return to due South: season 4 episode 12 (or season 3 episode 25) "Call of the Wild part 1"

Call of the Wild part 1
air date March 14, 1999

( Scene 1 )

Kinnikinnick is a smoking mixture, usually bearberry, and I suppose putting something that's meant to be smoked in someone's tea could turn that tea nicely hallucinogenic. Chicago sits, as we know, on the lake they call Michigan, so of course it doesn't get its drinking water from any type of reservoir with no fish in it, but okay.

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, David Marciano, Bo Svenson, Jonathan Potts, Phil Jarrett, Jan Rubeš as Mort, and Leslie Nielsen as Buck Frobisher

THERE'S the and/as credit Nielsen has deserved this whole time. Woohoo! (Wait: David Marciano? What? (And billed behind McDermott? What?!))

( Scene 2 )

As we all know, when we first met Fraser he had just arrested a guy who was dynamiting rivers and scooping salmon off the surface with a backhoe, so Mort's childhood experience sounds a tiny bit familiar, and then

💔

My researches suggest that it's possible Jan Rubeš was at Auschwitz and simply never talked about it. His English language profiles on Wikipedia nor IMDb (and their references, including his Order of Canada citation) don't include it, nor his obituaries in the Canadian newspapers; but there's a Spanish article at cines.com in which the section "Biografía" includes the paragraph "En 1942, su familia fue deportada a Auschwitz, pero Jan consiguió escapar y esconderse en los bosques de Checoslovaquia." Which is all fine and well, except that it gives a different date (September 23, 1924) and place of birth (Mladá Boleslav) from all the English sources (June 6, 1920, and Volyně, respectively). It does have broadly the same filmography, so they clearly intend to be talking about the same individual, but with those discrepancies and no sources cited, I'm not 100% confident (and I suppose even if I were sure the Spanish text was accurate, I wouldn't know if it was telling us he escaped from Auschwitz or escaped deportation when his family were sent there). The tattoo looks convincing, but they can indeed do things with makeup, can't they, so.

In any event, it's not for me to say how a survivor should most appropriately let people know what sort of camp he was talking about. If it were up to me, I might have had him read that line a little more matter-of-factly and not stop what he was doing to hold out his arm so they could see the tattoo—and then look up and be surprised at the boys' reaction. I think Fraser and Kowalski's horrified silence would have been just as believable if Mort had just mentioned the name of the place by way of clarification, rather than even edging anywhere near scolding Kowalski for having guessed wrong, and Kowalski's shame might have landed even harder; as it was, Mort's correction had just enough teeth behind it that his protests that he didn't mean to bring down the room feel just the tiniest bit disingenuous.

Thallium is indeed extremely toxic, but at this point in the scene, who cares?

( Scene 3 )

( Scene 4 )

I can only find a Six Mile Canyon in Nevada. In Canada, all I've got is Six Mile Hill, which is near Kamloops, BC. Mind you they don't specify that Muldoon didn't fall into the Six Mile Canyon in Nevada, but Bob Fraser wouldn't have had any jurisdiction there, would he.

So Muldoon and Bob Fraser were friends, but it turned out Muldoon was trafficking rare animals? (A lepidopterist studies butterflies. Not sure why such a person would come from Hungary to the north of Canada, but it turns out that as of 2013 there were 92 butterfly species known in the NWT, so what do I know.)

( Scene 5 )

As well she might! Local girl with the local knowledge!

The pages of the date book show March 8–9 as the weekend, which means the nearest year it could be from is 1997. I'm just saying.

( Scene 6 )

( Scene 7 )

We've mentioned Waco before. I'm not sure how to feel about Welsh basically going "federal, schmederal" at this point.

( Scene 8 )

So Bob was hunting Muldoon assiduously but took a break after Caroline died? We know he stopped going to work; apparently the time in which his beard grew and he lost weight was three weeks, and then where he went after he made Benton a bowl of oatmeal was back out in search of Muldoon.

( Scene 9 )

We can't see the passenger in the back of the second car; we can barely see the silhouette. (And we can't see the lettering on the canisters, so we can't judge the rustiness of Fraser's Russian.)

( Scene 10 )

This is like low tide levels of sand in this alley; that's lucky, isn't it? It's also lucky that the Hotel California embossed their employees' boot heels, rather than stamping them, and that they did so in mirror image, so that the boot print would read rather than , like the nose of an ambulance.

( Scene 11 )

Sigh. There is a segment of the population for whom fart jokes are never not funny. I am not a member of that segment.

( Scene 12 )

That's funny—as is "any number of clues, none of which I can remember at the moment;" like, go ahead, writers' room, just cut that Gordian Knot and Leslie Nielsen will make it sound good—but it's at least two words. (Depends if you hyphenate the first one, Dimethylaminoethoxy-cyanophosphine.) This compound appears on the U.S. Munitions Import List as an example of a toxic compound affecting the nervous system, so that's fun.

( Scene 11 continues. )

Howard Stern was (apparently still is) a radio host in the shock jock milieu. I'm not sure why this show would call him out by name; what he was up to in early 1999 seems to have been losing affiliates willing to air his weekly TV show, named "The Howard Stern Radio Show," because it was too offensive even for late-night. TIL Stern also had a character called "Fartman," a superhero who attacks evil with flatulence, which I suppose Frobisher might feel was a sort of mockery of his apparently debilitating digestive upset?

( Scene 13 )

So she brands the boots to discourage theft, and the result is that they are stolen more often. I feel like if your hotel is called Hotel California you might have been able to see that coming?

( Scene 14 )

Bulldogging is another name for steer wrestling. I've got flashbacks to Westley fighting Fezzik and Rogue Group taking down Imperial ATAT walkers with harpoons and tow cables, and I bet you do too. This Big Toe Blake dude just keeps going, almost as if he's on whichever of the psychoactive drugs gives you superhuman strength. PCP?

( Scene 15 )

Thatcher says "I appreciate that" and all I can hear is Cheers season 10 episode 20 "Smotherly Love" (1992):

WOODY: You know, Dr. Sternin-Crane, I always heard that you should tell your mother exactly how you feel.
FRASIER: Is that what you do, Woody?
WOODY: Yeah, right, like I want a whooping.
LILITH: Well, thank you very much, Woody, I appreciate that.
WOODY: You know, I have another idea.
LILTH: Thank you very much, Woody, I appreciate that.
WOODY: You didn't let me tell you the idea yet.
LILITH: Woody, in certain company, when someone says "Thank you very much, I appreciate that," it means "I don't thank you, I don't appreciate that, and I want you to shut your mouth."
WOODY: Oh. Well, thank you very much, Dr. Sternin-Crane, I appreciate that.

Tabun is indeed Dimethylaminoethoxycyanophosphine oxide, also called GA, being the first of the G-series of nerve agents because it was the Germans who synthesized them (thanks, guys). (GB is sarin gas.) Wikipedia says the lethal dose is about .01mg/kg, which if my calculations are correct means Frobisher was right that one milligram could kill a man, 100kg being a not-unreasonable mass for an adult. (I also guess that means those three Mounties in scene 10 were, alas, dead.)

I'm not sure why Francesca expects Fraser will inherit the Liaison Officer position—or, now that I think about it, why Thatcher expects Fraser would come with her if she were transferred to Toronto. Neither of those things happened when Inspector Moffat was promoted and left Chicago.

Francesca is wearing a cute little pinafore dress, so the mystery of the order of filming the episodes continues.

( Scene 16 )

Francesca is right, but her point would carry a lot more weight if she hadn't been super-excited by the possibility that Fraser would be promoted and run the consulate. I get that she thinks Toronto is a sterile wasteland, but if Fraser belongs on the tundra, why is she hoping he'll stay in Chicago?

Meanwhile, Fraser is still in mufti (no complaints), and Kowalski is wearing a blue newsboy cap, which, what?

( Scene 17 )

Blake is pretty cooperative now that the dust has worn off, I guess.

( Scene 18 )

Please identify another reason for Kowalski to observe (in that tone, as well) that Fraser is breathing hard into the phone. I'll wait.

( Scene 19 )

On the one hand: Holy shit, it's Ray Vecchio! I mean, we saw Marciano's name in the opening credits, so we were expecting to see him at some point, but here he is! Holy shit!

On the other hand: Fraser, what the fuck, bro, you know Vecchio is deep undercover with the Mob and Kowalski is here calling himself Vecchio for Vecchio's own safety; recognizing him and following him up to his room is one thing but why in, you know, THE WORLD would you call him by his name before if you knew it was safe to do so?

Do I know what I would do in a similar situation? No. Is it possible I'm having trouble shaking off all the fanfic I've read in the past 20-odd years and am not successfully coming at this thing as if I were seeing it for the first time? Maybe. I still think this is Some Bullshit with respect to our hero. He's been so careful about keeping Vecchio safe all this time; having him drop that ball now feels like the writers doing him a giant disservice.

( Scene 20 )

Yyyeah. Things that are good: Kowalski pretending not to understand the question so he doesn't have to be the one to tell Ray Vecchio to his face that he, Kowalski, is Ray Vecchio. That's really smart not blowing the guy's cover by giving him time to control his reaction. I like it. Things that are less good: (a) Muldoon recognizing the name Fraser; (b) Kowalski and Vecchio taking this instant dislike to each other. Probably inevitable, but regrettable all the same, and here's Fraser not picking up on it at all, just as it didn't occur to him that it would be dangerous to call Vecchio by his name. "Yes, that was stupid and I did it" doesn't feel to me like a comprehensive awareness of the badness of the situation.

I would have sworn Vecchio had said "this is 317" or "unit 317" or something before and doing so here shows he's back in the Chicago PD persona already, but I can't actually find it anywhere. Hmm. (Oh, I just did find it: In "Chinatown" he calls in and identifies himself as unit 342.) I do know we've heard of the Iguana family before.

( Scene 21 )

It makes total sense that Vecchio be Ray Vecchio "because he was Ray Vecchio to start with," that is, because he is Ray Vecchio. But why can't Kowalski be Ray Kowalski? Can we not call people by their last names around here, Welsh? Fraser? Huey? Dewey? Why make him use the name Stanley, which he wasn't using even before he went undercover as Vecchio? What the actual fuck?

Also, though, why is Kowalski so hung up on losing the Vecchio identity? Despite his assertion in scene 20, he has not actually been living Vecchio's life, such as living in his house, being with his family, etc. His own parents came in from Arizona and nobody—not Welsh and not the FBI, though apparently Internal Affairs still doesn't know he's there—said anything like "what the fuck are you doing, you're supposed to be Ray Vecchio" or anything like that. On the other hand, when he was offered a transfer and the opportunity to get his own life and his own name back, he didn't seem terribly enthusiastic about the idea. So: He's been pretty much living his own life; he doesn't seem to be too stressed about what last name he uses as long as he can use the first name Ray, which he's been using since he was a teenager; and he doesn't want to leave the 27th. Is that it? He doesn't want to leave Fraser? Make me see how what's bugging him could be something else, someone? Anyone?

( Scene 22 )

Item one: THERE IS. NO. RELATIONSHIP. Francesca. Baby girl. Listen. You have been putting all those tons of feminine effort into A DELUSION. DE. LU. SION. He doesn't understand the question! It's been five years! Why, how, what, how, how can this not have got through to you by now?

Item two: The going home thing is news to him, too, can't you see?

( Scene 23 )

Even if Thatcher had thought Francesca was talking through the back of her neck in scene 16, would she really be surprised to hear Fraser say that home for him is further north than Toronto? I'm going to choose to believe that these scenes should have taken place in the opposite order. Also, can't she get a decent latte in Chicago? (And I'm interested in what Fraser knows about discarding old boyfriends. 🤨)

( Scene 24 )

So the thing is Kowalski has been keeping Vecchio's name warm for him while he's been gone, but everything else he's doing has been really real, right? He really is a detective, those really are his cases, that really is his desk, and Fraser really is his (let's go with) friend — so why he should have to disappear from those roles when Vecchio returns in the same way Vecchio disappeared from them when he left in the first place is not obvious to me. I mean: I can see where looking at giving things up before you're ready to would be stressful (🚨 especially for a guy whose marriage ended before he was ready for it to end; someone evaluate Ray Kowalski for PTSD and do it asap 🚨), but I don't see why he has to give any of this up at all, except the name, and he's already got his own one of those that he's been keeping in the drawer this whole time.

( Scene 25 )

There's more to this Muldoon thing than we know yet, clearly. Bob wants Fraser to get Muldoon for his mother? Uh-oh . . .

( Scene 26 )

💔

I mean. See above re: Kowalski's divorce, because do we think his present feeling—that if he isn't The Guy Who Hangs Around With Fraser, he doesn't know who he is—is the first time he's felt this way? I don't. Which means, taking the last part first, (b) LIKE I SAID hoo boy does this dude need a psych eval and some therapy soonest and (a) he's in love with Fraser, right? Maybe on the rebound from Stella, but in any event, fitting Fraser into the place in his life where Stella was? Right? How can the show be intending me to think anything else at this (I'm going to say it) juncture?

( Scene 27 )

Damn / damn / darn is good. I don't know about Huey and Dewey's comedy club. I find whole sets of one-liners to be very difficult to sit through when the jokes are funny.

( Scene 28 )

It's not for me to say for sure, but a white man using an inuksuk as a grave marker strikes me as appropriative in a way I don't love. Couldn't he have erected a heap of rocks in any other shape?

The picture of Caroline Pinsent Fraser is the head shot of Martha Burns, whom we remember as the Russian woman in "Spy vs. Spy" and also as Paul Gross's wife, so there's that.

( Scene 29 )

Gentlemen, gentlemen, there are enough shooters here for everyone to arrest a couple, no need to get grabby.

( Scene 30 )

So I think that's all the details in place, then. Muldoon was a family friend because he was a gifted trapper and guide, but he was also a criminal (which, by the way, means that's at least two generations of Frasers who have bad track records of trusting people they shouldn't: Gerrard, Victoria, Lady Shoes, Maggie [briefly], Muldoon); Bob wanted to arrest him for the animal trafficking; and Muldoon shot Caroline for that reason. Doesn't entirely make sense, though, does it? Did he think killing Bob's wife was going to make Bob less interested in arresting him? I suppose if Bob was there when Muldoon did it, it might have bought him some time? (I mean, in the event, it seems to have bought him three weeks, doesn't it, although when Bob shaved his beard and got his shit together he'd have gone after Muldoon with a renewed fervor.)

Ben Fraser was six when Muldoon shot Caroline. I assume if he'd been there and seen it he'd have remembered? He has memories of Muldoon but no knowledge of his connection with his mother's death, which (a) is a pretty damning indictment of every adult in his life who knew the truth, and I'm including Frobisher and the grandparents as well as Bob, and (b) kind of has to mean he was somewhere else (and I don't mean somewhere else in the house) at the time. Could have been at school, I suppose. (But I mean seriously. In a community of the size they apparently tended to live in, it would have taken 45 minutes or less for everyone who had ever met them to have said or heard "Did you hear, Holloway Muldoon shot Caroline Fraser and when Bob comes to his senses he's going to kill him." Maybe that's why the grandparents moved to Alert? Can't get further away from buzz you don't want your grandson to hear than the literal end of the earth.)

Anyway. I assume they timed this scene on purpose so that when Fraser says "your ammunition is spent," etc., he and Thatcher are rising and looking down at Muldoon from a superior position on the wheel, but when Muldoon says "she dropped like a big old sack of potatoes," Fraser is looking up at him from the absolute lowest possible position on the wheel of fortune. Since almost the first time we met Benton Fraser I've been saying how he (that is, Paul Gross) does nice reaction work. That continues to be true here. I can believe what I'm looking at right here is a grown man who is experiencing this event as if he were still six years old.

(Speaking of evaluating someone for PTSD, am I right?)

( Scene 31 )

It's a good face, Fraser's "holy shit" face.

When Muldoon sets the bomb down and the timer shows 00:58, the time on the DVD is 40:20. Thatcher says "35 seconds" at 40:46, so I'll buy that. They have until 41:18. They disable the bomb at 41:15, and I have successfully hit the pause button at the exact right time to learn that at the moment before they cut the wires, the timer shows 00:08, not 00:03, but still, this is the closest to a legit countdown we've seen yet on this show, isn't it?

( Scene 32 )

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

This particular McLachlan lyric is bang on the nose, more so I think than any other needle drop we've had in the show all these years (possibly excepting "Superman's Song" in the pilot), but you know, I'm not even mad about it.

Okay okay. Legit question: Where are the rest of the Vecchios? Blah blah blah actors not available, but the man is shot and Francesca is the only family member visiting him in the goddamn ICU? Fuck it (I mean, see above re my refusal to live in a world where Sam Seaborn wasn't at Leo McGarry's funeral; this is the same sort of thing): I'm going to choose to assume they've been, and Mrs. Vecchio is overwhelmed with the stress and anxiety, so Maria and Francesca divide them up: Maria is home with Ma and Francesca is at the hospital with Ray. Maybe after dinner they'll swap.

I think Fraser and Bob are talking about two different things in their brief conversation here? I think when Fraser says "I'd have done the same as you" he means "I'd have chased the man who killed my mother to the ends of the earth and killed him with my own hands if I'd known it was him," and I think when Bob says "I hope you never get a chance to find out" he means "I hope you never have to make a decision about precisely how much of this sort of unbearable truth you have to keep from your child." Also, Pinsent did the whole scene with tears standing in his eyes. Nice work.

( Scene 33 )

The title, of course, refers to The Call of the Wild, a 1903 novel about a dog who eventually hears the call and rejoins the wolves of the north. Except for the way Fraser feels nostalgic for the Yukon, I don't think this episode has anything in common with the book.

Cumulative body count: At least 44; I'm counting only people we know for sure are dead, that is, the body in the reservoir, the body in the car, and the three Mounties who were gassed, but not anyone who gets shot from there on, because if Vecchio didn't die, maybe they didn't either.
Red uniform: When he's in the station and on the final stakeout and its aftermath, but not fishing on the reservoir and not in the nighttime lurking scenes.

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