return to Due South: season 1 episode 8 "Chicago Holiday part 2"

Chicago Holiday part 2
air date November 17, 1994

( Scene 1 )

I have seen better "previously on" montages before, I tell you what. This one is pretty crappy; I feel like it spends too long on some parts of the previous episode and not enough on others.

Credits roll.

Paul Gross
David Marciano
Beau Starr
Daniel Kash
Tony Craig
Catherine Bruhier

(plus Lincoln the dog)

Lisa Jakub, Stacey Haiduk, Ron Lea, Deborah Rennard, Peter Williams, Holly Cole Trio, and Stephen Shellen

And I don't know why the Holly Cole Trio wasn't credited in part 1.

( Scene 2 )

McGuffin. NICE. Given that the previously-on didn't remind us of any of the previous uses of "MacGuffin," it's delightful to have one more here.

How on earth Fraser knew Christina had gone into that store is beyond me, but it's probably not important.

( Scene 3 )

So Fraser was on the same level as Eddie and Christina, just around on the other side of the atrium with the escalators between. Was it really faster (and safer for himself) to try to cross the atrium, which involved jumping down onto the escalator and running up again, than it would have been to just run around on the same level? It's not a perfect circle, but basically it's a question of half a circumference (πr) on level ground with some obstacles vs. more than a diameter, because of the change of levels (>2r), plus the long diameter involves extra risk of injury. I don't know, I might still have gone the other way.

( Scene 4 )

It's not clear how and when they got back together with Vecchio. Also, though, didn't Mrs. MacGuffin go home like an hour ago?

( Scene 5 )

The thing is shouldn't she know by now that he knows she is a lying liar?

( Scene 6 )

Elaine's Canadian accent is less obvious on "out on a date" than it was in "Chinatown" on "rips your guts out." More importantly, though, rock on, Elaine, we can indeed not believe they actually charged those people! You're right and you should say it! Charged them for what—being at a club? Feh.

( Scene 7 )

So in "They Eat Horses" it was classic TV shows with Vecchio; today it's nursery rhymes (Little Miss Muffet, This Little Piggy). What goes on in his head (or in that writers' room)?

Anyway, I'm not sure why Fraser was doing charcoal sketches, but I guess the point is that the woman Vecchio met who claimed to be Eddie's sister and then his housekeeper was also in the ladies' room at the club, and Christina can identify her as having been there.

( Scene 8 )

Doesn't Fraser have his father's watch? Why is he asking Vecchio for the time?

( Scene 9 )

Is this guy stealing Fraser's valor? Do people want to be like Constable Fraser after all? (What are they doing sitting at an outdoor cafe table in Chicago in the winter? It's not just that this thing aired in November; the department store had Christmas decorations and a display from which Fraser could grab a toboggan. It's definitely late autumn at the earliest.)

( Scene 10 )

Aren't dentists supposed to be sadists rather than masochists? Other than that, I appreciate the Free to Be . . . You and Me theme of this scene. (For the young'uns who may have wandered in, Naugahyde is a brand of vinyl that was mainly used for easy-care faux leather furniture in the 1950s.)

( Scene 11 )

Christina was right to get rid of the shoes. White shoes with black tights, oh dear, no. Even if the shoes had fit, which they didn't, which was why she ditched them.

I like this story of Bob finding Runaway Ben and bringing him some cash and a pack of sandwiches. Sounds like some good dadding. (And now I'm thinking about the Mysterious Man in act 2 of Into the Woods. "Running away: Go to it./ Where did you have in mind?/ . . . Trouble is, son,/ the farther you run,/ the more you feel undefined/ by what you have left undone,/ and more, what you've left behind.")

( Scene 12 )

Christina is still wearing the platinum wig and blue dress. Not sure why they wouldn't have stopped back in the club and swapped back for her own clothes. Maybe they assumed the handcuff lady would be gone by then.

( Scene 13 )

There are only a couple of matches left in that matchbook. It's going to get thrown away for real soon.

( Scene 14 )

I mean, Janice is no angel, but she does (as I've said) seem to be genuinely afraid of Eddie, and with good reason. I do not care to dwell too long on what is happening to her after the end of this scene.

( Scene 15 )

I wish the Holly Cole Trio had ever finished the phrase instead of just saying "que sera" all the time, but we can't have everything.

This, of course, is what Christina's dad was talking about when he said she had no idea what could have happened to her. It's just bullshit that he said that about a club where everyone else was a consenting adult.

On top of all the nursery rhymes, we’ve got folk tales: This scene had Goldilocks (Vecchio's "three little bears") and Cinderella.

( Scene 16 )

Christina, do not take legal advice from a complete stranger whose shoes you have just stolen!

( Scene 17 )

That's right, Christina! This woman is not your friend!

( Scene 18 )

I can't believe we're still supposed to care about this couple and her candle fetish, but I guess he still has the matchbook, so we're not done with them yet.

( Scene 19 )

So apparently Janice talked Eddie into killing Frankie in the first place.

( Scene 20 )

It's hell being the comic relief, eh, Vecchio?

I'm not a hundred percent sure why they don't take the service elevator, when they know Janice and Christina couldn't have got to the basement on a public one. The odds that little boy will have pushed all the buttons on the service elevator are very slim. Still, it's true they don't know how much of a head start Janice has, so it makes sense Fraser would want to hurry.

( Scene 21 )

I think Fraser is indeed bullshitting Janice about the number of shots she had fired. It's definitely six in the incinerator room; then I counted five in the corridor, and possibly one more before the one he kicked away after she hit him on the head. So if it is a 15-round clip she should actually have at least two shots left, not just one.

( Scene 22 )

That tag on the candle-fetish couple story, I didn't need.

( Scene 23 )

Of course he can't escort her to the ball. She is SIXTEEN YEARS OLD. This is not a choice he can reasonably make. Stop it. Stop it, both of you.

I assume the day he slept through was Saturday, so nobody minded that he didn't show up for work.

( Scene 24 )

So both Christina and her dad have Learned Something. I assume he has no actual idea what she got up to overnight, though, or he'd definitely have set the building on fire. (For sure he wouldn't have let Fraser sleep it off on the sofa in her suite's living room, for one thing. Again: SIXTEEN YEARS OLD.)

I'm not sure I needed Welsh and the medical examiner, Huey and Gardino, and Mme. Defarge at this ball. What sort of event is this, anyway? Canada's senior trade negotiator meeting with an American commercial attaché is one thing, but does he really rate the Latvian ambassador? Wouldn't the Latvian ambassador be spending time with the Canadian ambassador, or the consul general in a city without an embassy? Maybe the American ambassador is actually the American ambassador to Canada, in town for this Chicago thing because . . . reasons. I don't know. It's a stumper.

The title is a reference to the 1953 Audrey Hepburn film Roman Holiday, with which the episode shares a few more similarities than these episodes have generally done with their namesakes.

Cumulative confirmed body count: 7
Red uniform: The whole episode, because this whole two-parter has taken place in a single 24-hour day

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