return to due South: season 3 episode 11 "Dead Guy Running"

Dead Guy Running
air date January 4, 1998

( Scene 1 )

And that is the first cut in the episode, friends. Almost three minutes (2:53 on my DVD playback) in one take, almost two years before The West Wing and its famous extremely long Steadicam walk-and-talks. I wouldn't want to be the guy who biffed a line at 2:45.

There's the Great Slave Lake, miles away from where Fraser (and Innussiq, I assume) grew up. Those kids apparently travelled a lot, huh?

Kowalski calls Stanley Smith with the iconic "come on down, you're the next contestant on" from The Price Is Right, a game show in which the contestants are drawn from the audience and invited to come down to the front of the house to join the game. The show has been running for 50 years and is apparently still on. The mind boggles.

Michael Johnson is a runner whose greatest successes were in the 1990s.

Mercedes 280 SL was a sporty hardtop convertible apparently more correctly called SL 280, and it looks like it did sell for something in the $100k ballpark when it was new, although by January 1998 a 1995 model would have depreciated a fair bit, wouldn't it?

( Scene 2 )

This show never used "Oh, dear" quite the way Quantum Leap used "Oh boy," but in this episode it's close.

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)

Richard Chevolleau, Anne Marie Loder, Alex Carter, Michael Ricupero, Greg Kramer, and Jan Rubeš as Mort

( Scene 3 )

( Scene 4 )

Okay, well, that monologue made me cry. Nice work, Milano.

I am HERE for Francesca having more to do than just toss herself at Fraser, although per usual I am mad at the number of times the camera shows us Fraser instead of the Vecchio who's having the emotional moment. Five times! by my count, in this scene, although one of them is when he's speaking and one of them is his final reaction after Francesca's last line. And like. He's not mugging it up or anything. They're sensitive reactions. In this case I'll grant that there's room for the one where he shows he understands how "going out for a drink" is different from "going out for a drink" (though Francesca was ready for him to understand that a little earlier, after "I guess he thought") OR the one where he hasn't seen The Godfather, but probably not both?

(Parenthetically, Fraser's acknowledgment of "going out for a drink" makes me surer than ever that he knew exactly what Thatcher was trying not to say when he supplied "Deflect?" in "We Are the Eggmen." I know I'm the only one still banging this subtextual drum, but I'm going to keep banging it.)

So but. This neighborhood dude was halfway to raping Francesca, and Ray Vecchio whaled on him and said he was going to kill him (incidentally: when Sonny found out Carlo was beating Connie, he kicked the shit out of him in the street), and now the guy is dead, and Francesca concludes her brother did kill him. Holy crap. Like: Most of us probably don't think of Ray Vecchio as a guy who would go all the way through with killing a man? But his own sister doesn't doubt that he did? . . . Do we now have to reassess the question of nine kilos of missing heroin from "Eclipse" or are we still sure that's okay because Siracusa didn't say "What are you talking about, Ray Vecchio isn't in this lineup"?

Also, I really might have had this (rather than discovering the dead guy in the wall) be the end of the teaser.

( Scene 5 )

The show said "eat the rich" again, y'all.

( Scene 6 )

Speaking of "Eclipse," this is a far cry from Fraser's "with dispatch" sanctimony, isn't it? Other people have their own shit to deal with, they're flouting procedure, but Fraser wants to absolve Ray Vecchio of a crime his own sister assumes he committed, and it's manual-schmanual, am I right?

( Scene 7 )

Is she sure he was booked? Fraser, you are holding a mug shot in your hand. 🤦🏻‍♀️

( Scene 7 continues. )

Francesca worrying that Fraser might think less of her for having been assaulted is (a) heartbreaking and (b) unfortunately pretty realistic. I don't know when Fraser had the sensitivity training he must have had to be so quick to promise Francesca that he wouldn't tell anyone else about it. And then she has to biff the whole thing by assuring him that she thinks of him as a man rather than as a priest because of his apparent lack of a vow of celibacy. 🙄 When do we think this disastrous date with Guy Rankin took place? Fraser had no knowledge of Vecchio's fury about this dude coming after his sister, so it had to be either before Fraser arrived in town in 1994 or while he was on vacation this past summer, right?

( Scene 8 )

The soft spot in my heart for Ray Kowalski reviewing with Fraser which pedal is which, I can't even tell you. ❤️❤️❤️

This episode aired on January 4, 1998, which 92 days earlier would have been October 4, 1997—the day before "Strange Bedfellows" aired, and by which time Ray Vecchio had been in his undercover Vegas gig for at least a couple-few weeks. ("Burning Down the House" aired September 14, but all we know is that Fraser was on vacation and Vecchio was gone when he got back, so he could have left town as late as the 13th, couldn't he.) So if Vecchio did kill and shellac Rankin, he'd have had to have someone else in on it to hide the body in the interview room. Which brings me to this question: Where was Tony? (Or, as Discord user Conundrum asks, Maria? which is a fair question.) (I assume he wasn't there when Vecchio was going all Sonny Corleone on the front porch, or he'd have helped—either helped Vecchio tear into Rankin or helped Francesca pull them apart, either way, because Tony's a doofus but he's not a bad guy.) So the monstrousness of the act is not irrelevant, but shouldn't Fraser be interested in the timing as a way of absolving Ray Vecchio?

( Scene 9 )

From room temperature, cook a 14-pound turkey at 350°F for about three hours unstuffed or three and a half hours with stuffing inside. (If you spatchcock the bird, that is, remove its spine and flatten it at the breastbone, you can cut this time in half; obviously then you have to make other arrangements for the stuffing, but you were probably doing that anyway.) Make sure it reaches an internal temperature of 165°F before removing it from the oven, and let it rest for half an hour (tented with foil) before carving and serving.

( Scene 10 )

I'm getting very strong "For Want of a Boot" vibes from the way Welsh is running around in this episode.

( Scene 11 )

I've noted before in this space how Fraser can dish it out but he can't take it. I can't see the desk sergeant's nametag clearly.

( Scene 12 )

Bob! Is! Fraser's! Conscience! Fight me.

( Scene 13 )

The guy the cops are looking for is always not employed there anymore. Has Fraser never seen a single episode of Law & Order?

( Scene 14 )

So Stella — I mean, obviously she knows Ray Kowalski from before and knows perfectly well he's not Ray Vecchio, but she's having to pretend just like everyone else, right? Although she also knew Ray Vecchio professionally, apparently, if she's been working in the prosecutor's office for any length of time? (She and Louise St. Laurent are colleagues, evidently.)

( Scene 15 )

Not that I don't appreciate a moment of Kowalski defending Fraser's hat from interlopers as much as the next girl, but why did Fraser not take his hat with him when he went to see DiNardo?

( Scene 16 )

( Scene 17 )

( Scene 18 )

In case it wasn't clear, we are now entering Weekend at Bernie's (1989). Please keep hands and feet inside the episode at all times. (But Kowalski's mention of Rita Hayworth is a reference to The Shawshank Redemption (1994), in which (as in the Stephen King novella on which it is based) Andy Dufresne digs a tunnel out of his prison cell by chipping at the wall with a rock hammer for 19 years, covering the hole with posters (Rita Hayworth initially, and then Marilyn Monroe and finally Raquel Welch); I will also note that he does not follow "Well, I'm changing the deal" with "pray I do not alter it any further.")

( Scene 19 )

The "parking spot for Nicky at NASA" thing is a complete mystery to me.

( Scene 20 )

I'm still so confused about the timing of this thing. It has to have happened while Fraser was out of town on his vacation this past summer, which means Kowalski should know all about it, right?, because he'll have assumed Vecchio's identity almost as soon as the dust cleared?

( Scene 21 )

See, Dewey should have asked her about the 14lb. turkey.

( Scene 22 )

♫ Someone's in trouble . . . ♫

( Scene 23 )

The call they're talking about is the one Smith said he'd make at the end of scene 20, but I don't know who it is they're supposed to be calling. Is it DiNardo?

( Scene 24 )

This is much too much of a necrophilia kink for Francesca to be talking about with Fraser at this time.

Mort is probably just singing "ritorna vincitor" ("return a conqueror") at the beginning of the scene because he's getting back to work, bless him. It's like people singing "Hail, the conquering hero" when someone comes back from the grocery store. We've got a good old Fraser-talking-to-Bob-and-someone-else-not-understanding moment; Bob urging Fraser to seize the moment with Francesca, because he's hung up on grandchildren (that is, Fraser is beginning to think about being alone forever?); another reference to postal violence; and then a bit of Puccini at the end ("Wait, young lady, and I'll tell you in two words . . . la da di"), from the bit where Rodolfo has just met Mimi and is about to introduce himself, but the title of the song translates as "What a cold little hand," which is frankly hilarious.

( Scene 25 )

Is Stanley Smith going to turn from a life of crime and become a cop? Ugh.

( Scene 26 )

Stella has a bandage on her right wrist. Did she get injured in the earlier interview with Kuzma, where she was the one who screamed?

( Scene 27 )

We've just been over the Fraser Does Not Lie question. How is lying to DiNardo (in the interest of exonerating Ray Vecchio, er, I mean, finding out what happened to Guy Rankin) different from lying to Melissa (to investigate what has happened to Celine) or lying to Walter Sparks (to get him in off the ledge of a building)? (We won't consider the ready-to-run-away-with-Victoria of it all, but it's back there too.) Huh, Fraser? How?

( Scene 27 )

Okay, the extremely offhand note that Stanley Smith is homeless is old-school due South poignance. Get that young man a job and an apartment, yo.

( Scene 28 )

Of course "addio" just means "farewell."

( Scene 29 )

Dead Man Walking (1995) was a film whose title (and the title of the book on which it was based) apparently comes from the notification that is called out when a prisoner is being transported from death row to the place of execution. Trivializing such a thing seems fairly disgusting to me, but I suppose it's not out of character for Stanley Smith, so I'll let it go and just move on.

( Scene 30 )

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( Scene 32 )

Again with the hat thing. He can't recognize it, because Fraser didn't have it with him when he visited the building site. And if it was Fraser who called him to come in about stolen supplies (that is, if that's the lie Fraser told), then I'm no closer to understanding what call Stanley Smith wanted to make in scene 23.

( Scene 33 )

Ooh, say it again. Mufasa.

Er, that is, what I mean is, (a) Fraser doesn't normally get right up in people's face like that, but he's enough bigger than DiNardo that stepping into his path and not backing down is genuinely intimidating for once, and (b) the Smooth Voice is back.

( Scene 33 continues. )

This is a lot of scenes in one, but I didn't see a good place to cut, so.

Fourth cousins three times removed are barely related at all. First cousins share grandparents, second cousins share great-grandparents (that is, second cousins' parents are first cousins), and so on; and the number of times removed is a number of generations, so a first cousin once removed is your parent's first cousin (or your first cousin's child), twice removed is your grandparent's first cousin or your first cousin's grandchild, etc. So Mallick Eynar was someone whose great-great-great-grandparents (Z and α) were Fraser's great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents.

I made the family tree up Fraser's mother's mother's side, staying on the distaff the whole time because it was easier that way, but in the Eskimo kinship system (which is conveniently also what the English language uses) there is no difference between one's cousins on the father's side and cousins on the mother's side, nor between the children of a parent's same-sex sibling and the children of a parent's opposite-sex sibling. So I went ahead and made the gender-unspecified cousins the siblings of maternal ancestors all the way up, but they'd have the same relationships to Fraser if they were off different branches. But in communities the size of the ones Fraser lived in as a kid, I don't see how you'd even know such a person (or frankly how, if you did, that distance would be the only way in which you were related, because back that many generations, you start to run out of unique ancestors, innit).

Anyway, for a long time I thought, how could a narwhal come out of a shell small enough that a dude was holding it up to his ear? But then I realized that the narwhal and the shell were never connected, and the dude was close enough to the water that the narwhal came out of the water, not the shell, and drove the shell into his ear. (Still totally improbable, but at least it doesn't defy physics.)

I don't really see how DiNardo's having noticed the hole in the drywall is evidence of anything, so if he'd just hung in there under the frank harassment he was getting from Kowalski and Fraser, he could have left the building and not had to shoot anyone. Given that he did feel the guilt, though, I appreciate Stanley Smith coming through with the heroism! I mean it was right of Kowalski to motion him back behind cover, but in the few hours he's been here in the police station, Stanley Smith seems to have decided the cops are all right? Which, as I said, ugh, except that we're here loving a cop show and these particular cops are our heroes, so. And then he gets the gun the other guy dropped and makes sure to give it to Kowalski! That's rock solid redemption work, there, Smith, well done.

( Scene 34 )

It's sunny outside when Fraser and Bob go out there, and I'd love it if they'd found a way to remove Bob's shadow in post.

That dance couldn't have been in 1972 if Caroline showed up and made Bob come home, because Ben Fraser was born in about 1961 and he was six when she died. So either Bob is misremembering when that dance-followed-by-Joe-murdering-Thibeaux-the-trapper incident took place, or Caroline showed up in some noncorporeal form to make him come home—which, as this is a noncorporeal Bob manifesting Ben Fraser's conscience, I suppose is also possible.

Cumulative body count: 33
Red uniform: The whole episode

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