return to due South: season 4 episode 2 (or season 3 episode 15) "Easy Money"

Easy Money
air date September 30, 1998

( Scene 1 )

So this Goody fellow is a ball of slime, eh? And he's awfully full of himself for being someone's personal assistant. Like that young woman fetching the coffee probably outranks him by about nine levels and he must have paid her a hundred bucks to answer when he pressed the button on that garage door opener.

"The Tonto act" is funny. Give 'em the old razzle-dazzle, Quinn.

( Scene 2 )

It's so interesting to me how Fraser pops up to his feet as soon as he's back up on the roof. It's the same way he hops back up after he dives for the fan that's about to land on Annie Morse-Torrance and Janet catches it instead; a hop up that connotes a great deal of "I'm good, nothing to see here" or even "That was deliberate, it was deliberate." This is not the first time a baddie has got him in a pickle; what's he so embarrassed about?

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, Philip Granger, Tyrone Benskin, Clare Coulter, Dan MacDonald, and Gordon Tootoosis as Quinn

( Scene 3 )

This kid is about . . . what, 12? His voice hasn't changed, and his teeth don't exactly fit in his mouth. I guess he could be as old as about 14 before I'd expect him to have got quite a bit sturdier and stronger given the life he must lead. But I think he's on the young end of the range; if he were already bar mitzvah, Quinn probably wouldn't ding him for being out on his own.

So a 12ish Benton Fraser and he's feeling some peer pressure because Innussiq killed his own caribou last year. Sigh. My six-year-old is annoyed that one of his best friends, who's seven months younger than he is, has already lost three teeth while he, my own kid, hasn't had so much as a wiggle. The explanation that different kids grow at different rates is not really meaningful or satisfying to him. So probably asking 12yo Ben Fraser why Innussiq killed the caribou wouldn't get you far. And yet.

( Scene 4 )

I'm vaguely interested that Kowalski was all up on Quinn's visit to Fraser before they went downtown.

( Scene 5 )

Ha. Did I say 12? I did.

So: I've been a kid, and I know the tyranny of everyone-else-gets-to. But I'm also a parent, and I feel pretty strongly that Fraser's grandparents will have a reason for keeping him from hunting while every other boy's parents or guardians (if it is in fact true that every other boy his age is allowed to hunt) allows them to hunt. [ponder]

( Scene 6 )

I don't know why Francesca thought it was a good idea for her to open her mouth at all, to be honest.

( Scene 7 )

So I've ranted before about how we're up a tree over here loving a cop show where we have to consider the cops the good guys, because Kowalski is Bad And Wrong here and the guy is absolutely right not to be talking to him. But then in comes the "lawyer," that is, the partner in crime, and he too is Bad. (Does anyone for a single moment believe that if Storey tells Tim where the stuff is, Tim will in fact get him a defense lawyer of any kind? Of course not; he'll disappear with the stuff, and Storey knows it perfectly well.)

( Scene 8 )

This scene is so important.

Listen to the tone in Fraser's voice when Kowalski asks why Quinn is his, Fraser's, responsibility; it's as if it literally never occurred to him that it wouldn't be, and more than that, he doesn't entirely understand the question even now. (I'm going to grit my teeth and skip lightly over his use of the word "articulate" to describe a person of color. Just this once.) Then Kowalski's monologue about his own father ends up with him talking about how much he loved . . . a car. And then the way his face changes when Fraser presses. (And the way Fraser's face changes while Kowalski is talking.) Man, people's relationships with their dads on this show. Fraser's father was absent for most of his childhood, and when he died they hadn't spoken since Christmas. (But he was probably secretly pleased his son had gone into the RCMP.) Ray Vecchio's father was a drunk and an abuser, and he may have been a low-level gangster, which may have been why he hated cops and didn't want his son to become one (although they don't seem to have cared for each other much). Welsh's father is a drunk, and he was apparently in law enforcement himself, but he's not too exercised about the fact that his younger son (I know it's an assumption, but I'm assuming that Wilson Welsh is the elder brother because Wilson was president before Harding) followed in his footsteps. And now here's Ray Kowalski, who knows perfectly well that his father feels like he squandered the opportunities his father (a) never had for himself and (b) worked hard to get for him.

So Fraser feels a responsibility to Quinn, and Kowalski feels that he has already let his father down. But listen: I just did a tangent on everyone's relationship with their fathers on this show, but in fact Fraser nor Quinn has not said more than three syllables about Bob Fraser in this episode (this is where he was killed; he was honest), which I think is not uninteresting.

I'll also bet about five pretend dollars that Diefenbaker might not have been supposed to be sniffing at the countertop and it's actually Rennie asking Draco the dog, rather than Kowalski asking Diefenbaker, if he wants a coffee. He bends down and talks to him nose to nose and it is freaking adorable whether it was in the script or (as I also suspected, remember, when the baby cried and Fraser said "Oh, very unhappy!") not.

( Scene 9 )

The timing of Fraser interrupting Kowalski on "The guy's got —" was a little off. I wish Rennie had had the rest of the sentence in mind so he could have kept talking until Gross cut him off.

( Scene 10 )

There's your titular easy money, then. Is Quinn going to sell the jewels to pay for lawyers and access and whatnot to save his community? Ransom them to stop the dam project?

( Scene 11 )

I don't know about you, but this episode is not quite 19 minutes old and I already feel like Quinn wouldn't have been that careless.

( Scene 12 )

I like "Hey, Fraseur" almost enough to forgive the fact that Kowalski pronounces "composite" so goofily (with the accent on the first syllable, ['kɑmpəzɪt], rather than on the second syllable, [kəm'pɑzɪt].

( Scene 13 )

( Scene 14 )

See, in this scene I don't see just a Francesca who is uncomfortable with how loudly Welsh and everybody else is yelling. I see a Francesca who (granted, she shouldn't have run her mouth in front of the cameras in scene 6, but) had the same abusive father as Ray Vecchio and is even now, as an adult, reflexively frightened when a man twice her size is angry. Put another way: Earplugs-schmearplugs, that woman needs an EAP.

( Scene 15 )

Something something student becomes the master? (Although look, Benton, 12 isn't too young to learn that there's a difference between tasting something and eating it. Good lord.)

( Scene 16 )

Never mind, I guess the student isn't becoming the master at all.

( Scene 17 )

Where I come from, we don't say "the" I-90. I think of that as a California dialect item (or, of course, Canadian).

( Scene 18 )

( Scene 19 )

We've come to the heart of the matter. Quinn knows Fraser knows he has the stolen jewels and doesn't think he should keep them, even though selling them and hiring lawyers with the proceeds could save his home. When Fraser was 12, Quinn didn't think he should kill a caribou, even though it could prove that he was grown. The question of need is a sticky one, though. Benton didn't need to kill the caribou in the same way that, presumably, Innussiq and the other boys did—that is, the other boys are subsistence hunting and Benton is doing it for sport, like Quinn's clients from the city. Benton wants to kill a caribou to show he belongs; Quinn says he already does belong and that's why he shouldn't do it. . . . All that does feel different to me than (a) their other metaphorical example, where Stinky Masterson's dog needed transport to an emergency vet and (b) Quinn's situation. It sounds to me from Fraser's own description as though Stinky did need Jimmy's snowmobile, not just want it; and does Quinn have another way to save his home other than hiring lawyers to fight the dam builders? Or another way to hire lawyers other than fencing the stolen jewels? So the parallels are not 100% accurate, but nevertheless, Quinn wants to fight the corrupt, evil men and Fraser says it's not worth it if he becomes corrupt and evil himself to do it. So where Quinn helped Benton find the caribou so he could decide for himself whether to kill one, Fraser is going to help Quinn find a fence so he can decide for himself whether to go ahead with his plan. (For what, as has been pointed out from time to time, shall it profit a man if he should gain the world and lose his soul? That's clearly what the show is driving at here, though it's been pretty careful all this time to keep away from religion as much as possible.)

( Scene 20 )

I'm not sure what sudden interest in Kelly he's asking her about. Other than that, I appreciate Francesca finally telling Kowalski where to shove his corrections of her malapropisms.

( Scene 21 )

If he'd killed anything big before, he wouldn't probably be out here feeling the need to hunt to prove he's a grown-up, right? The "not too late to turn back" exchange is heartbreaking.

( Scene 22 )

( Scene 23 )

Mushrooms? In ratatouille? (Also, doesn't Fraser have keys to the consulate? Why would a locked door stop him?)

( Scene 24 )

This just in: Turnbull is not, in fact, completely useless.

( Scene 25 )

For our younger readers: Toys R Us was a chain of giant toy stores that for a while in the 1980s and 90s were everywhere. They went bankrupt and closed in 2021.

( Scene 26 )

( Scene 27 )

Fire hazard much?

( Scene 27 continues. )

( Scene 28 )

There's a pause in "Forget the _ script" that sure sounds like the actor playing Kelly did an expletive and rather than shoot the scene again or even do ADR they just deleted it in post. An interesting choice. Anyway, it sounds like they might be talking about an actual movie?, and I don't know which one. Not like there's not a wide selection of heist-and-hostage films to choose from.

( Scene 29 )

So Kowalski the giant Steve McQueen fan on a motorcycle flying through the air—the movie was probably The Great Escape (1963)?

( Scene 30 )

Let's get the Kowalskis out of the way first: I love the way Kowalski and his mom look at each other. I'd like it better if she accepted his chosen name, but if it doesn't bother him that she calls him Stanley, the rest of us can probably get over it. (And at that time it was definitely much more common, wasn't it, for people to tie name changes to life-stage changes as well, so people who had always known them by the old name were often excused for continuing to use it. Today, I feel like your kid—at any age—says "I'm going to use this other name now," you call them by the other name. You at least make the effort. But again, Mrs. K calls her son Stanley and he doesn't say "Mom, for the hundredth time, it's Ray," so I'll just be over here adoring how their eyes both crinkle when they put their foreheads together.) And! How Damian Kowalski (fun side note: we've seen this actor before as Murph, the Whiskey King of the Windy City) towed that GTO all the way to Chicago; that is a father and a son who are both worried they've irremediably disappointed each other, is what that is, so how lucky for both of them (and especially for her, honestly) that all it took was a 2,000-mile road trip to bring them back together. (It wouldn't have been that long, but apparently they came in on I-90, so I conclude they were doing a grand tour and just stopped by when they were in the vague vicinity of Chicago, rather than coming to Chicago specifically, because in fact I-90 only runs in Illinois for about 100 miles between Gary, Indiana, and the state line on the way up to Madison, Wisconsin. You would not use I-90 at any point on the drive from anywhere in Arizona to Chicago.)

But how fortuitous that the Kowalskis happened to be coming by or through Chicago within 24 hours of Fraser and Ray Kowalski having that conversation about how they'd moved to Arizona. Did . . . did Fraser contact them and ask them to come see Ray? Because he absolutely should not have done that. I'm going to choose to assume he did not.

Nowthen. Benton Fraser shooting that caribou. The kid gives a pretty good performance in this scene, nicely showing the initial "I did it!" and the ultimate "What have I done?" The foley guy supplies good dying caribou; I don't know what noises a caribou makes when it has just been shot, but I believe that the one Benton shot is going to take a long time to die. And then what's he going to do? Take the antlers as a trophy? Does he even know how to field dress game? How's he going to get the carcass home? Do his grandparents have the storage space for that much meat? Will he be able to make use of the hide? Or has he, as Quinn suggested, killed an animal not because he needed it but because he wanted to, for himself, which is sacrilege? I can't not think about Sports Night s1e3 "The Hungry and the Hunted," in which Jeremy gets his first producing credit but ends up in the emergency room after he passes out on a hunting trip:

JEREMY: We shot a deer! In the woods near Lake Mattituck on the second day. There was a special vest they had me wear so that they could distinguish me from things they wanted to shoot, and I was pretty grateful for that. Almost the whole day had gone by, and we hadn't gotten anything. Eddie was getting frustrated, Bob Shoemaker was getting embarrassed. My camera guy needed to reload, so I told everyone to take a ten-minute break. There was a stream nearby, and I walked over with this care package Natalie made me. Sat down. When I looked up, I saw three of them: small, bigger, biggest. Recognizable to any species on the face of the planet as a child, a mother, and a father. Now, the trick in shooting deer is that you've got to get them out in the open, and it's tough with deer, 'cause these are clever, cagey animals with an intuitive sense of danger. You know what you have to do to get a deer out into the open? You hold out a Twinkie. That animal clopped up to me like we were at a party. She seemed to be pretty interested in the Twinkie, so I gave it to her. Looking back, she'd have been better off if I'd given her the damn vest. And Bob kind of screamed at me and whispered, "Move away!" The camera had been reloaded, and it looked like the day wasn't going to be a washout after all. So I backed away, a couple of steps at a time, and I closed my eyes when I heard the shot. Look, I know these are animals, and they don't play bridge and go to the prom, but you can't tell me the little one didn't know who his mother was! That's got to mean something! And later, at the hospital, Bob Shoemaker was telling me about the nobility and tradition of hunting, and how it related to the Native American Indians, and I nodded, and I said that was interesting, while I was thinking about what a load of crap it was! Hunting was part of Indian culture. It was food, and it was clothes, and it was shelter. They sang and danced and offered prayers to the gods for a successful hunt so that they could survive just one more unimaginably brutal winter. The things they had to kill held the highest place of respect for them, and to kill for fun was a sin. And they knew the gods wouldn't be so generous next time. What we did wasn't food, and it wasn't shelter, and it sure wasn't sports. It was just mean.

That episode aired October 6, 1998, one little week after this one. What an interesting week on TV dramedies for hunting stories, am I right? The absolute guilt and shame Joshua Malina puts into the silent beat right after "You hold out a Twinkie." is what we're meant to understand Fraser has been living with since he was 12 and shot that caribou not because he knew he needed to for his own survival but because he felt he needed to for his own reputation. Shooting the caribou would prove he was a grown-up, he thought, and here's the thing: It did, but not in the way he had expected it would.

And of course the best performance of all—in that last scene and in fact in the whole episode—is Gordon Tootoosis as Quinn, who presses his knuckles to his lips when Benton sights the caribou and drops his hand when Benton shoots and is so sad and disappointed that he led this boy to where he could make his own decision and then the boy made the wrong decision—and then, while the caribou is groaning and dying, looks at Benton to be sure he's going to be okay.

Cumulative body count: 34 (and one caribou)
Red uniform: The whole episode, but not (of course) the flashbacks

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