return to due South: season 3 episode 2 "Eclipse"

Eclipse
air date September 21, 1997

( Scene 1 )

Always nice to get a visit from IA. I think the last time we saw them was when Victoria had passed Fraser those stolen bills. (I am reminded that they appeared in "The Duel," but they just lurked in the back of the room and never said anything, so let's not count that appearance.)

( Scene 2 )

Oh, the things we are learning about the new guy. The striped underwear. The tattoo on his right arm. The pot soaking in the sink. The instant coffee (ugh) with candy in it. (I'd have made a face too.) The utter impatience with Welsh's messages on his machine. (Aww, remember when we had answering machines where you could hear the message as someone was leaving it? Hell, remember when we had phones?) The hooded-eyed stare into the mirror. His apartment has a galley kitchen with a sort of breakfast bar rather than a wall, so that's a floor plan I can appreciate. There's a kind of Tiffany-style pool-hall stained glass shade ("BILLIARDS") on the hanging lamp above the bar, a couple of bar towels on it (one of which lies under the phone), and a shutter that he could pull in to close off the kitchen. Avocado fridge-freezer, my beloved. Hardly any cabinets, and what cabinets there are are frontless. In the rest of the apartment we've got a fishtank, a wall clock with a neon rim, a midcentury club chair and ottoman, a bicycle hanging from the ceiling, and some dusty hardwood floors. Steam heat, apparently (isn't that a radiator over there while he's filling the bag)?

The label on the Scotch says "Glen []lanach," which is (unsurprisingly) fictitious.

. . . We're bringing some eavesdropping gear to a funeral, perhaps? That's a bit of a stumper.

There was a solar eclipse on September 6, 1997, but it was not visible in North America. (At least this fictitious eclipse seems to be a little less made-up than the one in Little Shop of Horrors, no? ". . . when suddenly, and without warning, there was this ♫ total eclipse of the sun! ♫")

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)

Jackie Burroughs, Diego Matamoros, Alan Peterson, Maria Vacratsis, Walter Alza

( Scene 3 )

Bluffing it out with Internal Affairs is sure to go well. Excellent plan, Lieutenant.

This closet is bigger than the season 1 closet, for sure.

( Scene 4 )

If bobbing for trout is not a traditional Inuit game, then how is a party that features bobbing for trout a traditional Yukon celebration? I ask you.

( Scene 5 )

The Isle of Mull is an island, rather than a distillery, but they do distill whiskies there. Here in 2023, I see some Mull singles at 15 years and older starting at about $125. Even at 1997 prices ($125 today would have been about $67 then, and I feel terrible about that), that's a pretty good trade up from a $10 bribe.

( Scene 6 )

It's not clear who's in the black and white picture. A man and a woman, and the man might be "Ray Vecchio," but it could be someone else. There's a little box fan on top of the desk also. A foot locker over next the rug Diefenbaker turned over. Bookshelf with hand-labeled VHS tapes on it. (This is already more than we ever saw of Vecchio's house.)

A part of me wishes they'd made this apartment 310 instead of 309, on account of Fraser's old apartment was 3J.

( Scene 7 )

The funeral surveillance thing is not any clearer than it was before.

( Scene 8 )

We've seen the Guardian before; I guess the weekly in "Red, White, or Blue" must have been the daily paper's weekend magazine?

Looks like you can see through to the bedroom behind the landlady. There's a poster on the wall over the headboard: "We give LUCKY green stamps," though why this ersatz "Ray Vecchio" should decorate his apartment with Canadiana is unclear to me.

( Scene 9 )

I like this scene. It's kind of back to the very freak-sympathetic old school style of season 1.

( Scene 10 )

The brawling butlers are funny, a nice harmony with "elves, not Elvis," but my main question is: One month before what now? Has Elaine been in the police academy this whole time?! (I guess they teased it in "The Duel," not that we knew that was what they were doing at the time.)

( Scene 11 )

Okay, first of all, there is a weeping angel in the crypt, I repeat, THERE IS A WEEPING ANGEL IN THE CRYPT.

There doesn't seem to be a Skull Rapids in Canada; the only one I could find is a section of Westwater Canyon on the Colorado River east of Cisco, UT. It's not a shock to us that Fraser will go off on a one-time-in-the-middle-of-nowhere tangent, but this new guy doesn't know him yet, so "are you unhinged" is a perfectly fair question for him to ask. But it's a little disappointing that he's abandoning the Ray Vecchio ruse so soon. Is this crypt (full of recording equipment) really a safe place to be admitting that you're not who everyone has agreed to pretend you are? Why not take a birthday present from a guy's best friend for the guy's own safety? Jesus.

The "don't even look like him" / "could have had plastic surgery" callback is cute, but for my money the best part of this scene is Fraser's genuine surprise when he says "Your name is Stanley Kowalski?" Like: Yes, it is a bit of a surprise that a guy born after 1951 would be named Stanley Kowalski, because that name is so inextricably linked with (the 1948 play and its 1951 film adaptation) A Streetcar Named Desire and Marlon Brando's performance in it. People do name their kids after fictional characters—hi to everyone named Willow, Arwen, Daenerys, and even Jessica—but Stanley is not a particularly good guy, is he, so why a family named Kowalski would look at Streetcar and decide it's a good idea to name their son Stanley is a mystery to me. But Ray Kowalski's dad was a Brando fan, apparently. Brando (1924–2004) was a big star in the 1940s and 50s, so if you're a new dad in (assuming Ray Kowalski and Ray Vecchio and Benton Fraser are roughly the same age) the early 1960s, naming your kid after Brando or one of his characters might not be a huge reach . . . and if your name is already Kowalski, it's true the name "Stanley" is right there . . . but oof. (Steve McQueen (1930–1980) (whom I always have to remind myself was not James Dean) was a big star in the 1960s and 70s, so it's not a surprise that the son of a Brando fan would have a different preference.)

(On the other hand, Fraser's boss's name is Margaret Thatcher, so you'd think he'd be hard to surprise by now.)

But here's the thing: Why is all of this news to Fraser here in the crypt? What did he and the new guy talk about on their dinner date last week?

( Scene 12 )

( Scene 13 )

If a White guy from IA threatens to withhold opportunities for advancement unless you provide false testimony against a colleague, what's a woman recruit of color to do? No wonder Elaine looks nervous at the end of this scene.

( Scene 14 )

🤮

( Scene 14 continues )

I knew we were going to like this guy.

( Scene 14 continues to continue )

The Toronto Blue Jays won the World Series in 1992 and 1993. As of 2022, these remain the only World Series won by teams not based in the United States.

• There have been 118 World Series: 1903, 1905–1993, and 1995–2022.
• From 1903 to 1968 there were no non–U.S. teams in Major League Baseball; from 1969 to 1976 there was one; from 1977 to 2004 there were two; and since 2005 there has been one.
  • From 1903 to 1961 there were 16 teams in the league.
  • In 1961 there were 18 teams.
  • From 1962 there were 20 teams.
  • From 1969 there were 24 teams.
  • From 1977 there were 26 teams.
  • From 1993 there were 28 teams.
  • Since 1998 there have been 30 teams.
• So assuming (arguendo, as they say) that each team has exactly equal odds of winning the World Series each year, in 1903–60 each team had a 6.3% chance of winning each year and a 356% expectation of winning once in that period; in 1961, each team had a 5.6% chance of winning; from 1962–68, each team had a 5% chance of winning each year and a 35% expectation of winning once in that period; and so on.
• That is, if the league had two teams, each team would have a 50% chance of winning each year, and it would (statistically) take two years for each team to win the championship, so after two years, each team "should" have won once.
• But from 1903 to 1968 the odds of a Canadian team winning did not exist, right, that's a divide-by-zero error. For the purpose of this rabbit hole, we're actually only interested in World Series from 1969 onwards.
• From 1969 to 1976 inclusive 24 teams, one of which was Canadian, were eligible to win each of eight World Series. Eight available championships, 24 teams, even if a different team wins every year, 16 of them are still going to be winless at the beginning of year nine, right? So the expectation of any given team—for our purposes, specifically the Canadian one—winning one of those World Series was (1/24) * 8, or 33%.
• From 1977 to 1992 inclusive 26 teams, two of which were Canadian, were eligible to win each of 16 World Series. So the expectation of a Canadian team winning one of those World Series was ((1/26) * 16) * 2, or 123%.
• From 1993 to 1997 inclusive 28 teams, two of which were Canadian, were eligible to win each of four World Series (because there wasn't one in 1994), so etc. etc. ((1/28) * 4) * 2 = 29%.
• From 1998 to 2004 inclusive 30 teams, two of which were Canadian, were eligible to win each of seven World Series, ((1/30) * 7) * 2 = 46%.
• From 2005 to 2022 inclusive 30 teams, one of which is Canadian, were eligible to win each of 18 World Series, (1/30) * 18 = 60%.
• So in the history of there being Canadian teams in Major League Baseball, if every team had won an exactly equal share of World Series, Canadian teams "should" have won (this is where it gets tricky for me, combining the percentages, but I think I can do it) 8/24 + 32/26 + 8/28 + 14/30 + 18/30 = 2.92 of an available 54 World Series championships.
• If you want to do this as if we're in 1997, that's fine; lop off 18/30 and 14/30 and say from 1993–96 (because the World Series is held in October and we're only in September 1997 right now) blah blah 28 teams blah blah three World Series (because there wasn't one in 1994) blah blah etc., ((1/28) * 3) * 2) = 21%, so in the history of there being Canadian teams in Major League Baseball, if every team had won an exactly equal share of World Series, Canadian teams "should" have won 8/24 + 32/26 + 6/28 = 2.3 of an available 28 World Series championships.
• And they had actually won two of them.
• So Canadian teams have underperformed just a bit, haven't they, Constable?
• Is all I'm saying.

(Look, I'm originally from Cleveland, so I guess I'm just going to be mad about professional sports more or less forever.)

( Scene 15 )

Fraser asking the guys to step to the side so the detective can read them their rights is a callback to the bar scene in the pilot, which Fraser himself has already revisited and shown that he knows better now? But he's had a couple of head injuries since then so maybe he's forgotten all that.

Fraser doesn't want Kowalski to take the bad guys to the nearest station house; he wants him to take them to the 27th precinct. So he's already off-manual. Pbbthht. (I don't know what SOP field manual chapter 7 he was reading from in 1997. Since January 2022, the Chicago Police Department directive on field arrest procedures says "Members will transport an arrestee immediately to the appropriate Department facility and in a Department vehicle equipped with a protective divider or a squadrol, unless circumstances would make this unreasonable or impractical." So I could make a case for either Fraser or Kowalski being right.) He also can't count; by the time he said seven shots, Kowalski had clearly already fired nine. I don't know how many rounds are in a normal clip; there appears to be a range.

I'm not sure why we need the whole monologue of how to get an eagle feather, especially given that this dude isn't the partner Fraser was making the gift for. Dream catchers were very big in the 90s, weren't they. We weren't as collectively aware of cultural appropriation at that time as we are now, to say nothing of how we should have been.

Also, I'm not from Chicago so I can't evaluate the accuracy of Rennie's accent, but I'm fairly sure nobody born and raised in the state of Illinois would call his mother "Mum." It's okay to be Canadian, bro. There are a lot of you in this show.

Kowalski missing his target by 50m is pretty bad. That's 164 feet, getting close to 55 yards, half a football field. He'd have to be aiming in an actual opposite direction to miss that badly, wouldn't he? Let's assume Fraser is being hyperbolic. I do like Kowalski's glasses hanging off his ears down under his chin at the end of the scene.

( Scene 16 )

Even if Huey never liked Vecchio, he did always say (or at least agree with Gardino) that he was honest.

( Scene 17 )

Bacon did die in 1626, and he did write exactly that in Of Revenge. He goes on to say "Certainly, in taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior; for it is a prince's part to pardon" and "This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well." Put another way, (a) choosing not to take revenge is nobler than taking it, and (b) holding a grudge is like drinking poison and expecting the other guy to die. All very well, but Kowalski has some personal beef with Ellery and probably isn't in a mood to hear any of this right now.

I AM NOT A LAWYER, BUT: The statute of limitations is three, five, seven, or 10 years for most felonies in Illinois (with some crimes where the victim was under 18 having a period of 25 years from the victim reaching the age of 18 and some, like murder, having no limitations at all—but these are not relevant here). However, depending when Ellery left Illinois, he might actually still be subject to prosecution for a crime he committed in the 1970s, so Younger and Fraser should can it. If Ellery's statute of limitations was three years but he left Illinois and didn't come back before that three years was up, the clock stops until he returns. (source)

( Scene 18 )

I mean, okay, so the log shows 10 kilos. Hallett and Brandau haven't offered any evidence that nine of those kilos went missing, have they? They just keep saying "this says ten but there was only one" without any documentation, what the fuck?

( Scene 19 )

It's not a hundred percent clear what Younger is saying to Beard. I got "I told you" and "your head," but in between is tough to parse.

The full title of The Advancement of Learning is Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Human, and Novum Organum is the second part of the (not incomplete) Instauratio Magna, but never mind. Maybe Fraser's grandparents catalogued their Baconia differently.

( Scene 20 )

Okay this scene is a stumper. Couldn't Gladys have buried Henry in a lead-lined casket if lead was important? Has anyone else ever heard of "acorophobia"? My cursory research suggests "entomophobia" for fear of insects, which makes a lot more sense. Of course the internet is full of "did you mean acrophobia" and "did you mean agoraphobia," which I did not, but even insisting that it stop telling me about Greek ἄκρος "highest, topmost, at the extremity" and ἀγορά "market," the best I can find for ἄκορος is a type of sweet-smelling rush that was used to cover floors? Classicists are welcome to help me the fuck out here.

Anyway, I am also not interested in Gladys and Henry's sex life, and it's not really okay that she presumed to share that information so immediately upon meeting Fraser and Kowalski. (I was about to say "so soon after being introduced," but in fact the introductions are still incomplete!) And "it's a bit stiff," forsooth. And why doesn't Fraser put her down? Can't they look at her firearms certificate (by which I assume he means the permit for her gun) and then send her on her way? Why haul her back to the crypt with them? Also, are they just going to leave her gun? (There's a moment right before Kowalski re-holsters his gun where I suppose it's possible he's picking up her gun, but it's hard to tell for sure, because only part of one of his arms is visible. I guess let's assume that's what he was doing, because otherwise, Chekov's Random Handgun is just lying there loose in a cemetery, which can't be safe.)

( Scene 21 )

I don't think that tank is big enough for that fish; there's no enrichment in there for it; and what kind of job do you find on the back of a matchbook? Gig work, presumably?

( Scene 22 )

Hello?

( Scene 22 continues. )

HELLO.

( Scene 22 continues to continue. )

That was a lot.

These cigar smugglers remind me a lot of the cops at the end of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Am I the only one? You remember the guys:

     At the end of the gangway appeared a heavily armoured and space-suited figure waving a vicious Kill-O-Zap gun. "We don't want to shoot you, Beeblebrox!" shouted the figure.
     "Suits me fine!" shouted Zaphod back and dived down a wide gap between two data process units.
     The others swerved in behind him. "There are two of them," said Trillian. "We're cornered."
     They squeezed themselves down in an angle between a large computer data bank and the wall.
     They held their breath and waited.
     Suddenly the air exploded with energy bolts as both the cops opened fire on them simultaneously.
     "Hey, they're shooting at us," said Arthur, crouching in a tight ball. "I thought they said they didn't want to do that."
     "Yeah, I thought they said that," agreed Ford.
     Zaphod stuck a head up for a dangerous moment. "Hey," he said, "I thought you said you didn't want to shoot us!" and ducked again.
     They waited.
     After a moment a voice replied, "It isn't easy being a cop!"
     "What did he say?" whispered Ford in astonishment.
     "He said it isn't easy being a cop."
     "Well, surely that's his problem, isn't it?"
     "I'd have thought so."
     Ford shouted out, "Hey, listen! I think we've got enough problems on our own having you shooting at us, so if you could avoid laying your problems on us as well, I think we'd all find it easier to cope!"
     Another pause, and then the loud hailer again.
     "Now see here, guy," said the voice on the loud hailer, "you're not dealing with any dumb two-bit trigger-pumping morons with low hairlines, little piggy eyes and no conversation. We're a couple of intelligent, caring guys that you'd probably quite like if you met us socially! I don't go around gratuitously shooting people and then bragging about it afterwards in seedy space rangers' bars, like some cops I could mention! I go around shooting people gratuitously and then I agonize about it afterwards for hours to my girlfriend!"
     "And I write novels!" chimed in the other cop. "Though I haven't had any of them published yet, so I better warn you, I'm in a meeeean mood!"

I am of course dismayed that the woman Kowalski was married to was named Stella, but at this point I shouldn't be surprised. And having the boy yell her name is just belaboring the Streetcar reference. (In the play, Stanley has hit Stella in a drunken rage and she's been sheltering with a neighbor; he sobers up and screams for her from the courtyard until she comes back to him. So the set-up is not at all the same, but a young man named Stanley hollering "Stella!" is iconic.)

I sort of wonder what these two kids were doing in the bank by themselves, but I guess young teenagers might have odd jobs like babysitting or paper routes or mowing lawns or what have you and may need to do their own banking. I don't see why Beard thinks it's a surprise that Stella would have married Kowalski even though he peed his pants when he was threatened at gunpoint when he was 13. I mean: Maybe it would be a surprise that she'd date him after that, but marrying someone you've dated since you were a teenager isn't a huge shock, right?

Side note: Ray Kowalski was born in 1960 or 1961.

Apparently Stella was out of Ray's league. The Gold Coast is a fancy-pants area of Chicago, and evidently young Ray went to public school. How did he and Stella meet in the first place? He doesn't say, but he was trying to impress her (John Lennon, music icon; James Bond, international man of mystery; Joe Namath, football hero) and not doing very well? (Only in that case why were they at the bank together?) And after this he was more successful. So Kowalski thinks this bank robber, which must have been Ellery, is responsible for the beginning of his real relationship with Stella? And . . . somehow also for the end of that relationship? Which is why Ellery is his Holy Grail? I'm not quite clear on this.

Instead let's talk about Kowalski being so invested in whether Fraser finds him attractive, shall we? The scene is at great pains to point out that Fraser is not in fact a woman 🙄, but at the same time, Kowalski doesn't ask "Do you think women would find me attractive"—he's very clearly asking Fraser and nobody else. 🤔 And Fraser, meanwhile, tries to have it both ways: He says he's not qualified to judge—which is baloney—one breath after saying "very much so, yes." In short: ?!!!?

( Scene 23 )

It didn't take Fraser long to get on Kowalski's side after that "with dispatch" tiff, did it?

( Scene 24 )

Ah, so Brandau has beef with Welsh. That should probably preclude him from investigating the guy, shouldn't it? But what do I know. The deal with loving a cop show is that everyone in law enforcement except our heroes is presumed to be scummy, am I right?

( Scene 25 )

This is sweet. (And it's good backstory. Do we now know more about Ray Kowalski's history on the force than we ever knew about Ray Vecchio's?) Fraser should have thought about money and friends not mixing before he borrowed cash from Vecchio to ransom Mr. Mustafi's vacuum cleaner, but maybe that's where he learned that.

On the other hand, assuming they called the taxi and the uniformed cops who are taking away the cigar smugglers using Kowalski's phone, why couldn't they have done that "with dispatch" as Fraser was saying in scene 15?

( Scene 26 )

None of this is how solar eclipses work, but sure. The important thing in this scene, of course, is that Kowalski gets the opportunity to take his revenge on Ellery, and then, as Bacon says, he chooses not to. It turns out he's the only one who's been torn up about their first meeting all this time, and rather than keep that whole acidic grudge alive, he lets it go. Good for him! Also, whatever it was he'd previously wanted to be, he admits he became a cop because of Ellery and that he's good at it and glad he did. I bet he feels 15 years younger.

I don't know how he got it in his head to throw the dream catcher like a frisbee, but never mind.

( Scene 27 )

My point is just, if personnel and records are in on the Kowalski-is-Vecchio op, wouldn't IA be in on it too? Otherwise, sure, fine, I like Kowalski giving Welsh the "bunt" sign, whatever.

( Scene 28 )

It's ridiculous to suggest a handwritten 10 is actually a handwritten 1🙂, but it's a little ridiculous to think the form would have been filled in by hand anyway, isn't it? Shouldn't it have been typed up so these discrepancies wouldn't arise? But who cares, because Kowalski has called the question.

( Scene 29 )

Okay: On the one hand, that was cool.

On the other hand, nobody's actually proven Vecchio wasn't dirty, have they? Because this lineup was rigged. Of course, Siracusa could have said "No, the guy I informed for isn't any of these guys" and put the onus back on Kowalski and Welsh, but he didn't, so I guess his picking number 3 out of the lineup does prove that Siracusa was making shit up, and he might not have been able to pick the real Ray Vecchio either. And thus and therefore, by the process of elimination, we can conclude that Vecchio was clean and either Hallett and Siracusa are lying about nine kilos of heroin going missing or someone altered Vecchio's evidence log to turn a 1 into a 10 to try and take him down.

Still it takes a little of the shine off Welsh saying "I stand by my detectives" when he knows perfectly well this particular defense is 70% lies.

( Scene 30 )

That's nice that everyone is so happy Vecchio and Welsh have been exonerated.

( Scene 31 )

The fish is still in the tank while he is doing this, so props to Beau Starr, I guess. Yeeks.

In the original Star Wars, a scene was cut between Han Solo and Jabba the Hutt in a docking bay in Mos Eisley, in which Harrison Ford as Han Solo walked behind the actor standing in for Jabba. When that scene was "restored" in the 1997 Special Edition [ptui ptui], they shifted Han Solo so it looked (sort of) as if he'd stepped on Jabba's tail and added a sound effect of Jabba yowling in pain. It's an absolutely crap addition to Star Wars, but it was released in January 1997, which would have been plenty of time for the creative team on this show to be alluding to that when Kowalski steps on Huey as he walks by. (Not that I'm equating Huey with Jabba the Hutt. Just that we've got a sharpshooting second-lead hero stepping on a guy and maybe we're meant to subliminally be linking Kowalski with Han Solo just a little bit.)

It's nice that Kowalski has had this epiphany, and it's nice that everyone is getting into the games Fraser brought for the party, and the "walking in the sky" thing is nice although it doesn't sound much like Bob. But: Where are Fraser and Kowalski off to? Leaving a party he's actually hosting doesn't really seem like Fraser's style, does it? 🤨

Cumulative body count: 24
Red uniform: The whole time

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