The Promise
air date January 11, 1996
( Scene 1 )
If he was late picking her up for the theatre, she'd have been fully dressed and ready to go long before he got there, so he must have been late to pick her up from whatever she was doing before she had to start getting ready, right? Whatever it was at the Justice Building.
Inspector Thatcher obviously has no prior knowledge of the danger of allowing Fraser to drive a car. (Or of the things people will arrest people for in this town. Milk Duds!)
( Scene 2 )
No idea who either of these people are, of course, except that neither of them is Elliot and the guy with the flag tattoo apparently works for a senator.
On the subject of the flag being backwards: So according to the U.S. Flag Code, which is a law there are no penalties for violating (it's all "should," no "shall"), the blue canton should always be on the upper (don't fly the thing upside down except to show distress or danger) left side to an observer. Obviously a flag on a pole can often be observed from 360 degrees around, so by "left" we mean on the hoist side. (Apparently, although I can't put my finger on it just now, there's guidance or regulation or something about flag patches on uniform sleeves that the blue canton should always be facing the wearer's front, as if they were running forward and the flag were flying behind them. Do I remember looking this up or asking about it or at least hearing about it when we were all watching Stargate: Atlantis? Because they all had flag patches on their sleeves, didn't they, and McKay's maple leaf and Beckett's St. Andrew's cross (side note: not a Union Jack, you go, Carson Beckett) have vertical symmetry, but Sheppard and Weir and everybody's stars and stripes don't, and neither does Zelenka's Czech flag. Only no, now that I'm looking at it, they all had their flag patches on their left sleeves only, which nicely avoids that issue, because in that case the hoist side of the flag faces both the wearer's front and the observer's left. I must have looked it up when I was more regularly encountering uniformed service members, who wear a flag patch on their right arm, with the blue canton facing their front—which is the observer's right.) ANYWAY. The man with the flag tattoo on his neck has the tattoo on the left side of his neck, and there's a flagpole as part of the tattoo, and the flag is correctly shown with the canton on the hoist side, but it's "flying" as though the wind were coming from behind him. So I don't know, maybe because the pole is there it's all copacetic and the thing isn't backwards at all. To me, though, it looks odd.
( Scene 3 )
I frankly don't see why Fraser couldn't have just slowed down enough for Thatcher to hop out of the car and go on her way. Why'd they have to come to a complete stop and have him open the door like a chauffeur if she's so fussed about being late? Anyway, he appears to have parallel parked in a head-in parking situation that may belong to this blue-jacketed dude and his valets anyway. But the blue-jacketed dude isn't concerned with the throttling that has apparently taken place at the other end of the alley.
( Scene 4 )
The girl looks particularly Dickensian, doesn't she? The cap and scarf really contribute to the look. And is she wearing fingerless gloves?
Credits roll.
Paul Gross
David Marciano
Beau Starr
Daniel Kash
Tony Craig
Catherine Bruhier
(plus Lincoln the dog)
Camilla Scott, Amy Stewart, Shawn Mathieson, Sherry Miller, Todd William Schroeder, Diane Douglass, Julian Richings, Warren Sulatycky
( Scene 5 )
YOU DO NOT "DETECT A LITTLE REVERSE DISCRIMINATION," VECCHIO, BECAUSE THERE IS NO SUCH THING. (This point is usually made with respect to racism, but you will also not convince me that "reverse sexism" exists in any predominantly male organization like a fucking police department, so Vecchio can shut up.)
Ugh, what the hell else happens in this scene besides Vecchio being a giant man-baby. Okay so—Commander O'Neill is recurring now? Why shouldn't everyone get a new lady boss all at the same time, eh?, I guess. Anyway, the woman who was killed in the teaser was apparently what is often called a madam, that is, a trafficker, and her digital address book probably contained a solid amount of blackmail material, which is what the man with the flag tattoo on his neck—who works for a senator—killed her for. (How we long for the days when lists were kept on the insides of matchbooks, innit.) It's not untrue that Vecchio's methods are sometimes a little (I would have said) brusque, but Huey and Gardino's methods have so far as far as we've seen been a little (I would have said) ineffective, so I think I might not have been as quick as Welsh and O'Neill to insist that Vecchio have nothing to do with this one.
Item: Vecchio has been on the force almost ten years by now, six of them in Vice. This division is apparently Violent Crimes. Also, in June 1986—nine and a half years ago—he was a beat cop. So how long did he walk a beat, when did he make detective, was Vice his first division, and when did he move to Violent Crimes? Was it . . . was it recently enough that that's why he doesn't have another detective as his partner? On top of how they have (let's stipulate) better manners, do Huey and Gardino have seniority?
Anyway, here's what Uncle Wiki has to say about demantoids.
( Scene 6 )
(Naugahyde again!) So Sid is over 18, apparently, while Andie, his sister, is younger. I assume the picture she's looking at is her and their mom, which makes me very sad. And it seems Sid is paying off the social worker to keep Andie out of foster care, which . . . is about how sympathetic we've found most public servants in this show who weren't Fraser or his immediate associates?
Meanwhile, the senator's employee is lying about why he's looking for Andie. We already knew he was a bad guy, because he killed Sunny Barclay; but now that she's gone, why is it so important to get the digital address book back?
( Scene 7 )
Fraser's Latin pronunciation is not what I'd personally call convincing, but thanks to
ellen_fremedon I can tell you that it probably means something like "Reading Latin letters (that is, literature) well is the hardest thing." ("Sap" is not from the Latin sapire but from Old English sæp and earlier Germanic sapf meaning "sap" as in "juice". Unless its slang usage to mean a gullible or foolish person is a completely different sap, which I suppose is possible.)
Does Vecchio not know that Thatcher has eased up on Fraser a bit after "Witness"? I mean it's still not obvious why she was trying to get rid of Fraser in the first place, as I said; it's not unheard of for an employee and a manager not to be a great fit, but we haven't seen either of them make much of an effort to adapt, have we? Anyway, Fraser was exiled to Chicago, wasn't he ("I'm not all that well liked up there, sir. . . . Pretty much all of Canada, sir.")? So you'd think he'd be eager to return, although who'd want to do it with what would probably be a(nother) blemish on his record, fair enough. I think the Fraser-doesn't-want-to-leave-Chicago angle would be a lot more interesting now if they'd spent a little more elbow grease on a Fraser-wants-to-go-home-to-Canada angle in season 1.
Meanwhile, the famously drought-plagued Cubs won the pennant (that is, the league championship; they went to the World Series) in 2016, and then they beat Cleveland, so in fact my prediction that any Cleveland/Chicago World Series (best of seven, so it takes four wins to finish) would result in the world actually ending after three games because neither of those teams could possibly win for the rest of human history was proven technically wrong—although their both winning their respective pennants in the same year did apparently usher in the Darkest Timeline in which we are currently living, so maybe what we need is another Cleveland/Chicago World Series with Cleveland winning to get out again? (Either that or we need them both to finish dead last in their respective leagues in the same year, but that happens all the time, doesn't it?)
( Scene 8 )
( Scene 9 )
If the guy with the neck tattoo wants his shit back, why would he kill the person who stole it? He doesn't just show her that garrote; he's getting ready to go at her with it. Not the way to recover your possessions, my dude.
( Scene 10 )
Is the advocate who's with them Carley, the social worker Sid's been paying off?
Fraser's soft spot for suffering or unhappy or neglected or endangered children and youth (Willie Lambert, Lucy Pike, Mario Gamez, Lenny Milano, Christina Nichols, Jamie Webber-Whatsit, Del Porter, Walter Sparks [an adult who was an unhappy child], Ian McDonald [likewise], Miss Madison) comes into even more focus. And of course the more we know about his own childhood, the more sense that makes. By now we know his mother died when he was six; he loved his father very much, but his father was never around much before or after his mother died; he lived with his grandparents, who moved him around a fair amount. He had friends, at least as a young teenager, but he was also bullied and spent a lot of time alone as a child. When he was injured (and presumably when he was ill) he may have had adequate care from a treatment standpoint (we have no especial reason to think otherwise) but not the kind of sympathy a child deserves. How does Vecchio know all of this and still ask why Fraser cares so much about Andie? (Maybe Vecchio doesn't know the stuff about Fraser's parents or about how his grandmother cared for him when he was sick or hurt. Fraser may have kept that kind of stuff between himself and his father's ghost. But he knows the rest; we've seen them talk about it.)
Also, here's the first concrete inkling of what Thatcher's problem with Fraser even is: He's acting too much as if he were an officer of the Chicago Police Department rather than a liaison to that department and other stateside law enforcement agencies. Which, fair enough. And "I thought I made it clear" tells us that they have had this conversation, presumably in a performance evaluation setting, probably when he returned from his convalescence and after she'd reviewed his personnel files. So I'm easing up a bit on being annoyed with her.
It's hard to say how little Fraser was when his grandparents took him to Aklavik on vacation, but by 1961, the year he was born, Inuvik was established as the new regional administrative center because Aklavik was flood-prone and bounded by riverbanks so it couldn't expand. Its population was "more than 1,500" before that, but when Fraser was a child—if his mother died in 1967 and he moved with his grandparents to Alert in 1969, let's assume this vacation visit to Aklavik was between those dates—the population of Inuvik, where he'd have been living at the time, was north (ha!) of 2,000 and Aklavik would have fallen below 1,000 and stayed there. "Thriving urban center" indeed.
But okay, so seven-year-old Benton Fraser was lost in the "big city" and alone and hungry, so rather than ask for help (either help getting something to eat or help finding his grandparents; possibly at this point in his life he'd internalized that he was some sort of burden and thought he should be more self-sufficient, which is a terrible thing for a seven-year-old kid to think, but look at his inputs, I'd believe it), he . . . boiled and ate a leather shoe? How'd he do that? Where did he get a pot of boiling water? Couldn't he have tried eating the thing without boiling it first? Once leather has been tanned, is there anything left you can boil (or chew and suck) out of it that will have any calories? And not be poisonous? I mean I guess trying to eat your shoe is a more resourceful approach than sitting down and crying, which is what most seven-year-olds would do in that situation. Anyway, also, a grandmother who tanned his hide for ruining his shoes in that circumstance is not a grandmother who would have any type of softening effect on him, lead him to talking about feelings and emotions, any of that.
( Scene 11 )
Sid doesn't trust the police, which isn't a huge surprise, but he believes what he overhears about the value of this digital object more than what Celia, whom he generally does trust, told him to his face. Kid's not the savviest person in the world, is he, which is also not a huge surprise, because although he and Andie have apparently been on their own for a while (how long?) he's probably only 18 or 19 and went through the same trauma she did to set them out on their own in the first place—he's not ready to be his sister's guardian, is he? Not even really ready to take care of himself.
( Scene 12 )
Fraser does have some experience of driving a horse-drawn vehicle, as well as with horses in general. He also has some experience of moving a long way away, in addition to being a lonely kid. I like how he's not trying too hard to draw Andie on this matter, just sitting quietly with her and being calm and supportive. Making general conversation and letting her lead herself to the realization that Sid isn't coming through on this one. Doing it with a literal horse in the scene, and letting her try driving, somehow feels like a nice touch rather than being hit over the head with the metaphor. (I suppose if he'd offered her something to drink that would have been the point where I demanded to be given a break.)
( Scene 13 )
( Scene 14 )
I suppose she might have been more convincing if she'd said "I didn't steal anything," is that it?
( Scene 15 )
Okay so I can buy that Fraser concluded the book was what Andie had stolen from the man with the flag tattoo on his neck even though she protests that she didn't say anything about stealing anything, the same way he concluded that Del Porter identified the thief without intending to do so—only the details that what she took was an electronic device and that he came at her with a garroting wire, those she'd have had to tell him explicitly. So when did she decide to go ahead and tell him these things? (I'm going to allow "killer" because the guy was ready to kill her, because the whole point of this scene is connecting the guy who came after Andie with the murder of Sunny Barclay—they don't know he's Sunny's killer yet.)
( Scene 16 )
That's a very mood-set-y moment that doesn't do much story work, I feel.
( Scene 17 )
I've included the lyrics that are going on under the dialogue mainly for their VICTORIA LIVES value. The rest of the scene is vaguely amusing for its contradictions and defiance of expectations. The artist has an English accent, but a kind of south-London non-snooty one, so it's perhaps ironic that he's being such a snob—although experts in their field are often fairly impatient with those they perceive as poseurs, no matter their class. If this guy's a tattoo artist who, as the sign on the wall behind him says, "specializes in Americana," no wonder he'd be sick to the teeth of doing Statue of Liberty and flag at Iwo Jima tattoos. (Do people get Jon Bon Jovi tattoos? I guess it takes all kinds.) On the other hand, if he were an expert, he might know how to do a Canadian flag without the wrong leaf on it. Meanwhile, apparently 1970 wasn't a terrific year for Château-Margaux (but not as bad as 1968 and 1969, so there's that). Today, Wine Searcher says it goes for an average price of $469, which this inflation calculator says would have been about $241 in 1995—when, besides that, there might have been a lot more 1970 vintages still available. Probably wouldn't go with burritos at any time, but what do I know?
Meanwhile, Tanganyika is the former name of the mainland part of what is now Tanzania (briefly known as the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar) in East Africa. The Zulu are an ethnic group in Southern Africa. I assume the indigenous peoples of different areas have different types of art and artistry, but I don't find a ton about tattooing in either society. But Fraser should not have treated customers at the tattoo shop like exhibits in a zoo; he was probably trying to establish that he didn't think of them as any type of freaks, but asking a much-tattooed white guy "hey, what part of Africa is your tattoo inspired by?" is clearly the wrong way to go about it. I'm feeling an early echo of Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan, PhD, here in the way Fraser knows a fair amount about a lot of subjects but not a ton about how to relate to real live people. (Now I want to get all my law enforcement–adjacent anthropologist-and-similar types in a room and see what happens. Fraser, Blair Sandburg, Bones Brennan, who else? Daniel Jackson? A linguist working with the military—close enough. Other participants in this big magic crossover welcome; submit your suggestions any time.)
In general, though, I think Fraser is right about tattoos and Vecchio is wrong. (And for completeness, of course here's what he means by Michelangelo.)
(I guess he maybe earned back his permission to wear the brown uniform when he got back in Thatcher's good graces at the end of "Witness"?)
( Scene 18 )
Oh, no. Is the ranch in Wyoming completely made up? What happened to these kids' parents?
( Scene 19 )
Listen, lady, you think politicians are more honest with their wives than they are with campaign managers they're not married to? In Illinois? She can't be new, because this guy is a sitting senator running for re-election, but she's apparently pretty naive. I'm with Vecchio here (who has made almost the same point about celebrities before, glad to see that consistency).
( Scene 20 )
Not idly do the leaves of Lórien fall . . .
Yeah, no, I don't think she dropped the thing on purpose to let him know where she'd been, but here we are. The flag-tattooed Johnstone staffer is keeping up his pretense that he knows Andie and is trying to bring her home so that people who see him grabbing a teenager and forcing her into his car will think it's reasonable of him to do this, which is clever of him but totally bites. Friends! If you see a weaker person struggling with a stronger person in public, do what you can safely do to see if the weaker person is okay! Make it your business! We live in a society!
( Scene 21 )
Okay, for funsies, I'm looking at a 1996 org chart of the Chicago Police Department and comparing it to this slightly more detailed current one (dated January 30, 2020, which is close enough). (I've saved both of these on my hard drive, so if the links break, let me know and I'll upload them to the same place as all the maps of Canada I've been spewing on this project.)
It looks like then, officers fell under Operations and detectives under Investigations, which makes sense based on what those words mean, but does seem like it could create some chain-of-command issues? Whereas now, on the more detailed chart, the detectives bureau is one branch under ops (which we'll come back to in a moment); counter-terrorism is another (not at the forefront of anyone's mind in the mid-90s, a more innocent time); and all the "areas," which appears to mean clusters of districts, are also under there independently. And each area has, in addition to between three and six districts, a couple of other teams and sections. Units are headed by sergeants; sections are headed by lieutenants; divisions are headed by captains; districts are headed by commanders. And then it looks like each area also has an executive office commander and a detective commander, who are peers (the XO commander's direct reports are the district commanders, and the detective commander's direct reports are the heads of the other teams and sections and so on) and who report to the deputy chief of each area, who reports to the first deputy superintendent of operations. SO, conflating these two org charts into one, it appears that Vecchio and Huey and Gardino are in the Violent Crimes section in Area Something-or-other (whichever area houses the fictitious District 27, which, by the way, is also the number of the precinct in Law & Order, so maybe while the socio-anthro crowd is getting together wherever they're meeting, all the officers of these and whatever other 27th precincts or districts we can come up with can meet in some cop bar somewhere and compare notes). Lieutenant Welsh is the head of their section (and possibly assigning command of that level of operation to a captain in the pilot was simply an error?). It's not clear whether he reports to Commander O'Neill or is simply outranked by her; she's in uniform rather than in smart street clothes as he is, which makes me think she's maybe the district commander rather than the detective commander reporting directly to the area deputy chief? Let's go with that, and then we can wonder why she's the one who has to go explain what's going on in the investigation, specifically Vecchio speaking to the senator's campaign manager who happens also to be his wife, to the mayor rather than someone below her (who was actually involved) or above her (who was actually in the direct line of command to people actually involved) just because she's the commander of the district where the murder took place.
Meanwhile, Vecchio spent six years in Vice, which is over on the left under the Vice and Asset Forfeiture Division, not attached to any particular district. (Note that also in the criminal networks group is a CPD/FBI Violent Crimes Task Force, which in fictitious police departments I bet burns the living hell out of people working in the violent crimes sections of regular operations areas, and vice versa. I have no knowledge of how different people in different divisions get along in real-life police departments.)
It's not just Fraser calling everyone who outranks him "sir" irrespective of their gender now. I dig it, but I don't think it's realistic.
( Scene 22 )
It's great that Vecchio caught Fraser, but what they need is someone on ground level to catch Andie, right? (Or not, because she should be able to grab the ladder from where she is, but never mind.) I'm a big fan of Huey and Gardino doing some more good police work; that was a nice break at the beginning of this scene, instead of the two of them (well, mostly Gardino) being incompetent schmucks almost all of the time.
( Scene 23 )
So but okay—what is going to happen to Sid and Andie? Even if the state's attorney (who would probably be surprised to hear that Vecchio considers her a friend?) entirely excuses them from prosecution for all this theft, Andie is still only 14, and is Sid equipped to be her legal guardian? Apparently they don't have family out west, so that's a non-starter? She ought to be in, I don't know, school? Just because he's over 18 doesn't mean he doesn't also need some looking after? But we're just going to send them off with a "Good luck" and that's the end of it? Bit disappointed in Fraser here, who you'd think might at least offer Andie something like a job share with Willie Lambert looking after Diefenbaker?
( Scene 24 )
The knee-banging is good, because physical comedy is never not funny. Inspector Thatcher is quite pretty in a heavily-made-up 90s kind of way. (The bold lip is fine, but I feel like she could use about three layers less of everything else, especially eyebrow pencil—a sign of the times, right?) One is pleased that she's apparently softening toward Fraser a little bit (thanking him for recovering her brooch) even as she's also holding a hard line (stop taking liberties!), which I think is an appropriate line to hold! Fraser! Don't go getting hung up on your boss, buddy. That kind of thing never goes well.
Cumulative body count: 17
Red uniform: Driving the car and in the first couple of investigations, but not once they start looking at/for tattoos