Due South: "Easy Money"
Jul. 1st, 2013 07:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyDue South 4.2, "Easy Money"
Original air date: September 30, 1998
Favorite quote:
RAY: How'd he beat us?
FRASER: Well, he must have taken a short cut.
RAY: He knows short cuts?
FRASER: Well he does study maps.
RAY: What kind of maps?
FRASER: Road maps, street maps, topographic maps . . .
"Easy Money" is not my favorite Due South episode, and I will tell you why.
1. Of all the infinite possible flavors of Fraser, didactic is my least favorite.
2. I'm not a big fan of flashbacks to childhood in TV and movies, precisely because they are so extraordinarily hard to do right. And this one falls apart for me because I just don't believe that Trevor Blumas is going to grow up to be Paul Gross. I'm sorry, I just don't. Obviously, that's totally subjective, but that's all these write-ups are anyway: my 100% subjective opinion about this TV show.
3. And I just figured this out walking home from work today, because I was thinking about childhood flashbacks and how, in this particular case, I would much prefer to have Gross-as-Fraser tell Ray about this meaningful episode of his childhood over being stuck watching it for half the episode. And then I thought of an instance where that actually happens, in "The Promise" (2.5):
And I realized what it is that bugs me about the flashback in "Easy Money." The little boy in Fraser's story in "The Promise," the boy who gets lost in Aklavik and boils his left Oxford--that boy can only be Benton Fraser. But the boy in "Easy Money" who runs away from home and shoots a caribou only to discover that he has done a horrible thing--that boy could be anyone. There's nothing about this story that makes it belong to Fraser in the way that his left Oxford does. And that makes it thin and easy to see the clichés through.
Otherwise, this is a didactic and predictable episode like "One Good Man." It's another episode, like "Spy vs. Spy," that looks like it may have originally been written, at least partly, with the original Ray Vecchio in mind. The city mouse vs. country mouse thing is much more part of the first two seasons of Due South than the second two, even with the irony of Fraser now playing the part of the city mouse, and Ray's exchange with Quinn looks Vecchio-ish to me:
That's the first Ray's refrain, not the second Ray's. We also have the motif of Fraser keeping his money in his hat, which is a big deal in the Vecchio seasons and less so in the Kowalski seasons, and the Fraser-and-Dief-tracking-in-Chicago motif, ditto. The episode spends a lot of time wandering back and forth across Chicago, killing time, and the only interesting thing about either of the villains of the week is that one of them is named Stor(e)y.
What does work in this episode is the part that was written specifically for one of the characters on-screen: Ray Kowalski's history with his father: "My dad slaved away at this meat-packing plant and um....he wanted me to go to college, he said, y'know, he didn't want me to have the stink of dead animals all over me. And I dropped out, I went off to the Academy. Day I graduated almost killed him. He said, you're gonna have a stink on you all the same, bad people. What kinda life is that?" There's a delicate echo of the main-plot's flashback device; Mr. Kowalski is a meat-packer who doesn't want his son tainted with the "stink of dead animals," but he can't keep Ray from making his own (bad) decisions--and notice that in "Eclipse," Ray talks about his job as a police officer in language that must be an echo of his father: "I've humped this job for a long time. Bad hours, bad food, and bad guys. And for what?"--just as Quinn knows he can't keep child!Fraser from shooting the caribou, even though he also knows it's a mistake.
Ray's story also sets him up as another main (male) character in Due South with a highly problematic relationships with the memory of his absent father, and that gets brilliantly undercut at the end when Ray's parents show up at the precinct. Unlike Fraser's father and unlike Ray Vecchio's father, Ray Kowalski's father is still alive, and this is both an opportunity for Ray and, as their incredibly awkward reunion shows, the unveiling of a whole new set of problems in negotiating adult masculinity, a problem which the A-plot is maybe trying to talk about, as Fraser mentors his mentor, but Fraser is so utterly not-undercut in this episode, so utterly honorable and right and true, that there's no traction on his relationship with Quinn--unlike his relationship with the ghost of his father, which routinely shows him to be as crotchety and human as anybody else.
There is one moment where the use of Quinn as a surrogate for Bob Fraser ("You shoot a Mountie," Quinn says to Kelly, "they'll hunt you for ever.") does work, and that's the moment at the very end:
And I say this works not because it's almost the only time in the episode when we get a hint of the quirky guy behind Fraser's Mountie mask, but because of that crucial he's not here. The acknowledgment that heroism and idealism, however much they are appropriate and necessary to the idealized and idolized figure of the capital-F Father, are not as valuable as the real presence of the real human father (notice also that there's no mention, in flashback!Canada, of child!Fraser's father, only of his grandparents). Fraser doesn't quite say that he'd rather have his father alive than a hero, but he comes as close, maybe, as he's equipped to.
Original air date: September 30, 1998
Favorite quote:
RAY: How'd he beat us?
FRASER: Well, he must have taken a short cut.
RAY: He knows short cuts?
FRASER: Well he does study maps.
RAY: What kind of maps?
FRASER: Road maps, street maps, topographic maps . . .
"Easy Money" is not my favorite Due South episode, and I will tell you why.
1. Of all the infinite possible flavors of Fraser, didactic is my least favorite.
2. I'm not a big fan of flashbacks to childhood in TV and movies, precisely because they are so extraordinarily hard to do right. And this one falls apart for me because I just don't believe that Trevor Blumas is going to grow up to be Paul Gross. I'm sorry, I just don't. Obviously, that's totally subjective, but that's all these write-ups are anyway: my 100% subjective opinion about this TV show.
3. And I just figured this out walking home from work today, because I was thinking about childhood flashbacks and how, in this particular case, I would much prefer to have Gross-as-Fraser tell Ray about this meaningful episode of his childhood over being stuck watching it for half the episode. And then I thought of an instance where that actually happens, in "The Promise" (2.5):
FRASER: Ray-- All right. Listen. When I was little, my grandparents took me on vacation to Aklavik.
RAY: What, for a little sun and sand?
FRASER: Well, hardly. It's a thriving urban center. Anyway, one day I . . . I wandered off alone when they were window shopping. There I was, all alone in a big city. The point is, Ray . . . I became hungry. . . . Very hungry. And I knew no one. I had no money. I . . . I was desperate.
RAY: So you ate a polar bear.
FRASER: Well, don't be ridiculous, Ray. I boiled my shoes. My--my Oxfords. My left Oxford, to be exact. Boy, did my grandmother ever tan my hide for that one.
RAY: Oh, that's a good one. So what's the point?
FRASER: The point is, Ray, that to be young and alone is frightening. Without proper guidance, we . . . we'll do things that are out of character
And I realized what it is that bugs me about the flashback in "Easy Money." The little boy in Fraser's story in "The Promise," the boy who gets lost in Aklavik and boils his left Oxford--that boy can only be Benton Fraser. But the boy in "Easy Money" who runs away from home and shoots a caribou only to discover that he has done a horrible thing--that boy could be anyone. There's nothing about this story that makes it belong to Fraser in the way that his left Oxford does. And that makes it thin and easy to see the clichés through.
Otherwise, this is a didactic and predictable episode like "One Good Man." It's another episode, like "Spy vs. Spy," that looks like it may have originally been written, at least partly, with the original Ray Vecchio in mind. The city mouse vs. country mouse thing is much more part of the first two seasons of Due South than the second two, even with the irony of Fraser now playing the part of the city mouse, and Ray's exchange with Quinn looks Vecchio-ish to me:
RAY: So, how'd it go today?
QUINN: Not well.
RAY: Well, I coulda told you that, these companies only believe in one thing - money.
QUINN: Money.
RAY: Yeah, it buys lawyers, politicians, access, that's the way it works.
That's the first Ray's refrain, not the second Ray's. We also have the motif of Fraser keeping his money in his hat, which is a big deal in the Vecchio seasons and less so in the Kowalski seasons, and the Fraser-and-Dief-tracking-in-Chicago motif, ditto. The episode spends a lot of time wandering back and forth across Chicago, killing time, and the only interesting thing about either of the villains of the week is that one of them is named Stor(e)y.
What does work in this episode is the part that was written specifically for one of the characters on-screen: Ray Kowalski's history with his father: "My dad slaved away at this meat-packing plant and um....he wanted me to go to college, he said, y'know, he didn't want me to have the stink of dead animals all over me. And I dropped out, I went off to the Academy. Day I graduated almost killed him. He said, you're gonna have a stink on you all the same, bad people. What kinda life is that?" There's a delicate echo of the main-plot's flashback device; Mr. Kowalski is a meat-packer who doesn't want his son tainted with the "stink of dead animals," but he can't keep Ray from making his own (bad) decisions--and notice that in "Eclipse," Ray talks about his job as a police officer in language that must be an echo of his father: "I've humped this job for a long time. Bad hours, bad food, and bad guys. And for what?"--just as Quinn knows he can't keep child!Fraser from shooting the caribou, even though he also knows it's a mistake.
Ray's story also sets him up as another main (male) character in Due South with a highly problematic relationships with the memory of his absent father, and that gets brilliantly undercut at the end when Ray's parents show up at the precinct. Unlike Fraser's father and unlike Ray Vecchio's father, Ray Kowalski's father is still alive, and this is both an opportunity for Ray and, as their incredibly awkward reunion shows, the unveiling of a whole new set of problems in negotiating adult masculinity, a problem which the A-plot is maybe trying to talk about, as Fraser mentors his mentor, but Fraser is so utterly not-undercut in this episode, so utterly honorable and right and true, that there's no traction on his relationship with Quinn--unlike his relationship with the ghost of his father, which routinely shows him to be as crotchety and human as anybody else.
There is one moment where the use of Quinn as a surrogate for Bob Fraser ("You shoot a Mountie," Quinn says to Kelly, "they'll hunt you for ever.") does work, and that's the moment at the very end:
FRASER: You know there's a short entry in one of my father's journals that reads 'My adversaries appear ready to listen. I'm nearing victory.' And that entry was written the day before he was shot.
QUINN: Your father acted heroically.
FRASER: Yes. But he's not here. At least ... [he looks around with great thoroughness] he doesn't appear to be.
And I say this works not because it's almost the only time in the episode when we get a hint of the quirky guy behind Fraser's Mountie mask, but because of that crucial he's not here. The acknowledgment that heroism and idealism, however much they are appropriate and necessary to the idealized and idolized figure of the capital-F Father, are not as valuable as the real presence of the real human father (notice also that there's no mention, in flashback!Canada, of child!Fraser's father, only of his grandparents). Fraser doesn't quite say that he'd rather have his father alive than a hero, but he comes as close, maybe, as he's equipped to.
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Date: 2013-07-02 01:25 am (UTC)I swear, once they're all done I'm having a non-stop marathon of the entire series.
no subject
Date: 2013-07-02 07:31 am (UTC)Oh, great glorious day, this series is continuing! You have no idea how much I enjoy your analyses of due South. No idea! :-D
I'll be really sad when it's over, but then I can enjoy marathoning the entire thing over again... and probably over again and again. ;-)
I've never have quite as strong a reaction to this episode as you've had, which is quite fine--personal taste and all that good jazz. In particular, I don't especially dislike the idea of flashbacks using child actors, if they're done well. However, with that caveat, I agree wholeheartedly with you that the casting of Trevor Blumas was a bad choice. But for me, it was more his physical looks than his acting: Paul Gross could've never been that waaay too full-lipped kid, and that pulled me out of my suspension of disbelief more than anything else.
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Date: 2013-07-02 01:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-02 06:03 pm (UTC)Thank you. I love these.
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Date: 2013-07-03 08:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-29 06:26 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2019-02-27 03:50 pm (UTC)Six years later...
Date: 2019-07-14 03:27 pm (UTC)As I’ve been re-reading these, I’ve been looking at my 10 yr old comments too. Some I still hold to, but some, like my opinion of Ray K/ CKR have changed pretty radically. I like him a lot & I’m really ok with him riding off into the sunset with Fraser. Your posts & deconstructions have had everything to do with my change of heart. I’m grateful for your insights, & whatever you’re working on now, I hope it’s going well. Thank you kindly.
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Date: 2024-12-11 11:27 pm (UTC)