Perfect Strangers
air date November 30, 1997
( Scene 1 )
Neither I nor
ellen_fremedon nor my husband with his music degree can definitively identify what Fraser is listening to, and the hum-a-few-bars search engines are no help, either, so the best I can work out is that it might be Mahler's symphony no. 4? Which apparently everyone hated in Mahler's lifetime. That sounds about right for this show, anyway.
( Scene 2 )
I don't know, Sonny seems like one of these guys who struggles to take responsibility for his own shit. Everything is always someone else's fault. It's nice of Kowalski to take care of him, though, and I appreciate Kowalski not letting the parole officer know Sonny's living someplace he shouldn't be allowed to.
( Scene 3 )
( Scene 4 )
The song lyrics we didn't hear were these:
The river dying
Despite your triumph
Upon a sinner
Reward your lying
You sit, fixated
Alone, berated
Adjust your statement
AgainThe ends won't fit now
Condemn you out loud
Big talk you told
Decayed, eroded
The grim sensation
Your black creation
Your black foundation
AgainThe rooftop chase, especially interrupting the work crew's lunch, was a nice callback to how it used to be.
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)
Dean McDermott, Scott Hylands, Shawn Alex Thompson, Cedric Smith, Kenneth McGregor, Mackenzie Gray
( Scene 5 )
I like that Kowalski figures out what "OTT" means. I don't especially care for how he and Fraser both put their grubby hands all over this evidence.
We assume Sonny is not dead, because if he were they'd have covered his face before taking him away, right? Except if he's not dead wouldn't they be in a lot more of a hurry? Hmm.
( Scene 6 )
Okay, I guess Sonny didn't make it after all. Why is Kowalski doing this interview by himself?
( Scene 7 )
❤️ Diefenbaker ❤️
Francesca would have known it wasn't Pamela's dog if she'd read the textbook. But at least she's paying attention in class? Or trying to?
I have no idea what's going on with Welsh's id and I'm not sure I want to.
( Scene 8 )
Fraser's beating the drum about cultural protectionism again. Those are some production values, eh? To be able to film that whole thing in less than two days (and get a hard copy to Chicago in just a couple of hours)? I think I'm calling shenanigans on the timeline ("still unsolved"? they've been at it for a day and a half, bro), but I'll buy the rest of it for a dollar. Also, Fraser is right that "flight attendant" is more correct than "stewardess." It could be argued that the correct terminology isn't important in this precise moment, but it could also be argued that it's as well to develop better habits and stick to them, and I'm with the second argument, so I'm on Fraser's nit-picking side, for once.
Oh, the monks! The monks are singing a Marian prayer: "Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thy intercession —" — and then the tape ends. The rest of it goes — esse derelictum. Ego tali animatus confidentia, ad te, Virgo Virginum, Mater, curro, ad te venio, coram te gemens peccator assisto. Noli, Mater Verbi, verba mea despicere; sed audi propitia et exaudi. Amen. "— was left unaided. Inspired with this confidence, I fly to thee, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother; to thee do I come; before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy hear and answer me. Amen."
( Scene 9 )
Field trip!
Okay so the taxi stand thing is obviously a call back to the pilot, and a hilarious one. But I have a hard time being bothered by the Canadian-ness of the two guys arguing over who's not going to take the first cab that pulls up. A couple of Olympics ago, I remember the Canadian figure skaters talking about how they really wanted to do well in the team competition, because there was one guy on their team (maybe one of their men's singles skaters?) who they all just loved, and he'd been skating forever, and this was probably his last Olympics, and the team event was his best shot at a medal, and they all just really wanted to do everything they collectively could to get him one, and you guys, it was the most Canadian thing I had ever heard in my life. (I am also reminded of a time I heard about a contest to complete the phrase "as Canadian as [ ]," by analogy with "as American as apple pie" and similar, and the winning entry was ". . . possible, under the circumstances." Perfect.)
Meanwhile, I also have a hard time being bothered by the extreme stereotype of the Japanese tourists taking their picture with Fraser, because it has happened to me: When my college roommate got married, we were taking pictures by the tidal basin and a large group of Japanese tourists came along and were delighted to have come upon a wedding party in formal dress and insisted on taking pictures with us. It was bizarre and delightful.
That's all about the outdoor part of the scene, isn't it. I don't really give a shit about the indoor part. Mosaic vs. melting pot, Royal Commission brochure, whatever. Kowalski is guessing half French ("allo," which may still be how French speakers answer the telephone) and half Spanish ("que pasa"), and it defies belief that he would seriously think everyone conducts all their personal business in both languages at all times.
( Scene 10 )
This may be my single favorite Ray Kowalski scene that was ever aired. (The Hawks in question are the Blackhawks, Chicago's NHL team, who have somehow not, as far as I've heard, been involved in the name-changing conversations that have sensibly taken place wrt Cleveland baseball and Washington football.)
( Scene 11 )
On what basis do General Bowman and the RCMP believe the killer lives in Chicago? I mean now that the pin has turned up there that seems like a solid guess, but it sounds like they thought that before the pin was found, right?
( Scene 12 )
I don't understand the roommate's affect. She says she can't believe Chantal is gone, but she doesn't seem surprised or upset at all, about any of this (except disappointment in "the usual crap" about Chantal's older boyfriend not leaving his wife for her). She's even delighted that Fraser guesses "obsessed, fixated, single-minded" correctly and that she's able to give them the key to Chantal's place in Chicago. Something is not right about this young woman.
( Scene 13 )
( Scene 14 )
Get online? In 1997? I'm not sure what Kowalski is asking here. I do like "I wouldn't know this guy if he jumped out of my suit." That's good.
( Scene 15 )
Apparently (per IMDb, where I was looking for Mahler information and finding none) Draco the dog got on the wrong side of a panther at the zoo during the filming of this episode. Poor buddy.
What does Fraser mean about its feeling good to be back in the saddle? Hasn't he been doing police work? I guess he hasn't really been doing it in his capacity as a Mountie, so maybe that's what he's been missing.
I'm glad Fraser acknowledges that his experience of infants is limited, because I was legit about to wonder what made him such an expert. It is true that babies cry to let us know they're hungry. However, especially if you're formula feeding, you can't necessarily wait until the baby cries to feed them; the whole process of parenting an infant will be pleasanter for everyone if you keep aware (somehow; new parents are often mentally exhausted, so electronic means are not at all wrong!) of how long it's been since you fed the baby and try to anticipate the next feeding, because if you wait to begin even warming the bottle until the baby is crying, by the time you're ready to feed them they may be too upset to eat. This is sometimes represented with wisdom like "crying is a late sign of hunger," but that's a bit crap, because it stands a real risk of making parents (especially those who might have post-partum anxiety, diagnosed or not) worry that they're supposed to be able to anticipate every time the baby is about to be hungry and are doing something wrong or neglectful when they "fail" to do this or—eventually—if the baby cries at all. (Ask me how I know.) Still, as you learn when you have an infant, there's crying and then there's crying, and my point is that if you don't start getting food ready until the baby is already crying, you probably are going to be late to feed them, and feeding a baby who is crying is much more difficult. If you're breastfeeding or chestfeeding you may have the additional signal of your own discomfort when you're engorged that it might be time to feed the baby, but you can't count on that either, because you might feel it too soon or not soon enough or not at all. Timers are great and Fraser should shut the fuck up about the mother-child bond—which he should call the parent-child bond—not being improvable by technology. The technology is there not explicitly to improve anyone's bond but to free up adult brain cells so the adult can focus on the baby. Which might well improve their bond. It might not be what Thatcher's friend Nancy needs! Every family is different! But Fraser can cram it.
( Scene 16 )
I can't work out who this dude reminds me of with that half-smile. Is it Viggo Mortenson? (To be clear: This is not Viggo Mortenson and doesn't look like him at all. It's specifically the moment of the stiff slight smile that is ringing a bell with me.)
I think telling an immigration officer your visit is neither business nor pleasure is likely to get you denied entry into the United States these days, but in those long-ago pre-2001 times who knows what a white dude could get away with. Anyway, assuming this general is General Bowman and he's here on the trail of the killers of his daughter, we could call that business, couldn't we? How do we imagine Fraser answered that question when he arrived in Chicago in 1994? (Family business, she concluded ominously.)
( Scene 17 )
Aha, so that's where everyone knows the guy from but why they can't put their finger on exactly who he is. (The fact that they've named a smarmy white guy "Chad" is nothing short of brilliant, of course.)
Are we not using the name "Forty-Niners" because that organization wouldn't allow its name to be used? Interesting, if so, that they were able to get "Bears" and "Soldier Field" through (possibly by naming it not quite accurately; it's not "Soldier's Field" or "Soldiers' Field"). Also, wouldn't a sports anchor be likely to use a quarterback's name, even if he also used the team name? ". . . made it very difficult for San Francisco's Bobby Throwsalot to call any of his plays," I mean. So this feels weird. (The Bears didn't play the 49ers in 1997, but never mind.)
( Scene 18 )
I am extremely digging the quiet competence of Kowalski's police work here. I particularly love it in the way he is interested by Percy's use of "butchering," but really, the whole scene. Nice work, Rennie. (I am also unavoidably reminded of Sports Night and would like to think of this as a jumping-off moment for crossovers, except how I don't want any of our Sports Night heroes to draw this kind of attention from the police department of any city.)
Is having robbed a liquor store 17 years ago a bad enough situation for Chad here that he had to change his name and pay blackmail to avoid it? I feel like those sportsball guys routinely have criminal records (and way more violent ones) that they get more and more opportunities to rehabilitate. Especially a white dude, I mean, why wouldn't he take this on the chin and talk about putting his past behind him and so on. But here we are. Two hundred bucks a week was decent money in those days; Sonny wasn't getting rich off shaking Percy down, but it should have kept him and his pregnant girlfriend off the street, at least. This was when rent for what we assumed was a two-bedroom apartment in Fraser's extremely crappy former building was $375/month including utilities, so if your only income was $200/week from blackmailing a sports anchor, you could maybe rent a one-bedroom apartment in a slightly nicer building and still have money for groceries and incidentals. And Sonny and Irene were going to be pulling in welfare benefits as well. He should have had the $10 to pay George if he really did bet and lose that much on pool.
( Scene 19 )
This was quite a nice moment between Fraser and Thatcher, until Bob (that is, Fraser in the form of his own subconscious) had to ruin it. The conscious mind latching onto "sirloins" and managing to make a hash of that is funny, though.
( Scene 20 )
Fraser is right, they don't look like clouds. I was sure Bob was painting mountains in the background. The Group of Seven were Canadian landscape painters, but apparently Bob hung around with a smaller group. Heh. (I also like Fraser's utterly uncommented-upon "Inthatcher Spector".)
( Scene 21 )
This would be even more interesting to me if we could ever get a clear view of that picture, but I guess we're not meant to at this time.
( Scene 22 )
Nice place. There's a hallway table in there that I like a lot. Whose phone is Fraser using?
( Scene 23 )
How'd Bowman get that gun into the country? Not that you can't carry guns in the United States, because obviously you can, but on a plane?
( Scene 24 )
( Scene 25 )
🚨 Danger,
Will RobinsonConstable Fraser, 🚨 Danger 🚨I mean, to Fraser's credit, he sees the danger here. Holy carp, is his boss asking him to stud for her? How can she be? What can she possibly mean by "wouldn't even know how to start"? How much experience does she think he has in the field? And yet what else can she be talking about? This manager-employee dynamic has always been inappropriate on one level or another, but this is a whole other thing, isn't it? (On the other hand, how can she be so oblivious to his discomfort? "Is your seat wet, too," forsooth. This is pretty much the point at which I begin to wonder if there's ever been anyone neurotypical working at this particular Canadian consulate. Maybe Ovitz.)
It's a pity, too, because the beginning of this cab ride was a very handsome apology by Thatcher for being less than managerial in scene 19, which she absolutely was, and Fraser covered for her admirably and it was nice to see her acknowledge that. But now here we are.
Oh, before they got in the cab: Francis Gary Powers was a pilot flying a spy mission when he was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960, recovered alive, and tried and convicted of espionage. In 1962 he and a student who had been imprisoned in East Berlin were exchanged for Rudolf Abel (né William August Fisher), a Soviet spy who had been convicted in New York in 1957. Dougie Gilmour is a hockey player for whom (along with four other guys) the Leafs traded five guys to the Calgary Flames in 1992, but that trade apparently hugely benefited Toronto and hurt Calgary, so it's not clear to me how it would be embarrassing to trade for Bowman the way the Leafs traded for Gilmour. It's also not clear how it would be embarrassing to trade for Bowman the way the United States traded for Powers, nor what Thatcher thinks the Canadians might have that the Americans would want in exchange. The whole conversation is a bit of a stumper.
( Scene 26 )
One assumes that baby belongs to one of the officers and is just in for a visit. Fraser is canonically not afraid of babies, so it's really the proximity of Thatcher to that baby that has sent him scurrying.
So okay, Chantal's Older Boyfriend is named Evers, and he's married to money. No wonder, as Kowalski says, he's more afraid of her than he is of the police.
( Scene 27 )
I mean, in fairness, who doesn't hate it when they lose a war? Uncle Wiki says the outcome of the War of 1812 was "inconclusive," which I suppose could be seen as losing if you define losing as not winning. It's true that the United States failed to annex any part of Canada, so as far as Canada is concerned, I can see where "sent you packing" is a fair assessment of things. (The Canadians did in fact win a decisive victory at Queenston Heights, so General Bowman isn't making that up. It's just that it's a slightly odd thing to be hung up on 185 years later.)
( Scene 28 )
I like how Fraser and Kowalski lean across the desk at each other to talk about this insight, and I like how Fraser instantly dismisses Kowalski's challenge. "It's an excellent epiphany." 😂 I'm not sure why Francesca is approaching the two of them to ask about what I assume is her psych homework (though I do like that she's doing the reading, which too many students never bother). Also, Francesca is (a) left-handed, which I'm not sure we've noticed before, and (b) wearing the hell out of that yellow blouse. That's two out of two White women on this show wearing yellow successfully. I myself could never. (I think I tried, when I was a kid—I seem to remember a passport photo when I was 10—but kids can get away with a lot of things adults can't, innit.)
Here's the picture in Francesca's textbook that leads to Fraser's Excellent Epiphany (which would be a great title for a fic, by the way):
( Scene 29 )
Apparently nobody in the 27th precinct has seen Throw Momma from the Train (1987) or, better yet, its antecedent Strangers on a Train (1951), in both of which people who don't know each other well agree to trade murder victims to rid themselves of unwanted relationships while avoiding suspicion. (The 1987 film, directed by Danny DeVito, features himself telling Billy Crystal, "I kill your wife, you kill my momma. That's fair." The 1951 film, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, is of course the source of the title of this episode; it is nothing to do with the sitcom Perfect Strangers, which was a buddy comedy about a "city mouse" in Chicago and his long-lost distant "country mouse" cousin who comes to . . . live with him and . . . wait a minute . . .)
( Scene 30 )
Poor guy.
( Scene 31 )
I do love when a civilian aide gets to help out with genuine police work instead of just fetching and filing. (I don't know how the gang at the police station was able to hear Percy's second call, but never mind.)
( Scene 32 )
So Percy seems to have known his phone was bugged this whole time, huh? Meanwhile, Evers is feeling it like a Poe character and seeing General Bowman around every corner.
( Scene 33 )
This is a pretty good scene, though I don't love Fraser's as-a-Canadian stuff (the implication being, I feel, that Canadians are as a populace more law-abiding than . . . than whom? than anyone else? than Americans specifically? Only Americans do vigilantism? Feh.). I'll point out right off the mark that the graffiti on the pier behind Bowman says "EAT THE RICH!" But note how the whole time, Evers is cowering behind Fraser, while Percy—though he's a son of a bitch—is facing Bowman straight on and with his head up. The only time he lowers his chin is to look at the sight-light on his chest; other than that, after lying about never having seen Evers before in his life, he knows what he did and is ready to take his lumps for it. Interestingly complex, Percy, for a single-episode villain.
( Scene 34 )
I appreciate how Fraser's voice and accent sound more like Bob's when he's talking to Bob. The detail in that bit of the performance pleases me greatly.
( Scene 35 )
Oh no.
This is the most uncomfortable conversation that has ever been had.
( Scene 35 continues to continue. )
"Several hundred kinds of inappropriate" is the phrase both of them are reaching for at this point, I'm sure.
( Scene 35 is about to come to a merciful conclusion. )
But before this scene comes to its merciful conclusion, let's twist the knife just a tiny bit more.
Look at how many emotions Gross and Scott manage to play in the second and a half in which neither of them is speaking. Fraser does a little sad sighing chuckle in which "adoption, of course, what an idiot I am" might as well be tattooed on his forehead; Thatcher looks at the flowers in his hand and her expression changes from gentle clarification to a kind of dismay that is somehow not in any way pitying; and they both do it in less than one beat. I mean, I've said before: Professionals. But man, I love watching people work who are really good at what they do. I'll put this moment on the shelf next to "Deflect?" as the tip-top Fraser-and-Thatcher subverbal performances.
Okay, I've said a relationship between Fraser and Thatcher would be a terrible idea. I've said you shouldn't catch feelings for your boss. I've said you should keep your mouth off her mouth at all times in future. He's obviously been horrified by the very prospect for the first 42¾ minutes of this 45-minute episode! So why is it SO GUTTING when it turns out at minute 44:30 that she was talking about something entirely other all along?
You'd think he'd be relieved, right? I mean, he is visibly relieved (isn't he?), but he is also mortified to have misunderstood her intentions so badly (though one isn't sure how he was supposed to hear her say "I've been thinking of having a child" and conclude what she meant was "I've been thinking of adopting a child"). On top of which, apparently by talking himself into being okay with this idea he has actually talked himself into wanting it, and he only realizes that's what he's done when it turns out he can't have it.
How much of his distress is because it's only been five or six weeks since the last time his heart was broken and how much of it is because he feels like he really isn't supposed to have feelings at all? And if it costs him that much to open up and put his heart out there, and the payoff keeps being zilch (or worse), it's not going to be long before he stops even trying, right? 😭
(I mean. I don't know what the Fraser-and-Thatcher plot is doing here at all, but it's tacked on a little more solidly than it was on "Witness"—there's at least a through-line here—so there's that. But given that it is here, I think they played this button beautifully.)
I also kind of adore the item that Bob and Caroline used to dance without music, which went by so fast it got swallowed up in the entire rest of the scene. ❤️
Cumulative body count: 32
Red uniform: The whole episode