return to Due South: season 2 episode 17 "Red, White, or Blue"

Red, White or Blue
air date May 23, 1996

Here's another one that badly needs a serial comma.

( Scene 1 )

It's not a bad "previously on," although it shows a lot of things well out of the order they occurred in.

( Scene 2 )

I get sort of a Mycroft Holmes vibe from the brother, or specifically from the differences in demeanor between the brother and Randal Bolt. Meanwhile, "You pickled my dogs" feels like the sort of line that someone would come up with if it hadn't been scripted and the instruction was "Say something traumatic from your past, something totally absurd about how evil this dude was and is." I am strongly reminded of the "herring war" scene from Golden Girls:

DOROTHY: Oh, girls, let's face facts. The three of us just can't agree on anything. I mean, it is obvious we were not meant to live together.
BLANCHE: I hate to agree with you, but I think you're right.
ROSE: I think so, too. In fact, I know so. This is exactly what happened during the Great Herring War.
BLANCHE: The Great Herring War?
ROSE: Yes! Between the Lindstroms and the Johanssens.
DOROTHY: Oh, that Great Herring War.
ROSE: The two families controlled the most fertile herring waters off the coast of Norway, so naturally it seemed like it would be in their best interest to band together. Boy, was that a mistake! You see, they couldn't agree on what to do with the herring.
DOROTHY: Oh, well, that's understandable. I mean, the possibilities are overwhelming.
ROSE: Exactly! The Johanssens wanted to pickle the herring, and the Lindstroms wanted to train them for the circus.

The audience laughs. Bea Arthur as Dorothy and Rue McClanahan as Blanche hang in there.

BLANCHE: Weren't they kinda hard to see riding on the elephants?

At this point Bea Arthur starts to chuckle.

ROSE: Oh, not that kind of circus. A herring circus. Sort of like Sea World. [Rue McClanahan starts to laugh and hangs her head.] Only smaller. Much, much smaller. But bigger than a flea circus.
BLANCHE: Mm-hmm.
DOROTHY: Ah, tell me, Rose, um — [she chuckles helplessly] — did they ever shoot a herring out of a cannon? [She bites her lip.]

Betty White as Rose thinks about this. Rue McClanahan is covering her eyes to try to stop laughing. Bea Arthur puts a hand on Rue McClanahan's arm and turns her own face away from Betty White and the audience to try to get a grip on herself. Betty White remains stone cold.

ROSE: Only once. [Rue McClanahan guffaws. Bea Arthur looks back at her, incredulous.] But they shot him into a tree. [Rue McClanahan gasps and laughs even harder. She puts her head down on the table.] After that, no other herring would do it. [Rue McClanahan and Bea Arthur give up and throw back their heads and laugh.]
BLANCHE: You're making this up!
ROSE: I am not! My grandfather told me that story! [Rue McClanahan and Bea Arthur are beginning to pull themselves together. Betty White has not cracked.] 'Course, he also used to call me by my sister's name. [Rue McClanahan laughs. Rose laughs a little, remembering her grandfather.] And sometimes he'd wear his underwear on the outside of his pants. [Bea Arthur is done for. She slaps the table and puts her head down. Rue McClanahan pounds the table with her fists.] I guess he wasn't a very reliable source!

Rue McClanahan shakes her head. Rose chuckles fondly. Bea Arthur sits up, recovering. Rue McClanahan catches her breath.

Legend has it that Betty White improvised that herring circus stuff, although the cinematographer Tweeted pictures (which I have also saved and can reupload in case the collapse of Twitter becomes complete) that seem to show it was all in the script. Still, I maintain there's a difference between "DOROTHY LAUGHS" and "Bea Arthur can't look at the audience or she'll break up completely" and between "BLANCHE LAUGHS" and "Rue McClanahan is in tears and has to take a beat to recover before she can say her next line."

Anyway, it looks like Francis is bad news, huh?, and he and these younger cousins, Vernon and Gabe, are planning something nefarious for Fraser and Vecchio on the day of Randal Bolt's trial.

Credits roll.

Paul Gross
David Marciano
Beau Starr
Tony Craig
Catherine Bruhier

(plus Lincoln the dog)

Camilla Scott, Kenneth Welsh, Raye Birk, Alex Carter, Gary Reineke

( Scene 3 )

The kiss is more compelling in the flashback than I thought it was in the moment, so that's some good editing, I suppose. The main thing I get from this scene is that that is one Jackie Kennedy pink suit Thatcher is wearing, what's up? This is the first time we've seen her wear a color except when she was in uniform, and it's a soft one at that. (It's actually a paler pink than the famous bouclé Chanel that Jackie was wearing when JFK was shot, but tell me you don't see a dark-haired woman in a pink skirt suit and make mental connections.)

( Scene 4 )

This is nice. It's a distillation down to the essence of the difference between Canadians and Americans. Vecchio and Fraser played approximately equal roles in stopping the train and averting the disaster, so it's not like Vecchio is pretending to have done something he didn't do, but Fraser's instinct is not to understand why this is a news story about him, and Vecchio's is to say "yeah, of course I'm awesome."

( Scene 5 )

Hey, the Guardian is apparently where Mackenzie King works, although it sure seemed like she was writing for a newspaper rather than a magazine.

We haven't read the article, of course, but I guess it's safe to assume it doesn't mention Vecchio? Meaning Fraser is doing the not-just-about-me of it all in the wrong way. Presumably he's trying to talk about the whole event as little as possible in his attempt to avoid currying favor with the press, and because he's talking about it as little as possible, he's not mentioning Vecchio at all. Where what he could be doing is saying something like "I did what anyone in my position would have done, and I wasn't alone, because Detective Vecchio and Sergeant Frobisher and Inspector Thatcher all made contributions that were at least as essential as mine if not more so."

It's not really fair of Vecchio to be angry at Fraser for the fact that the press wants to talk to him rather than to both of them, any more than it was fair of Dan Rydell to be angry at Casey McCall in "Celebrities" and "It Can't Rain at Indian Wells" for being 92nd on the list of the 100 most influential people in sports when he wasn't on it at all. Or, to take a real-world example of doing it properly, as I recall every profile I read of Captain Sullenberger after that time the plane had to land in the river, when the press tried to make him the sole hero of the piece he always said No, but the whole crew.

Doesn't this seem like much too soon for Bolt to be going to trial? I know a speedy trial is a constitutional guarantee, but it's been like five weeks. I think it usually, maybe always, takes longer than that. I was recently summoned for jury duty in a case where the alleged crime had been committed in the autumn (I can't remember the exact month) of 2020, a solid two years before the jury was being seated. Granted there was a pandemic backlog from when trials weren't being held in person for a wee while, so maybe if everything had been moving more smoothly that whole time we'd have been doing our voir dire more like, what, six or eight months after the incident? (Mind you I don't know when the defendant was arrested or indicted, which may not have been immediately.) Still. This is awfully quick.

( Scene 6 )

That is not why they have those automatic door opening buttons, of course. It is good if a person with a disability feels good about being able to do something without relying on "some do-gooder" to help them, but people's self-esteem is not what the ADA is about as much as people's actual access to places and services that other people take for granted. Like, Vecchio isn't wrong that there may well be people whom Fraser "helps" without asking first who may be thinking Thanks, Red, I've got this, please take your hands off my chair before you break it or knock me out of it etc., but the way he makes his point, "So they can feel good about themselves," is not any less patronizing than Fraser's assumption that people need help in the first place, and I'm disappointed in them both.

But I don't see what that has to do with Fraser's emotional reticence, which is what Vecchio pivots to when he starts talking about Geiger stabbing Fraser in the leg, and Fraser did admit that it hurt and he wasn't wild about it, didn't he? I mean we've seen him angry, we've seen him in love, we've seen him in lust, we've seen him afraid, and we've seen him cry. So what does Vecchio actually want from him here?

( Scene 7 )

In Fraser's defense, Francis Bolt has not actually asked a question.

( Scene 7 continues )

Aw, it's the Fraser and Diefenbaker origin story!

It's tough to do flashbacks when your actors have aged visibly even in the time you've been filming. Recall that in "One Good Man" they stuck Vecchio in a hat so they wouldn't have to deal with the fact that his hairstyle changed between season 1 and season 2 (or in fact with whether he was thinning as much "five years ago" as he is now or what). In this case, although he's aging well, it can't be denied that Paul Gross has got slightly fleshier in the face and jowls in season 2 than he was in season 1—which is no doubt why that whole flashback is shot in dim light and with him slumped against the wall of the mine shaft. Handy that for Diefenbaker they could just use a whole other dog.

Anyway, the number of the train as Francis relates it is 56023, but as Fraser read it over the radio I didn't hear a five at all; I could have been wrong about "two-Dakota," as Francis fairly clearly said "coded," but the rest of what Fraser said was "26023." Continuity note.

( Scene 8 )

I'm not sure how Fraser and Vecchio thought getting the judge to call a recess was going to work. Wouldn't Francis Bolt just have pressed the button and blown them all up at that point? (Also, though, wouldn't the Bolts themselves be killed in that explosion? So how would that be a win for them? Not for their cause: for them specifically?)

Tourette's is a syndrome characterized by rapid involuntary physical movements or vocal sounds. It was named for Georges Gilles de la Tourette, who first studied patients with similar conditions; I believe in modern times it is among those "disorders" being reanalyzed as neurodivergences and (hopefully) destigmatized.

( Scene 9 )

The judge, 12 jurors, Fraser, Vecchio, that's 15, plus Bolt and Francis and their two cousins. So everyone who wasn't in that specific courtroom is out safely, which is pretty impressive. (Even the prosecutors got away. Even the actual security guards, who you'd think would have stuck around and tried to subdue the intruders? But I guess I'd think a lot of things.)

( Scene 10 )

You remember Paul Revere. "One if by land, two if by sea," and all that.

( Scene 11 )

I'm with Thatcher on Ford's use of "darling." Ugh. She does a nice eye-roll when he calls her a "girl" as well. What an asshole.

( Scene 12 )

As usual, Fraser is mostly correct, though (a) the inaccuracies in Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride" were deliberate choices rather than mistakes and it's not Longfellow's fault subsequent generations have apparently treated the damn thing as a historical text rather than a pro-Union propaganda instrument, which is what it was, and (b) it's not really important at this juncture, is it?, unless Fraser's only purpose is to stall for time, which I suppose it might be. Another question is, why would Fraser, a Canadian, be so well informed on details of American Revolution–era history and subsequent doggerel? I guess we can chalk it all up to growing up in the library, right? The guy is supposed to have read everything.

( Scene 13 )

I make either 13 or 15 noncombatants, depending how you're counting Fraser and Vecchio. Ford is apparently counting them and the judge as combatants rather than hostages, which . . . kind of bites, doesn't it?

( Scene 14 )

The thing about the colors of the flag is fine. Unofficial, but whatever. The main thing is that yet again Fraser is opening up emotionally at a time when he cannot look at Vecchio, because that's the only time he can do it. AUGH. Get this man into therapy, stat.

( Scene 15 )

She is ready to kill him and she should do it.

( Scene 16 )

I guess my question is, if they removed their heart rate monitors, wouldn't the combined readout have dropped to zero? Like, where were the sensors attached anyway? I suppose it's possible Francis applied them under their clothes and then re-dressed them while they were unconscious, but the monitors are just clipped to their jackets, so why not, you know. Disconnect them?

( Scene 17 )

The passage of time in this episode is puzzling to me. Fraser's question back in scene 9 about ordering a helicopter in 45 minutes if you were leaving in 15 is a good one; and how many minutes have gone by now? More than one, so I guess it's 14 minutes left of the original 45—so what did they do with the remaining half hour? Apparently that's when they were busy rigging the bombs to all the jury members? I don't know what Francis's 15-minute deadline was all about. Maybe this is one of those families where you have to tell someone you're leaving at 1:30 if you want to have a prayer of getting out of the house by 2:00.

( Scene 18 )

Wikipedia says the RCMP occasionally uses hand semaphore, so this scene isn't entirely implausible, but as best I can tell comparing Fraser and Thatcher's gyrations to the alphabet accompanying the articles on flag semaphore, they are mostly signaling Rs and Zs.

Fraser's initial signal looks to me like four letters: R J [I can't tell what the third one is meant to be] R. His question about the response team looks like R T R Z R U (maybe). Thatcher's response "Standing down" looks like R Z cancel R L R cancel N. Fraser's next signal "Do not activate" etc. looks like R Z ??? R J Z R. And so on. That's pretty much where I gave up trying to decipher the signals. Obviously his shrug at the end of "I have no idea. Do you?" is there for comic effect, but apparently so is the entire thing.

Thatcher is apparently over her confused attraction to Fraser, eh?

( Scene 19 )

It's not as if Fraser has never heard of bearer bonds before, Vecchio, hello. Maybe "It's like cash in hand" is a reminder for the audience rather than for Fraser.

( Scene 20 )

Did anyone else expect Francis to shoot Vernon on the spot? Just me?

( Scene 21 )

This guy is Chekov's Underling, apparently. (Where's Turnbull?)

( Scene 22 )

I have no idea if there is or isn't usually a puddle at the bottom of an elevator shaft, but I applaud Vecchio's telling Fraser to shut up and I am also very pleased that he apparently didn't take much convincing to cling to Fraser and slide down an elevator shaft in the first place, nor did Fraser bursting into flames faze him at all. I feel like Vecchio's growing.

( Scene 23 )

Thatcher continues to be unimpressed by the feds. And who can blame her?

( Scene 24 )

VECCHIO IS THE ONE TO OUTSMART THE BADDIES, AND FRASER DOESN'T GET IT UNTIL VECCHIO EXPLAINS. I love it. I will almost overlook the part where Vecchio indirectly called Fraser a self-centered creep who wants to see himself in the paper, which is vaguely internally consistent with Vecchio's feelings at the beginning of this episode but doesn't line up with the Fraser we've known for two years at all. (I guess we can answer the question of whether Vecchio is in love with Fraser in the negative at this point, though I’ll definitely take "I know that you are what you are and you can't help that.")

"No long division" is a bullshit thing to say when you'd only have been dividing by four, but never mind: I was right that Francis was going to screw over Vernon and Gabe, just not that he was going to kill them, I guess.

( Scene 25 )

Randal and Francis Bolt are right not to trust each other, of course. Something something honor among thieves.

( Scene 26 )

If Fraser answers one more question with a question, I am going to punch him in the face. Also, I no longer know what to make of his and Thatcher's feelings for each other.

This, maybe even more so than "The Duel," feels like a series finale, especially with the all-we've-been-through and love-this-city stuff here at the end. And yet we still have one more episode of season 2 to go (and at the time there was no season 3 in the offing). Multiple endings up in here a solid 15 years before Return of the King made it cool.

Cumulative body count: 24
Red uniform: The whole episode (less one sleeve at the end after it has burned away)

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