MEMBER: What's that?
FRASER: [bursts into song]
I am using this transcript for quotations, again modifying spelling and punctuation as necessary. I am very grateful to this site for making the transcripts available.
Spoilers.
This episode is difficult to analyze, because it's moving in two completely contradictory directions at once.
1. It is an intensely meta episode, starting with the quotation from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid* and only getting more outrageous from there. Moreover, Fraser's bubble of parareality is more than usually conspicuous: the dockhands making his "I first came to Chicago" spiel into a dialogue; the captain of the Henry Allen just happening to be his father's old friend; the ship-wide chorus on "Barrett's Privateers"; the blind man who isn't blind; the story so implausible even Fraser doesn't believe it--"You know, Ray, we do not know that he's a pirate. For all we know, he might be an accident-prone accountant."
2. It is an intensely serious episode about Ray and Fraser's partnership. This is the point at which the unstable plate tectonics of their relationship finally produce an earthquake. And it's a doozy, the 1812 New Madrid earthquake, metaphorically speaking.
I think it's important to acknowledge that Ray's grievances are justified. Fraser argues by undercutting his opponent's position, by "niggling," as Ray says. He's pedantic and nit-picking, and I don't think he understands just how completely bonkers he drives Ray. As I've said in previous analyses, I have considerable sympathy with Fraser here, but I also understand how it feels to Ray, and how it dovetails with the other major problem in their partnership, the problem that we saw in "Mountie and Soul" and that rears its ugly head again here:
RAY: Do not do that, Fraser!
FRASER: Do what?
RAY: Cut me off like that! I was going on my gut. When your partner's going on his gut, you got to go with the flow, you got to let it ride, you got to--
FRASER: Ray. Ray. Ray. Ray. Ray.
RAY: What?!
FRASER: The car's this way.
RAY: Right. . . . Car's this way. . . . I knew that.
The one-two punch, neatly demonstrated, of (a.) Fraser's failure to let his partner lead and (b.) Ray's lack of self-confidence. I find his "I knew that," the desperate scramble to salvage face after an unambiguous mistake--and the transparent lie--very revealing. Unlike Ray Vecchio, whose vulnerabilities were in different places, Ray Kowalski has no defense against Fraser's niggling, no ability not to see it as criticism, even if Fraser doesn't mean it that way.
And Ray, quite rightly, feels that Fraser niggles instead of listening. Hence the punch. But there's also another problem:
RAY: Look-- I swear, I swear to God I will punch you right in the face. Fair warning.
FRASER: Well what does that mean, you're going to punch me?!
RAY: Just--look, I'm going to punch you in the face! Why don't you listen to me?!
FRASER: Just think calmly--
[Ray punches Fraser in the face]
Fraser is a cerebral creature; he's not prepared for Ray to mean what he says literally. And (I think) Fraser's niggling technique is intended to defuse arguments--and to make them diffuse, to distract everyone just slightly, to keep things from getting heated. But it has exactly the opposite effect on Ray.
Fraser's interpersonal modus operandi consists mostly of running roughshod over anything between him and his goal. Ray Kowalski is certainly not the only character in the four seasons of Due South who wants to sock Fraser in the jaw. He's just the only one who actually does it. And that, in itself, tells us why the partnership is important, even necessary. Because Fraser needs someone who won't let him lead all the time. Fraser needs someone, to put the thing in a nutshell, both who will make him swallow his pride and for whom he is willing to swallow his pride.
FRASER SR.: Partnership is like a marriage, son. Give and take, up and down, who left the empty butter dish in the fridge. . . . It isn't easy.
FRASER JR.: No, it isn't.
FRASER SR.: Buck Frobisher and I were a team, maybe the best team the North has ever known. One day we fell out and it all but destroyed us.
FRASER JR.: What did you do?
FRASER SR.: We swallowed our pride for the greater good. Someone's using a brave ship's name for an evil purpose, and you've got to stop them. You need the Yank. Swallow the pride, son.
Fraser can't be a superhero alone. This (pinned down in Ray's remark about not having a cape) loops all the way back to the pilot and its use of the Crash Test Dummies' "Superman's Song" to emphasize the isolation that Fraser is initially brought out of by Ray Vecchio.
The episode also makes clear that Fraser's options for partnership are down to Ray or nobody:
THATCHER: Well, you're not going to take it, are you?
FRASER: Well, I haven't--
THATCHER: Because over the years we've developed a relationship. Working, of course, working relationship, and you might be hard to replace. Cost-wise. I mean, not everybody would live here in his underwear--uh, work--live in a place where he works.
In her embarrassed haste to recover from her characteristic Freudian slip, Thatcher makes an even worse misstep, implying and very nearly stating that Fraser is valuable to her because he puts up with living and working conditions that no one in his right mind would accept. And Fraser's expression suggests that he recognizes that valuation and what it means. Certainly, as persuasion to stay in Chicago, it falls woefully short. Ray is Fraser's lifeline; the question is whether the lifeline is going to hold. When Ray says, "There's more to life than dying," it looks like a truism, but I think it's also something Fraser doesn't have a very good grasp of. There certainly isn't very much more to his life, as we see it, than courting death.
Random notes:
1. Also thematically important, we're back to questions of appearance and reality:
FRASER: You know, Ray, we do not know that he's a pirate. For all we know, he might be an accident-prone accountant.
RAY: You ever try to run a calculator with a hook?
FRASER: No, but appearances can be deceiving. You know, I once knew a trapper in Great Slave Lake who ran his trap lines dressed in a three-piece suit. He looked like a banker. Of course, he carried his bait in his pocket, so the smell, it was--well, that's a different story.
RAY: Fraser, a guy dies. He's got a hook and he's got an eye patch. He says 'treasure'. He says 'chest'. What do you think he is?
FRASER: Ray, if there are any pirates on the Great Lakes, which I sincerely doubt, I think it's highly unlikely that they would go about dressed like some character invented by Robert Louis Stevenson.
RAY: Stevenson!
FRANCESCA: Hey, Ray, I got an I.D. His name's Billy Butler. He worked the lake boats most of his life. He's got three convictions for drug smuggling and one for assault.
RAY: Accountant?
FRASER: Pirate.
RAY: Thank you.
Also note 1. Fraser's (again habitual) attempt to deflect the argument with an anecdote; 2. Ray's contemptuous mutter at Fraser demonstrating his well-read-ness. And:
2. Ray gets to be right about Billy Butler and, at least, not wrong about the location of the car after they leave the Union Hall.
3. I love the Diefcam with subtitles, and the neat compromise they've made between his stated deafness and the fact that Draco can obviously hear.
4. The thing in this episode that gets me every damn time:
FRASER: Ray--
RAY: Look, Fraser, I know what you're going to say. You give me a reason--you give me one reason why we should risk our skinny asses chasing the Robert Mackenzie. That is way out of our jurisdiction. We have no authorization. . . . Okay?
FRASER: On November 1st, 1969, the Robert Mackenzie left a pier in Thunder Bay carrying 28,110 long tons of high-sulfur coal bound for the steel mills in Detroit. She was 810 feet long, 80 feet wide, crewed by 32 men and captained by Scottie Phillips. Now, no one on board could have known they were headed into a gale known as the Witch of November. By 2 a.m. on the 2nd, the seas were already running at 20 feet. The winds were gusting at 50 miles an hour. At 3:13, the Mackenzie radioed her sister ship, the Phoenix, to say she'd taken a wave over the wheelhouse, knocking out her radar. She was blind in the water, navigating by dead reckoning. Captain Phillips decided to head south to find shelter in Bet Grise Bay by way of Keweenaw Point. But by then the seas were running over 40 feet. Winds were blowing at 100 miles an hour. At 4:23 a wave broke, exposing a mountain of rock known as Six Fathom Shoal. Time stopped. The Mackenzie hit the shoal broadside, cutting her in half. The stern was still under full power and it rammed the bow, crushing men on metal as they were caught midship scrambling for life boats. It hit the bow three times before it finally drove it under. And then the stern continued into the night, all its lights blazing, fires burning from the ruptured boilers, like some kind of headless beast. Captain Phillips' last transmission to the Phoenix read, "Thirty-two down on the Robert Mackenzie."
RAY: . . . All right. Say we drive like hell, I mean, put the pedal to the metal. Can we get to Sault Sainte Marie and get on the Henry Anderson before she sails?
Fraser: Allen. Henry Allen. . . . Yes.
Ray: Right, Allen. Come on.
The reasons that this works for me (I seem to be all about the numbered lists tonight):
1. Ray is all but daring Fraser to persuade him. And Fraser, instead of making a speech about justice and truth and the right thing to do, tells him a story.
2. Fraser has been at his most prim and priggish in this episode, but notice the way his diction changes as he tells the story. It's the opposite of his Batman voice, and I'm tempted to believe that it's closer to Fraser's heart than his usual sharp diction and balanced periods.
3. Paul Gross sells the thing perfectly, and it is, in fact, a powerful story.
4. And it works. The story gives Ray what he needs.
5. Even now, when he must know it's the worst thing in the world to do, Fraser can't keep from correcting Ray.
6. Ray lets him, without taking it as an insult. Something has been mended between them by Fraser's choice to tell a story instead of give a lecture.
Storytelling is powerful in Due South, and this is one of the most purely beautiful examples of its power.
*BUTCH: Well, the way I figure it, we can either fight or give. If we give, we go to jail.
SUNDANCE: I been there already.
BUTCH: But if we fight, they can stay right where they are and starve us out or go for position - shoot us; might even get a rockslide started and get us that way. What else could they do?
SUNDANCE: They could surrender to us, but I wouldn't count on that. They're goin' for position, all right. Better get ready.
[...]
BUTCH: No, we'll jump.
SUNDANCE: Like hell we will.
BUTCH: No, it'll be OK - if the water's deep enough, we don't get squished to death. They'll never follow us.
SUNDANCE: How do you know?
BUTCH: Would you make a jump like that you didn't have to?
SUNDANCE: I have to and I'm not gonna.
[...]
BUTCH: All right. I'll jump first.
SUNDANCE: Nope.
BUTCH: Then you jump first.
SUNDANCE: No, I said!
BUTCH: What's the matter with you?!
SUNDANCE: I can't swim!
BUTCH: Why, you crazy--the fall'll probably kill ya!
--Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (excerpted from script here)
Original air date: March 15, 1998
Favorite quote:
FRASER: Gentlemen! There's something I'd like to get off my chest.
CREW MEMBER: What's that?
FRASER: [bursts into song]
I am using this transcript for quotations, again modifying spelling and punctuation as necessary. I am very grateful to this site for making the transcripts available.
Spoilers.
This episode is difficult to analyze, because it's moving in two completely contradictory directions at once.
1. It is an intensely meta episode, starting with the quotation from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid* and only getting more outrageous from there. Moreover, Fraser's bubble of parareality is more than usually conspicuous: the dockhands making his "I first came to Chicago" spiel into a dialogue; the captain of the Henry Allen just happening to be his father's old friend; the ship-wide chorus on "Barrett's Privateers"; the blind man who isn't blind; the story so implausible even Fraser doesn't believe it--"You know, Ray, we do not know that he's a pirate. For all we know, he might be an accident-prone accountant."
2. It is an intensely serious episode about Ray and Fraser's partnership. This is the point at which the unstable plate tectonics of their relationship finally produce an earthquake. And it's a doozy, the 1812 New Madrid earthquake, metaphorically speaking.
I think it's important to acknowledge that Ray's grievances are justified. Fraser argues by undercutting his opponent's position, by "niggling," as Ray says. He's pedantic and nit-picking, and I don't think he understands just how completely bonkers he drives Ray. As I've said in previous analyses, I have considerable sympathy with Fraser here, but I also understand how it feels to Ray, and how it dovetails with the other major problem in their partnership, the problem that we saw in "Mountie and Soul" and that rears its ugly head again here:
RAY: Do not do that, Fraser!
FRASER: Do what?
RAY: Cut me off like that! I was going on my gut. When your partner's going on his gut, you got to go with the flow, you got to let it ride, you got to--
FRASER: Ray. Ray. Ray. Ray. Ray.
RAY: What?!
FRASER: The car's this way.
RAY: Right. . . . Car's this way. . . . I knew that.
The one-two punch, neatly demonstrated, of (a.) Fraser's failure to let his partner lead and (b.) Ray's lack of self-confidence. I find his "I knew that," the desperate scramble to salvage face after an unambiguous mistake--and the transparent lie--very revealing. Unlike Ray Vecchio, whose vulnerabilities were in different places, Ray Kowalski has no defense against Fraser's niggling, no ability not to see it as criticism, even if Fraser doesn't mean it that way.
And Ray, quite rightly, feels that Fraser niggles instead of listening. Hence the punch. But there's also another problem:
RAY: Look-- I swear, I swear to God I will punch you right in the face. Fair warning.
FRASER: Well what does that mean, you're going to punch me?!
RAY: Just--look, I'm going to punch you in the face! Why don't you listen to me?!
FRASER: Just think calmly--
[Ray punches Fraser in the face]
Fraser is a cerebral creature; he's not prepared for Ray to mean what he says literally. And (I think) Fraser's niggling technique is intended to defuse arguments--and to make them diffuse, to distract everyone just slightly, to keep things from getting heated. But it has exactly the opposite effect on Ray.
Fraser's interpersonal modus operandi consists mostly of running roughshod over anything between him and his goal. Ray Kowalski is certainly not the only character in the four seasons of Due South who wants to sock Fraser in the jaw. He's just the only one who actually does it. And that, in itself, tells us why the partnership is important, even necessary. Because Fraser needs someone who won't let him lead all the time. Fraser needs someone, to put the thing in a nutshell, both who will make him swallow his pride and for whom he is willing to swallow his pride.
FRASER SR.: Partnership is like a marriage, son. Give and take, up and down, who left the empty butter dish in the fridge. . . . It isn't easy.
FRASER JR.: No, it isn't.
FRASER SR.: Buck Frobisher and I were a team, maybe the best team the North has ever known. One day we fell out and it all but destroyed us.
FRASER JR.: What did you do?
FRASER SR.: We swallowed our pride for the greater good. Someone's using a brave ship's name for an evil purpose, and you've got to stop them. You need the Yank. Swallow the pride, son.
Fraser can't be a superhero alone. This (pinned down in Ray's remark about not having a cape) loops all the way back to the pilot and its use of the Crash Test Dummies' "Superman's Song" to emphasize the isolation that Fraser is initially brought out of by Ray Vecchio.
The episode also makes clear that Fraser's options for partnership are down to Ray or nobody:
THATCHER: Well, you're not going to take it, are you?
FRASER: Well, I haven't--
THATCHER: Because over the years we've developed a relationship. Working, of course, working relationship, and you might be hard to replace. Cost-wise. I mean, not everybody would live here in his underwear--uh, work--live in a place where he works.
In her embarrassed haste to recover from her characteristic Freudian slip, Thatcher makes an even worse misstep, implying and very nearly stating that Fraser is valuable to her because he puts up with living and working conditions that no one in his right mind would accept. And Fraser's expression suggests that he recognizes that valuation and what it means. Certainly, as persuasion to stay in Chicago, it falls woefully short. Ray is Fraser's lifeline; the question is whether the lifeline is going to hold. When Ray says, "There's more to life than dying," it looks like a truism, but I think it's also something Fraser doesn't have a very good grasp of. There certainly isn't very much more to his life, as we see it, than courting death.
Random notes:
1. Also thematically important, we're back to questions of appearance and reality:
FRASER: You know, Ray, we do not know that he's a pirate. For all we know, he might be an accident-prone accountant.
RAY: You ever try to run a calculator with a hook?
FRASER: No, but appearances can be deceiving. You know, I once knew a trapper in Great Slave Lake who ran his trap lines dressed in a three-piece suit. He looked like a banker. Of course, he carried his bait in his pocket, so the smell, it was--well, that's a different story.
RAY: Fraser, a guy dies. He's got a hook and he's got an eye patch. He says 'treasure'. He says 'chest'. What do you think he is?
FRASER: Ray, if there are any pirates on the Great Lakes, which I sincerely doubt, I think it's highly unlikely that they would go about dressed like some character invented by Robert Louis Stevenson.
RAY: Stevenson!
FRANCESCA: Hey, Ray, I got an I.D. His name's Billy Butler. He worked the lake boats most of his life. He's got three convictions for drug smuggling and one for assault.
RAY: Accountant?
FRASER: Pirate.
RAY: Thank you.
Also note 1. Fraser's (again habitual) attempt to deflect the argument with an anecdote; 2. Ray's contemptuous mutter at Fraser demonstrating his well-read-ness. And:
2. Ray gets to be right about Billy Butler and, at least, not wrong about the location of the car after they leave the Union Hall.
3. I love the Diefcam with subtitles, and the neat compromise they've made between his stated deafness and the fact that Draco can obviously hear.
4. The thing in this episode that gets me every damn time:
FRASER: Ray--
RAY: Look, Fraser, I know what you're going to say. You give me a reason--you give me one reason why we should risk our skinny asses chasing the Robert Mackenzie. That is way out of our jurisdiction. We have no authorization. . . . Okay?
FRASER: On November 1st, 1969, the Robert Mackenzie left a pier in Thunder Bay carrying 28,110 long tons of high-sulfur coal bound for the steel mills in Detroit. She was 810 feet long, 80 feet wide, crewed by 32 men and captained by Scottie Phillips. Now, no one on board could have known they were headed into a gale known as the Witch of November. By 2 a.m. on the 2nd, the seas were already running at 20 feet. The winds were gusting at 50 miles an hour. At 3:13, the Mackenzie radioed her sister ship, the Phoenix, to say she'd taken a wave over the wheelhouse, knocking out her radar. She was blind in the water, navigating by dead reckoning. Captain Phillips decided to head south to find shelter in Bet Grise Bay by way of Keweenaw Point. But by then the seas were running over 40 feet. Winds were blowing at 100 miles an hour. At 4:23 a wave broke, exposing a mountain of rock known as Six Fathom Shoal. Time stopped. The Mackenzie hit the shoal broadside, cutting her in half. The stern was still under full power and it rammed the bow, crushing men on metal as they were caught midship scrambling for life boats. It hit the bow three times before it finally drove it under. And then the stern continued into the night, all its lights blazing, fires burning from the ruptured boilers, like some kind of headless beast. Captain Phillips' last transmission to the Phoenix read, "Thirty-two down on the Robert Mackenzie."
RAY: . . . All right. Say we drive like hell, I mean, put the pedal to the metal. Can we get to Sault Sainte Marie and get on the Henry Anderson before she sails?
Fraser: Allen. Henry Allen. . . . Yes.
Ray: Right, Allen. Come on.
The reasons that this works for me (I seem to be all about the numbered lists tonight):
1. Ray is all but daring Fraser to persuade him. And Fraser, instead of making a speech about justice and truth and the right thing to do, tells him a story.
2. Fraser has been at his most prim and priggish in this episode, but notice the way his diction changes as he tells the story. It's the opposite of his Batman voice, and I'm tempted to believe that it's closer to Fraser's heart than his usual sharp diction and balanced periods.
3. Paul Gross sells the thing perfectly, and it is, in fact, a powerful story.
4. And it works. The story gives Ray what he needs.
5. Even now, when he must know it's the worst thing in the world to do, Fraser can't keep from correcting Ray.
6. Ray lets him, without taking it as an insult. Something has been mended between them by Fraser's choice to tell a story instead of give a lecture.
Storytelling is powerful in Due South, and this is one of the most purely beautiful examples of its power.
*BUTCH: Well, the way I figure it, we can either fight or give. If we give, we go to jail.
SUNDANCE: I been there already.
BUTCH: But if we fight, they can stay right where they are and starve us out or go for position - shoot us; might even get a rockslide started and get us that way. What else could they do?
SUNDANCE: They could surrender to us, but I wouldn't count on that. They're goin' for position, all right. Better get ready.
[...]
BUTCH: No, we'll jump.
SUNDANCE: Like hell we will.
BUTCH: No, it'll be OK - if the water's deep enough, we don't get squished to death. They'll never follow us.
SUNDANCE: How do you know?
BUTCH: Would you make a jump like that you didn't have to?
SUNDANCE: I have to and I'm not gonna.
[...]
BUTCH: All right. I'll jump first.
SUNDANCE: Nope.
BUTCH: Then you jump first.
SUNDANCE: No, I said!
BUTCH: What's the matter with you?!
SUNDANCE: I can't swim!
BUTCH: Why, you crazy--the fall'll probably kill ya!
--Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (excerpted from script here)
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no subject
Date: 2009-08-21 04:19 am (UTC)More things about this that maybe you get if you're Canadian, and more things about why that story of Fraser's about the Robert Mackenzie works.
Read the telling details in that description. And then read the lyrics of the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (http://home.pacbell.net/chabpyne/lyrics.html), which, it is theorized, took damage at Six-Fathom Shoal (http://www.lakesuperior.com/online/225/225fitz.html) before going down in Lake Superior in 1975, on its way to Detroit.
So yeah. He's talking about the Fitz.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-21 05:32 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2009-08-21 05:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-24 02:53 pm (UTC)It is, perhaps...
Date: 2009-08-25 11:51 pm (UTC)&, of course, this is the ep from which I get my outtake icon. Partners, yeah. ;-)
Re: Icon...
Date: 2009-08-31 05:59 pm (UTC)I TOLD you...
Date: 2009-09-04 07:15 pm (UTC)Actually, this is what happens when you try to compact a 40+ hour/week internet habit to the odd 30 minutes in the libary. *sigh*
no subject
Date: 2009-08-27 04:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-07 03:04 pm (UTC)My sympathies are mostly with Ray, but the look on Fraser's face when Ray punches him...ouch. Because you are absolutely 100% right--Fraser does not take Ray's threat literally, or seriously, much as he doesn't take his complaints about their partnership literally or seriously. The disconnect between how Ray feels and how Fraser perceives him as feeling, and Fraser's sudden discovery of that disconnect, are painful to watch.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-07 03:30 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2010-03-07 02:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-15 02:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-26 02:28 pm (UTC)I'm going to go back and read your other review / analysis posts, with great pleasure - thanks for putting the time into writing them!