return to due South: season 4 episode 5 (or season 3 episode 18) "Dead Men Don't Throw Rice"

Dead Men Don't Throw Rice
air date November 4, 1998

( Scene 1 )

The game they are playing is meant to be Monopoly, but it isn't. In the first place, Boston and Maine Railroad isn't a property in the U.S. or Canadian versions of the game (the U.S. railroads are Reading, Pennsylvania, B&O [Baltimore and Ohio], and Short Line; the Canadian railroads from 1982–1999 were CP [Canadian Pacific], BC [British Columbia], CN [Canadian National], and Ontario Northland). In the second place, though, look at the board. Fraser is moving a token to a property two spaces from the corner, and the railroads are always in the middle of each side. The corner he's coming up to appears to say "Start Here" rather than "Go," and there seem to be three properties in the last group before that corner rather than just two, although every edition of Monopoly ever made has a two-property group on either side of Go (the dark purples at the beginning and the dark blues at the end). But the big thing is that the spaces are yellow and red and green rather than white with color-group headers. In short, this is not a Monopoly board, so I should probably not stress about the fact that there are buildings apparently on two of the three yellow property spaces in front of Fraser as well as on the red (what would be if this were U.S. Monopoly) Luxury Tax space and on the green (ditto ditto) Chance card space? Or that Fraser is talking about buying a property that, in addition to how it can't possibly be a railroad, apparently someone already owns or it wouldn't already have buildings on it? Or that he's moving his piece and declaring his intention to buy this property before the dice have actually landed? (The bills and whatnot in the middle of the board I can overlook, because some people play by house rules calling for taxes to go in there rather than to the bank and be awarded to someone landing on Free Parking.)

Rudolf Nureyev was a great ballet dancer, arguably the best of his generation, possibly the best ever, who defected from the Soviet Union to France in 1961. I don't think he spent the rest of his life looking over his shoulder expecting to be caught and returned to Russia, so I assume Jones's Nureyev comparison ends with the pirouetting.

( Scene 2 )

The replacements are mad. Kowalski is vaguely entertained, possibly even flirting with Handler, who is having none of it. But listen, he's right: If there's a special signal and you don't give it, what do you think is going to happen?

( Scene 3 )

I suppose you can do a lot of things when you're desperate, but that window doesn't look big enough to me for Jones to have got out through it.

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, Barbara Eve Harris, James Kidnie, John Hemphill, Frank Crudele, and Al Waxman as Van Zandt

Remember how four years ago Al Waxman was the bad guy on "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" and Vecchio could tell it was probably him because he looked like That Actor, that is, hey-it's-that-guy?

( Scene 4 )

( Scene 5 )

Wonder where the other three guys—the two who let Jones in and the one who brought Van Zandt the gun—have got to.

( Scene 6 )

This is the second phone Kowalski's lost in eight months, which is a bummer, I agree. What agency is Special Investigator Handler with?

The nearby car is a tan sedan with a cream-colored hard top; its license plate is, of [course],(https://fox.dreamwidth.org/1520149.html#cutid16) RCW 139.

( Scene 7 )

These guys are definitely not gravediggers, because they're upset that they can't get hold of their friend who is called Digger, but there's definitely a Shakespearean-gravedigger vibe about them, innit?

( Scene 8 )

Francesca is, surprising nobody, still hung up on Fraser. But someone else is sending her flowers. Does she wish they wouldn't?

( Scene 9 )

I wish Fraser weren't as surprised and impressed as (let's be honest) we are when Kowalski busts out multisyllabic words and complete sentences with no hemming and hawing in them. Dude's a capable police detective, as we've seen before.

Carnauba wax is a common ingredient in shoe polish, which I assume is why Fraser is interested to discover it in the trunk of the Crown Vic; Two-Tone Jones was that dapper.

( Scene 10 )

( Scene 11 )

Kowalski as Good Cop, here we go.

( Scene 12 )

Okay, Francesca is making plans to go to Atlantic City with someone who doesn't speak English?

( Scene 13 )

( Scene 14 )

How, if at all, could Fraser ever have made it clear to Francesca that there has never (or practically never) been any "this" to work out or not work out between them? I feel like even if his question had been "What isn't going to work out between us?" rather than "It isn't?" she'd have charged ahead anyway, determined to understand things in her own way despite what's obvious to literally everyone else in her world and ours. But hey, here's Francesca working hard to convince herself, I guess, that Fraser's not the guy for her (or that she's not the woman for him) (or both). "She's going to be a mountain climber or a snowmobile repair person" is sweet. Only she seems not to be happy about the fact that she's (apparently) getting married; no wonder Fraser is stumped.

And "I'm Catholic and he's one of those other religions" is hilarious. (If she's marrying the guy who was speaking German on her phone, he's probably Lutheran, right?)

Listen, though. We saw Francesca in "Dr. Longball" and "Easy Money" but not in "The Ladies' Man," and then we did see her in "Mojo Rising," and in that episode as here she's wearing more layers than usual—an overshirt, a stylish vest—and looking a little, if I'm not mistaken, fleshier in the face. This is a woman who is built slightly enough that a gain of a couple of pounds represents a much larger percentage of her body weight than of, for example, mine; but I'm also going to conclude Milano was pregnant at the time. (IMDb concurs, a little nonspecifically.) Which isn't strictly relevant, except that Francesca is apparently engaged to be married to someone nobody has ever heard of before or even knew she was seeing (including, as recently as last week when she was taking up Vodoun to try to break Mama Lalla's curse on the precinct, Francesca herself), whose language she doesn't speak and whose religion she can't name. It would make so much more sense to me if they had used the fact that the actress was pregnant to have this engagement-out-of-nowhere come out of somewhere. If, for example, Francesca—although she's a grown woman who has been married before and can make her own decisions—might as at least a Christmas-and-Easter Catholic find that she feels like single motherhood may be a step further than she wants to take her independence. I don't know! I'm not Catholic at all. I'm just saying allowing the character to be pregnant at the same time as the actress could have motivated some of her choices and behaviors in some way that otherwise seemed to have come one hundred percent from left field.

( Scene 15 )

I am not Indigenous myself, so I'd certainly defer to those who are on the subject, but my understanding is that "Eskimo" is used by some and dispreferred by (and offensive to) others, so it's not quite the same as the tomahawk chop or Chief Wahoo (or the former name of the football team here in Our Nation's Capital, to say nothing of the many other professional, college, and high school teams that are named for specific tribes but may feel it's okay if they don't specifically use slurs to do it). In any event, Fraser didn't ding Ray Vecchio for his use of "Eskimo," but we've seen him learn things while he's been living in Chicago (e.g., "Zaire" one week and "Democratic Republic of the Congo" the next), so.

Anyway, I'm pleased to report that following the 2021 season, the Cleveland baseball team changed its name from Indians to Guardians, and Chief Wahoo—who was a cartoon, but more relevantly, a caricature—is no more.

( Scene 16 )

The car that drove off had the rear license plate LGB 648 and the one that arrived at the funeral home had the front license plate ZYZ 364, but I feel like we're supposed to think they're the same car? Which just seems unusually sloppy for the props department, doesn't it?

( Scene 17 )

I don't see why the fact that she's getting married is a more relevant reason for Francesca not to go on this assignment than the fact that she's a civilian.

( Scene 18 )

They're eating cold sandwiches, which I don't see how those would have any particular smell—good or otherwise—and the place says right on the door that it's a fish market restaurant, but whatever.

( Scene 19 )

Do Francesca and Kowalski know that Fraser is at the next table? It's hard to tell if she's glaring at Fraser when she's asking Kowalski about how someone can be so smart and also so stupid. Also hard to tell if he can hear her, although previous canon would suggest that from that distance of course he can.

Every dish in this scene—Tie Domi, Teemu Selänne, Esa Tikkanen, Pavel Bure—is named after a hockey player. I don't know what to do about that. I also don't know what part of a fish you'd call a saddle. Is it a sort of double filet? Like, a butterflied whole fish? (I mean you wouldn't serve one person a whole salmon. But a saddle of meat from a mammal is the loin from both sides of the spine, so I assume a saddle of salmon involves the same, even though usually it's split into sides?) Petits lardons are little cubes of salted pork belly, so maybe this saddle of salmon was seared in the hot pork fat before roasting and the crispy browned bits thrown on it as a garnish after? I don't know what "over four" means in this context; au four would mean "roasted," which the guy already said, but maybe he meant "for four," which is a more reasonable number of people to serve with a whole salmon?

Basically I'm puzzled by the menu at this restaurant on a number of levels.

( Scene 20 )

Cal Tech says the surface gravity on Pluto is ¹⁄₁₂ the surface gravity on Earth (8.333. . .%). So a thing that weighs one pound on Earth, 16 oz., weighs ¹⁶⁄₁₂ oz. on Pluto, that is, 1⅓ oz. Other internet sources say an object's weight on Pluto is even less, about 5.9% or 6% of its weight on Earth, which would mean a pound of nails or cheese would weigh just .95 oz. (I suppose a pound of gold would weigh one troy ounce on Pluto, because there are 12 troy ounces in a troy pound, each of which is a hair heavier than an avoirdupois, that is, a normal, ounce.) I don't know from where Fraser is getting 6.4 ounces—or why he's speaking in standard or imperial measurements at all—but that represents 40% of the pound's weight on earth, which is pretty close to its weight on Mercury or Mars, but not Pluto.

Tony Orlando started in doo-wop and hit it big with Tony Orlando and Dawn in the 1970s.

( Scene 21 )

What are the odds Fraser actually needs Kowalski's help to remember his lines here in this Clever Ruse they're perpetrating on these two schmucks?

In other news, Fraser is wearing an olive green sweater under his brown leather jacket, and it's good, but not as good on him as the cream and cooler blue shades he's worn at other times. (Have there been more than two blue sweaters? I can only remember the ones in "The Wild Bunch" and "Bounty Hunter," though they've dressed him in off-white several times ("An Eye for an Eye;" "Mountie on the Bounty part 1;" "Pilot," the original and best).) I was surprised I couldn't find more examples from the post-Vecchio oeuvres until I remembered there have only been half as many episodes since Vecchio split as before and Fraser is mainly wall-to-wall red uniform anymore.

( Scene 22 )

( Scene 23 )

The thing is that Fraser has not, as far as I can tell, been sending Francesca any signals, mixed or otherwise. So she's really off her nut. I feel like we'd be in a whole different place if her idea that her feelings for Fraser were reciprocated had any basis in any kind of reality. Of course if Francesca were pregnant, that could explain a small number of emotional outbursts; not that pregnant women always act crazy, but while I'm neither Catholic nor Indigenous I have been pregnant and I'm here to tell you it can indeed make all the feelings you were already having feel a little closer to the surface, a little bigger. So it's not like Francesca's ideas about Fraser would make sense if she were pregnant, but her yelling in the hallway might be a little less mysterious.

I'm so interested in the fact that Fraser didn't change back into his uniform as soon as he got back to the station but waited until after they'd lied to Ira and Vince.

( Scene 24 )

That's too small to be a bouga toad, but whatever, apparently what Diefenbaker was saying was "Hey, remember Jerome?"

Welsh has made an offhand and unremarked-upon reference to [The Court Jester](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Court_Jester) (1955), in which the immortal Danny Kaye (and Glynnis Johns! and Mildred Natwick as Griselda) does "the pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle, but the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true" for five minutes.

( Scene 25 )

Hey, remember the Nahanni River?

And he could hold it for 36 hours? He wouldn't have just peed in his sleep? . . . I guess it's not really sleep. Still, though.

Special Investigator Handler has obviously never met this desk sergeant before if she thinks she can tell her to keep what she's seen to herself and that will work. I mean to say.

( Scene 26 )

It's not surprising that Kowalski is the default dogsitter, right?

( Scene 27 )

Did the promos for this episode show Fraser in the casket with no explanation? Did people flip their shit? Once the episode reached this point did people go all the way off on the Sleeping Beauty of it all? (Or was it Snow White? Which is the one where the prince has to kiss the girl to wake her up? Is it both?)

( Scene 28 )

Aw, Diefenbaker. (Most of this short scene is in distorted black-and-white with subtitles, Diefenbaker POV.)

( Scene 29 )

I like this moody music. It has a frequent descending-chords figure that reminds me a lot of the bit of the Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack right after the Bilbo Baggins jump scare. Gives the same feeling of something mystical receding, though in this case it keeps coming back in waves.

( Scene 30 )

Hard to deny Fraser is good with a door. Always has been. But let me ask this:

BROTHER?!

Yeah, right.

( Scene 31 )

Those two guys picked Fraser up very easily. If he were really dead he'd probably have passed out of rigor by this point, wouldn't he? And yet he doesn't bend at the waist, which is handy for them. Also, apparently after he lay down but before he became unconscious he thoughtfully grabbed onto the outseam of his trousers so his arms wouldn't just flop down from the shoulder.

( Scene 32 )

This desk sergeant has spoken to Nicky about cooking poultry before, but at that time I think it was legit and this time it's obviously what she's falling back on pretending she was talking about the whole time. She's a gossipmonger, but I think I like her.

Chelsea Clinton—I keep having to remind myself how long ago 1998 was and how much might not be obvious to today's viewers—was, indeed still is, the daughter of Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former of whom was president of the United States at the time. She'd have been about 18 and was allowed, as I remember, more or less to live her own life without being subject to constant paparazzi attention. (I mean, not none. But the thing in e.g. The West Wing where the Bartlets laid down the law about press access to their youngest daughter was definitely borne out of the Clintons' real life.)

( Scene 33 )

Here we go.

( Scene 34 )

Heh. Brother.

( Scene 35 )

Superman can die, though, although to be fair I guess he didn't stay dead, did he.

( Scene 36 )

That, I think is lovely. Once in a while Bob Fraser comes through with something awesome (or heartbreaking), and this is one of those times.

( Scene 37 )

Dewey's generally an asshole, but when the chips are down, look at him trying to take care of Kowalski, who's just lost his partner. Aww. (I think the story of the moose on the side of the mountain must be the caribou story he told Charlie Pike in "Diefenbaker's Day Off," so sincerely, nice continuity job, writer's room.)

( Scene 38 )

It was Robert Browning, in [The Ring and the Book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ring_and_the_Book), XI.2375–2377. Kurt Browning is a world champion Canadian figure skater (the first to land a quad in competition). I can't find anything on anyone named Thibault (or Tibault or Tibo or Teebo) Browning. [eta: An anonymous commenter alerted me to the existence of the Browning T-Bolt rifle, of which I had previously been unaware. This gun was produced between 1965 and 1974 and took .22 caliber ammunition (and reintroduced in 2006 allowing .17 caliber ammunition of a type that didn't exist until 2002), so it's not the gun that killed Bob—recall that was shooting .30-06—but maybe it was what he normally carried? Hard to say. It didn't occur to me to look for it in the first instance because what he says sounds like "tee-bow," that is, he doesn't pronounce the LT, which I assume one would when discussing the T-Bolt, but it's a good connection, so thanks for the heads up, Nonny!]

( Scene 39 )

The Fraser-and-Diefenbaker reunion is sweet—enough so that I almost didn't ask what the hell Kowalski is wearing? It's a sort of opposite-color colorblock situation on the front of his sweater that I think even Vecchio might not have favored? Oof.

Francesca was much braver the last time she had a gun to her head, so I conclude that the sobbing this time is more because she thinks Fraser is dead than because she's scared. (Though it's another thing that could have been partly explained by the character being pregnant.) I do like everyone's stone-faced serious expressions, though. Like, again, Dewey is a jerk but maybe he's not actually a bad guy? If you see the distinction? The grim seriousness on Turnbull's face (is probably just McDermott being a professional in case the camera happens to find him but) must be what launched the Turnbull/Francesca ship, mustn't it (if it didn't get off the ground at "and think of the color yellow")? And then Welsh makes his (tasteless, in my view) Jonestown reference. Oy.

( Scene 40 )

Three 99-year sentences is 297 years; I don't know how Van Zandt is eligible (not "available," Kowalski, come on) for parole in 143 years. It looks like since 1978, eligibility for parole in Illinois has been after the minimum term of an indeterminate sentence or 20 years, whichever is less; or after 20 years of a life sentence; or after 20 years or one-third of a determinate sentence, whichever is less. (Minus credit for good behavior.) (730 ILCS 5/3-3-3) So if Van Zandt's sentences are straight-up 99 years, or even if they're some range X–99, won't he be eligible for parole in either 20 or 60 years, depending if those sentences are simultaneous or consecutive? That is, if he technically gets parole in 20 years on the first sentence, doesn't he immediately begin serving the second sentence, and when he gets parole on that one, immediately begin serving the third? Or, in the alternative, does he have to do all 99 years of the first two sentences and then become eligible for parole after 20 years of the third one, which would be 218 years? There's no math I can do with these numbers that gets me to 143 years, because even if the range of Van Zandt's sentences was 47⅔–99, so three sequential minimum terms would add up to 143, he'd have been eligible for parole after 20 years because that's less than 47⅔. If the sentences were 61½–99 and he had to do two "full" (that is, the low end of the range with no eligibility for parole) terms before being eligible for parole after 20 years of the third sentence, that would get us 143 years. Otherwise I'm stumped. People who understand parole and release eligibility in Illinois are welcome to tell me what I'm getting wrong here.

Nowthen: Francesca's German fiancé. I heard Ja komm, ich nicht rauf was Sie sagen, "Yeah, come on — I'm not getting what you're saying;" als sich Ihnen vohern sagte, ich kann keine Englisch, "As I told you beforehand, I can't [speak] any English;" Sie Chicago-Mädchen sind merkwürdige, "You Chicago girls are weird;" ich muss jetzt gehen, "I must go now." I'm not super familiar with German but I have the feeling that "keine" isn't right and that "merkwürdige" should agree with "Mädchen," but maybe it does and I'm thinking too French-or-Russian-ly about it?

But besides his four lines, I have a number of other questions about Doppel Gänger (and is Paul Gross wearing some false teeth or just kind of holding his jaw oddly in addition to the glasses and the floofy way his hair is combed?) and Francesca's relationship with him. With this kind of language barrier, how did they get to the point that she decided they were engaged? I mean obviously they were not, because the dude can't possibly have proposed or consented. Or even known Francesca was planning to marry him. (He calls her Sie, which is formal, though I don't know how close you have to be to someone in German to switch to du. Naturally there'll be a range among German speakers, but is it normal or unexceptional to be reserved enough to save the familiar pronoun for after marriage?) Like—getting all the way to the dress fitting is pretty committed to the concept, yeah? But last week, as we said, nobody had ever heard of him?

Of course she was attracted to him in the first place because of his resemblance to Fraser. (See also Greene, Rachel, and her brief relationship with Russ.) But before the first place: Where did she even meet him? I assume she was making a deliberate effort to get over her hangup on Fraser. Which is hard for her to do!, and she stumbles a couple-few times. So but okay: She decides, presumably on the advice of a therapist or at least a priest (or possibly her mother and her sister, but let's give her credit for maybe going to see a professional), to proactively get out there and try to meet someone new. She meets Doppel Gänger and is thrilled. Neither of them can understand a word the other one says, but she's cute, so they give it a shot, and we've seen before how she'll hang right in there and try to keep a conversation going whether she's getting any participation from the Guy Who Looks Like Fraser across the table or not. So who knows?, maybe at some point he said something that sounded sweet and she said "Oh my god are you asking me to marry you?" and squealed and hugged him and he . . . can't have realized that's what just happened, but sure, his inexplicable new American Schatzie is effusing in his arms, why not. I'll go ahead and assume he really did send her those flowers, even. And then I'll give her credit for realizing, when she thinks Fraser is dead and is devastated about it, that she isn't over him and therefore shouldn't marry Doppel.

But I still can't make it make sense! How does he even know she works at the police station?

I want the title to be a reference to Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982), but I can't make it work. I think it's just the aphorism "dead men don't tell tales" and the tradition of throwing rice at weddings.

Cumulative body count: 35
Red uniform: The whole episode, including the formal dress version when he's in the casket

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