return to Due South: season 2 episode 9 "The Edge"

The Edge
air date February 15, 1996

( Scene 1 )

Okay, so this isn't a real operation, and Vecchio didn't just shoot Fraser again. Apparently a summit conference is coming up, and there's some concern someone will threaten the U.S. Secretary of State with lake water (which probably does contain cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls, that is, PCBs; those chemicals were banned in the United States in 1979, but the Great Lakes continue to be badly polluted and Lake Michigan is the worst of the lot, despite Lake Erie's reputation as basically one big sludge puddle—its issues are or were more to do with petrochemicals and actual literal garbage, I guess)?

I'm confident about "dispare" and about 80% confident on the rest of Agent Cortez's lines, which I think translate as "Someone [do] something, [I'm in] agony" and "My two [that is, the pair of you]," but I'm more than willing to be overruled by someone whose Spanish is better than mine.

Credits roll.

Paul Gross
David Marciano
Beau Starr
Tony Craig
Catherine Bruhier

(plus Lincoln the dog)

Now Kash is out of the credits, and Tony Craig's spotlight clip is where Fraser and Vecchio are pulling him back from trying to get to the burning car. Conclusion: "One Good Man" was an extra episode? But it had to go after the Riv blew up because otherwise why would it involve another replacement Riv. In short: The credits on that episode are a stumper.

Camilla Scott, Maria Therese Rangel, Ken Foree, and Gordon Pinsent as Fraser Sr.

( Scene 2 )

Are Fraser, Vecchio, and Cortez just one of several tri-country teams who are going to be working under Special Agent Helms on this thing? Like, at least one in each CPD precinct, and Vecchio happens to be the one in the 27th? If so, where are they getting the other Mounties—by which I mean, how many people does Thatcher have in her liaison office? Assuming the answer to these questions is no, why aren't Fraser and Cortez working with a fed (FBI or Secret Service or something) rather than with a (forgive me, Detective) random member of the local police department? I guess it's probably because Fraser already has a strong working relationship with Vecchio? But how long have they been training together, who are all those other guys, who was the one who was yelling at them at the exercise, why is Helms only coming in three days before the event—I have many more questions. (In addition to my usual questions about international trade events taking place in Chicago.)

Welsh's phony/Spanglish "el gardio del traffico" crack is (a) racist and (b) emblematic of the trouble with police departments in most jurisdictions (aside from the racism in those departments). The "joke" is that traffic direction and crowd control aren't as exciting as "real" police work, ha ha ha. But they are public safety, and they are law enforcement, and those things are every bit as important as solving (or, here's a novel concept, preventing) crimes. Arguably more so, because ensuring the safety of the general public affects way more people than anything to do with most of your violent or property crimes that involve much smaller numbers of perpetrators and victims both. I'm certainly prepared to agree that it's excessive to have armed officers doing that kind of work, but the solution isn't to bust armed officers (uniforms or plainclothes) down to traffic duty as some sort of punishment; the solution is to reassign huge parts of the police department's remit to other agencies (community safety, social work, etc.) and adjust their budgets accordingly.

( Scene 3 )

I want to talk about Cortez "jumping the gun," first of all. She was role playing as a hostage, right, and isn't it safe to assume you can't predict what the hostage will do in a given situation? So she "jumped the gun" or missed a cue or who knows what—Vecchio and Fraser's job was to roll with that. Her assignment should have been not do X action at Y time but rather surprise them. So Vecchio is, not for the first time I'm afraid, being kind of an ass to and about a female colleague. Sigh.

And why was he shooting anyway? I am not a Gun Person but I'm pretty sure it's a bad idea to shoot at anything or anyone if you don't know what's behind them can take it. There's been a certain amount of TV-level hand-waving that kind of stuff in the season and a half of this show that we've seen (and of course bad guys will shoot into crowds no problem; that's part of what makes them bad guys), but one of the reasons neither Fraser nor Vecchio had a good shot while Nick-the-kidnapper was holding Cortez-the-hostage was that they were 180 degrees apart, looking right at each other, backstopping each other's field of aim. If he didn't have a good shot when everyone was holding still, why the fuck did Vecchio fire his gun when everyone was moving?

Fraser's national health insurance number is his nine-digit Social Insurance Number, which is the Canadian equivalent of a Social Security Number, and he shouldn't just be reading it out in its entirety to this dude behind the window—but I guess in the mid-90s we were doing that, weren't we. I definitely put mine on all my college applications in the fall of 1994, and it had been on on my driver's license since 1993 and was my student ID number starting in 1995. It wasn't until quite a bit later that most if not all states allowed people to request alternate ID numbers on their drivers' licenses or state ID cards; by now I assume they all use DMV-specific numbers rather than even allowing SSNs to be plastered all over everything in sight. I haven't given anyone anything but the last four digits of my SSN in years. But this was early 1996, before we were all hooked up to Al Gore's internet, a much more (especially w/r/t identity theft) innocent time. (Giving Fraser's late mother the original surname Pinsent is a nod to Gordon Pinsent, I guess? Although he's made of and/as credits and you wouldn't think he'd need an extra nod? So maybe it's just an odd choice?)

It's a bit much that Fraser becomes suspicious because the dude at the window stamped his document (a) hard and (b) straight up and down but wasn't suspicious when the guy asked him for his full SIN and mother's maiden name. I suppose he might have a lot of experience stamping documents himself and know that eventually you'd use a rolling motion? I've definitely had jobs where I had to do repetitive tasks and would recognize a fellow sufferer adopting the same muscle-memory coping techniques I developed. But maybe the guy at the window was new, you know? I just don't feel like the stamping should be what made him feel like the whole business was fishy.

Anyway, NAFTA was the North American Free Trade Agreement, in effect from January 1, 1994, to June 30, 2020. I'm not sure what there would have been for "top NAFTA representatives" (which would be, what, the U.S. Secretary of State and their Canadian and Mexican counterparts?) to talk about in Chicago in February 1996, but I'm not especially informed on international trade issues except to feel like Toby Ziegler made sense when he said "free trade stops wars." (I mean of course I feel that way, because nine-tenths of the point of that monologue is that he knows how to be convincing, and only one-tenth is what he's actually saying. So I don't know if he's right! I just know that I feel like he makes sense.)

( Scene 4 )

Again with the feds being very suspicious and dickish to local law enforcement in general and Fraser in particular. Notice Helms introducing the word "perhaps," for example, and Fraser not calling him on it. But my main question about this bit is, if those telephone codes (whatever that is) are top secret, why are they just being handed around in the open like this? I mean even assuming they were in a locked file cabinet in the room presided over by the guy who got tied up, and the bad guy jimmied it open with a knife the way he did to get Fraser's file in the first place, why is the room with the locked file cabinet just there where anyone at all can walk in off the street and ring a bell and (a) see the file cabinets and (b) reach through the service window to open the door if, for example, they're trying to get in to help out a guy who's been bound and gagged? I guess telephone codes are probably not sensitive compartmented information, but I still feel like probably top secret stuff should have a little more access restriction protecting it than this seems to have had.

Anyway, of course Fraser wasn't on the detail at the PM's residence during the break-in last year, because he's been here in Chicago for a year and a half and not really welcome back in Canada, hasn't he? Honestly.

( Scene 5 )

He's dished up something with what looks like red sauce for himself; we don't see what he put in Diefenbaker's bowl, but maybe another share of whatever he's eating. Probably pasta. Anyway, when he sits at the table, he starts out with a green salad, fair enough, but it looks like it's mostly iceberg lettuce. Tsk. And a big glass of milk. Bless.

"Your early threes" is good.

( Scene 6 )

Aw, Diefenbaker! 💔

The reaction time and eyesight stuff in Fraser's nightmare is about his losing his edge, but the hundreds of miles away in a foreign country stuff is an interesting thumb on the bruise of his not being all that well liked in pretty much all of Canada, isn't it? I've noted before that they didn't seem to make much of a big deal about his wanting to go back to Canada in season 1, so it struck me as slightly odd that they made as much of a deal as they did about his not wanting to leave Chicago in the beginning of season 2; but now here's his subconscious mind suggesting it's irresponsible of him to be working in the United States? Shows bad judgment? Hmmm.

( Scene 7 )

Good to see all three security teams trust one another so completely, huh? After all that lip service in the first couple-few scenes. I don't entirely understand why Cortez says "sabes" rather than "sabe" to her colleague, but what do I know, maybe they're peers and have a more familiar relationship than I'd expect. I feel like Fraser and Thatcher would both use "vous" rather than "tu" if they happened to be speaking French to each other at work, don't you? But I could be wrong about that, and my Spanish is way rustier than my French. I'm also a little surprised at "gringo," but I have a vague high school Spanish memory that Latin Americans (maybe Mexicans in particular? maybe not?) have a particular reluctance to call USians "americanos" because aren't we all; at the time we were taught "estadounidenses," but that's a mouthful, isn't it, and I have no idea if it is or ever was in actual common use.

The important analysis of this scene is that Fraser is out of uniform in a black suit with a narrow black necktie and looks terrific. Like, unexpectedly so.

( Scene 8 )

Fraser is carrying a gun in this scene. I suppose he's permitted for the occasion. At this point, my question is, if security is such a situation, why are these delegates flying commercial? And if they have to, why not move them through closed parts of the airport? Are you really going to have two dozen armed officers just shoving civilians out of the way in this manner?

Mainly I'm still distracted by the dark suit.

( Scene 9 )

Blah blah, feds are incompetent, Vecchio may be racist and sexist, international cooperation is a joke, epithets are always funny ("What plaid flannel–wearing, cheese-eating yahoo of a milkman governor signed that idiot bill into state law? . . . It was me, wasn't it?" . . . Like the Toby Ziegler clip I referenced earlier, that line is also from "Somebody's Going to Emergency, Somebody's Going to Jail," which is West Wing s2e16. I don't know why I have that episode on the brain today.) Never mind any of that. The important thing is this:

Fraser has three, repeat, three stars on his left sleeve, which means some time between February 8 and February 15, he passed his 15-year mark of service in the RCMP (or at least got around to adding the third star if he earned it earlier, but both he and Thatcher seem like why-put-it-off-when-it-can-be-done-now sorts, don't they?, so I don't guess he had the star and only just got around to sewing it onto his uniform, do you?).

( Scene 10 )

🤨

( Scene 11 )

Same boots as what?

( Scene 12 )

OPSEC, PEOPLE, HOLY CRAP

( Scene 13 )

For those of us who are less fluent in the metric system, their man is almost 6'4" and weighs 262 lbs 7.5 oz.

( Scene 14 )

Whoo. Fraser does a nice job not shitting himself when he wakes up and a stranger with a knife is sitting on his bed. Sounds like this poor guy did a few years in Vietnam and lost his grip a little bit—losing his mind but not his "edge," as the kid Secret Service agents are saying in Fraser's dream; isn't 35ish too young for Fraser to be having a midlife crisis?

I like Bob-the-subconscious warning Ben that another dream is incoming.

( Scene 15 )

This looks like they were leaving the Canadian consulate, but why the Secret Service guys would be having their meeting there is a mystery to me.

( Scene 16 )

Last part first: Having been a jerk to her this whole time, when Cortez is in danger, Vecchio shakes the assholery right off and takes her and her situation seriously. So that's a little bit okay (and not out of character, considering how he was when he and Fraser first met). Other than that: Vecchio's concern about being "an extra in an Indiana Jones movie" is not misplaced—

—but it's pretty specific, isn't it? (That's a grab from the about-to-open-the-ark scene at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), of course, and all the extras in the background are about to meet a nasty end. I couldn't quickly get similar shots from Temple of Doom (1984) or Last Crusade (1989), but the extras in those films don't fare any better.) I appreciate that there's not a visible puffy spot on the tree trunk where we can tell the knife is going to land. And finally, A. platyrhynchos is a Mallard duck, but (a) it sounds to me like Fraser says "platyrhinos" or something other than "platyrhynchos" (broad-billed, that is, flat-nosed) and (b) the duck we are shown on the screen does not look like a Mallard to me. (I'll allow "unusual sighting for this time of year" because the Mallard is migratory and doesn't care for snow, but look, the things are everywhere, it's not like the Mallard is a rare breed that you'd be surprised to see except that it's the middle of winter.)

( Scene 17 )

This dude has got about twenty years and more than fifty pounds on Fraser; he shouldn't be getting away as easily as he is. But the Bob Fraser in Ben Fraser's subconscious is no whippersnapper, so it doesn't make a ton of sense that he's what Fraser hallucinates when he's feeling like he might be getting too old for this. Diefenbaker seeing the puppy from his dream makes much more sense.

( Scene 18 )

It's a nice little monologue Cortez has about growing up in what I assume is Nezahualcóyotl, but what of it? She wanted to be a cop like El Halcón, okay; and now she is. Great. I assume she, like him, does not take bribes. (La mordida = bribery.) But what happened to him? And why is this what she talks about while she's having a land mine dismantled under her foot? Is it because she thinks she's going to die? This is just the tiniest sliver of a thing that could have been really interesting and instead is . . . not. It allows Vecchio to go on a journey (from "Give me something flat, like a nail file"—because of course that's what women carry, cosmetics and related items—to being weirdly impressed by her pocket knife to calling her a partner), but since we never knew what his actual problem with her was (I mean, clearly he doubts her competence because she's a woman; does he also doubt her honesty because she's Mexican? It doesn't seem like he knew about the culture of corruption she was describing until she described it, so that's probably not it?), it's hard to know why this is what spurs him to get over it. I don't know, it's a nice moment between them, but I don't really get why.

( Scene 19 )

I don't see how Parker's youth is a relevant factor except if it means he'll listen to Helms and not get ideas of his own.

( Scene 20 )

The people at this party are dressed in a frankly astonishing range of levels of formality, and it's also not clear who the hosts (or guests of honor) actually are. At the beginning there are a couple of men in business suits and a woman in a sharp cocktail suit, but here are a couple of other women in backless evening dresses, and people are going through what seems to be a receiving line featuring three middle-aged men in uniform; the one in the middle appears to be in what we now know is RCMP formal dress uniform, on his left is a White dude in what may be a U.S. Army or other service branch dress uniform, and on his right is a Latin dude in what may be a Mexican military uniform of some sort. Later, all the men are in black tie and the women in spangly evening gowns, and "I hope things are well in Ottawa" lady is speaking to Ambassador (?!) Pierce in what is evidently another receiving line. (Are we busting ambassadors down to "trade representative" now?) Once LaCroix has Fraser under his gun, nobody really flees; people are sitting still, sure, but they seem to be watching as if this were a floor show, hardly looking scared. I'm not super impressed with the extras in this scene, is I guess what I'm saying.

Anyway, Fraser's story is not an Inuit story (despite Vecchio saying "There he goes again"), and he's not signaling anything to Vecchio and Cortez with his "third option" stuff, though it seems from the camera work like that's what he's trying to do. And then he's trying to make LaCroix see that it's important to be aware of the difference between right and wrong—when the whole point of his story was that he was both. This is kind of all over the place? I mean it's true that it's possible to be both right and wrong at the same time. I think in this case LaCroix is right to oppose the destruction of the forests, but wrong in how he's going about protesting it. But rather than be sympathetic to him, Fraser is giving him "if you lose sight of the distinction, you're beaten." Come on, man.

And where does "if you know who you are, you don't have to hide" come from? It's a very useful line to come back to if you happen to want to write a Fraser coming out of any type of closet, but in this scene in this episode, nobody's hiding—this guy just wants to be left alone. (Well, he wants a little more than that, which is why he brings a gun to a black tie reception, but he's not hiding, is my point.)

I do not appreciate Vecchio telling Cortez she looks great. I wanted his journey in the earlier scene to end in a place of professional respect, not in a place of social opportunity.

I want Fraser to look better in white tie than I think he does, but I suspect it's the slightly ill-fitting white jacket that ruins it. Proper white tie, with tails, would probably suit him very well indeed.

( Scene 21 )

So I don't know where we're supposed to feel like we got to with the Vecchio-and-Cortez thing. And we never did learn what she was making copies of, did we? And meanwhile, I'm sorry, instead of a commendation for valor, what Fraser wants is a COFFEE DATE WITH HIS BOSS? That . . . simply does not compute. I can see that she's pretty and he finds her compelling, but it's the coffee date instead of the commendation that doesn't feel like Fraser to me. The guy whose job is the essence of who he is. When he just finished talking about how important it is to know who you are. Oy vey.

Cumulative body count: 20
Red uniform: Does not appear in this episode

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