return to due South: season 3 episode 1 "Burning Down the House"

Burning Down the House
air date September 14, 1997

( Scene 1 )

That river was moving pretty fast; how did the rowboat not just knock Fraser's feet out from under him when he landed through it?

This is a new Diefenbaker. Looks wolfier than the old one, for my money.

( Scene 2 )

So this scene is obviously meant as a callback to the first time we met Fraser, when he was called on the carpet for risking his life and the Mounties' reputation to catch a guy who'd been "overfishing" to the tune of 4.5 tons by exploding ordinance and harvesting whole riverfuls of salmon with a backhoe. Fraser nor his relationship with usual RCMP methods have not changed, and here's a new boss-type person who apparently didn't get a memo about what to expect when Fraser was on his turf.

A punt, in this context, is a flat-bottomed boat propelled by pushing along the river bottom with a pole. Why such a vessel would have been involved in Fraser's pursuit of this "litterbug" is anybody's guess; they're used in shallow, slow-moving rivers and other calm waterways, which what we saw in scene 1 was not, but on the other hand, 1700 km is more than a thousand miles, so who knows. A thousand miles of wilderness could have had Fraser ranging over pretty much the whole Yukon and NWT (which in 1997 still included what is now Nunavut) west of the Hudson Bay.

Fun fact: Just north of the White Pass, under the W in that map, our villains would have found themselves in Fraser, YT.

Anyway, DES is diethylstilbestrol, a synthetic estrogen that turned out to be extremely dangerous and is no longer generally available (though Uncle Wiki doesn't say it's banned), and rotting chicken is one of the worst smells I know.

( Scene 3 )

So . . . something is up with Vecchio, then. (And with the whole precinct, right? Why is it dark and vacant like this? Aren't police stations normally staffed more or less around the clock?) Something Welsh knows about but that Vecchio can't tell Fraser, or at least can't tell him over the phone. 🤔

Credits roll.

Paul Gross
Callum Keith Rennie
Beau Starr
Camilla Scott
Tony Craig | Tom Melissis
Catherine Bruhier
and Gordon Pinsent as Fraser Sr.

(plus Draco the dog)

David Marciano, Ramona Milano, Dean McDermott, George Bloomfield, Neil Dainard, Diane Douglass, Vito Rezza

Okay so well. The credits are Quite Different, aren't they? For one thing, the music has been punched up a bit, with some extra percussion and a couple of waily electric guitar licks. For another thing, all the series regulars have these kind of scrolling head shots moving past their in-episode clip sequences, which doesn't suck but is a little dizzying. Camilla Scott as Thatcher and Gordon Pinsent as Bob Fraser have been promoted to series regular from their extremely recurring guest roles. Tony Craig as Huey has a new partner, evidently, and is sharing billing with the guy. And, most importantly, Marciano is out of the opening credits and listed here as first among guest performances, which one imagines viewers who had been tuning in after 15 months without their show must have met with a collective ?!!?. (Who the hell, they must have asked, is Callum Keith Rennie?)

( Scene 4 )

It's not the same building Fraser has been living in at all, but we're meant to understand that it is. All those establishing shots were apparently a Doylist way of saying to us "We're still in Chicago, honest! This is totally Chicago! Look at these el trains! In conclusion: Chicago." (h/t Cleolinda Jones on Troy (2004)) Because 15 months is a long time and we apparently don't have (or maybe even want) access to the same locations anymore. So here we are.

( Scene 5 )

So Fraser's apartment was at the end of a hallway, rather than having neighbors on both sides, and it was on the third floor, which would probably not be safe to walk around on after a fire of this severity and he likely wouldn't even be allowed up there. But never mind: We've already covered how this is totally Fraser's apartment—in conclusion: 3J—just the way we were required to accept that the guy with latex prosthetics and hanging upside down in Back to the Future part II (1989) was in conclusion: Crispin Glover. [handwave] You don't need to see this set's identification. Move along.

The fact that Bob and Caroline Fraser never spent more than four months together while they were married is pretty depressing, although I'll grudgingly admit that "Something good may come from it. It did for me" is a nice father-son moment. But what the hell were they doing in (or in fact north of) Clyde River? I mean, why not, I guess, right?, these are people who apparently moved around quite a bit (and whose parents subsequently moved to Alert for reasons that are anybody's guess).

( Scene 6 )

Some things to be aware of with reference to this scene: Lennon and McCartney refers, of course, to John Lennon and Paul McCartney, two of the Beatles, who wrote most of that band's songs. Leopold and Loeb were a couple of college students who kidnapped and murdered a kid in 1924 because they thought their "superior intellect" would allow them to get away with "the perfect crime." They were brought in for questioning a week later, the assholes. The Three Stooges were of course a trio; as my six-year-old would say, it's right there in their name. The sextant Fraser gives Huey looks for all the world like it's carved from balsa wood or Styrofoam rather than bone of any kind. We are still not re-recording dialogue to make it make sense ("What do you see, over and over, is this" should be "What you see" or "What you do see," but here we are.). Vecchio's badge was, let's not forget, a big five-pointed silver star with "DETECTIVE" across the top, "METROPOLITAN POLICE" across the middle, and "93026" at the bottom; this guy's badge is a big silver five-pointed star, but alas none of the other details are visible. And gaslighting is what is happening to Fraser.

Whoever The Hell This Guy Is is obviously not Ray Vecchio, but everyone seems to be agreeing to pretend he is. Why? And Fraser is taking it pretty calmly? I'm not sure how I'd react if someone pretending to be my best friend insisted that I was the one making shit up for insisting he was no one of the sort. I did have a nightmare once in which, among other things, my husband didn't know me, and it was awful. So maybe this scene is hitting me harder than it's meant to. There is a slight clue in Welsh saying "We've got to talk" and Whoever The Hell This Guy Is saying "You talked to Welsh, right?" Fraser says he has, although he hasn't, really, has he; that will no doubt explain what on earth is going on here. But Fraser has, as we know, had more than his share of concussions during the course of his adult life, so what do I know, maybe the traumatic brain injuries have finally caught up with him.

The "trail of the killers of my father" stuff is a nice way of bringing viewers up to speed who haven't been with the show this whole time. It reminds me of one of my favorite meta bits from Wodehouse, toward the beginning of The Code of the Woosters:

A thing I never know, when I'm starting out to tell a story about a chap I've told a story about before, is how much explanation to bung in at the outset. It's a problem you've got to look at from every angle. I mean to say, in the present case, if I take it for granted that my public knows all about Gussie Fink-Nottle and just breeze ahead, those publicans who weren't hanging on my lips the first time are apt to be fogged. Whereas, if before kicking off I give about eight volumes of the man's life and history, other bimbos who were so hanging will stifle yawns and murmur 'Old stuff. Get on with it.' I suppose the only thing to do is to put the salient facts as briefly as possible in the possession of the first gang, waving an apologetic hand at the second gang the while, to indicate that they had better let their attention wander for a minute or two and that I will be with them shortly.

( Scene 7 )

We're calling back to the first meeting between Vecchio and Diefenbaker, of course, with the "getting intimate" stuff. I appreciate that. I also appreciate "Ray Vecchio would," as a statement of Fraser's loyalty to his friend. (In fact if I'd directed this episode I'd have hit it just a little harder; I know Fraser is in a rush to get to the house, but this line reading feels almost too quick, edging perilously close to offhand.) The only thing is . . . I'm not sure Fraser is right? Not exactly. I don't mean Vecchio wouldn't have risked his life in service to others. He obviously did so not a few times in the first two seasons of this show. But Vecchio's life-endangering escapades were mainly situations Fraser got him into, right? Situations that may not actually have needed to be potentially fatal. We definitely never saw him run into a burning building, for example, though I do agree he'd have done so to save his own family, sure. Bottom line, I think what Fraser means is "Ray Vecchio would (if I asked him to)," which is differently sweet.

The burning house does appear to be the latter of the two Vecchio homes we've seen before, though it is not literally at 2926 N Octavia (which doesn't seem to be a real address). And code 13 is "major disaster activation," which I guess I'll allow in this case (I mean, I assume the writers asked someone and that's the correct code for "officer's house is on fire").

( Scene 8 )

I'm enjoying the Fraser-and-Bob dynamic. I especially enjoy "It's hot. Is this my final posting?" I do like that Fraser is admitting out loud that he knows perfectly well This Guy isn't Ray Vecchio, though here's his subconscious (which he points out may be delusional) suggesting he'd better gather actual evidence in case he can't believe his own lying eyes.

Also, observe Francesca being more competent than Tony. \o/

( Scene 9 )

Okay, Fraser probably saved those fish because he assumed they belonged to Tony and Maria's children, which means Diefenbaker just casually ate some kids' pets. Oh dear.

The reason we have saved only Francesca and Tony is surely because the actresses who played Maria and Mrs. Vecchio were not available, right? (In conclusion: etc.)

( Scene 10 )

VICTORIA METCALF!

Okay, I'm sorry to raise my voice, but if they're considering old cases where someone might have a motive for fucking shit up today, is there a particular reason we are not mentioning Victoria, who if I'm thinking correctly is the only one who got away? . . . The only suspect I'd call an arsonist is William Porter, but he's not mad at them and anyway he's in federal prison for 10 years; the only one besides Victoria who I think would be mean or mad enough would be Frank Zuko, but he too is probably downstate for a long while.

Wait, though, there are other baddies (or "baddies") who don't go to prison at the end of their respective episodes. We don't actually know what's become of Mark Smithbauer (nor Turk Broda? does he go to prison?), but he doesn't seem like a burning-Fraser's-apartment-down type. You know who does, though? John Taylor, that's who. Since we're bringing up old cases, I mean to say. That's totally who I'd expect to light up both Fraser's building (for the insurance) and Vecchio's house (because it was at least partly Vecchio's fault he couldn't go forward with his building plans). It's fine that they ultimately went with an apocryphal case. I'm just saying, there were better back-catalogue options they could have referred to than Herb for heaven's sake Colling.

There does not seem to be (or ever to have been) any such place as the Evanston Institution for the Criminally Insane. Best I can come up with is that the Peoria State Hospital was, between 1902 and 1907, called the Illinois Hospital for the Incurable Insane (note the adjective + substantive adjective rather than adverb + adjective; regrettable but certainly of its time).

Three other things:

1. Fraser (that is, Paul Gross) says "thermonucular" both times he should say "thermonuclear," and it has bothered me since the very first time I saw this show twenty-mumble years ago. See above re: doing ADR until the words come out of the actors' mouths right. GAH.
2. Where did he get those calipers?
3. Leslie Nielsen was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2002.

( Scene 11 )

Fraser didn't sign in. Why doesn't that bother the guard?

( Scene 12 )

Whoever The Hell This Guy Is is evidently quite clever in a lot of ways, no? For example, he brings the lighter into the conversation to distract Motherwell so he can confuse him into thinking he probably is the same guy who arrested him. It's a shitty mind game to play, and the only reason we like it at all is that the cops on this show are our heroes, which, not for the first time, oof, why do we have to love a cop show? And here's Fraser, the one guy who is absolutely sodden with principle, standing there not interfering while Whoever The Hell This Guy Is (a) plays shitty mind games with Motherwell and (b) threatens him with at least two kinds of excessive force. UGH.

I like This Guy's use of "I don't know art, but I know what I like."

Greta Garbo was a famously introverted movie star of the 1920s and 30s. She is remembered for saying "I vant to be alone," but this is a line from Grand Hotel (1932); still, in a 1928 interview, she said "As early as I can remember, I have wanted to be alone. I detest crowds, don't like many people," and can't an awful lot of us sympathize with that?

( Scene 13 )

Let the record show that at 30:02 on the DVD, Constable Benton Fraser called Whoever The Hell This Guy Is "Ray."

( Scene 14 )

The purpose of Turnbull is to show Fraser how the rest of the world sees him, right?

( Scene 15 )

Thatcher has a very severe, no-nonsense short haircut. It's not that it doesn't suit her, but it definitely changes her face, doesn't it. I like that she can obviously tell Whoever The Hell This Guy Is isn't Ray Vecchio but she simply doesn't give a shit—if that's the game he wants to play, fine, whatever.

( Scene 16 )

They get onto the freeway in the exact shot from "The Duel" in which Fraser and Vecchio hurried back to the city from Will Kelly's place. I'm just saying.

Also, after feeding him the window putty, why doesn't Fraser give Whoever The Hell This Guy Is the actual sandwich? There were two halves, and he only put window putty in one of them.

( Scene 17 )

That's another 1971 Riviera destroyed. What are we up to, three of them now?

Okay, first of all, don't you think if they took the car to a park, any children and family pets would vacate the park as quickly as possible? Meanwhile, Fraser says 41,786 traffic fatalities per year, which is in the ballpark for the late 1990s, so look at that, the writers' room doing some research. (I think they could be excused for running that red light, though, because a burning car is probably more dangerous. Just guessing.) They go through the car wash way too fast, and all in all the parking-lot-park-car-wash thing is one more callback to the where-shall-we-crash-this-bus scene in "The Duel," isn't it.

Is Fraser really so strong that he can keep This Guy's foot off the brake with his hands from that angle? My right leg is stronger than a lot of people's arms, I mean to say, especially when the brake pedal is in front of me and I could stand on it and a person trying to pull me off it would have to be reaching over and leaning down and whatnot. I'm just saying the physics of the situation seem to be on This Guy's side. But let's not pretend that "Do not touch my inner thigh or calf" didn't set a hundred thousand ships afloat (the ones that hadn't already been launched by "We have a lot of fun, don't we, you and I?"). 😄

Fraser and Whoever The Hell This Guy Is have a nice moment agreeing that they're pleased to have met. We've heard the new guy admit he's not who Fraser thinks (or, I guess, not who he says he is, because Fraser hasn't thought he was Vecchio for even a split second), but Fraser hasn't heard that, and after that only-semi-audible monologue, the new guy is still insisting that he's Ray. What's that all about?

And the wrapup of the peril is nice, too—having said twice that he doesn't risk his life for anybody, the new guy doesn't even hesitate before putting his body between Fraser and a loaded gun, and it turns out he's wearing a bulletproof vest, but Fraser doesn't know that. So when he goes and detains Greta Garbo, he thinks the new guy has really been shot, and when he's genuinely afraid for him, he does call him Ray. (That would have been even more meaningful if he hadn't done so in scene 13, but we're probably not supposed to have noticed that.)

I am also charmed by the fact that when the car lands in the lake, it is surrounded by a flotilla of rubber ducks, which you will never convince me is not a nod to the 1992 Friendly Floatees spill. Delightful.

( Scene 18 )

Fraser is in mufti here—blue jeans and hiking boots, a plaid flannel shirt we probably haven't seen before, and a brown leather jacket, and I'm glad to see that sort of outfit back again, I tell you what. However: Where did it come from? His apartment burned down and his luggage was in the trunk of the car. That uniform he was wearing when he got out of the lake should be the only clothes he's got.

Poor Fraser, going to all that trouble to prove that this guy can't possibly be Ray Vecchio and then having Welsh say (basically) "Don't be ridiculous." Shifting from "It's always been this way" to "Of course this is brand-new" that fast will leave your transmission in a tangled mess on the road, innit. (I like that the bottom line is to do with the relative sizes of their noses, given Vecchio's known recall of every nose he's ever seen.) But at least we have a Watsonian explanation now: Vecchio is "deep undercover with the Mob." Okay. The fact that the entire 27th precinct and the entire Vecchio family is in on it means it's not the most covert operation anyone's ever heard of, but sure, these are people who will successfully be able to pull the wool over the eyes of the entire city of Chicago, sure, why not.

The Doylist explanation is, it had been close to a year and a half and Marciano had moved on.

This is an odd sort of semi-condition between being a continuation of the old show and being a new show that happens to have the same name—hence the changing of all the sets and locations and the non-unanimous availability of the cast. Recasting a main role can go a few different ways. Most famously, when William Hartnell, the original Doctor Who, became too ill to continue playing the part, the writers invented the concept of regeneration and forged on ahead barely missing a beat. More usually, characters are written out and replaced with new ones when the original actors want to or are required to leave (see, e.g., Shelley Long to the recently departed Kirstie Alley in Cheers; McLean Stevenson, Larry Linville, and Wayne Rogers to Harry Morgan, David Ogden Stiers, and Mike Farrell in M*A*S*H; Charlie Sheen to Ashton Kutcher in Two and a Half Men) or the actors are replaced but the characters—main and less so—are not (see, e.g., Aunt Viv on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air; Laurie Forman on That '70s Show; Carol on Friends; half the cast of most daytime soap operas; and many, many others, such as Mackenzie King and Apparently Eric on this very due South as well as Becky on Roseanne, who, when the replacement actress in turn left the show and the original actress returned, was greeted by her mother with an indignant "Where the hell have you been?"). This show has kind of done both, in a way.

( Scene 19 )

This episode aired in September 1997. Bob Fraser died in either August (and probably August 1993 at that, because the pilot aired in April 1994) or (apparently, though it makes less sense to me) February 1994. So he has been dead for between three and four years, and evidently more like three and a half. I'm just saying.

The postcard is addressed to Const. B. Fraser, care of Dist. 27, 1219 W. Maxwell St., Chicago, Illinois 60607, an address that (unsurprisingly) also seems not quite to exist.

Anyway, saying "cold out here heat me up" is a message is a little silly, because it's written on a postcard, bro, of course it's a message—but we know what he means, I guess, he means it's a coded message. The special effect of the picture vanishing in the heat (presumably to reappear again when it cools off?) is . . . not great? But it's not completely out of nowhere. Of course I'd expect that kind of heat-sensitive thing to respond to, like, the warmth of your hand or something—that is, Fraser could have pressed his hand over the picture of the mountain, or breathed on it, and the picture of him and Vecchio would have appeared. Passing a lighter underneath it isn't how that kind of thing works at all? Plus, didn't Whoever The Hell This Guy Is leave his lighter with Motherwell? Maybe this prop wasn't Chekov's Lighter, but as I don't think the lighter was necessary at all, the fact that its presence on the desk is unexplained bothers me a little.

Folks invested in the question of whether Fraser is in love with Vecchio or vice versa would almost certainly have preferred "cold out here warm me up," wouldn't they? But either way, what just happened at the end of the episode was basically that Fraser asked the new guy out on a date, right? I mean, no, what he did was make a peace offering. He invited him to get dinner so they can get to know each other because they're supposed to be convincing the whole world that they've been best friends and bros for two years, and he did so after a whole episode's worth of calling him a lying liar, so no wonder the new guy was pleased and relieved. (But you can see it as asking the guy out on a date, too. You don't even have to squint that hard.)

Cumulative body count: 24
Red uniform: As soon as he returns to Chicago from vacation, and for the rest of the episode until he changes into civvies after getting drenched in the lake

Previous | Index of annotated transcripts | Next