return to due South: season 4 episode 8 (or season 3 episode 21) "Good for the Soul"

Good for the Soul
air date December 16, 1998

( Scene 1 )

Actually what happened was that Tommy made a mistake; Warfield was rude and mean, which is not a crime; Fraser interfered; and then Warfield committed a crime. So I know whose fault I think that assault was. (Being clear: Warfield's, of course, because he's the one who did it, but I don't think he'd have done it if Fraser had minded his own goddamn business, because even as an officer of the law, you can't make someone apologize for being an asshole, as being an asshole is not illegal.)

( Scene 1 continues. )

Kowalski has new glasses, and they are better than the old ones. Fraser can't seem to sort out when he's able to make a citizen's arrest and when he's not.

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, Anne Marie Loder, Charles Dennis, Donald Carrier, Marc Brandon Daniel, and Alan Scarfe as Wilson Warfield

( Scene 2 )

I say again: What they saw was a situation that was under control until you came and shoved your oar in, Fraser. I'm not saying Warfield was right to yell at the busboy and throw water in his face for accidentally spilling water on him, but the dude hadn't actually done a crime in public until he was provoked by our hero. (I guess throwing water in the busboy's face is technically assault. But it's not the same as hitting him, as even Fraser would admit, because he didn't move in to arrest the guy when all he'd done was throw water.)

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And bro, have you been paying attention for the past five years? You live in a cop show. Come on. 🙄

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I don't want to seem like I'm pro–mob boss or pro-asshole or anything. This is an anti-asshole blog. And we do live in a society, and the kind of small-L libertarian everyone-mind-your-own-business of it all is how assholes flourish. So Fraser is right in his statements at the end of the scene, and he was arguably right to try to step in when Warfield was being an asshole in the first place. But I can't get over the feeling that he's being incredibly sanctimonious (Fraser? surely not!) about people's unwillingness to give statements about a crime that would not have occurred if he hadn't got involved. The busboy said he didn't want an apology! Warfield hit the busboy because Fraser insisted he apologize! Again: Warfield is clearly the asshole and the offender here, but Fraser is the motivator.

( Scene 3 )

"Slick Willie" is a common nickname for dudes who (a) are public figures with (b) names that start with Wil- and (c) somehow manage to avoid a lot of the trouble they ought to get into.

( Scene 4 )

Provoked! You provoked a crime! Isn't that entrapment? (I can't tell whether he was about to say it's the ideal opportunity to arrest Warfield or to arraign him for something that might stick.)

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Benton Fraser has been a cop for more than 15 years. It simply defies belief that the fact that the system is rigged and often unjust is news to him.

( Scene 5 )

I'm unhappy that Welsh is the only person acknowledging that Fraser had any causal relationship to this incident.

( Scene 6 )

That last bit is just adorable. Look how Fraser glances at Francesca for the merest second—blink and you'll miss it—after "whether he poses in the nude" to see if his joke is going to land but is all business when she looks at him. And she is absolutely astonished for the moment before she realizes oh my God it turns out Fraser made a joke! at work! (about nudity! to Francesca!) because he actually does have a sense of humor! ❤️

( Scene 7 )

Ah! A costume party, is it? Well, it sounds like good clean fun.

( Scene 8 )

I wonder what the point is of Fraser saying "use your wireless radio frequency communication devices" instead of something like "call." Is he hoping to confuse the goons enough that they'll give him what he wants? It's clear that they do understand him, and in all the time he's been living in Chicago he hasn't managed to out-lingo anyone, so . . . ?

( Scene 9 )

He's picking a fight. This is just not the same as going after a guy for overfishing or running a protection racket or littering or etc.

( Scene 10 )

And I don't know on what basis Fraser had been expecting Kowalski to turn up. Did Kowalski even know he was at the club?

( Scene 11 )

Richie and Johnny, like the cigar smugglers in "Eclipse," remind me of the enlightened liberal cops in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I guess the throughline is that you never know what someone else, even the "bad guy," is up against, which isn't the worst message ever.

( Scene 12 )

"I'll do what I can" is the most honest Fraser has been to a witness yet. Back in the day, he used to promise nothing bad would happen. Glad he finally learned not to do that.

( Scene 13 )

"In a manner of speaking, yes" = "no." See also "That depends on how you define cheating" (= "yes, I cheat") and "what I told you was true, from a certain point of view" (= "I lied").

( Scene 14 )

Well, if that isn't right on the nose. She's been stateside too long.

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( Scene 15 )

That children sometimes die cannot be news to Fraser. Maybe he's surprised that they haven't been reunited with their parents. But suppose their parents are still living in the material world? He shouldn't be scoffing at Bob in this manner.

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There are apparently several people named René Thibault, one of whom is currently LaFarge Holcim's Regional Head of North America, but more relevantly there's a Canadian artist by that name born in 1947.

I like the angel Mountie tree topper. I'm not sure what to make of Bob's advice to Fraser at this time. I guess this is Fraser realizing that forcing Tommy and the other guy to do "their duty" is maybe an overreach but not yet ready to decide to drop it himself, which is a shame.

( Scene 16 )

What does a natural baritone look like, do you suppose? 🤨 ("Santa Drives a Pickup" is a real song by Paul Gross and David Keeley. I'm so sorry.)

( Scene 17 )

Well, he didn't try to talk the guy into coming back to the consulate, so maybe Fraser is beginning to learn something.

( Scene 18 )

Mike Ditka is still kicking it as the iconic former head coach of the Chicago Bears. By 1998 he was with the New Orleans Saints and stinking up the joint, but I assume he will always be a Chicago institution.

( Scene 19 )

In 1955, Bob Fraser will have been about 18 years old. Is that old enough to head a detachment? I mean, if it was just him and Dilbert Foxworth and he was the first of the two of them to join the force, then he was the senior member of the detachment and thus the leader, I guess.

( Scene 20 )

The difference between a ball peen and a claw hammer is not even as relevant to this conversation as the difference between an African and a European swallow is to the bridge keeper in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I can't decide if demonstrating his knowledge of various types of hammers is supposed to make it clear to Warfield that Fraser totally understood the comment "you've got brass ones" and replied as if they were talking about his coat buttons entirely on purpose. (Keep them polished, indeed. What was I saying about what you can get away with on cable?)

( Scene 21 )

( Scene 22 )

Fraser is making a nuisance of himself, I see. Doesn't he have responsibilities at the consulate, though?

( Scene 23 )

I mean, Marty the Gun does have the most reasonable idea anyone in the whole episode has had yet, Fraser included, which is ~blink~. But the whole point is going to be who can out-stubborn the other, so blinking is losing, isn't it. Sigh.

( Scene 24 )

Loitering?

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And Kowalski is right! About the harassment thing at least. Which I guess means also about the selfish thing. I understand that Fraser understands the system and changing the system is part of what he's trying to do here. But this is not the same as fighting City Hall, which he literally did in "One Good Man," because this? began as and still is none of his business.

( Scene 25 )

So this whole episode has a little bit been trying to be an echo of "The Deal," hasn't it. Mob boss, Fraser trying to protect someone the Mob boss doesn't like, Mob boss's guys beat the shit out of Fraser while incongruously beautiful music plays on the soundtrack. Only in "The Deal," the Mob boss was threatening the guy before Fraser ever got involved. I say again: All the unpleasantness in this episode has come about because Fraser wanted Warfield to apologize for throwing water in Tommy's face (and, I suppose, for not accepting Tommy's apology for having spilled the water in the first place). Stipulated: Warfield is a son of a bitch. This episode is still not showing Fraser to be as noble and heroic as "The Deal" did. And maybe it kind of knows that? a little bit? in the way he tries to get away from the gang who are going to beat him up? Because in "The Deal," once he realized his way was blocked, he faced Charlie and took it; the only fighting back he did was to knock the gun out of his hand before he could shoot him. Here, he runs up onto the top of the car in a move that's not at all clear to me how it's supposed to help—though I'll grant he does keep trying to get up rather than just lie there once he's down. I don't know, it feels to me like the show is going for a callback and not quite getting there because they haven't realized what the point of the earlier episode actually was—in much the same way that, in H.M.S. Pinafore, Buttercup sings the captain a whole verse of platitudes about how things are not always as they appear to be, and then he sings her back a whole verse of random-ass aphorisms, because he's missed the point.

BUTTERCUP:
Things are seldom what they seem.
Skim milk masquerades as cream.
Highlows pass as patent leathers;
Jackdaws strut in peacock feathers.

CAPTAIN:
Very true, so they do.

BUTTERCUP:
Black sheep dwell in every fold.
All that glitters is not gold.
Storks turn out to be but logs;
Bulls are but inflated frogs.

CAPTAIN:
So they be, frequently.

BUTTERCUP:
Drops the wind and stops the mill.
Turbot is ambitious brill.
Gild the farthing if you will,
Yet it is a farthing still.

CAPTAIN:
Yes, I know. That is so.

[. . .]

CAPTAIN:
Though I'm anything but clever,
I could talk like that forever:
Once a cat was killed by care.
Only brave deserve the fair.

BUTTERCUP:
Very true, so they do.

CAPTAIN:
Wink is often good as nod.
Spoils the child who spares the rod.
Thirsty lambs run foxy dangers;
Dogs are found in many mangers.

BUTTERCUP:
Frequently, I agree.

CAPTAIN:
Paw of cat the chestnut snatches.
Worn-out garments show new patches.
Only count the chick that hatches;
Men are grown-up catchy-catchies.

Anyway, "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear" is a well-known Christmas carol, and what Dutch Robinson (whom we've seen, in "Dead Men Don't Throw Rice," as Detective Dutch; this recording was made just for this episode, evidently) is singing is the usual melody used in the United States. In the UK they generally sing the same text to a different tune, which is true of a fair few Christmas carols, actually, but this is a rare case in which I think the U.S. one is better. (The British "Away in a Manger" and "O Little Town of Bethlehem" are both far superior to the U.S. versions. Likewise the Harold Darke "In the Bleak Midwinter," which I associate with Britain in a way I don't the Gustav Holst setting of that text, though I'm not as positive about the U.S./UK divide between those.) Wikipedia says the UK tune is more common in "Commonwealth countries," of which Canada is one, but I guess as we're in Chicago, Fraser gets to hear the U.S. melody while he's getting the shit kicked out of him. Whatever, Dutch does a nice job, and it's nice to hear the second verse, which we don't always, because "the cloven sky" is such a terrifying image when you think about it, but it's a shame we didn't get to hear the third verse, which would actually have been on point:

But with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring; —
Oh hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing!

( Scene 26 )

It doesn't seem to me that Fraser is in a position to decide whether to go to the hospital or not. Wouldn't go? Kowalski is fairly carrying him down the hall here at the station; put him in the car and drive him to the goddamn hospital. Or failing that, take him home. What are they both doing here?!

( Scene 27 )

And Francesca doing all this first aid is certainly a callback to Elaine doing all the first aid in "The Deal," but while that scene made me despair for Elaine, this one actually gives me the feeling that Francesca is moving on a little bit. I mean, she says take your shirt off, I could feel around a little, but she says it with a kind of tone that feels to me like she knows she's never going to get anywhere with Fraser and has come to accept it and is even ready to joke around a little bit about how big of a torch she used to carry for the guy. Good for you, Francesca.

( Scene 28 )

He has not been right about this thing all along. That's a terrible lesson for him to be taking from this!

( Scene 29 )

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( Scene 32 )

I call shenanigans: In scene 18, Fraser had not yet traded for Welsh, and yet there is simply no way what he was carving in that scene was an elk. I can allow grizzly bear rather than polar bear, but elk, no way. (I mean I also call shenanigans on how quickly Fraser is carving whatever he's carving right now, but.)

( Scene 33 )

It's fun that Dewey got Kowalski the last ray gun but one (because we know Kowalski got the last one). It's very sweet that Kowalski donates it to Turnbull. Aww.

The framed photo Fraser is looking at is a black and white shot of a little kid and at least one adult, presumably Fraser and Bob; the kid is well tall enough to reach his father's belt, so he's apparently older than seven, which means if what's kind of obscured by shadow there on the left side of the frame is another adult, it can't be Caroline, who died when Ben was only six, so maybe it's his grandmother? Or maybe there's no one else in the picture at all. Hard to say. And it's a very small frame, certainly not bigger than 4"x6", possibly smaller, which, sure, a 60s-vintage photograph is going to lose a lot of resolution if you enlarge it too much, but look, scene 15 of this very episode had Bob and his friends making paintings to brighten the Christmases of lost children with no families—why was Fraser's supernaturally delivered extra Christmas gift not a painting of his family, for FUCK'S SAKE?

And "Christmas is about forgiveness" is a nice message, but if that's the point Fraser is trying to make, why the hell did he just spend 45 television minutes and however many days of his own life, including getting the shit comprehensively kicked out of him, to make sure Warfield faced justice? Is that forgiveness? Gah!

Cumulative body count: 36
Red uniform: The whole episode, sometimes without the tunic

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