The Duel
air date May 2, 1996
( Scene 1 )
Vecchio's track record when predicting how long legal proceedings will take (and how they'll end up) is not the best, is it? Also, the suggestion that the trappings of democracy are just pro forma is extremely uncomfortable and on the nose, and yet again I am wondering why we have to love a cop show.
( Scene 2 )
This is a rare instance of "X, never mind Y" being used in the correct order, and I appreciate the defense attorney for getting it right.
I love Fraser for saying he knows Carver is bad news because Vecchio said so. But I don't know why I love that; it's definitely got the ACAB odor about it, and it's not really Fraser's style, is it.
( Scene 3 )
There's a lot too much woman-taking-a-shower and soft-focus saxophone music here for my taste. There wasn't even this much nudity when the first Mackenzie King was getting ready for her date with Fraser. For my money, we could have had a montage of woman-alone-in-her-apartment stuff instead of spending so much time with her in the shower and still been properly horrified by the turkey falling on her head while she has shampoo in her eyes.
Credits roll.
Paul Gross
David Marciano
Beau Starr
Tony Craig
Catherine Bruhier
(plus Lincoln the dog)
Ramona Milano, Colm Feore, Lisa Houle, Anthony Sherwood, Dave Nichols, Katayoun Amini
( Scene 4 )
( Scene 5 )
They can't arrest Carver for this, but they can probably question him, don't you think? (On a whim, I googled "Chicago police 634.2" and found this incident reporting guide, on which there is nothing by that number. But it was revised in 2018, so maybe in 1996 there really was a 634.2, who knows.)
( Scene 6 )
Water is not at all a soft surface, but it will stop a bus, so our heroes should be glad they're just on a bus whose brake line has been cut and whose accelerator is jammed, rather than on a bus carrying a bomb rigged to go off if its speed falls below 55 mph as was the case in Speed (1994), which someone had evidently seen not long before they wrote this episode. Anyway, I can't quite tell what Fraser says right before Vecchio says "sawdust". "Keech" (which some of the internet dictionaries have told me is a lump of fat rolled up by a butcher, like, the meat-processing equivalent of mine slag, I guess)? "Quiche" (which, why would there be a heap of quiche they could drive into in the middle of a city—but why would there be a heap of keech either, or of shaving cream or sawdust, for that matter)?
So Laurie here is Vecchio's first partner and is no longer with the police. I am very interested by her, so my guess is we'll never see her again.
( Scene 7 )
Okay, Fraser, stop flirting with the bad guy, willya.
It is vaguely disappointing to me that we already know Carver was behind the turkey and the bus, because it could have been interesting to have an actual mystery to solve, right? Like what if we as the viewer had been coached to think Carver had been here with his chemistry student the whole time so he couldn't possibly be behind this? The first thing would have to have not been a turkey, I guess, because that makes it clear it was him from the jump. But what makes this episode better than the last time I was annoyed that we already knew whodunnit is (a) our heroes already know also—this isn't being treated as a mystery at all—and (b) Colm Feore as Carver is just really, really good. (I've seen this guy in at least half a dozen plays and he is never not brilliant. I know for sure I've seen him as Mercutio, as Oberon, as Frank Ford in Merry Wives, as Cassius; I think he must have been the pirate king the last time I saw The Pirates of Penzance at Stratford? Obviously not super memorable, but he'll have been fun to watch, anyway; you can tell from this episode that if you give him an inch he'll have all the scenery between his teeth and you won't even have seen how he got it in there. As Jack Worthing in The Importance of Being Earnest, a play I simply adore. And as Cyrano de Bergerac in a production I will rave about to anyone who will sit still long enough. You may also recognize him from The West Wing s2e9 "Galileo," where he corners CJ on the roof of the Kennedy Center and asks if she didn't hire him because he never called her after they went out that one time, but that's not the best role to remember him in. Cyrano Cyrano Cyrano.)
Avogadro's number is indeed a thing that would be taught in any high school chemistry curriculum. It is apparently useful for discussing the fact that the number of atoms in a quantity of a substance remains the same even if you change its volume, pressure, or temperature (changing any one of which will necessarily change the other two). When I was in high school, it was 6.02 x 1023, which is what's on Carver's blackboard, but apparently in 2019 they changed it to 6.02214076 x 1023, which is a slightly larger incomprehensibly large number. (Apparently you can change fundamental laws of matter? idk, this feels like that time the state of Alabama tried to legislate that π = 3, though I guess it's actually the opposite of that.)
( Scene 8 )
How does Welsh know this happened? People are always calling him to fill him in on what Vecchio has been up to?
( Scene 9 )
Carver's got the order of good nights all wrong. It's "Good night room. Good night moon. Good night cow jumping over the moon —" (and it did always bother me that they rhymed moon with moon, but what can you do) "— Good night light and the red balloon. Good night bears; good night chairs. Good night kittens and good night mittens. Good night clocks and good night socks." And so on. But I think this scene shows why it is so dangerous that they never say good night to the telephone. If they had, would Carver be able to terrorize Vecchio in this manner now?
( Scene 10 )
This is clearly the same house the Vecchios were living in in "Victoria's Secret," but I think it's the first time we've seen the exterior, isn't it? And it's not at all the outside of the same house they were living in in "Pizzas and Promises."
Vecchio is much less upset than I'd have expected him to be given what happened the last time someone he didn't like messed with his car. (Also, I can't say for sure, but he may be able to ding Carver for harassment, no?)
( Scene 11 )
What does Huey mean, "feel free to have a seat at his desk," like Fraser is new here or something? That felt strange to me. More importantly, though, what happened to the Fraser who always does his duty and expects, nay, requires his colleagues to do the same? I'm not saying I don't appreciate his refusal to answer this dude's questions, but I am saying I don't understand it. First "I know this guy is bad news because you said so, Ray," and now this.
Put another way: This is the first time since we've known Fraser that being a loyal friend has been more important than being a police officer.
( Scene 12 )
The line reading on "He was like . . . I don't know, imagine your dad" is nice, knowing as we do that Vecchio had a terrible relationship with his actual dad; no wonder he looked up to his first supervisor as a father figure. I sure don't love Kelly's aphorisms, though.
( Scene 13 )
That sheriff would be a lot more convincing with his everybody-should-wear-red if he himself were not wearing brown in the middle of the woods. I'm just saying.
( Scene 14 )
I, too, am sure Detective Vecchio would have made the same determination. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to work out that something washing up in a strong current has come from upstream.
( Scene 15 )
You see how phishing works, don't you? Small talk sinks ships! Or something like that.
This child is more than one year old but less than two, and it's May 1996, which means she was born some time between let's say the fall of 1994 and the summer of 1995, which . . . can work out? If she was born in like September of 1994 and Maria was relatively recently postpartum (and had got her figure back with a quickness) or she was born in like May of 1995 and Maria was sort of just barely pregnant and not showing yet in "They Eat Horses" and recently post-partum in that scene in "Victoria's Secret" where they were all heading out on vacation, which was the last time we saw her. The rest of Maria and Tony's children continue to be a mystery, but this one is not impossible! I don't know why this is the first time we've heard about her, if she lives in the house with All The Vecchios, but that's a separate issue. . . . Where is Maria, though? Maybe resting, and Francesca is babysitting. But why is the baby in a stroller by the front door if she's not going out with Aunt Francesca but waiting for mom to take her to see the clown by the lake?
( Scene 16 )
Okay I am upset by the crying babies, because this scene did not require real babies to be scared to come off. I am also a big fan of the clown instinctively trying to make the exploding stroller (safely under the water) part of his act so the kids he's entertaining don't worry. I am also completely sympathetic to the parents wondering what the hell is going on with two guys running up and pawing at all their strollers and looking at all their kids with no explanation (they didn't have time to explain, but the parents at the park didn't know that) and then grabbing a stroller and running off with it. I can even get behind Vecchio not knowing which stroller among dozens is the one that belongs to his sister; even actual parents of stroller-riding children have to put ribbons and things on the damn handlebars to designate which stroller is whose, so Vecchio is excused. What I don't understand is all the looking around and why as soon as they got within earshot of the clown show Vecchio didn't shout "MARIA?!" and find her that way. (Even assuming the actress who plays Maria was not available, a little shouting wouldn't have gone amiss. We don't have to see her for Fraser to find the relevant stroller.)
We don't know for sure how they knew which park to go to, but it's safe to assume they called Francesca back from the car to get more details about what "out with the baby" actually meant. (And we'll have to live with the fact that the lake by which the clown is performing is apparently not Lake Michigan, because footbridge? Whatever. It's a park with a water feature. Okay.)
( Scene 17 )
That car is very well shot so we can see almost nobody in it. The glare off the windshield makes it nearly impossible to see the driver, but we can assume it's Tony; everyone else is in the depths of the station wagon (and silent!) except one little girl waving from the rear driver's side window, which may be the same girl from that heading-out-on-vacation scene in "Victoria's Secret," why not.
In other news: Francesca has a job?!
( Scene 18 )
Oh boy.
( Scene 19 )
I hope Vecchio paid for that dinner when he ordered it, is what I hope, because even if you don't eat, you can't just leave a restaurant without paying.
( Scene 20 )
Oh no. Oh, Francesca, no. Sweetie, no, you are allowed and even encouraged to have your own interests! God, I want to round up all the magazines she and everyone else was reading in the 90s and The Rules and whatever all else and just papier-maché the crap out of something with them and then beat it with sticks.
Sigh. Okay. The Iditarod is an annual dogsled race from Anchorage to Nome, so what Francesca has defaulted to is "How 'bout that not-at-all local sporting event," which is vaguely funny, except see above re: having her own interests.
( Scene 21 )
Why indeed doesn't Fraser have a phone.
( Scene 22 )
Fraser is so sympathetic when he says "Well, no," which is lovely. And then when he says "You're going to like anything I say," is everyone in creation saying "yes, Fraser, YES, this has been true THE WHOLE TIME YOU HAVE KNOWN THIS WOMAN, thank you for joining us" or is it just me?
( Scene 23 )
It's not clear what Vecchio thinks the sneakers have to do with Francesca, but getting her out of town for her own safety doesn't seem like the dumbest idea he's ever had, does it. Although I don't see why any of Fraser's other neighbors couldn't notice the fuse box smoking before he did or deploy the fire extinguisher themselves. There's a lot of learned helplessness in that building, isn't there? And I'm surprised anyone would get in the elevator after what happened the last time something went wrong with the elevator—frankly I'm surprised the elevator even works. (Probably Fraser hired someone to fix it.)
Pears Hélène are pears poached in vanilla syrup and served with vanilla ice cream and covered with a hot chocolate sauce or hot fudge, which sounds so good I'm not even going to wonder why Francesca would be poaching pears in the oven rather than on top of the stove.
( Scene 24 )
Elaine the civilian aide doing some analysis, huh? I like it.
( Scene 25 )
I've seen Vecchio knock down a door without a warrant and I've seen him rough up a suspect a little too much.
( Scene 26 )
Nice reaction work from Marciano here, not feeling great about Angie being there.
( Scene 27 )
Some nice reaction work in this scene, too, when Laurie says "About Ray." in a way that makes it clear she has just realized there is nothing about this meeting that is in any way a date. (And from there on she's all business, which, good for her.)
( Scene 28 )
I'm a little less satisfied with this as a way to show there's another bug because I have never in my life met a telephone, wired or cellular, that wouldn't pick up the voice of someone sitting as close to the speaker as Fraser is sitting to Vecchio. But sure.
( Scene 29 )
Elaine, the civilian aide, doing investigative work. On the one hand (the hand that loves Elaine), huzzah! On the other hand (the hand that is concerned about police procedure and wishing our heroes didn't do whatever they damn pleased just because they're our heroes), hmm. (I mean, at least she's actually employed by the police department in question; likewise, at least Fraser is actually a sworn law enforcement officer. Neither of these things is true of some anthropology grad students I could name.)
( Scene 30 )
This is a nice scene for Marciano; he does a great job showing us a Vecchio who's afraid he might be in over his head. So I'm just going to be businesslike about a couple of things:
- Dayton and Akron are not connected by railroad, but they're 195 miles apart on the interstate, so if there were trains, a train leaving Akron at 1:00 p.m. doing 40mph will have traveled 40 miles by the time the train leaves Dayton at 2:00 p.m. doing 60mph; so they're 155 miles apart at 2:00 p.m., 55 miles apart at 3:00 p.m., and five miles apart at 3:30, which means they'd meet at 3:33 p.m., 122 miles southwest of Akron.
- I think Fraser is being inappropriately cavalier about the possible effects Carver's attacks on Vecchio might have had on the kids at the park, the people on the bus, and his neighbors who were stuck in the elevator—to say nothing of Will Kelly, who actually was actually hurt. Perhaps by "no one has been hurt" he means "no one has been hurt in any long-term physical way" or "no one has been killed." But I'm sorry to hear he thinks no harm has been done.
- Apparently when they find the toy car they just go ahead and stop looking for the other bug?
And then I will be not at all businesslike about one more thing: So the Riviera was a '71 in season 1 and a '72 in "One Good Man" and now it's back to being a '71 again? DOES THIS SHOW HAVE NO BIBLE?!
( Scene 31 )
"You're just discovering this now" isn't a great way for Vecchio to react to the news that the evidence was planted. Maybe a little incredulity about the assertion itself wouldn't go amiss.
( Scene 32 )
These are close enough closeups that I am once again appreciating the makeup and wardrobe departments' work on Fraser but also, this time, beginning to doubt that that old man's hair is really his. Anyone else think Kelly's grey hair is a rug?
( Scene 33 )
This scene's nice reaction is from Welsh, who gives a good "wtf" face when Vecchio says "No," which tells me what he meant was "I try to help you out, feeding you lines like 'you were in the habit of stopping home in the middle of the day,' and this is what you give me?!" Nice work, Starr.
( Scene 34 )
Is the whole reason we needed Ange in "One Good Man" to set up her presence in this episode? Is she Chekov's Ex?
Are Welsh and Fraser (and Francesca, probably) the only people in this whole episode who don't think Vecchio would have planted evidence?
( Scene 35 )
The music cue when Fraser first finds the twine reminds me very strongly of "Victoria's Secret," which I suppose is appropriate because we're being encouraged to believe that Carver has done something to Diefenbaker; the way the music goes wibbly-wobbly when Fraser stands up is a nice heads-up that in fact something is happening to him.
( Scene 36 )
I like Huey a lot in this scene. It's only a couple of lines but it's teamwork, which, huzzah.
But. Once in a blue moon, there is a split second of a shot that I wish I could get in a poster. Almost my whole life, for instance, I've had a very special place in my heart for the moment in The Princess Bride (1987) where Cary Elwes as Westley has finished hauling himself to his feet but right before he raises his sword to point it at Chris Sarandon as Prince Humperdinck. Likewise, I adore the moment in The Truman Show (1998) where Jim Carrey as Truman has run his little boat into the horizon and he's taken a moment to realize what that means and he sobs against the sky. (It's another example of a terrific performance by the back of someone's head.) In Strictly Ballroom, it's the way Paul Mercurio as Scott looks at Tara Morice as Fran after he swoops in on his knees, while he's on his way to standing up in front of her.
I feel that way about Marciano as Vecchio here. I like the whole moment, which is why I giffed it, but the real killer is the point where he looks up at the camera but before he raises his eyebrows. On my DVD it's 40:42. I swoon.
( Scene 37 )
There is a tiny instant of Fraser looking behind Vecchio out the window before he says "What if he wasn't the only one to hear it" that nicely compensates for the fact that Fraser couldn't possibly have known this was Vecchio's plan. Good work! I don't know how Vecchio had the time to get Welsh and the prosecutors to come with him (or two minutes behind him, along with all these uniforms) to the junkyard, but Fraser definitely can't have known they were all there, and I extremely appreciate that they had him look around and see something that clued him in.
( Scene 38 )
This is a fun little scene, except . . . we all knew the car was bugged, including Fraser, because he was there when they realized there was a second bug and he was there when they stopped looking for it. Right? Have another look at scene 30. Am I understanding that completely wrong?
If it had ended here, I would buy this episode as a series finale. I like that while Fraser does figure some stuff out, so he's not completely useless, it's Vecchio who does the detective work that actually solves the case and, crucially, rescues Fraser (who has not previously needed rescuing). That's good stuff. And wrapping it up with Vecchio continuing not to give a shit when the trains will intersect is nice. Meanwhile,
resonant points out that this episode is a nice counterpoint to the pilot: Vecchio is convinced of Carver's guilt and he can't persuade anybody else that the guy is dirty, just like Fraser with Gerrard in the pilot, but because Vecchio has support and is not forced to be the lone genius, he does get his man. (Thanks for that observation, res.)
( Scene 39 )
At first I thought it was a matchbox ambulance, and I didn't get it; but it doesn't have the blue star of life on it, so I'm pretty sure it's a transport van. And I think what Carver is supposed to understand from Vecchio is something like "Even if I have to take you there myself." (Or, in an early-2020s meme, "Tell Carver. I want him to know it was me.")
Cumulative body count: 24
Red uniform: Not when he goes to meet Kelly on his own, and therefore not when he's drugged and abducted, but otherwise the whole episode