A Hawk and A Handsaw
air date January 19, 1995
( Scene 1 )
News item: Apparently in addition to the two sisters who, like him, live with their mother, Vecchio has (or at any rate had) a brother. Also, I guess he's just ditching his biennial psych eval?
So Fraser has attempted to work undercover, which involved a certain amount of dishonesty that he didn't care for, and he has made promises that have turned out not to be true, but I think "He's inside, I saw him inside" is the first time we've seen him actually straight-up lie to someone's face, isn't it?
Credits roll.
Paul Gross
David Marciano
Beau Starr
Daniel Kash
Tony Craig
Catherine Bruhier
(plus Lincoln the dog)
Michael Riley, Kate Trotter, Terri Hanauer, Deborah Rennard, Shay Duffin
( Scene 2 )
I can't tell if the plaque on the outside of that building says Ita or lta, but whatever the first word is, either it's sufficiently greeked or it goes by sufficiently quickly that I can't see what it's supposed to be. The first letter isn't C and the first word isn't Chicago, so I conclude CTA didn't care to have their name used in this episode.
( Scene 3 )
Redirect police funding to other necessary social services, and do it 27 years ago.
( Scene 4 )
Vecchio is not wrong! (The camera is still on the building for a lot longer than it was in scene 2, and I still can't make out the first word of the transit authority's name, so my conclusion is: Greeking it is.)
( Scene 5 )
Aha, a church, so we're talking about Saint Michael, of whom there are nine in addition to St. Michael the Archangel (plus a Saint Miguel, 14 Blessed Michaels, two Blessed Michels, a Blessed Michele, and four Blessed Miguels)—not one of whom died in the 14th century, but never mind. Joan of Arc heard the Archangel Michael speak to her, which I feel like there's a connection there with the guy who asks Vecchio if he's seen God.
Meanwhile, Ty Cobb was an early baseball player whose bad reputation may be undeserved, and Tai Babilonia was a figure skater in the late 70s (and I don't know why mentioning her would lead Vecchio to assert that all men should stop figure skating, unless it was because she was a pairs skater).
( Scene 6 )
I am not qualified to judge the authenticity of Irish accents, so I'm here to tell you that Uncle Wiki says the actor playing the priest, Shay Duffin (1931–2010), was legit from Dublin.
( Scene 7 )
Credit for singular they; demerits for the words-for-snow myth.
( Scene 8 )
Vecchio's frustration with Fraser is visible here. He's spent a while indulging him, but now he's had it.
( Scene 9 )
Lester Pearson (1897–1972) was an important Canadian prime minister in the 1960s and a Nobel laureate for his role in ending the 1956 Suez crisis. The Toronto airport is named after him. Neither his daughter nor any of his granddaughters was named Esther. After the Mackenzie King business (and the fact that his dog is named Diefenbaker), one is forced to conclude that Fraser is hung up on prime ministers. Or, put another way:
FOZZIE: [on stage, bombing]
KERMIT: This guy's lost.
BARTENDER: Maybe he should try Hare Krishna.
KERMIT: Good grief, it's a running gag.
(The Muppet Movie, 1979)I would prefer that Esther Pearson had not used that particular G-word, which has been officially dispreferred by the Romani people since 1971 (and of course probably unofficially since long before that). If she meant a dark-skinned itinerant, she could have said Roma; if she meant a fortune teller, she could have said fortune teller. Vecchio's use of "Eskimo" in scene 7 was not great, but it's arguably less problematic than this.
( Scene 10 )
I . . . am now trying to think of other films or TV shows whose premises could be described exactly truthfully in such a way as to get a person admitted to a psych ward for observation.
( Scene 11 )
Ugh, is this how this sort of mental condition is handled? I have no experience of it, but this scene is wildly uncomfortable. I just want Walter to shout THERE! ARE! FOUR! LIGHTS!.
( Scene 12 )
Well, this sure the hell isn't how drug tests are supposed to be run. I mean, obviously, because the noir-y lighting and the fact that she's fine with 10% of her sample group killing themselves shows us that the show knows she's filthy. But for crying out loud. N=50 is not a good sample size for the last stage of trials before FDA approval. It seems like it might be an acceptable size for phase 1 trials, where they determine whether the drug is safe for humans in the first place? But that doesn't seem to be what's happening here? Why on earth do the doctors know who's in the test group and who's in the control group? Where is the control group? What about informed consent from the test subjects?! I have a lot of notes, and I'm not even an expert.
( Scene 13 )
I'm choosing to believe the guy in the ski hat is a nod to Jack Nicholson's character on the poster for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Meanwhile, Fraser is wearing white hospital jammies and a white robe (and his Mountie hat), with covers over his shoes, but the other guys are in street clothes and their own shoes. Wonder what that's about.
The nurse who is kindly guiding patients hither and thither appears to be played by the same background/atmosphere extra who was getting her picture taken with Fraser in "Manhunt" scene 17—a very tall woman with dark hair and the same smile.
( Scene 14 )
Cabled Sweater remembers a different patient #36. But also, she has a tray of identical dose cups, which is bad and wrong. Shouldn't she have sealed packets labeled with each patient's name or patient number or something individually identifiable? When my mom was in residential rehab they had to scan her meds into her room, verbally confirm her name and date of birth and what medications she was expecting, and then scan them again before opening the packet and giving them to her. I'm frothing with rage over here at how this place is being run.
( Scene 15 )
The shot where they're sitting on the sofa in the visiting room, framed by the doorway into the hall, reminds me of something and I can't think what. I am having further flail-hands reactions at the concept of testing MAOIs on human subjects without their consent and without additional monitoring.
Meanwhile,
resonant points out that if Fraser can control his saliva ducts, there is nothing you can write about him that would be unrealistic by canon standards. 🤨
( Scene 16 )
( Scene 17 )
The song lyrics are in Innu-aimun, and LyricsMode says the translation is "Be careful what you do/ Be careful what you do with the thing that has given to you/ Be careful what you do/ Be careful what you do, the way you were raised// Be careful what you do/ Be careful what you do with the thing you protect/ Be careful what you do/ Be careful what you do with the thing which has helped you." (The montage ends before the last verse, Akua tshe tessinnu/ Akua tuta nete kiei tshin kanetaunekuin/ Akua tshe mushumenut/ Akua kiei tshukumenut eshei/ Akua tshe tuassimenut/ Akua kiei tsheshimenut eshei, "Take care of our land/ Be careful what you do, the way you were raised/ Take care of our grandfathers/ Take care of our grandmothers too/ Take care of your children and your brother and sister's children too".
The image of all the patients joining Fraser's group is so lovely and so sad. Every one of them has a blue room to show him, and they're so desperate for someone to listen.
( Scene 18 )
First of all, the line from Hamlet is "I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw." Which I carp on only because I don't believe the grandson of librarians Benton "World of Information at your Local Library, Ray" Fraser would (a) have to try to remember where he'd heard a line of Shakespeare or (b) misquote it.
Anyway. Fraser is right to tell Walter that Ty made his own decision. It's the hardest thing, isn't it, for people who love someone who dies by suicide, to accept that they couldn't have stopped it. (I read an article once about Beachy Head (I think), a cliff in England from which people often jump to their deaths. I remember an anecdote where someone had told his friend he was going to jump, and the friend tried to stop him—caught him by the arm or maybe just by the sleeve—and the jumping friend said if you don't let go, you'll fall with me . . . and the grabbing friend let go. I read that 34 years ago and I can still practically see the words on the page, is how it haunts me. I'm almost sure it will have been in the weekend magazine attached to The Independent in 1988 or early 1989, but I haven't been able to find it, despite the miraculous internet.) Fraser's agreeing with Walter that it might have been easier if he had subsequently killed himself may be true, but it is a breathtakingly shitty thing to say.
And then we have the tale of Bob Fraser's beard. So okay: Ben's mother did die, and it was when he was "very young," which is nonspecific but I'm going to say puts him younger than nine or ten. But old enough to have memories of the event, so older than about . . . four? I mean that could easily be his earliest memory, and a trauma like losing your mother would likely stick even if it happened at an earlier age than kids normally have earliest memories. I have some clear memories from when I turned three, because that's when my brother was born—a big event, if not a traumatic one—but not a lot. So let's say Ben was between four or five and about nine when his mother died. [eta: As
That's young enough, of course, to still be entirely dependent on his other parent. But Bob apparently entirely quit parenting (quit living entirely, the way Ben describes it) for at least several weeks—long enough for a young kid to see his beard growing longer and to be able to tell he was losing weight. I mean, look, I think I get it: Widowhood is a terrible thing, whether you're expecting it or not (we don't know how she died, whether it was following an illness or in an accident or what), and if Ben was younger than 10 then Bob was younger than about 40, which means probably so was his wife. A terrible shock. But he still had a young child that he was responsible for. Unless Ben was already living with his grandparents by then (but why would he have been? That only makes sense if the whole family were living with the grandparents) so at least there'd have been two other adults capable of making sure this kid got fed and bathed and schooled while his father was in this fugue state. (Two adults who'd also just lost either their daughter or their daughter-in-law, but with three adults in the house, it seems like the kid has a fighting chance of not being completely forgotten.) Fraser describes his father's grief very sympathetically for someone who was apparently so overlooked during that time. The only indication otherwise is when Walter says "your dad was a very strong man" and he shakes his head just ever so slightly (not really, no he wasn't). I'm going to choose to believe that what Bob was crying about, after he shaved his beard and sliced that banana into that bowl of oatmeal, was both the loss of his wife and the way he had been neglecting his son.
Also, I can never see this scene without thinking about Hawkeye Pierce in M*A*S*H season 10 episode 19 "Sons and Bowlers," when his father is having surgery back home in Maine:
One morning when I was ten, my dad made me breakfast. A bowl of cornflakes. And I—I asked him why Mom wasn't making breakfast that morning. And he said she wasn't feeling well, but it was nothing. And a few days later, he made me scrambled eggs and bacon and said that Mom was in the hospital, but it was nothing to worry about. By the time Dad was up to French toast and sausages, Mom was gone. He never wanted to worry me. Nothing's changed since I was ten. This is just another fancy breakfast.
(And, later in the same episode, here's Charles Winchester:
Pierce, you should be grateful that only distance is separating you. My father and I have been twelve thousand miles apart in the same room. . . . The most intimate and personal communication at the Winchester household took place at the evening meal. Every night, promptly at seven-fifteen, we would gather at the dinner table. The soup would be served, and my father would begin with, "Tell us what you did today, Charles." As the elder of the two children, I was given the privilege of speaking first. I would then have until the salad to report the highlights of my day. Even now, the sight of lettuce makes me talk faster. I always assumed that that's how it was in every family. But when I see the warmth, the closeness, the fun of your relationship—my father's a good man. He always wanted the best for me. But where I have a father, you have a dad.)
I don't know, TV heroes and their (in two out of three cases) single fathers. I'm going to have to think more about it.
( Scene 19 )
You listened with your retinas, Fraser, but okay, I'll allow it.
( Scene 20 )
He didn't say when he sharpened that buckle.
( Scene 21 )
"Why do I always have to be the fulcrum" is peak sidekick content for sure. (And why does he have to do it with his ass facing the camera? I ask you.)
( Scene 22 )
Apparently Drug Rep is named Farmer. Probably Fraser knows that because he read it on the medical records they were printing out. But mainly: Yay, Cabled Sweater! (The anti-Ratched.) Yay, Walter! Boo, Dr. Martins. It's Gaslight up in here, also, isn't it. Yay, Vecchio! It's vaguely amusing that Martins's reverse psychology works on him less than one second after he insists he's not using reverse psychology on Martins. But he does manage to delay long enough to save the guy. Huzzah.
( Scene 23 )
Location note: There is a "MAXIMUM 40" sign in front of this church, so we are totally filming in Canada.
Meanwhile: Yes, yes, there's a weeping angel next to the window Walter is cleaning, and yes, it's objectively hilarious that Vecchio's response to the question "are you Catholic?" is to give the priest cash money, but what I really want to note here is that in the final scene, Walter is clean-shaven. WALTER IS CLEAN-SHAVEN. 💔
I don't need to talk about the title, right? Because it was explained right there in scene 18?
Cumulative body count: 9
Red uniform: At the intake interview