return to Due South: season 1 episode 22 "Letting Go"
Letting Go
air date June 1, 1995
Scene 1
Fraser is on a gurney. Music cue: "Plenty" by Sarah McLachlan (the instrumental intro runs under the whole teaser). Vecchio is running alongside while the medical team rushes Fraser through the hospital.
DOCTOR: Caliber?
VECCHIO: Nine millimeter.
DOCTOR: Range?
VECCHIO: Uh, fifty yards.
DOCTOR: Angle?
VECCHIO: I — I don't know!
DOCTOR: There's no exit wound. Bullet probably hit something.
VECCHIO: Like what?
DOCTOR: I want him intubated. Number eight endotracheal tube. Get ready to bag him.
Fraser bumps into Victoria in the vestibule of the diner. The medical team are still triaging him as they run.
VICTORIA: Hi.
SURGEON: Estimated blood loss?
DOCTOR: About two units.
VICTORIA: I thought I saw you standing in the middle of the road.
SURGEON: Is he a drug user?
DOCTOR: Negative.
VICTORIA: You hungry?
SURGEON: Time?
DOCTOR: Twenty minutes down now.
Fraser sees himself and Victoria cooking in his apartment and remembers talking about her to Fr. Behan. The triage continues.
FRASER (VO): It was as though I had known her forever.
DOCTOR: Vitals?
NURSE: BP eighty systolic. Pulse weak and thready.
Fraser sees himself and Victoria watching North by Northwest on Mr. Mustafi's television.
VICTORIA: Why doesn't it have any sound?
FRASER: It's broken.
Fraser sees Victoria coming back to his apartment later that night. They kiss and kiss and fall into bed.
VICTORIA (VO): How could you do that to me, huh?
FRASER (VO): What aren't you telling me?
VICTORIA (VO): I did it! I shot the son of a bitch. He was trying to kill me.
He is still on the gurney rushing through the hospital.
BOB FRASER (VO): She's not coming back to you. And why in God's name would you want her to?
She points a gun at him in the car, kisses him, and kicks him backward rather than shooting him.
FRASER (VO): She had the most beautiful voice.
He is still on the gurney; his eyes roll back. Now he is on the station platform; she is on the train.
VICTORIA (VO): Come with me.
FRASER (VO): I made a mistake once, and I can't make it again.
He starts to run. Vecchio is running on the other platform parallel to him.
VICTORIA: Come with me!
He is running and looking over at Vecchio. He is on the gurney. He is sleeping in his bed, with Victoria waking up next to him.
FRASER (VO): She's the only woman I ever loved, and I put her in prison.
He is on the gurney. She reaches to him from the train. He is running and reaching for her. Vecchio stops and takes aim.
VICTORIA (VO): You're going to regret it if you don't.
A gleam of light reflects on the train near her hand.
VECCHIO: She's got a gun!
Fraser grabs Victoria's hand and gets on the train. Vecchio fires. Fraser's eyes go wide. He is on the gurney. His eyes are fluttering.
DOCTOR: Are you next of kin?
VECCHIO: Why?
DOCTOR: You might want to call somebody.
VECCHIO: He's okay, right? He's okay, he's breathing, right?
DOCTOR: When we know, you'll know.
Fraser is lying on the station platform. Victoria is watching, distraught, from the train as it leaves the station.
FRASER: I should be with her.
Victoria meets the gurney, dressed for surgery in scrubs and a hairnet.
VICTORIA: He'll be fine. Won't you, Ben?
He is on the gurney. He watches Victoria pull her mask up.
VECCHIO: Benny. I'll be right out here.
NURSE: Coming through!
DOCTOR: Do we know [unintelligible] vitals?
They wheel him into the operating room just as the vocal begins.
Credits roll.
Paul Gross
David Marciano
Beau Starr
Daniel Kash
Tony Craig
Catherine Bruhier
(plus Lincoln the dog)
Melina Kanakaredes, Laurie Holden, Jennifer Dale, Frances Hyland, Gordon Pinsent as Fraser Sr.
Apparently 8.0 is a standard gauge trach tube for an adult man. This is a pretty good flashback/trauma sequence. I'd stack it up against The West Wing season 2 episode 1 "In the Shadow of Two Gunmen part 1." The West Wing one would probably win, but I think it'd be a fair fight.
All the guest credits are women! Except Pinsent, who's back to an "as" credit after two episodes in a row of "and/as".
Scene 2
In a hospital courtyard, a groundskeeper is gardening; a couple of kids and their grandfather are playing with a ball; a couple are walking with their new baby. Fraser is in a room hooked up to monitors. Diefenbaker is with him; he has bandages around his neck. There is a fly on Fraser's toe, and he can't wiggle it off. He tries to turn over onto his side. He reaches for a back scratcher that is hanging from his bed rail, but he knocks it onto the floor. He flops back onto his back. The fly is still on his toe. He closes his eyes.
Poor Fraser; being in the hospital is a drag. It's hard to say how much time has passed since the shooting; Diefenbaker is well enough to have left the animal hospital and be no help to him now, but Fraser still has a bandage on his left hand where Jolly cut him.
Scene 3
Vecchio is seeing a therapist.
THERAPIST: The shooting team cleared you. That must have been reassuring.
VECCHIO: Yeah.
THERAPIST: How is he?
VECCHIO: They found the bullet. In the T-eight vertebrae, wherever that is.
THERAPIST: The thoracic region.
VECCHIO: It's too close to the spine. They didn't want to risk taking it out.
THERAPIST: I'm told he's expected to recover fully.
VECCHIO: Yeah.
THERAPIST: Have you talked to him about any of this?
VECCHIO: He's barely conscious.
THERAPIST: Then you don't know how he feels.
VECCHIO: [angry] Look, what's to know, okay? I shot him. He's fine, I'm fine, we're all fine, all right?
He goes and stands by the window.
We never see the therapist. I feel like that reminds me of something.
T8 is pretty high up, about even with the bottom of the shoulderblades.
Scene 4
Fraser is lying on his side. Between the windows of his room is a stuffed bear that is bigger than he is. Diefenbaker is looking out the rear window and watching an aerobics class in another wing of the hospital. A couple of guys are having a smoke break on the gym roof. A dark-haired woman goes into an office in that wing as well. Diefenbaker grumbles. Fraser looks at him and then looks out the rear window again. A pregnant woman is arguing with her partner and may be going into labor. Diefenbaker grumbles again.
FRASER: Listen, just because you can see them, and their blinds are open, it's not to be taken as an invitation. It's unethical. It's also against the law. [Diefenbaker whines.] Aside from which, you'll go blind. [Diefenbaker looks at him. Fraser chuckles. Diefenbaker grumbles.] Oh, fine. Don't listen. [He looks out the window again and watches the pregnant woman yell at her partner. Diefenbaker barks.] No, you see, this is different. I have a wound that leaves me no choice but to face the windows. [Diefenbaker looks at him.] Well, yes, I could close my eyes, but I'm not about to do that, because I am not actually prying. [He looks out the window at the aerobics class again.] Hm.
Diefenbaker grumbles. Fraser keeps looking at the aerobics instructor. Then up at the two guys having their smoke break. Then over at a room where a doctor is speaking to a patient who is shaking her head; the doctor leaves, and the patient's husband holds her while she cries. Fraser sighs and closes his eyes.
Seems like if Fraser were concerned about prying, he could close the blinds, close his eyes, or lie on his other side, hm? (Time has been passing: Diefenbaker's bandages are gone, but the bandage on Fraser's left hand is still present.)
Scene 5
It is nighttime. Diefenbaker is curled up in the chair in Fraser's room. Fraser is sleeping, but the lamp above his bed is on and the light is bothering him. He reaches up to turn it off, which wakes him up. Music cue: "Plenty" by Sarah McLachlan. Fraser looks out the rear window at the dark-haired woman's office. A man is in there with her. He strokes her hair and turns a framed picture face down onto her desk. He kisses her face; she tilts her head so he can get closer; and after a moment she turns and kisses him back. Fraser watches.
I looked into your eyes
they told me plenty
I already knew
The couple are making out in the office across the courtyard. The woman's arms are around the man's neck; he has his hands in her hair and sliding down her back. Fraser closes his eyes. He sees himself and Victoria kissing in his apartment in the snow.
you never felt a thing
He touches his lips and opens his eyes.
so soon forgotten all that you do
Fraser sees himself and Victoria falling back onto his bed. He blinks in his hospital bed and sees himself and Victoria in his bed again. They kiss and kiss; their legs tangle together.
in more than words
I tried to tell you
the more I tried I failed
He frowns and opens his eyes and looks out the rear window again. The couple in the office across the courtyard are disagreeing about something.
I would not let myself believe
that you might stray
The man has something in his hand that the woman wants—a photograph or a document. She kisses him and takes it out of his hand, holding it behind her back.
and I would stand by you
no matter what they'd say,
Fraser blinks and keeps watching. The man leaves the woman's office; she comes back to her desk and prepares a hypodermic needle, which she injects into her leg.
I would have thought I'd be with you
Until my dying day
Until my dying day
There is a clap of thunder. In the next office over from where the woman is shooting whatever it is into her leg, the lights are flickering and a person is silhouetted in the window.
I used to think my life
was often empty
a lonely space to fill
Fraser looks back at the woman's office. Her lights go out.
you hurt me more than
I ever would have imagined
you made my world stand still
He closes his eyes and tries to go back to sleep.
Poor Fraser. He's still hung up on Victoria, and he's in the hospital where it's impossible to sleep restfully.
Scene 6
Fraser is sleeping, but people are in his room talking.
TV INSTALLER: There you go. All hooked up.
VECCHIO: Doesn't this thing come with an automatic horizontal hold? [He is fussing with the TV remote. The TV picture is all static.]
TV INSTALLER: That's extra.
VECCHIO: Extra. [Fraser turns his head and looks out the rear window at the office across the courtyard. It is empty.]
TV INSTALLER: Want to press the red button?
VECCHIO: [as the installer is leaving] Hey, this thing is broken.
TV INSTALLER: Hey, it's not my department. Call two-seventeen for service.
VECCHIO: [calling after him] It was never working in the first place! [He slaps the remote down, sits in the chair next to Fraser's bed, and sighs.] I finally get you to say yes to the damn thing, and it's broken. Three weeks. Twenty-one days staring at beige walls with beige linoleum, day in and day out.
FRASER: You know, you can leave, Ray. I mean, you don't have to come here every day.
VECCHIO: I know that.
FRASER: I mean, you have a job. You should go to work.
VECCHIO: I do go to work.
FRASER: When?
VECCHIO: When you're asleep. You do that a lot, you know.
FRASER: Oh. Still, I think —
VECCHIO: Look, you start your physical therapy, you get your sea legs back, and in the meantime, we get through this the only way I know how. [He hits the TV three times.] Baseball. [He turns the TV to face Fraser. It has a visible picture for about one second, then the horizontal static is back.]
FRASER: Who's playing?
VECCHIO: Who cares? [He grabs a bag of chips.]
FRASER: This is great, Ray. Thanks. [Diefenbaker whimpers for chips.]
VECCHIO: Don't they have rules about this sort of thing?
FRASER: Ah, the nurses have all taken pity on him. They feed him, they water him, they walk him regularly, they like him, he likes them, he eats better than I do. I think he's even happier here. Ingrate.
VECCHIO: [gives up on the chips] They haven't found her, you know.
FRASER: [doesn't answer for a long moment] The investigation.
VECCHIO: Officially, it's still open. Unofficially, it's on the back burner. The diamonds were recovered, and the murder victim — he's a convicted felon. For all we know, she could be in Afghanistan.
FRASER: [turns his head to look at Vecchio] I still see her. I'm not sure what I see, actually. [He reaches over to get his meds.]
VECCHIO: Oh, you know, those painkillers. They can do it to you. [Fraser looks at the painkillers, then drops them in the trash. Diefenbaker grumbles at Vecchio.] What? [Diefenbaker barks.] Look, no more, okay? It's going to make you fat.
FRASER: You're in his chair.
VECCHIO: Oh. Okay. I'm going to get out of here. Can I get you anything?
FRASER: No, you've — you've done more than enough already.
Fraser smiles. Vecchio leaves. Diefenbaker hops up into the chair. Fraser tries to turn off the TV, but the remote doesn't work, so he hits it and it goes dark. He closes his eyes.
This scene is so accurate. As much of a drag as it is being in the hospital, visiting people in there is also wretched. Literally no one can be comfortable, ever. However: This is a much less awkward hospital scene than in "Manhunt"—yay, I feel like they are growing.
I'm glad to note the implication that the investigators now agree there was such a person as Victoria. I suppose the fact that Welsh and Huey and Gardino saw her with their own eyes (and also she'd just shot up a train station) probably helped.
(The bandage is gone from Fraser's left hand now, so apparently the major passage of time happened between scenes 5 and 6.)
Scene 7
Fraser is sleeping. Bob leans over him and startles him awake.
BOB FRASER: Hello, son.
FRASER: You've got to stop doing that.
BOB FRASER: More boring the other way.
FRASER: Couldn't you just have sent some flowers or a card?
BOB FRASER: You're just mad because I didn't get here sooner.
FRASER: No, relieved is more like it. If you had come sooner, I might not have been able to tell which one of us was actually —
BOB FRASER: Dead?
FRASER: Yes.
BOB FRASER: Well, it's not a dirty word, son. Besides, there are worse things than being dead.
FRASER: Oh, really? Like what?
BOB FRASER: Well, you, for instance. You wouldn't catch me moping around here because I was shot.
FRASER: I suffered massive nerve and muscle damage. I was lucky to survive.
BOB FRASER: I'd've been back on the post next morning.
FRASER: I hardly think so.
BOB FRASER: You've been lying around here for three weeks. Can't stay in this bed forever, you know.
FRASER: I don't plan to. This is called recovery. I am recovering.
BOB FRASER: Oh. [leans in] She got you good, didn't she?
FRASER: No. [drinks water] I was thinking of going home.
BOB FRASER: To the Territories?
FRASER: [nods] I thought I'd rebuild your cabin.
BOB FRASER: Huh. Whatever for?
WOMAN: [calling] Robert!
BOB FRASER: Oh my God.
FRASER: What?
WOMAN: [emerges from the closet carrying Western-themed flannel pajamas] Here. Tell him to put these on. They're warmer.
BOB FRASER: [takes the jammies] It's seventy degrees. [To Fraser, it looks like Bob's hands are empty.] These won't do him any good.
FRASER: Who are you talking to?
BOB FRASER: You don't see her?
FRASER: No.
BOB FRASER: It's your grandmother. [She peers at Fraser through her glasses.] She brought you some pajamas. [holds out the invisible jammies]
FRASER: Oh, well, thank her for me.
BOB FRASER: Of course.
FRASER: Anybody else drop in?
BOB FRASER: No, not so far.
WOMAN (FRASER'S GRANDMOTHER): You're babying him, Robert. [She smacks him.]
BOB FRASER: [flinches from the invisible slap] Well, he's been shot, Mother!
FRASER'S GRANDMOTHER: Can't stay in bed forever.
She tsks and goes back into the closet. Bob watches her go. Fraser waits.
BOB FRASER: You didn't see her?
FRASER: No. How is she?
BOB FRASER: Not dead enough, son.
From the hallway, of course, it looks like Fraser himself is talking to no one. Someone knocks on the door. Fraser turns and sees the aerobics instructor from the gym he can see through his rear window.
AEROBICS INSTRUCTOR: Am I interrupting?
FRASER: No, no. Come on in. [He tries to sit up.]
AEROBICS INSTRUCTOR: Jill Kennedy.
FRASER: Yeah, from the, um —
AEROBICS INSTRUCTOR (JILL): From —
FRASER: — hospital.
JILL: Right. I'm the —
FRASER: Physiotherapist.
JILL: You recognize me?
FRASER: No, actually. That was, um, deduction.
JILL: You deduced me? [She pulls the curtain around his bed.]
FRASER: Yes. Yes, I did. You see, um, your hands, although small, are —
JILL: Excuse me. [She pulls the blanket down off his legs.]
FRASER: [as she begins to examine him] — uncommonly muscular. As are your triceps, biceps, deltoids, pectorals — [She is prodding at his legs; he reacts when she has apparently hit a sensitive spot.] — latissimus dorsi and abdominal RACK — [She takes her hand off his knee.] — um, this is not something you would normally encounter in a nurse, unless she was accustomed to heavy lifting. Also, there is —
JILL: May I? [She turns him on his side so she can pull his gown off his shoulder.]
FRASER: — yeah — about you the scent of eucalyptus, which is a very, um, common ingredient in muscle liniments. And that is mixed with, um, I would say chlorine, which I would imagine would be from the whirlpool — [She is pulling the gown down off both shoulders.] — um, and on top of that there is — [sniffs] — uh — coconut. [She puts her hands on his chest.] Hand lotion.
JILL: It's shampoo.
FRASER: Ah. There. You see, well, all of that's very consistent with a physical therapist who has very . . . very clean hair.
JILL: That's quite a talent.
FRASER: I'm sorry.
JILL: That's okay. You're a policeman, right?
FRASER: Yes. From Canada. A Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman.
JILL: Ahh. That would explain the bowed knees.
FRASER: [looking at his knees] Bowed?
JILL: I'd say five-eighths of a centimeter. Quarter horse, sixteen hands?
FRASER: [taken aback; impressed] As a rule.
JILL: Hmm. Well, you've got quite a few mementos here. [She goes back to his legs.] Left leg's been broken and reset — [He flinches again when she touches him.] — hmm, twice. Second one was pretty nasty. Fell what, fifty, sixty feet?
FRASER: [wigging with ticklishness] Uh, fifty-seven.
JILL: Off a building?
FRASER: Off a cliff.
JILL: Somebody pushed you?
FRASER: I jumped, actually.
JILL: Oh, that would do it. [moves to the right leg] Oh, serious knife wound. Seven-inch blade, serrated edge — what was he hunting?
FRASER: Me.
JILL: Ooh. [She draws the blanket up over his legs and notices a scar on his jaw.] And this is recent. A minor laceration. It's small, but deep. Glass door?
FRASER: [nods] Tempered.
JILL: Ouch. [looks at something on his chest] And this is interesting. It's old, maybe twenty years. There's plenty of scar tissue, so it was deep. It's an object, but — something soft, with teeth and hair maybe? This is going to sound really silly, but were you ever —
FRASER: It was an otter. I was ten. It was dead. Someone hit me with it. Can we move on?
JILL: Okay, okay. [She grabs the trapeze handle over the bed.] You ever going to use this thing?
FRASER: Thinking about it.
JILL: Keep thinking, three months. Start using, a couple of weeks. [She turns Fraser over to look at the wound that has him in here in the first place.]
FRASER: Hoo. I'm sorry.
JILL: That's okay. Cold hands. [She pulls the dressing off the wound.] Another hunter?
FRASER: Friend, actually. He was aiming for someone else.
JILL: Who?
FRASER: A woman. She had, um — [He looks out the rear window at the couple whose doctor had given the patient bad news the other day; at the aerobics class; at the roof; at the woman who had been in labor, now cradling her new baby.] — committed a crime and was attempting to escape. He drew his weapon —
JILL: And you just happened to step in between.
FRASER: Yes.
JILL: Hmm.
FRASER: What?
JILL: Ah, nothing. You just don't strike me as the clumsy type. [She follows his eyeline and sees the aerobics class.] Nice pectoral muscles, don't you think? [He smirks to acknowledge she's caught him looking. They look at the woman in her office next. She opens a manila envelope and looks at its contents.] What is it?
FRASER: Photographs.
The woman looks at the photographs and is upset for a moment at her desk. She gets up and pries the vent cover off an air duct in her office wall.
JILL: Well, it is kind of mesmerizing.
The woman drops the vent cover. She is upset. She sits back down at her desk, and after a moment she picks up a gold lighter and sets the photographs on fire.
JILL: Wow.
This was a lot! At least two scenes in one, really, but there was no break in between them, so. First: Bob visits, and after he chides Ben for being soft, he is visited in turn by the ghost of his mother. (The ghost of the ghost of his mother?) Aside from the comedy value of this—the jammies she's bringing in have, like, sheriffs' stars and cowboy boots printed on them, adorable—I am interested by what it means about Fraser's subconscious. One argument could be (and has been by me!) made that the ghost of one's parent represents one's subconscious mind, so Grandmother visits Bob because he doesn't really believe Ben is showing weakness by still being in the hospital three weeks after being shot. BUT as we are reminded when Jill arrives, even Bob isn't really there. He represents Ben's subconscious mind, so his seeing his own mother's ghost—Ben's seeing Bob's seeing his own mother's ghost—is, what, Grandmother representing Ben's id? (She's bringing him warm pajamas. What else could she be? But she's inaccessible to him.) Bob tells him he's going soft, so that's Ben worrying on some level that he ought to be back up and at 'em by now and reminding himself out loud that he had massive nerve and muscle damage and was lucky to survive. And he's so right about that that when Grandmother comes along to tell Bob that Ben's going soft, Bob immediately defends him. (I haven't read a lot of Freud, but this is all making fantasy-TV sense to me right now.)
And then Jill Kennedy comes in, and she's an attractive woman who makes Fraser profoundly uncomfortable, although a little less so when he realizes that she's interested in him only as a patient. He still feels the need to be extra distant and clinical while she's looking at his body so diagnostically, which, fair enough, when you close up one distance it makes complete sense to open up another one. It's nice of her to give him the "cold hands" out the third or fourth time he flinches when she touches him; she might have gone with that sooner. He's still kind of touchy about the otter incident, apparently, and we don't know the stories of the broken leg (from jumping off a 57-foot cliff or the time before) or the tempered glass door (though that scar doesn't look like makeup and may be Paul Gross's own; they may just be using it the way they had River Phoenix cut himself with a bullwhip in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade to explain the scar on Harrison Ford's chin). But mainly, he seems to have met his deductive match, and she's also interested in what's going on in the office across the way, so he's got another (besides Diefenbaker and Vecchio, I mean) buddy. That's cool.
Particular shout-out to
resonant, because here is nursing staff close enough that the patient can smell their shampoo, but it's okay this time. 😉
Do we think she's teasing him about appreciating the other aerobics instructor's "pectoral muscles" or sharing his appreciation? I could buy Jill liking women just as much as if not more than she likes men. What do others think?
The bullet wound on Fraser's back seems very well healed to me for only being three weeks old.
Oh and just so no one thinks I'm sleeping on this: Yes, if it wasn't clear beginning in scene 4, the arrival of the pretty blonde physical therapist—combining Grace Kelly with the nurse—cements the fact that we're actually in Rear Window here.
Scene 8
In the hospital's rehab gym. Other patients are pedaling bike pedals and practicing sitting up. Fraser has his knee in a sling so he can manipulate his leg with a pulley.
JILL: Feeling all right?
FRASER: A-one.
JILL: Blackmail.
FRASER: Excuse me?
JILL: Grab the handle? [He does.] Of course. What else could it be? Now, tell me if this is painful. [She lifts his leg and bends his knee. He says nothing.] You'll tell me?
FRASER: Mm-hmm.
JILL: [keeps on moving his leg] You saw the photographs.
FRASER: Well, I didn't see what was in them.
JILL: You saw how she reacted.
FRASER: Well, perhaps it was a sad occasion.
JILL: That's what a person does when she sees sad pictures? Burns them? So what else did you see?
FRASER: When?
JILL: You've been lying there staring in those windows for three weeks. What else?
FRASER: Oh, I guess my mind was elsewhere.
JILL: Elsewhere?
FRASER: Mm.
JILL: Look, you don't want to talk about it. I get it. That's fine.
FRASER: No, no. I think I pretty much —
JILL: Oh, that's okay, we can just keep this simple. You're the patient, I'm the physio, we don't talk, no problem.
FRASER: Okay.
JILL: Time's up. [She goes to get his leg out of the sling.]
FRASER: [surprised by something she does] Ow.
Okay, so she gets back to business and the first thing she does is hurt him? I mean we don't see what she does, so maybe that would have hurt even if she wasn't in a slight snit about not having a gossip buddy. I prefer that to thinking she's like coercing him into joining her Rear Window speculations by withholding proper care until he does.
Scene 9
Fraser is walking with a walker and approaches a set of practice stairs.
JILL: You're kidding.
FRASER: No, I'm sure it's nothing.
JILL: A surgeon with a needle in her thigh? That is not nothing. It's drugs. And if it's drugs, that is professional misconduct. Malpractice suits from every person she's ever treated.
FRASER: [working on walking up the stairs] You said there was a photocopy room next door. Maybe someone was making photocopies.
JILL: At two in the morning?
FRASER: [reaches the top of the stairs, works on walking across the landing] As for the injection, she could be a diabetic, or taking some other kind of medicine.
JILL: She's a junkie.
FRASER: Look, I think before we leap to conclusions, we should take a deep breath and just —
He starts to fall down the practice stairs; Jill gasps and catches him.
Gossiping with your patient is not professional misconduct. Jill is keeping it totally professional here. I guess the fact that they're not talking about other patients probably does make it okay. (I mean this is before HIPAA, but even then, discussing other patients should have been off limits.)
Scene 10
Fraser and Jill are in the pool. She is helping him walk in a less weight-bearing environment.
FRASER: You're being unreasonable.
JILL: I am being perfectly logical. What we saw was a rich doctor with a drug habit who's about to be blackmailed.
FRASER: No, what we saw was a woman opening an envelope and burning the contents. We have no actual evidence an actual crime took place.
JILL: Okay, let's get some. I have a friend in maintenance. He's got keys to all the offices.
FRASER: Ms. Kennedy, is it your custom to incite all your patients to break and enter?
JILL: No. Do you usually ignore a crime that's taking place right under your nose?
FRASER: I am not a police officer in this jurisdiction. And even if I did have the authority to investigate, I've . . . I've taken a leave of absence.
JILL: Oh. [His leg buckles.] Are you okay?
FRASER: [biting his lip] Mm-hmm.
JILL: Are you sure? [helping, holding him up]
FRASER: Mm-hmm. [She gets behind him so he can lean back against her and she can get him out of the water.]
JILL: Threw in the towel, huh?
FRASER: No, as you can see, I, I, I just need some time to recuperate.
JILL: This? Oh, this you'll get over in no time. The other thing, well — maybe you're right.
FRASER: What do you mean?
JILL: You know, the thing that we're not talking about? Some guys never recover from that. One good punch and they're knocked out cold. And never recover.
FRASER: I have no idea what you think you're talking about. [They have reached the stairs out of the pool. He grabs the handrail.]
JILL: Of course not.
BOB FRASER: She's a lovely girl.
FRASER: She's not a girl. She's a therapist.
JILL: Excuse me?
BOB FRASER: [He is up to his chest in the water in his dress uniform.] Then one of us is going blind.
FRASER: It's nothing.
JILL: Still, I suppose it is your choice.
FRASER: What is?
JILL: Well, you can ignore it if you want to, but she's just not going to go away, is she?
BOB FRASER: By the way, son, could you see your way clear to thinking of me in a pair of trunks?
FRASER: Do you mind?
JILL: I mean, every time you open your eyes, she'll be right there, just —
FRASER: All right, that is enough, thank you. Ms. Kennedy —
JILL: Jill.
FRASER: Jill. You're a very fine physical therapist, and I have no doubt you're a very fine, caring, and decent person, and while I appreciate that, I would appreciate it a whole lot more if you'd confine your comments and advice to matters directly concerning my physical well-being and left my personal life to me.
JILL: I was talking about the doctor.
FRASER: Oh, well, that's, um, that's — a completely different thing.
JILL: It is true, though.
FRASER: What is?
JILL: I do hate to see a good man go to waste.
BOB FRASER: [singing tunelessly] ♫ Oh Rose Marie, I love you. I'm always dreaming of you . . . ♫
Fraser looks back at Bob floating on his back in the pool (still in full dress uniform including hat and boots) and then turns away again. Jill finishes helping him up the stairs. Bob fountains pool water out of his mouth.
Jill sounds very much like she is teasing Fraser with that "see a good man go to waste" remark, so I'll let it pass rather than going OH FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE JILL KENNEDY. The dialogue seems to be working pretty hard to make Fraser think she's talking about Victoria rather than about the doctor in the office he can see through the rear window, but I suppose Victoria is enough on his mind that everything reminds him of her, so.
The song Bob is singing is "Rose Marie," which is from a 1924 operetta about a young woman who is in love with a miner rather than the city boy her brother wants her to marry (it's got a Mountie in it). There's also a 1936 film (apparently the best known of the three films by that title) with a completely different plot but some of the same songs and also a 1954 film of the original musical with an almost entirely new score, but the song "Rose Marie" is in both (all) of them; it was also a hit single in 1955 by Slim Whitman. So Bob could know it from either of those movies or from the radio, I suppose.
(Oh Rose, my Rose Marie
Oh sweet Rose Marie, it's easy to see
Why all who learn to know you, love you
You're gentle and kind, divinely designed
As graceful as the pines above you
There's an angel's breath beneath your sighs
There's a little devil in your eyes.)Oh Rose Marie, I love you
I'm always dreaming of you
No matter what I do, I can't forget you
Sometimes I wish that I never met you
And yet, if I should lose you
Would mean my very life to me
Of all the queens that ever lived, I choose you
To rule me, my Rose MarieThe movie version has both verses; Slim Whitman apparently only recorded the second. I've taken the time to go down this Rose Marie rabbit hole because having asked Uncle Google about the lyrics Bob was singing, I think the odds that someone said "Okay, Gordon, float in the pool and have a bit of a sing" approach zero, don't you? They picked exactly that song for him to sing for precisely the reason that Bob is Ben's subconscious and Ben can't stop thinking about Victoria. [flailhands] Even the silly bits of this show are right on point.
Scene 11
In Fraser's room, Fraser is opening a present from Vecchio.
FRASER: Ahh. [He pulls out a circular saw.]
VECCHIO: It's a power saw.
FRASER: So it is.
VECCHIO: Top of the line, guaranteed not to rust, with a lifetime warranty.
FRASER: Hm! What's it for? [He puts the box on the bed and looks at the saw.]
VECCHIO: Your dad's cabin. I thought we'd go up there together and I'd help you rebuild it.
FRASER: Oh. Ray, you hated that cabin. [He puts the saw back in the box.]
VECCHIO: Ah, no, I didn't, I just hated leaving it to go to the can. Which brings me to this. [hands Fraser a binder] Pick one. My treat. [The binder is open to "Bathroom fixtures."]
FRASER: [smiling] You know, you really don't have to do this.
VECCHIO: Nah, trust me, I do. [Fraser looks up at the trapeze handle. Vecchio gets up and moves the visiting chair out of the way so Fraser can wheel closer to the bed.] Okay, so, what, uh, I figured we'd go up there maybe two, three weeks, you'd get back your health, and I'd kill maybe three, four thousand mosquitoes. [Fraser can't reach the handle from the chair.] I'll get that. Lemme. [He grabs the handle and lowers it to where Fraser can reach. Fraser hauls himself into the bed.] You okay?
FRASER: Yeah. Just a little tired. [starts to lie back]
VECCHIO: Okay, wait, wait. Wait, wait. [He gets the gift box and the binder out of the way and lifts Fraser's legs into the bed. Fraser exhales roughly.] You want me to go?
FRASER: No.
VECCHIO: [smiles; sits in the wheelchair and plays with it] Hey, this is pretty cool. You know, I think it'll be good. That, uh, we go up there for a while. [fidgets with his hands] Try to put Victoria behind us. You know, it'll be like a do-over, you know, like a fresh start. Right?
FRASER: [distracted] Right.
Fraser sees himself and Victoria at the revolving door of her hotel.
VICTORIA: I had a really nice time.
FRASER: So did I.
Victoria drops a snow globe; it shatters on the floor.
VECCHIO: Yeah, it'll be great.
FRASER: [smiles reassuringly] Yeah.
VECCHIO: Hey. [rolls up in Fraser's wheelchair] Where do you buy lumber up there?
FRASER: You cut it.
VECCHIO: [laughs] What, like from the forest?
FRASER: [nods] Yeah.
VECCHIO: You're kidding, right?
FRASER: [smiles for real] No.
VECCHIO: Wow. You know how to do that?
FRASER: [mimes swinging an axe; makes wood-chopping noises] tok. tok.
VECCHIO: Well, I don't have an axe.
FRASER: I have an axe. [He smiles. Vecchio is laughing.]
VECCHIO: I have to go buy an axe. [Fraser chuckles.] You got an axe for me?
FRASER: Yeah. I have two axes. [He is looking thoughtfully at the ceiling.] Two.
So after this scene it's probably time to talk about Fraser and Vecchio's relationship, huh. I'ma cut this because it is Very Very Long.
They have been best friends and bros for several months (becoming unusually close unusually quickly because they're operating in TV time rather than real time). In that time, Vecchio has been generally unsuccessful with women—he gives his number to a woman in the produce section, and then she never calls; all the numbers in his little black book except his sister's are out of date; an attractive young woman with a bicycle calls him "sir," which he thinks shows he's losing his mojo; he falls in love almost instantly with a mystery woman who turns out to be an ATF agent and goes back to Presumably Washington when the case is closed; during that episode he refers obliquely to a time a woman he'd realized he was in love with ended up marrying someone else; he fills an enormous choir loft with women from his apparently refreshed little black book, but they are all there to see Fraser and one of them explicitly tells him to take a hike.
In the same time, it has generally been understood that Fraser could have been as successful with women as he wanted to be—within minutes of meeting him, Francesca rather transparently makes a play to find out whether he has a girlfriend; also within a short time of meeting him, Elaine rather transparently tries to get his number, and seconds later another woman in one breath compliments Diefenbaker and tells Fraser to call her; Mackenzie King assumes he's pursuing her and may end up being interested in him herself; Julie Frobisher all but admits her marriage broke up because she was in love with Fraser rather than with her husband; Elaine and unnamed other women openly admire Fraser as he leaves the squad room; Miss Cabot does her flirting on horseback; a young woman transparently prefers to test drive him rather than a car, the car lot owner's wife straight-up propositions him, and Francesca later basically ropes him into a picnic date; he could probably have brought home whomever he wanted from the wildest club in town; he picks up a baby and the women in a twenty-foot radius can't even handle it; later in the same episode he also attracts a possibly single mom and a postal carrier; Elaine keeps her hat in the ring when she asks if he does his lamp-lit reading alone; another single mom basically flings herself at him after Diefenbaker breeds with her dog; his childhood best friend's PR agent raves about his bone structure; the choir of St. Michael's is made up entirely of young women who want to get closer to him, the lingerie clerk undoes her blouse so he can look at her corset close up (which he does entirely dispassionately), Elaine turns out to still be interested when she administers first aid after he gets beat up, and a day later Francesca actually comes and disrobes in his face; and Katherine Burns gets drunk and jumps him to make her fiancé jealous before realizing she actually may have genuine feelings for him. Fraser is interested in precisely none of these women, though at the very last minute it looks like he may be coming around on Katherine Burns.
Meanwhile, Vecchio shows occasional signs of latent homophobia or at least homosocial unease—he would prefer not to hold Fraser's hospital gown closed, though he does it anyway; he chooses wrapping himself in a frozen animal carcass rather than huddling with Fraser for warmth when they are in danger of freezing to death; he is "humiliated" (his own word) to be found conferring with Fraser in the supply closet. (On the other hand, he is totally wigged by his mother and his sisters and his brother-in-law coming into the bathroom while he's showering but not at all bothered that Fraser's in there the whole time. And I was going to say who's he madder at when he thinks Fraser and Francesca may have slept together?, but even though the answer turns out to kind of be her, it's because he doesn't want her to get hurt, not because he doesn't want her to chew Fraser up and spit him out. Could stop to wonder what he means by "guys like him," though.) Fraser shows no such discomfort—he offers to help Vecchio out of his snow gear without a blink; he asks Vecchio to hold that hospital gown closed without any apparent awareness that it might be at all awkward; he suggests huddling together for warmth in the meat freezer ditto; he is not humiliated by Elaine's finding them in the supply closet, though he is distressed to have both Vecchio and Diefenbaker angry at him; it not the apparent genders of the people propositioning him at the wild club that rattle him, but their states of undress; who knows what kind of history he has with Mark Smithbauer (
The show's position on anything other than cisgender heteronormativity is basically silence. It defends the folks who are into the club scene without there being any overt same- or non-gender pairings (or any matchups of more than two people, although Fraser is propositioned by two women at the same time for what would presumably be the three of them partying together in a V shape). The leather dentist asking Fraser to punish him (in part 1) and encouraging Vecchio to get rough (in part 2) is played for laughs, but I think what's meant to be funny is the masochism, not the fact that he's a dude. The person wearing a dress but speaking with a low voice in the search for Joey Paducci the shoemaker was, in 1995, certainly supposed to be understood as a drag queen or transvestite, but I think the idea there is look, Fraser gets all these attractive women bringing him their feet and Vecchio gets a man in a dress, ha ha—but he doesn't freak out about it the way he did e.g. when he had bugs on him in the dumpster, which is usually how your stereotypical TV straight-guy "man's man" would react to any type of alternative sexuality or gender presentation in that time period. The professional athlete's assholishness was considerable but not at all rooted in homophobia, which I feel like is rare for TV characters who are professional athletes; likewise the mob boss. If I'm not mistaken, the only person to use any type of language* has been Frank Bodine, the gun runner ("I don't like that cop or his fruitcake Mountie friend"), and I'm not even sure about that—is "fruitcake" the same as "fruit," or is it an ableist rather than a homophobic slur? I do think it's valid to read Perry as maybe wanting Nigel for himself, and I do think it's valid to read Jill Kennedy as maybe digging women as well as men. And when Elaine finds the guys conferring in the supply closet, she doesn't make a federal case about it but simply concludes (for the moment) that Fraser isn't going to be interested in her and drowns her sorrows in a quart of ice cream.
*We've had (very likely inadvertent) ethnic slurs from Welsh ("paddy wagon") and his girlfriend Dr. Pearson ("gypsy"), but that's not the topic of this particular deep dive.
And then Victoria turns up and Fraser blows off first work and then Vecchio's guys' night to stay in bed with her. Vecchio is happy for him and proud of him in the first instance but then jealous and resentful in the second. That is, when Fraser ditches work for Victoria, Vecchio's reaction is "hey, my friend is getting laid, turns out he's human after all" (because it has simply never occurred to him that the reason Fraser has not been enthusiastically appreciating all this feminine attention could be that he is more attracted to men—or, gasp, that he could be asexual, a thing that was not on a lot of people's radar in the mid-90s when popular entertainment was just barely mainstreaming Teh Gay). When Fraser forgets about coming over to play pool in the dining room, Vecchio's reaction is "bitch better not steal my best friend." That happens fast. When he meets her, he helps her out because she's important to Fraser—not because he likes her at all—and he immediately sees that she's the culprit when bad shit starts happening. (I'd say maybe sooner than the audience is supposed to, but I don't think so; even if we're meant to fall for the kitchen-cleaning and assume she's just being thorough, I think the coldness with which she shoots Jolly with the same gun that was used to shoot Diefenbaker shows us that she's the bad guy before even Vecchio works it out.)
Vecchio shot toward Fraser and Victoria on the moving train because he thought she was going to shoot Fraser herself. The glint of the reflection off the train is unmistakable; we are absolutely supposed to understand, as the audience, that he really believes she has a gun in her hand (and is not saying so to justify firing his own weapon, the way he broke into the hotel room and set a fire to manufacture some imminent danger—so, look, it's not unreasonable to ask the question, the guy does have a history). He told her "if you hurt him, I'll kill you," and he meant it: She did hurt Fraser, and Vecchio fired intending to kill her. But didn't he a little bit already want to kill her? Wasn't he a little bit primed to see that glint as a reflection off a gun by the fact that he already hated this woman? For coming between him and his best friend? For luring Fraser to run away with her after Vecchio had mortgaged the house to get him out on bail? I don't think Vecchio cares more about the mortgage than he does about Fraser, but shit! That's a heavy commitment for any friend. I know married people who I think would think pretty hard before taking out a mortgage to bail out their spouses, and here's Vecchio mortgaging his whole family's home to get bail money for a guy they didn't even invite over for Christmas dinner.
So. Is Fraser in love with Vecchio? Not right now, for sure, because he's still dealing with the maelstrom caused by Victoria. Before Victoria arrived? You know, I don't think so. I think he clings to his friendship with Vecchio because he's never had anything like it, certainly not as an adult (see above re: who knows what kind of "best friends" he and Smithbauer were as teenagers), but until Victoria appears, he shows barely a glimmer of romantic interest in anyone of any gender. Is Vecchio in love with Fraser? . . . At this point in the show I think it's a tough call leaning toward not exactly. I think I could make a case for best friend he ever had; closer than his own brother (whom we've heard mentioned precisely once); caught off guard by the intensity of the negative feelings he found himself unexpectedly feeling toward the woman who came along and monopolized him. ("Bros before" you know, blah blah Yoko, etc. Ugh.) But that third point nudges me toward thinking, well, yeah, Fraser causes Vecchio to act in ways that are Not Like Himself, and where have we seen that before?
So possibly Vecchio mortgaged the house in some weird unconscious effort to prove to Fraser that he loved him more than Victoria did (which I think we can all agree he did, even if his love was brotherly rather than romantic). I can see a Vecchio who realizes he has shot Fraser and is running alongside his gurney toward emergency surgery and hears the doctor ask "Are you next of kin?" and his mouth says "What?" while his brain says Holy shit, maybe I am. That's a Vecchio who gets cleared by the review board and (I assume) gets the bail money back and pays off that maybe ill-advised mortgage and all that stuff in the first three weeks Fraser is in the hospital and also spends however much time he needs to with that therapist, who by the time we "meet" her sounds pretty desperate when she says "Then you don't know how he feels!" . . . And then he gets him a TV that he knows Fraser doesn't want so he can try to watch baseball while he's visiting every day, which he feels like he has to do. Thaaat to me is a Vecchio who has some feelings he's surprised by but can't identify and some guilt that he can absolutely recognize and is reluctantly examining them both separately and together right now.
And that's the Vecchio offering to come up north and help rebuild a cabin he did in fact hate in the few hours he spent there and to retrofit it with indoor plumbing. Is this a massive gesture of goodwill by someone who is consumed with guilt, or is it a massive gesture of she-didn't-really-love-you-but-I-do by someone who is trying to get his head around being in love with his best friend? What does he mean when he says "put Victoria behind us"—was she really between them? Or does he mean "put the gunshot wound behind us?" Whichever it is, of course the shattering snow globe in Fraser's flashback is also a thing. I mean he is slowly coming to terms with the fact that Victoria is gone (as she should be!). Look, the episode title is "Letting Go;" the shattering snow globe is not subtle.
Scene 12
Diefenbaker is watching Fraser poke at his dinner plate. Jill arrives.
JILL: Hi.
FRASER: Hi.
JILL: What's that?
FRASER: Oh. Well, tonight I believe they're billing it as "chicken surprise." What've you got?
JILL: [She has two large paper bags.] Well, I used to go to this place when I was a kid. They have the best chili dogs in the city. I wasn't quite sure what you'd like, so —
FRASER: All of it. [He covers his hospital tray and quickly moves it out of the way. She laughs and starts unloading takeout onto his tray table. Diefenbaker whimpers.] Yeah, you, you, you'd better give him something. He'll just embarrass himself. [She tosses a wrapped sandwich of some kind to Diefenbaker.] You know, you really didn't have to do this. I appreciate it, but I'm sure you must have had other plans.
JILL: You want to know if I have a boyfriend? No. Not at the moment.
FRASER: Ah. Pickle?
JILL: Ah, no, thank you. I did a little digging. You can't ignore this. [She dumps out some trash on the tray table.] The contents of Dr. Carter's garbage can. From my friend in maintenance. Now, technically, that is not breaking and entering. [Fraser starts tasting a burnt photo fragment.] Oh, you don't know where that's been! [He takes the thing out of his mouth.] Look at this note.
FRASER: "Office, tonight at nine p.m." You know, this could mean —
JILL: Well, wait five minutes, and we'll find out. [She pulls out a large pair of binoculars.] A gift for you.
FRASER: A card would have been sufficient.
JILL: Well, not in your case. [She looks through the binocs and the rear window at the office across the way; she turns off the lights in Fraser's room so she can see the other office better.]
FRASER: This is silly.
JILL: You had plans?
FRASER: Well —
JILL: Shh. [The woman comes into her office and turns on the lights.]
FRASER: Well, she can't hear us.
JILL: Shh! [She goes to the rear window and looks through the binoculars. The woman goes to her desk and turns on the lamp there. A moment later the man comes into the office. The woman gets up from her desk and goes to him.] Ooh, what's this?
FRASER: It's a friend. I think he's a doctor.
JILL: No. An intern. I've seen him on rounds. [The couple are making out by her office door. His hands are wandering. Then the woman breaks away and goes back to her desk to answer the phone.] Right on time. [The woman hangs up the phone and hands the man an envelope from her purse.] Bingo. I wonder how much.
FRASER: [wheeling himself over to the rear window] Oh, now, we don't actually know that there's any money in there. [The man looks at the cash in the envelope.]
JILL: You're right. I was jumping to conclusions. [The woman has another document; she and the man are arguing.] She wants him to go in her place. [The woman takes a gun out of her purse and tries to give it to the man. He doesn't want it.] He's going to kill the blackmailer.
FRASER: No, no. [The man puts the gun in his pocket.] She gave it to him for protection. He would have checked the chamber if he intended to use it. [The man leaves the office. The woman is distressed.]
JILL: I do have a cat.
FRASER: I beg your pardon?
JILL: His name's Barney.
FRASER: Oh.
JILL: [The woman has disappeared while they were talking about Jill's cat.] She's gone. [The man comes out of the building into the courtyard. Another man comes into the courtyard from the other side, lighting a smoke.] Look. Near the fountains. [The man goes over to meet the smoking man.] Now give him the envelope. [The man points the gun in the smoking man's face.] He's going to kill him.
FRASER: No, no. [The smoking man holds his hand up; the man with the gun pulls it up and they both laugh.]
JILL: He's in on it. [They watch the man give the smoking man half the cash. The woman peeks out the door into the courtyard. She hides behind a tree and sees the man and the smoking man shake hands. The two men go their separate ways. Jill nods.] Blackmail.
The woman from the office knows she has been betrayed.
I don't . . . think I care much about the rear-window intrigue? It's the B plot, or it should be, based on the title and therefore the subject of the episode, but it gets a disproportionate amount of the air time. Anyway, Jill brings chili dogs (and burgers, it looks like, because what she tosses to Diefenbaker is a round package rather than oblong), which sounds delicious, but it is my understanding that Chicago Dogs have mustard, onions, relish, tomatoes, peppers, a pickle spear, and celery salt—but not chili. Chicagoans please advise.
Scene 13
The next morning, Vecchio is with Fraser and Jill at the rear window.
VECCHIO: Blackmail?
FRASER: No.
JILL: Yes.
VECCHIO: Okay, which is it?
FRASER: Suspicion of blackmail.
VECCHIO: You have anything to back up these suspicions?
FRASER: No.
JILL: Ah, yes. Um. Photographs. [She dumps out the bag of burnt photo fragments. Vecchio is not impressed.]
VECCHIO: Anything else?
FRASER: Strictly speaking? No.
JILL: Well, there's the photos, the drugs, the money — what more do you want?
VECCHIO: Something physical. Something I can put in my hands. We call it evidence? [Jill and Fraser exchange a look.] Okay. Benny?
FRASER: [to Jill] I'm sorry. Could you excuse us just for a — ? [He watches her gather up the torn photos into the paper bag and go.] Thank you.
VECCHIO: You want to tell me what this is all about?
FRASER: I know it seems odd Ray, but the —
VECCHIO: Yeah, odd, and she's very pretty.
FRASER: Well I don't see how that figures in —
VECCHIO: Look, what we have here is a series of coincidences and a very attractive nurse. She's sympathetic, you're —
FRASER: Ray, I know it's all circumstantial, but the fact —
VECCHIO: Come on. You're a cop. You know how this works. [The woman comes into her office. Fraser picks up the binoculars to watch her.] That her?
FRASER: Yeah. [He hands Vecchio the binocs.] She's a doctor, he's an intern. They're lovers.
VECCHIO: So?
FRASER: He's betrayed her. She's going to kill him.
VECCHIO: [looks at him for a moment] Benny? [Fraser looks at him.] Not every woman with long dark hair tries to kill their lover.
FRASER: [looks back out the rear window] Oh.
VECCHIO: All right. I'll ask some questions.
FRASER: Thanks.
VECCHIO: [to Jill, who is coming back in as he's leaving] We're going to ask some questions.
JILL: Oh, hey — [She hands him the bag of burnt photos.] You'll want these.
VECCHIO: Thanks.
Jill goes back to the rear window to where Fraser is still sort of staring into space.
"Benny, not every woman with long dark hair tries to kill their lover" is so sad. It could be ridiculous, but it's not; they play it like this is something Fraser genuinely needs to have pointed out to him, and he really sits and thinks about it after Vecchio leaves. By that point, the fact that Vecchio has pointed out that Jill is very pretty seems entirely irrelevant, which I think it always has been. Like I'm with Fraser on that: Sure she is, but so what? And it looks like Vecchio got there too; at first he though okay, Fraser is going down this blackmail-is-happening-back-there path because he wants to keep hanging out with the attractive therapist, but once he realizes what's going on in Fraser's head, he pivots to the women-with-long-dark-hair-are-not-universally-dangerous angle. (It is also, of course, not a coincidence that Jill is blonde. For one thing, she's in the Grace Kelley role from Rear Window, but also, she's the anti-Victoria. Straight blonde hair rather than dark curls. She's healing him rather than his saving her. Add to the list as you like.)
Scene 14
Vecchio is in the corridor talking with the woman from the office (Dr. Carter).
DR. CARTER: Yes, I have a handgun, which I have a permit for.
VECCHIO: And is that permit current?
DR. CARTER: Yes. Is there something wrong?
VECCHIO: No, just routine. Sometimes the computers spit out the wrong registrations. One of the many potholes on the new information highway. May I see it?
DR. CARTER: Yes. It's here in my office.
Jill and Fraser are watching the office from Fraser's rear window.
JILL: [gasps] He's in.
FRASER: Yes, it would appear so.
JILL: Well, this is very delicate. I hope he knows what he's doing.
FRASER: He'll manage.
Dr. Carter has shown Vecchio her permit.
VECCHIO: Great. May I see the gun?
DR. CARTER: Yes, of course. I work nights. [She opens the case and hands him the gun, which he compares to the permit.]
VECCHIO: Okay, thanks very much.
DR. CARTER: Is there, ah, anything else?
VECCHIO: You do know how to use that, right? I mean, you take lessons?
DR. CARTER: Of course. Why?
VECCHIO: Well, it's always good to be prepared. And women tend to be easy targets. We get a lot of reports of harassment and assault, that sort of thing. You haven't run into any trouble like that, have you?
DR. CARTER: No.
VECCHIO: But if you did, you wouldn't hesitate to contact us, right?
DR. CARTER: Oh, I'm sure I wouldn't. Hesitate.
VECCHIO: Good. Well, that's why we're here. [He looks at a picture on her desk.] Nice family.
DR. CARTER: This isn't about my permit, is it?
VECCHIO: No, it isn't, doctor.
DR. CARTER: Well?
VECCHIO: We got a report about an unusual occurrence in your office last night. Something about photographs. You and a gentleman arguing. A gun was displayed.
Fraser and Jill watch as Dr. Carter closes the blinds on her office window.
Is the fact that nothing at all is hinky about the gun and the permit somehow evidence that something is very wrong up over there? Although she took the gun out of her purse, not out of a box in her desk; could she have given her intern boyfriend a different gun?
Scene 15
Vecchio is back at Fraser's room with Fraser and Jill.
VECCHIO: She's a diabetic.
JILL: And you believed her?
VECCHIO: No, I believed her MedicAlert bracelet, so I ran it though the DMV, and they confirmed it's on her license.
JILL: What about the drugs?
VECCHIO: Insulin. I checked the bottles myself. She lined them up on the desk for me one at a time.
JILL: Well, how can you be so sure that it was insulin?
VECCHIO: That's what I said. So she gave me this for testing. [He holds up a vial of Dr. Carter's insulin.]
JILL: Well, she must have done something. She put hundreds of dollars in an envelope and he handed it to a complete stranger.
VECCHIO: A stranger. To who, him? Her? You?
JILL: Uh, that I don't know.
VECCHIO: You got a description of the guy?
JILL: Uh, not too tall. Ah, ah, medium build?
FRASER: It was dark.
VECCHIO: So no description.
JILL: Well, she gave him a gun to carry.
VECCHIO: Not according to Dr. Carter. It was in her desk. I checked.
FRASER: Well, she did give him a gun.
VECCHIO: It was in her desk.
JILL: What about the pictures?
VECCHIO: I was getting to that. You're right, they're having an affair.
JILL: Who?
VECCHIO: The doctor and the intern. You want to stay with us? She's married and got a kid. Friend of hers took some pictures at a convention last year where she and the intern were getting a little too friendly, so she burned them.
FRASER: No negatives?
VECCHIO: She said she could get 'em for me if I needed them. I told her that wouldn't be necessary.
JILL: [to Fraser] You knew this?
FRASER: I saw them.
JILL: Well, so what? I mean, everybody has affairs these days. Why pay blackmail when you can get away with an I'm sorry and a couple of extra therapy sessions? It's got to be more than that.
VECCHIO: Look, she's got answers, and you got a bag full of ashes. Either way it's your word against hers.
JILL: Oh, so we're just imagining things? Nothing we saw really happened?
VECCHIO: I didn't say that.
JILL: [to Fraser] Is that what you think?
FRASER: I think appearances can be deceiving.
JILL: I can't believe you're going to let them get away with this.
FRASER: Well, he's right, we have no evidence.
JILL: A pleasure to meet you. [As she leaves, she whistles for Diefenbaker, who follows her.]
VECCHIO: I like her. She puts her cards on the table.
FRASER: Mm.
VECCHIO: Hey, Benny, Victoria was not your fault. Could've happened to anybody. You were blindsided.
FRASER: I was going with her, you know.
VECCHIO: I know.
After a moment, Vecchio leaves quietly. Fraser is still looking out the rear window.
I didn't realize until now that Jill hasn't seen any of the Carter-and-the-man-making-out stuff and Fraser hasn't told her about it—he only told her about the drugs, and she saw the burning pictures and the money-and-gun stuff.
I don't know what to say about "I was going with her"/"I know." Have we not been sure whether Vecchio knew that? I guess it could have been that he thought Fraser was running to try to pull her off the train. I mean, maybe we could have thought that, too, because he did say he wasn't going to let her go again—only then he didn't shoot her to keep her from getting on the train as it departed; he only started running after she urged him to come with her. So I think we have to admit that we've known all along that Fraser meant to go with Victoria. But this is the first time Fraser has said so out loud (healing? progress?), and it's here that Vecchio confirms that he knew Fraser was skipping out on his bail and he's here still being his best friend anyway.
Does Fraser think Vecchio shot him because he was trying to go with Victoria? Does Vecchio think that's what Fraser thinks? We know, as I've said, that he fired because he believed she had a gun and was going to kill Fraser. So here in our world, Vecchio shot Fraser by accident and is wracked with guilt about it, and Fraser was going to skip bail (effectively stealing from Vecchio the price of a large row house, plus interest) on purpose and is . . . dealing with that. I guess he performs guilt differently than Vecchio does in a lot of ways.
On the line "I was going with her, you know," the camera focuses more sharply on Fraser than I think it has ever done in the whole show so far. I mean since the pilot. I don't know from lenses and whatnot, but while I don't think this is his closest closeup, there's a sharpness we haven't seen before. It actually begins a second or so earlier—there's some in-and-out focus stuff during Vecchio's line beginning "Hey, Benny"—but when it lands on him looking out the window (not looking at Vecchio to tell him he was going with Victoria, hell no, that's something you don't say if you're Benton Fraser unless your back is turned), the level of definition and detail is a little startling. (Did you know Paul Gross had pores?)
Scene 16
It is night. The blinds are open again in Dr. Carter's office. Fraser is sitting on the edge of his bed looking out the rear window. His grandmother appears behind him, peers at him through her glasses, then gives him a satisfied smile and nod before she disappears again. He smiles. After a moment he rubs his eyes and lies back in bed. He picks up a book but doesn't read it.
Grandmother Id is pleased with how Fraser is doing—what, now that he's admitted to Vecchio that he was running away? I'm just so pleased for him that he's happy he got to see her.
Scene 17
Jill goes in to Dr. Carter's office. Diefenbaker is with her.
JILL: Okay, now you stay here and guard the door.
She turns on the light. From his room, Fraser sees this.
FRASER: That is the most contrary woman. [He hauls himself out of bed and into the wheelchair, grabs the phone, and waves it at Jill when she looks over. She shakes her head and starts rifling Dr. Carter's desk, knocking her phone off the hook. Fraser is calling the switchboard.] Ah, yes, internal extension for Carter. C-A-R — [Jill uses a nail file to jimmy the lock on a desk drawer.] Busy? No, I, I'm sorry. I don't think that's quite —
He watches Jill get the desk drawer open and take out the gun case. He hangs up the phone. She opens the case; it is empty. He wheels over to the rear window. She holds up the empty gun case with a smug smile. He holds up the phone receiver so she'll call him. She ignores him and looks in the desk drawer again, pulling out a vial that according to the label contains insulin. Fraser's phone rings. He wheels back over to the bedside table to answer it.
FRASER: Hello?
VECCHIO: Fraser.
FRASER: Ray.
VECCHIO: It's the damnedest thing. [He is outside a house where a body in a bag is being wheeled out on a gurney.] I'm on my way home and this call comes over the radio. Robbery-homicide. The dead guy's in a photographer's loft, so I figure, what are the odds?
FRASER: And?
VECCHIO: Ramirez, David. Photographer. Not too tall, medium build.
FRASER: Jill Kennedy is in Dr. Carter's office.
VECCHIO: I'm on my way.
He hangs up. Fraser holds the phone receiver up and gives Jill a stern look. She goes to Dr. Carter's desk and rights the phone there; as soon as the receiver is in the cradle, it rings and she picks it right up.
FRASER: Get out of there now.
JILL: What?
FRASER: She killed the photographer.
Fraser watches through the rear window as Jill hangs up and hurriedly puts the gun case and the vial back in the drawer. Diefenbaker is sniffing around a credenza or sideboard; Jill picks up a small case that holds six vials—the same size as the insulin vials but clearly labeled "morphine". Jill smiles triumphantly but then hears the door handle rattle. Through the rear window, Fraser sees her react to this; he is nervous. Jill rushes Diefenbaker into a closet to hide. The intern opens the office door.
INTERN: Your phone's been busy — [He realizes she is not there. He comes in, suspicious. Fraser watches from the rear window. The intern goes to the desk and checks the phone. Jill and Diefenbaker are in the closet. The intern puts the phone down and is about to leave; he meets Dr. Carter in the door. Fraser hoists his binoculars.] Your phone was busy, so I came up to —
DR. CARTER: Looking for these? [She brandishes a set of negatives.] Or were you hoping to take a few more? [Jill and Diefenbaker are hiding quietly.]
INTERN: I'll talk to you later. [He turns to go.]
DR. CARTER: I don't think so.
She aims her gun at him. Fraser lowers his binoculars. Jill and Diefenbaker cower in the closet.
I don't know what phone Fraser was waving at Jill when he was over by the window, or why he couldn't answer that one rather than rolling back to the beside table, but that's probably not super important. They're all selling the tension nicely in this scene, particularly the way Fraser is absolutely out of his element not being able to do anything. Nice face work here—the stern glare at Jill, the big anxious eyes when shit's going down and all he can do is sit there.
Scene 18
Dr. Carter, in her office, is holding the intern at gunpoint. Fraser, in his room, is dialing the phone.
FRASER: Security? Yes, there's a person in one-oh-four with a gun. Yes, I am a patient here. No, I am not medicated. I'm — no, I'm — [He hangs up furiously.]
DR. CARTER: Why didn't you just ask me for the money?
INTERN: Would you have given it?
DR. CARTER: Ah. In a heartbeat. I loved you. [Jill and Diefenbaker are sitting very quietly in the closet listening.]
INTERN: I couldn't, I& mdash; I couldn't.
DR. CARTER: What, you were too ashamed to let an older woman pay you for sex? I am so stupid. I actually thought that you cared for me. [Her finger is on the trigger.]
Fraser is rushing through the hospital hallways in his wheelchair.
INTERN: I, I, I — I do, I —
DR. CARTER: Don't lie to me.
Fraser takes a corner too fast, crashes into a janitor's cart, and falls out of the chair. He hauls himself back into it.
DR. CARTER: Did you ever love me? Or did you plan the whole thing from the start? Pictures? Or did you just roll over suddenly one morning and see me lying beside you — [Diefenbaker is wriggling. Jill holds him steady.] — and just decide that you didn't love me any more? Is that it? That's the way you decide things when you're twenty-five, isn't it? Or maybe it was Ramirez who talked you into it, is that it?
INTERN: Yes.
DR. CARTER: Ugh —
INTERN: I owed him money —
DR. CARTER: — the lies just roll off those beautiful lips.
Fraser is speeding along the hallway. A cut in his hairline is bleeding down onto his forehead. He pushes his way through a door to a staircase and looks up.
DR. CARTER: I followed you. I wish I hadn't. I don't know — I don't know why. I keep asking myself why. I just — [Fraser is hauling himself up the stairs without using his legs.] — you gave me such hope. The way you touched me. You made me feel —
INTERN: Elle, we can be like that again.
DR. CARTER: — like a woman, and I — [She is coming closer to him.]
INTERN: Elle — [He takes her in his arms.]
DR. CARTER: — it was so perfect. [She reaches around him and presses the gun into his back.] How dare you? [She spins him around and holds him up against the closet door with the gun in his back.] How dare you? [Jill screams. Dr. Carter opens the door and sees her and Diefenbaker. Diefenbaker snarls.] Keep him back!
Diefenbaker jumps at Dr. Carter. She recoils from him and the gun fires at the ceiling. Jill and the intern run to the hallway. Dr. Carter follows them, shutting Diefenbaker in her office. Fraser drags himself out of the stairwell. Dr. Carter fires. Everyone in the hallway is running away from her. The intern stops and turns around to face her. Jill ducks into a nurse's station and pulls the duty nurse down with her. Dr. Carter is training her gun on the intern, who is (bravely?) not fleeing. Fraser is leaning against a corner wall behind him, holding onto a handrail.
FRASER: Dr. Carter. The police are coming. Put down the gun.
DR. CARTER: No, don't come any closer.
FRASER: Perhaps we could talk. [He moves forward to grab onto the nurse's station counter.]
INTERN: She's trying to kill me. She's trying to kill me!
FRASER: Yeah, I can see that. You hurt her. I understand that.
DR. CARTER: You don't understand anything.
FRASER: Oh, I understand that sometimes you can love someone so much you're willing to do almost anything for them. The power of that kind of love can be very frightening.
DR. CARTER: I don't care.
FRASER: Oh, I think you do care. I think you care so deeply — [The police are arriving. Jill looks up and sees Vecchio, with his gun out, against a wall where Dr. Carter can't see him. He waves her to keep quiet.] — that when he betrayed you, you tried to do the only thing that made sense. You tried to destroy yourself. [Vecchio has almost got a shot, if Dr. Carter takes one more step forward. The intern has backed up almost level with Fraser.] Don't let him do this to you.
DR. CARTER: [She hears footsteps behind her.] Who's that?
Huey and Gardino rush in behind her.
GARDINO: Drop the gun, ma'am!
Fraser is stepping forward to get between the intern and Dr. Carter. He is reaching for her gun. Vecchio sees that she is squeezing the trigger. The hammer is moving back. He dives in front of Fraser just as Dr. Carter's gun goes off. The intern runs. The recoil knocks Dr. Carter down.
Fraser lands under Vecchio, who has been shot in the shoulder. Jill leaps up from behind the nurse's station. Fraser turns Vecchio over. It is not immediately clear whether Dr. Carter has killed him. Fraser looks at her. She is stunned. Jill rushes to them. Vecchio blinks and looks at his arm. Dr. Carter is sobbing on the floor.
Vecchio is wheeled away on a gurney. Gardino and Huey lead Dr. Carter away in another direction; a nurse comes to walk with them. Jill walks Fraser down the hall with Diefenbaker in the opposite direction.
Well, so there's the tie-in. Fraser can relate to the experience of loving someone you shouldn't and loving them so hard that you're not yourself. I'll buy that. I'm not sure about his second point here—"you care so deeply that when he betrayed you . . . you tried to destroy yourself." I think when the intern betrayed Dr. Carter, she tried to destroy him, didn't she? I mean that would also have destroyed her, but I think it's a reach to say destroying herself was what she was trying to do. When Victoria betrayed Fraser—harder to say. Again, I'm not sure he tried to destroy himself, but he was certainly willing to destroy himself in the effort to stop her. (And then when he didn't stop her and she didn't kill him he looped right back around to loving her so hard he wasn't himself, and it took Vecchio's bullet to stop the cycle.) Unless . . . unless he knew Vecchio was about to shoot and he leaped onto the train anyway, or not even anyway but actually for that reason. Was his only initial complaint about how he got shot ("I should be with her") that he didn't die in Victoria's arms?
Proposition: Was Vecchio trying to destroy himself because Fraser had betrayed him?
Scene 19
Vecchio and Fraser are both in Fraser's room. Vecchio is in a wheelchair, dressed in a robe with his arm in a sling. Fraser, both of whose arms work fine, is using his own wheelchair to push Vecchio's wheelchair over to the rear window.
VECCHIO: All right, be caref— stop jerking it. Be careful. Okay, okay, okay. [Fraser wheels himself around to sit next to him.]
FRASER: Does it hurt?
VECCHIO: Of course it hurts.
FRASER: Thanks.
VECCHIO: For what, getting shot?
FRASER: Yeah.
VECCHIO: Yeah, I figured you'd like that.
FRASER: Well, I'm not proud about that, but I'll admit I did get a certain perverse pleasure out of it.
VECCHIO: Ah, you see, you were mad at me.
FRASER: Well, you shot me in the back.
VECCHIO: But that was an accident!
FRASER: Well, I know. So was yours. It was an accident, wasn't it, Ray?
VECCHIO: Yes, of course it was.
FRASER: Well, there you go. Enough said. Even-steven.
VECCHIO: [turns his head incredulously] Even-steven? [chuckles] Just give me those binoculars, will you? Even-steven. Nobody says "even-steven" anymore.
FRASER: Really?
VECCHIO: Yes.
FRASER: Why?
VECCHIO: It's juvenile.
FRASER: Oh, dear.
They sit and look out the rear window.
VECCHIO: Is there something going on in that window over there?
The dialogue at the beginning of this scene is suggestive enough for anyone to conclude that it doesn’t matter whether Fraser and Vecchio are in love, isn't it,
But the main thing is that between (a) telling Vecchio he had been going with Victoria and (b) seeing Dr. Carter (kill the photographer and!) completely lose her composure over the intern, Fraser's inner torment over the Victoria episode seems to have concluded. ❤️ (The title seems just to have been a reference to what happens in the episode and not a shout out to any other movie or TV title. Prosodically it's not unlike "Rear Window," but it's not enough like it to be echoing it deliberately. I think this title just is what it is.)
Cumulative body count: 13
Red uniform: Does not appear in this episode