return to Due South: season 1 episode 15 "The Wild Bunch"

The Wild Bunch
air date February 16, 1995

( Scene 1 )

Yay, someone has remembered that Fraser hired Willie to dogsit!

( Scene 2 )

Poor Vecchio.

( Scene 3 )

Sigh. Willie: If he doesn't trust you, this might have something to do with why.

Credits roll.

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

(plus Lincoln the dog)

Christopher Babers, Michael Rhoades

( Scene 4 )

It's not the same animal control guy from "Diefenbaker's Day Off;" I checked.

( Scene 5 )

The animal control officer taking the collar off the dog is maybe the most upsetting thing that has happened on this show so far, and consider the fact that it's me saying this, given how I felt about the Gamez kids looking up at their mother as they were taken away and Louise Webber screaming as Vinny drives off with baby Jamie and then coming to the airstrip to kiss the baby goodbye. (At work, my colleague and I have an agreement that wherever possible I'll handle documents that discuss potential or actual harm to animals and she'll handle documents that discuss potential or actual harm to children and thus we'll both be protected from too-frequent emotional tailspins. I'm the one who is more rattled by children in peril! And I'm here to tell you I'm very upset by this animal control guy throwing Maggie's collar away.)

( Scene 6 )

The license plate on Vecchio's ugly gold Chevy is RCW 139, which is the same plate that was on Lenny's Comet (before it was stolen back; it will have had a different plate on it when Gary pushed it into the lake).

( Scene 7 )

The disbelieving microtilt of Fraser's head at hearing the guy's full name is the only moment of levity in this scene. (Benedict Arnold, of course, is one of history's most infamous turncoats. The likelihood that an American family called Benedict would name their son Arnold approaches zero.) I don't know enough about animal control laws at all or Chicago's in particular to know whether the dog chasing the van for six blocks is enough to bring him in. If there's a leash law, I guess probably? But you'd think the owner's being willing to pay a fine would settle it. Diefenbaker didn't actually try to attack Benedict until he came after him with the pole.

( Scene 8 )

I like how Vecchio is right there with Willie's suggestion to bribe the nicer animal control guy, and then turns around and calls him a criminal.

( Scene 9 )

I fear Fraser is falling victim to one or more of the Geek Social Fallacies. Meanwhile, the Pekingese is even smaller than the Lhasa Apso. It does not bear any resemblance to a caribou, passing or otherwise.

( Scene 10 )

What are the qualifications for being an animal control officer? I would have assumed "hating dogs" would be a disqualifying factor.

( Scene 11 )

Well.

There are pictures on the wall in the courtroom. Behind the gallery is a big one of LBJ. On the side wall is one that I'm pretty sure is JFK and one that may be Abraham Lincoln. Behind the judge is Bill Clinton, who was president in 1995, and another individual I can't identify from here. Could it be James Edgar, who was governor of Illinois at the time?

Northumberland Sound is an inlet on the northwest tip of Tallurutit (Devon Island), Canada, in Nunavut (in 1995 still part of the Northwest Territories), which is uninhabited. Hard to know why Fraser and Diefenbaker would be up there scrapping with wolverines.

Of course Diefenbaker is not domesticated if he was born in the wild; what Fraser might have been able to persuade the judge is that he's tame.

There's not much to say or do about what's happening on Fraser's face here. He has got himself into trouble with the precise truth before (at least once on purpose) and managed to get out again, but look what he's done now, and Diefenbaker is going to be destroyed, and it's because of him. I'd throw up and cry too.

( Scene 12 )

Disbelief on top of disbelief for Fraser.

( Scene 13 )

"I have not yet begun to fight" is supposed to have been said by the U.S. naval captain John Paul Jones in response to a demand to surrender in the Battle of Flamborough Head. It doesn't look like there's any evidence he ever said such a thing, but apparently between Benedict Arnold and now this, the theme of this episode is the American Revolution (the way we had nursery rhymes in "Chicago Holiday" and classic TV shows in "They Eat Horses").

Judge Wapner was the first presiding judge of The People's Court, an early reality TV show where people brought their small claims to a "courtroom" to be handled by a system of binding arbitration.

Fraser's blue cable-knit sweater is good, maybe better than the one in "An Eye for an Eye," but I think the frayed cream-colored one in the pilot is still the leader.

( Scene 14 )

The "wretched refuse" line is from "The New Colossus," the sonnet mounted on a plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. Maybe it's not the American Revolution but U.S. history in general today (the way in Chicago Holiday it was nursery rhymes and folk tales)?

We don't know what the "lab people" are going to do with these dogs—nothing good, one imagines—but I wonder why the bad guys can't snatch animals themselves and have to pay a rogue animal control officer to do it for them?

( Scene 15 )

This kid doesn't give quite as good monologue-to-dog as Paul Gross does, but he's young. He's got time.

( Scene 16 )

Fraser is working very hard to deal with how sad and guilty he feels right now. Look at the set of his shoulders, listen to the hoarseness of his voice.

( Scene 17 )

AAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH

( Scene 18 )

Oh, man. Look how brave Fraser is trying to be, and then listen to the hoarseness in Vecchio's voice.

Vecchio is wearing a leather beanie that looks pretty good.

( Scene 19 )

They're playing imminent-death-in-the-family exactly accurately. This is so hard to watch.

( Scene 20 )

So . . . a compass does always point north, doesn't it? It's meant to? Nice of Fraser not to point that out.

( Scene 21 )

Fraser pronounces "call her" and "collar" almost exactly alike, so I'm not actually positive whether he is reminding Vecchio about the evidence Statler brought him in scene 9 or asking Vecchio to shout the dog's name. Maybe both. It doesn't matter. She stops him from having to kill Diefenbaker. I am drained after that scene.

( Scene 22 )

Diefenbaker's shots are up to date, but Fraser hasn't had him fixed.

( Scene 23 )

So Jackie is evidently a single mom. And this must be, what, a few months later? Because Maggie was moving pretty well, so I'm assuming she wasn't like ready to whelp imminently, and anyway Jackie seems to be a good pet owner who would have noticed something different about her dog and known already that she was knocked up. (It probably would have been on her "Lost Dog" flier.) So that's a couple more months of pregnancy, and then they wouldn't be separating those puppies from their mother in the first eight weeks. (Although I suppose "You sure you don't want one" doesn't have to mean "shall I leave one here with you today." So those could be younger-than-eight-week pups.) Anyway enough time to have officially got the order to euthanize Diefenbaker reversed, right?

All the same, even when they're practically in-laws, Fraser can't handle that a woman is interested in him. Oh, Fraser.

( Scene 24 )

I understand attachment to a car, even as far as making the equivalence between a car and a pet. (I approve of Fraser's sympathy for Vecchio's loss of the car in the previous episode, and I approve of Vecchio's realization that Fraser's loss of Diefenbaker would be worse.) I don't know if replacing it with an identical car would be sufficient? I guess maybe it would be better than nothing.

The episode title is a reference to the 1969 western by the same name, in which a gang of outlaws fight a gang of bounty hunters and a gang of federales and practically everybody dies. So thank goodness we're just going with title-only here.

Cumulative body count: 10
Red uniform: In the ugly car in the first place; in court

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