return to due South: season 3 episode 4 "Strange Bedfellows"

Strange Bedfellows
air date October 5, 1997

( Scene 1 )

Perched on the corner of one of the boxes behind Fraser as he sits at his desk is a rubber duck (from the time he and Kowalski drove into Lake Michigan). I am charmed!

( Scene 2 )

That is correct: You heard Kowalski say "I'll try anything" when Fraser called him a prude. Ray Vecchio ("I like a woman who is, you know, a woman") would never. (He also said "Old laws are the best laws," but he was trying to justify ticketing Stella and Orsini for public lewdness when he said that. The "I'll try anything" comment was just something he threw in for free.)

Credits roll.

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

(plus Draco the dog)

Anne Marie Loder, Winston A. Rekert, David Storch, Eugene Clark

The last episode was apparently a series wrap on Catherine Bruhier, which is a little disappointing to realize in retrospect. (You can't really call it unceremonious, because there literally was a ceremony, but there was no indication that becoming a sworn law enforcement officer would be the end of her involvement with the 27th precinct and thus with the show.) On the other hand, hey, Ramona Milano is a series regular! Hooray!

( Scene 3 )

So I don't think the alderman is particularly good-looking, but if Kowalski's ex is into him, he probably looks better to her than he does to me. Feelings can affect your perceptions, can't they. 😊 She wants to hook up with someone who's angling to be mayor of Chicago, let her, if you ask me.

But "the guy she's doing" is crass, even though Kowalski is no longer married to the woman being discussed. Nice introduction to the new guy! The Dewey whom Fraser assumes he's named after is indeed Thomas E. Dewey (1902–1971), the one who famously did not in fact defeat Harry S. Truman in the 1948 presidential election. Why Fraser would assume this, given that nobody on this show has ever in fact been named for or related to any of their apparent namesakes (Mackenzie King; Esther Pearson; Margaret Thatcher; Arnold Benedict; Jefferson Adams), is unclear. (To keep with the pattern, the new guy might should have been named Dewey Thomas, but we can't have that, can we; the old pair were called Huey and Louie by Ray Vecchio to needle Detective Louis Gardino, but the new pair are to be called Huey and Dewey because we're going ahead and just being silly now.)

( Scene 4 )

Orsini is a smarmy son of a bitch, but he doesn't seem sleazy or slimy. Nevertheless, Kowalski looks like he wants to die.

( Scene 5 )

"Protective of women," indeed. Orsini and Diefenbaker can both fuck off.

( Scene 6 )

Kowalski is in his car here trying not to cry. So we're reinforcing the idea we got from "Eclipse," that he was less willing to let go of the marriage than Stella was. Which is rough, I'll grant him that, just as Fraser does (and what does he know from healthy romantic relationships, I ask you? — not that you've had to be in one to recognize one or spot its absence, fair enough), but bro. Bro. You can't do that. You can't follow her around, and you can't let your mom fill you in on what she's up to. (We're overlooking the fact that he says "mum." Just ignoring it completely.) It would have been a little more gracious of Stella to back away from her friendship with Kowalski's mom! That is definitely something she could have done. But given that these two women have decided to stay friends despite how shitty that is for him, he needs to lay down a boundary with his mother and not allow her to deliver The Stella Report, because it is getting in his head and stopping him from moving on.

How long do we think it's been since their divorce? It looks like in Illinois they'll have to have been separated for six months before the marriage could be dissolved, so my guess is in any event it will have been less than a year. (Although that apartment of his looks like he's been living in it for a wee while, doesn't it? Living in it by himself, I mean. That is, if that was the marital home and she left him, he's been there alone long enough for the place to have few or no traces of her left; and if it wasn't the marital home and he moved there at least six months before the formal, legal end of the marriage, that was way more than six months ago.)

( Scene 7 )

First of all, I ask again, where is everyone? I know it's nighttime, but is this a business-hours-only precinct now? Secondly, where is Fraser living? His apartment burned down three episodes ago.

( Scene 8 )

So when she said "I'm going to get a cab" she apparently meant ". . . in the morning." Which is her prerogative! Look, I haven't been divorced, so what do I know. But I think Kowalski needs to get it together.

( Scene 9 )

Orsini's oof and the hoarseness of his voice when he says "not a problem" make it sound like Fraser's car door actually got him in the nuts, doesn't it? But I don't see how that angle would have worked.

( Scene 10 )

Gentrification is a load of crap, eat the rich, etc.

( Scene 11 )

Everything about this scene makes sense except Kowalski asking why the deal is going through if it's such a stinker — as if bad development deals never get approved. BOO, Kowalski. Spoken like a white dude who hasn't ever actually had to worry about whether his building would remain standing.

( Scene 12 )

Fraser is more right than Kowalski is, but he could have stopped at "No, I'm not going to tell you what they're talking about" and not got into "You should stop asking." I mean, Kowalski should stop asking, but.

( Scene 13 )

That's two scenes in a row where they're simply talking over each other. Fraser and Vecchio never did that.

( Scene 14 )

"Ray, Kowal— sorry, Vecch— ah, is this you? I've got a wake-up call for someone named Ray. Is this yours? Sign here, please."

It's good for Kowalski to realize this is what Fraser is cautioning him away from, but holy crap, Stella saying "No, you always knew the line" is rough, am I right? On the one hand, she doesn't say it with any bitterness toward him. On the other hand, (a) the casual way she says it may be worse than if she'd said it bitterly, and (b) there is a lot of room on the far side of "Of course not, Ray" before "you were never that bad." We've just heard Stella all-but-explicitly affirm that Kowalski knew exactly where the line between acceptable and unacceptable behavior was and (because?) he spent a fair amount of time huddled right up against it without going over. Oof, no wonder his nostrils flare. I wouldn't want to hear that about myself either; it's not actually at all reassuring.

Meanwhile, Cassell's Dictionary of Slang says "jump Bogart" (though it does not capitalize the B) means "become aggressive," as a variant of "bogart (n.)," a bully, both named after Humphrey Bogart, of course, because of the number of his roles in which he played a tough guy. (It also has "bogart (v.)" but it is not clear why or how it got any of its nonbullying meanings [transitive: steal or monopolize; intransitive: leave, goof off]); and is it me or should a prosecutor not hang out with her witness socially? Like, of course Diane can't join Stella and Orsini for drinks? Shouldn't Orsini have known that?

( Scene 15 )

It's not clear whether Orsini thinks Dwayne doesn't look like "the type" to abuse his wife or Diane doesn't look like "the type" to be abused, but either way, it's a load of crap and Stella should be mad at him about that way before she's mad that he's been inflating the amount of affordable housing at Manor Point. (I'd also like Fraser not to mansplain spousal abuse of women to a state's attorney who is (a) a woman and (b) prosecuting a spousal abuse case. Shut up, Fraser.) In this particular scene, Kowalski is the winner.

( Scene 16 )

Jesus Christ, Kowalski, take no for an answer.

( Scene 16 continues. )

Oh, well, it wouldn't bother the man, so it's not important what the woman wants, am I right?

( Scene 16 continues to continue. )

ATTAGIRL, STELLA

( Scene 16 continues to continue to continue. )

The Verdi "Libiamo, libiamo" is listed in the soundtrack as "Brindis," which is silly. It is a brindisi, a drinking song, and it's apparently labeled that way in the score of La traviata, but that's what it is, not what it's called. If you had "Sempre libera" in your soundtrack you wouldn't list it as "Aria," would you? (I hope not.)

Anyway, Kowalski and Stella are a nice-looking couple, and they dance pleasantly enough. The big news is the exploding champagne bottle. (We don't know if it's true Champagne or some other sort of sparkling white wine, of course.) Is it true that the cage always untwists counterclockwise? I've never noticed, but Uncle Google suggests that it is so. So that's some sloppy bomb-building on the part of whoever sent them the bottle, isn't it? If they'd bothered to put the muselet back how they found it, Fraser would never have noticed and the episode would be over by now.

( Scene 17 )

Kowalski's pretty annoyed with Francesca for saying "mug snaps" given that he didn't know what "nefarious" meant. I appreciate how smug Fraser was not when he simply defined it for him and moved on. (I can now hear Leo McGarry saying "Okay. The U.S.S. Portland is a Seawolf–class —" [seeing that the president doesn't know what "Seawolf–class" means] "— or 'big' — nuclear submarine.")

Again: Where is Francesca living, and with whom?

( Scene 18 )

So I think "You really like this guy?" is Kowalski making an effort, or at least trying to make an effort, to be friendly rather than exly with Stella. Which means her comment that the relationship was falling apart for years is particularly harsh. (And then he turns around and blows it by telling her that a breakfast date is a dumb idea.)

( Scene 19 )

"Don't leave home without it" has been the marketing slogan for American Express since the late 1970s. So Kowalski can break into the consulate and there are no alarms or anything that go off when this happens? That's interesting to know, and also, where did Fraser get another union suit just like the old one that was either burned in his apartment fire or sunk in the third green Riviera? I'm just asking. Also also, this office is a lot smaller than his old one, and will be even after all those stacks of boxes from the move are dealt with. I assume he's only staying in it until he can find a real place to live.

The "This is Chicago, the only time" stuff is a nice callback to Ray Vecchio talking about opening the window to get a better aim.

( Scene 20 )

It is like not earlier than the middle of the morning here. There's no dawn left in the sky, I mean; it is solidly daytime. What were they doing between 4am and now? I'm just asking.

( Scene 21 )

( Scene 22 )

I don't know for sure that Welsh says "guitas," but it's the best I can work out for a slang term for money based on what I can hear, which is a velar consonant of some sort, the vowel /i/, a tap or flap consonant, a schwa, and an s. Keytas? Keetus? The u in "guitas" makes the g hard—otherwise it'd be djee-tas—and it's apparently Argentinian street slang for cash, dough, dosh, etc. We know Welsh's Spanish is not great, though, so why he'd be using this particular term is a mystery. (Though I'm actually more puzzled by "dust," which I thought referred to PCP.)

( Scene 23 )

( Scene 24 )

The idea of Fraser practicing slang until he can say it naturally is pretty funny. I'm still bugged by Stella having a social relationship with Diane, but more than that I'm interested in the fact that she didn't protest Orsini's arrest at all—asked what the charges were, but didn't ask Kowalski what the hell he was doing or anything like that.

( Scene 25 )

Fraser catches on unusually quickly, for him, that Kowalski was offering Stella rather than himself a lift home. And then: police work!

( Scene 26 )

Dun dun DUN, it is Chekov's Wife-Beater. Although look, Diane was thanking Stella so much in scene 24, which sure suggested to me that they'd won the case against Dwayne, which in turn would have suggested to me that he'd be doing some time by now. What's he doing out of jail and skulking around Stella's building already? . . . Tangentially, while I like the way Rennie and Loder are playing this relationship between people who have known each other for 25 years even though we've only known him for a cumulative couple of hours and her for less than half that, so I appreciate the vaguely flirty playing-the-game tone in which she says "I don't know, we're dangerous," wasn't she in fact sort of serious about Orsini? And is she not rattled at all by the fact that he was arrested on the courthouse steps and turned out to be covered in slime? Put another way, I like how she's playing against Kowalski in particular, but I don't understand her attitude in general right now.

( Scene 27 )

We know the answers our heroes are only just finding, but it's okay, because they're not taking forever about it.

( Scene 28 )

Kowalski and Stella kissing is hot, I don't know what else to tell you. This is a couple who know how to kiss each other, and I'm impressed, because like I said, we haven't had a lot of time to get to know him and even less to get to know her. I'm not, like, emotionally invested in their relationship, the way one was with Fraser and Victoria, and I agree it's probably not a good idea for him to stay and go to bed with her tonight, but they're making me believe they have a long history together, which is good work on the actors' part.

The song they're dancing to was released in 1997, so if he's played it enough for her to be sick of it, they can't have been apart for very long at all, can they? The lyrics translate to "Weeping, face to the wall, the city shuts down; weeping, and there is nothing more, perhaps I die, and where are you? Dreaming, face to the wall, the city burns; dreaming, without breathing, I want to love you, I want to love you. Praying, face to the wall, the city sinks; praying, Santa Maria, Santa Maria, Santa Maria."

( Scene 29 )

In case you're interested, the time between when the bomb shows 110 seconds and when the bomb shows 3 seconds is . . . 45 seconds.

( Scene 30 )

Look, the guy said he wanted to be alone, what do you expect?

( Scene 31 )

22C is a little less than 72F, and I'm sort of exhaustedly amused that Bob is so firmly pre-metric even though Canada was converted well before he died.

So Bob-as-Fraser's-subconscious is back, and he's installed Narnia or something like it behind the clothes in Fraser's office closet. That's a little more involved than he's been before, though he has been threatening it since the season premiere. Thatcher is now convinced Fraser has a screw loose, which was probably inevitable, but not likely to be helpful to his career.

( Scene 32 )

N'aww, so poor Ray Kowalski is not really okay yet, is he.

The title of the episode is from the saying "politics makes strange bedfellows," meaning you'd be surprised what sort of people will get together when they have a shared political interest. It doesn't really seem to make much sense with respect to this episode, but the references-to-other-things titles often don't, do they?; we just need to take them at face value: Kowalski doesn't like that his ex-wife is sleeping with an alderman. (The aphorism actually originated, as so many aphorisms do, in Shakespeare, where in The Tempest Trinculo says "misery acquaints a man with strange bed-fellows" (II:ii). He means it literally, where he decides he has to huddle up with the foul-smelling Caliban in a storm, but you may also consider who in this episode is miserable and whom their strange, that is, unexpected, bedfellows might turn out to be. 🤔 )

Cumulative body count: 24 (a fair amount of peril in this episode, but nobody dies)
Red uniform: The whole time

Previous | Index of annotated transcripts | Next