I Coulda Been A Defendant
air date September 28, 1997
( Scene 1 )
Okay, I am pretty much out of sympathy with almost everyone who speaks in this scene except The Man In Line Behind Her and possibly the mother. (I will overlook the UPS driver, the woman with the stroller, and the ice cream vendor.) The kids are being difficult after their mom said no. Kowalski is impatient for reasons that he does not explain. Fraser is delaying their progress toward wherever they're going by stopping and helping all sorts of people who may not need it and certainly didn't ask (and whom he didn't so much as ask "May I help you?" before deciding he knew what they needed better than they did) and interfering with the reporter's work at least twice. And the reporter is the instigator of the plan to pursue and interview The Man In Line Behind Her, which is obviously not what he wanted, which you can tell because he disappeared quietly. Sometimes people want to be allowed to do good deeds anonymously, lady! I am also judging her for asking Fraser what seem to be some pretty elementary questions about the pretty basic level of investigation he's conducting, which you'd think she'd have been able to work out her own self from observing him, if nothing else—but she might have been able to conduct her own self, if she were any kind of journalist.
[update: Okay,
resonant, who used to be a journalist, says her experience is that unlike newspaper reporters, TV reporters are actors rather than journalists—that this young woman is delivering news someone else has investigated. So maybe she's not actually equipped to ask the questions herself. (Making her even less useful, in my opinion, but there it is.)]
In that crowd, who wouldn't be sympathetic to the mom (Sometimes your kids let go of your hand and run off in a crowd, and it's not because you're a bad parent, and nobody benefits when other adults who are not the parents of those exact children judge you. That woman has two boys who are, without malice, nevertheless making her day more difficult, and she has a headache, and one of them just dashed into traffic. She doesn't need me weighing her in the balance and finding her wanting) and The Man In Line Behind Her, who just wants to be left alone?
Fraser didn't make up Glooskap of the Mi'kmaq or George Steinbrenner, but the idea of Steinbrenner being a symbol of a sensitive and caring New York is of course such nonsense that there is literally no chance Fraser believes a word of it, and the absolute deadpan way he says it (and the way no one bats an eye) is worth his weight in gold.
( Scene 2 )
Yeah, just having a gun isn't actually illegal, though, is it? What are they arresting the guy for? They didn't arrest Gladys for firing a gun at her husband's grave, and now this poor guy is tackled and arrested for merely having a gun in his possession? Why don't they just ask to examine his "firearms certificate" and then leave him the fuck alone?
You Can't Go Home Again is a story of a man who alienates his family and neighbors by writing a successful novel set in his home town. He sets off on a journey of self-discovery and finds that of course you can't ever return to the way your life used to be. (The title was almost certainly not a cliché when Wolfe used it for his book.)
You can't see Fraser's face clearly when he says "That's nice" to the Albanian woman, but by the tone of his voice my guess is it's the same kind of frozen smile with which he says "Hi, Gladys" in scene 9 of "An Eye for an Eye" (proving that episode does have some value after all).
Kowalski is wearing jeans and harness boots and looks good wearing them.
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)
Brent Carver, Ron White, David Gardner, and Ramona Milano
- Woo-hoo, Ramona Milano has been promoted to "and," check her out!
- Brent Carver (1951–2020) is another brilliant, brilliant actor who routinely appeared at the Stratford Festival (I previously raved about Colm Feore and I think this guy? might be better.) and is kind of slumming here in this guest turn. I don't think he'd have thought of it as slumming, though. What a miraculous performer he was. When I tell you he won a Tony for Kiss of the Spider Woman eight lousy years after appearing as the Pirate King in a Pirates of Penzance that was a formative influence on me (eat your heart out, Kevin Kline)—the one that began with himself giving the "O for a muse of fire!" speech from Henry V after the opening number in act 1; played "Hail, Poetry" absolutely straight; and featured, and I am not making this up, a "Popeye the Sailor Man" tango break in act 2; and made all of this work!; it was, as they say, practically perfect in every way, and I will stop evangelizing about it now but will burn a copy for anyone who wants—anyway, this dude raises the bar around here, and I feel like he drags the rest of the cast up with him.
( Scene 3 )
I do not think they have yet presented a valid reason for holding Mr. Talbot, even if that isn't his real name. Why is he under arrest? Why would they hold him overnight? (Also, Kowalski can fuck off with mocking the guy, "I repeat myself under stress, I repeat myself under stress.") He should indeed be free to go. If this ever happens to you, ask if you are under arrest, and if you're not, get up and leave. Get up and leave! Ugh, why do we have to love a cop show.
( Scene 4 )
It's all very well that Fraser is sympathetic now, but he's the one who chased the guy into traffic and frightened him in the first place.
( Scene 5 )
There's our reporter asking questions! Good for her! . . . I don't know why they agree to sit quietly just because Welsh yelled at them, though.
( Scene 6 )
It appears to be a dodecahedron, actually.
( Scene 7 )
Thank you!
First of all, who's Commander Murphy? Second of all, God, Welsh, please don't ever tell us about your piles ever again.
Jimmy Hoffa, as we've mentioned before, was a labor activist who disappeared in 1975. If this guy turned out to be Jimmy Hoffa, that would definitely be newsworthy (and he'd be in great shape!). Otherwise, I'm with Welsh in this whole scene—why are you harassing this poor guy whose only "crime" seems to be owning a gun, which is not a crime—but because it's on my mind for work-related reasons lately, I will say I'm not bananas about "good Samaritan." As I said in a comment on a manuscript, "it seems to imply that passersby who stop to help in emergency situations are always acting against type . . . not exactly that I'm concerned [about] subjecting readers of Samaritan descent to microaggressions, but I think it's an unnecessarily culturally specific term (which is another thing; why do we assume everyone will have the background knowledge needed to know what this means)".
( Scene 8 )
Diefenbaker is the real hero of the piece.
First we've heard of Innussiq. Was he Fraser's best friend on the outskirts of Inuvik, or in Tuktoyaktuk after he and his grandparents returned from Alert? (I continue to assume there were no children in Alert, including Fraser.)
( Scene 9 )
What's this? A fed who's coming right out and saying he's not trying to interfere with a local matter? That's unusual, isn't it?
"Deputy director" is not a title that has meaning with respect to the U.S. Department of Justice as a whole. That department has several (one might even say many) components that have directors, and those directors have deputies, but that would make them deputy director of [specific division] at [component of the larger DOJ]. If this guy is deputy anything at Justice, undifferentiated, he'd have to be deputy attorney general, in which case he'd say so.
Are we meant to understand that Kowalski likes Francesca, and that pretending she's his sister is some sort of social hardship because he'd rather be pursuing some other sort of relationship with her? Gross.
Late edit: Is this "alphabetical order" moment between Francesca and Elaine the moment this show achieves Bechdel compliance?
( Scene 10 )
Is Spender here as Talbot's attorney? His priest? His physician? Absent one of those relationships, I don't think this conversation is actually privileged (there was no spousal privilege between same-sex couples in 1997), so while it's nice that Fraser wants to give them their privacy, and they're probably morally entitled to it, they aren't actually legally entitled to it, no. (Except that Talbot shouldn't be and may not actually be under arrest at all.)
( Scene 11 )
There is also no sibling privilege, although that revelation illuminates scene 10 a great deal, doesn't it? The hug, the way Spender is taking gentle care of Talbot but is also exhausted by having done so for a long time — probably since their parents died, which I'm assuming they have. I may be projecting, not from my own experience but somehow from what I've seen in a number of cases where a younger sibling becomes the caretaker for an older sibling with disabilities or special needs. That is, the text hasn't said so, but I will bet several pretend dollars that Spender is the younger brother here. I don't know why that feels relevant to me, but it does.
( Scene 12 )
( Scene 13 )
Okay, a lot went on in this scene, but last part first: "trade"? Oh, Francesca, no.
I am with Francesca on the rest of the scene, though. How tiresome to be shadowing your predecessor on your first day at a new job and not even be allowed to attempt to do the things she's shown you how to do but obviously knows how to do much more comfortably because she's been doing them for years?
Fraser and Kowalski are both right, as far as what they're saying goes, except that it's pretty rich to tell Spender "after all, this is a police station" when we've just heard Cadet Exposition over here detail how three dangerous guys have jumped bail, escaped from prison, or been released despite committing actual murders while they were inside. Put another way, I can see Spender feeling like maybe the various departments of corrections aren't the most competent people he could be dealing with. On the other hand, this will have been a federal crime, which is why Johnson was in Leavenworth, a federal prison, and why Talbot is a federal witness, and maybe the Chicago Police Department and the Illinois Department of Corrections might be assumed to do a slightly better job than the U.S. Marshals Service and the Federal Bureau of Prisons? Or maybe not, but this is the first time Spender has started to throw his federal weight around in the way we're used to, where feds think they're better than local law enforcement.
Incidentally, Elaine says "Lewisville" or "Looseville" rather than "Louisville," which tells me she is not referring to Louisville, Kentucky, as that is neither of the correct pronunciations of that city, but to one of the following other Louisvilles:
and not to Louisville, Kansas; Louisville, Nebraska; Louisville, Tennessee; or either of the Louisvilles in Missouri.
- Alabama
- Colorado
- Georgia
- Illinois (frankly, this is probably the one she means)
- Mississippi
- New York
- Ohio
- or possibly to one of the places that goes ahead and spells its name Lewisville
The Jeffrey Dahmer reference is grim. I'll put it behind another tag, which you can click to expand or collapse:
Content warning: Extremely unpleasant personal violence
Jeffrey Dahmer was a serial killer who dismembered and in many cases raped and ate parts of the bodies of his victims. He was convicted in 1992 and killed in prison in 1994.It feels right (a) that he'd still have been current enough for Francesca to refer to in 1997, (b) that Francesca would believe that some murders are worse than others (or, put another way, that some people need killing), and (c) that Elaine and the guys would probably think look, even if we agree with you (and we're not saying whether we do or don't), you can't say that kind of thing out loud.
( Scene 14 )
( Scene 15 )
Poor Bruce! He's so scared.
Why are they doing this transfer on the top floor of a multilevel parking deck instead of somewhere with a roof? 🤔
( Scene 16 )
Good men and women, if you please, Welsh. It's fair to note that Kowalski hasn't called in to say where the hell he's taken Bruce, but which of these randos is supposed to have blown Bruce in? They never heard of him before, like, yesterday.
( Scene 17 )
Says the guy who talked about the Holy Grill.
I like having Francesca in on the plan. She can indeed do this! (But she probably was followed.)
( Scene 18 )
Are they not going to be pinned on the roof? How are they going to get down from there?
( Scene 19 )
Is Welsh still waiting for Kowalski to call in?
( Scene 20 )
Shows what Spender knows. While it's true Fraser does have a habit of going into hiding with federal witnesses someone is trying to kill, his entire family is already dead.
( Scene 21 )
Fraser is smiling quite patiently at Francesca when she talks about curling up to something warm. Kowalski, on the other hand, has little if any patience with her. How's he taking her home, though? I mean, where's she living now? Didn't her house burn down two episodes ago?
( Scene 22 )
Kowalski in this scene (his smile watching Bruce reminisce about Scouts, his volunteering to be in the troop because he has short hair, his reassuring Bruce that he won't have to go to jail) is impossibly sweet. Fraser's "Akela, we'll do our best" is the Cub Scout "Grand Howl;" dyb stands for "do your best" and dob for "do our best."
( Scene 23 )
I feel icky for him, just thinking about his having slept on the floor, in a sleeping bag, in all his clothes. Ugh.
( Scene 24 )
We don't normally see much police work that Fraser isn't involved with, do we? On that level, this is a nice change of pace.
( Scene 25 )
OH MY GOD, the way these two guys play this scene. I can't. Here's Bruce telling the story that he believes illustrates how much his brother has always loved him. This guy has to be at least in his mid-40s (Brent Carver will have been 46ish at the time the episode was made; Ron White (1953–2018), who played Kevin, was a little younger, for what that's worth), and figure this boomerang incident happened when he was probably not older than about 10? And he's still so upset with himself for having lost his brother's gift. Look at his thousand-yard stare when he says "I lost it." And then look at how Fraser wants so badly not to ask "Did you say he found it in a closet?" (I don't know what "Benchley boomerang" means. Maybe the hanger had a brand name stamped on it?) And when he shows Bruce the hanger—as we've learned, Bruce isn't actually an idiot, and you can see him not want to know what he has just begun to realize. And Fraser pulls the hook out of the hanger and he's so sad; and Bruce takes the hanger and he is so. sad.
I've always wanted to believe that Young Kevin gave Young Bruce the hanger and told him it was a boomerang because it made Young Bruce happy and he couldn't tell the difference. But looking at the sadness on Bruce's face, where after all these years he understands, I think I have to admit that Young Kevin gave Young Bruce the hanger and told him to tell the other kids it was a boomerang; he threw his brother under the bus so he could fit in. 💔
I mean, I think I've said what I had to say about this scene—I just couldn't wait until the end of the scene to say it.
( Scene 26 )
This is the first time we've seen Welsh use a gun or really be involved in a police operation at all. (He turned up at the scrapyard at the end of "The Duel" and he was in the car calling the action in "The Promise," so okay, he's been involved, but now he's really participating differently, innit.)
Bruce running toward Kevin is adorable. He's got his sleeves pulled down over his hands and he's running like a little kid; I'm sorry, I'm not going to be able to stop flailing over this performance. The way he checks back with Fraser. 💔 And then Kevin is in fact planning to Disappear him! Ugh, Kevin, what an asshole. I'll give him 5% for being upset that he "has to" get rid of his brother; he's not a psychopathic villain who's taking any pleasure in destroying people. But that makes him worse! Doesn't it? He's decided somewhere along the way that his job, whatever it is, is more important than his brother, whom he (says he) loves. What the fuck, Kevin?
Incidentally, here are the Senate confirmable positions at DOJ in 1997:
- without "director" in their name: Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General, Associate Attorney General, Solicitor General, Inspector General, Assistant AG/Policy Development, Assistant AG/Legal Counsel, Assistant AG/Legislative Affairs, Assistant AG/Antitrust, Assistant AG/Civil, Assistant AG/Civil Rights, Assistant AG/Criminal Division, Assistant AG/Environmental and Natural Resources, Assistant AG/Tax, the entire U.S. Parole Commission (five members), the entire Foreign Claims Settlement Commission (three members), Assistant AG/Office of Justice Programs, Administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, almost all U.S. Attorneys (81 positions; it's not clear to me why the U.S. Attorneys for Bangor, Maine, and Baltimore, Maryland, are not listed as requiring Senate confirmation), Commissioner of the INS, both Administrator and Deputy Administrator of the DEA, all U.S. Marshals (92 positions)
- directorships:
- Community Relations Service (CRS)
- Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA)
- Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS)
- National Institute of Justice (NIJ)
- Office for Victims of Crime (OVC)
- Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
- U.S. Marshals Service (USMS)
That's 207 positions, of which seven are directorships. At the same time, there were 11 appointed positions in the entire DOJ called "deputy director," none of which were subject to Senate confirmation:
- Deputy Director of the Office of Public Affairs
- Deputy Director, Office of International Affairs (in the Criminal division)
- two Deputy Directors at the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services
- a Deputy Director and a Deputy Director for Operations at BJA
- a Deputy Director at NIJ
- a Deputy Director at OVC
- a Deputy Director at the Executive Office for U.S. Trustees
- a Deputy Director for Operations at USMS
- Deputy Director, Office of Public Liaison & Intergovernmental Affairs (in the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs)
The directorships of the ATF (2008) and the Office on Violence Against Women (2004) require Senate confirmation now but didn't in 1997; and since 2012 the directorships of BJA, BJS, NIJ, and OVC no longer require Senate confirmation.
In addition to the presidentially appointed but not Senate confirmed deputy directors, there are career (nonappointed) deputy or principal deputy directors at CRS, BJA, BJS, NIJ, OVC, FBI, and USMS (as well as at ATF and OVW). So Kevin could be sitting in one of approximately a couple of dozen deputy directorships and about to be elevated to director, I guess? In which case, given that he's (a) running around armed and (b) connected somehow with the Witness Protection Program, I guess I'll conclude that he's with the U.S. Marshals Service? But like I said earlier, if that were the case, he'd have said so, rather than calling himself "Deputy Director of Justice."
Kowalski is fighting off way more guys than are actually fighting him, isn't he? Two at 12:00, three at 1:00, four at 5:00? He's surrounded by nine guys? When in fact there are a total of four guys and they're coming at our heroes from one direction (because the good guys have a hill behind them)? Maybe that's the nod to the fact that he doesn't have his glasses, because otherwise he seems to be shooting relatively straight without them.
( Scene 27 )
( Scene 28 )
I think we're supposed to think the cadets' arrival is like this ("Rohirrim! To the King!"), but they do turn out to be sort of like this (the Scrubbing Bubbles of the Dead), don't they? I don't know how Elaine managed to convince the Academy Director to suspend the ceremony in favor of riding to the aid of Kowalski and Welsh, but I approve. I'm also entertained, as I guess we're meant to be, at the teaching-hospital-style arrest procedures happening at the end of the scene. Your interns go exactly by the book; your established residents just get it done.
( Scene 29 )
I sort of think of Bruce aiming the gun at Kevin as the "and I can tie my shoes" of the gun battle, right? Bruce has reached the point where he's all but saying "Okay, if this is how it's going to be, if this is what we're doing, then I'll do that, because you do know I can do it, too, don't you?"
Brent Carver had a slender dancer's build, but he was 5'11" according to IMDb, and I'm so impressed with how he managed to look so small and slight. I mean they dressed him in clothes that were a little too big and they doused him with cold water so he looked like a half-drowned puppy, but everyone else was sopping wet as well, including Rennie (the other long skinny dude) and Bruhier (5'6"), and they didn't look like they were about to dissolve like a paper doll.
The use of "Brothers in Arms" probably always makes a person feel like it's do-or-die time, doesn't it? Mark Knopfler has, as it has been said, an extraordinary ability to make a Schechter Custom Stratocaster hoot and sing like angels on a Saturday night, exhausted from being good all week and needing a stiff drink. With apologies to the late, great Douglas Adams, perhaps Knopfler can also make a Gibson Les Paul Standard weep like an angel who hasn't had a day off in a couple of years. I don't know, I had a thought here but it's not crystallizing properly.
( Scene 30 )
This is another case where we don't know what's going to happen to the person our heroes saved (see also: Celine in "Some Like It Red," Sid and Andie in "The Promise"), and while on the one hand those other cases involved kids and this guy is a grown adult, haven't they shown that he's a grown adult who could probably benefit from some looking after? Social services? Maybe not; he was doing fine all that time on his own and it was really just the reporter's fault that this whole episode happened in the first place, and now he doesn't need federal protection anymore (if he ever really did need it in the first place, which I guess he did while his co-conspirators were still living), so he needn't be so concerned about anybody ever seeing him again, and he can indeed go wherever he likes and just live his life and be left the hell alone.
The title of the episode is a reference to On the Waterfront (1954), in which Brando (him again!) plays a washed-up prize fighter working as a longshoreman, who does a job for a union boss that turns out to involve him in a murder. He's eventually coming around to being willing to testify, and the union boss sends his brother to talk him out of it—his brother having convinced him, years ago, to take a dive in his last fight. Brando says "You was my brother, Charlie. You shoulda looked out for me a little bit. . . . You don't understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it." The brother relents and gives him his own gun, and the brother is later killed for letting him go. I think we're mapping Bruce here to the Brando character and Kevin to Charlie the Gent? which seems about right, because while Kevin may not be killed at the end of this episode, he's certainly not going to get his directorship, is he.
Cumulative body count: 24
Red uniform: The whole episode