I don't, like, take notes when I read the occasional murder mystery, but all the same, I'd like the record to show that on page 85, I began to wonder if it will become relevant that ( spoiler? )

and in my experience KJC is sufficiently deliberate that I feel like that's more likely than not to be A Thing.

[eta: p. 168: I think I know who did it. (I'm almost certainly wrong.)]

[eta2: In fact I couldn't have been more wrong! But I dug it the most anyway. Oddly nostalgic, though obvs my own Oxford experience involved neither undergraduates nor murders.]

Couple weeks ago I posted a little Red White and Royal Blue fic, and the other day I made a royal family family tree with, yes, the extra members I referred to in it, but also (obvs) those who appear in the book and the movie, and I think it can be made to comply with either canon with only a small number of slight adjustments.

( Long post is long. )

The name of the book, on the cover, was evidently Red, White & Royal Blue. That seems to be what Amazon is calling the film as well, in a different font, except when I went to double check I found that they can't even let the same decision stay made for this long:

So I'm going to carry on using the Oxford comma and the word "and" and we're all going to have to be okay with that.

Anyway, like I said, the movie was fine, and I think it was fine because it was cut down from the book, where I think exactly the same movie without the book holding it up might not have been as good. I'm just going to take a second here, and then hopefully be able to move on to other matters, to note that the cast of this movie are the best-looking lot to have appeared on my television in a long while, maybe ever, and I say this as a person who just spent a year and a quarter transcribing due South. Taylor Zakhar Perez as Alex, good lord. Something reminiscent of Rufus Sewell about the cheekbones, especially in profile when he does a similar crinkly-eyed smirking laugh, but/and then the dazzling smile and the big brown eyes and the eyelashes for days. The rest of them are very nice-looking as well, she conceded, hand-waving many beautiful people including Uma goddamn Thurman and Nicholas Galitzine, the other lead (the first words out of whose mouth are "When the revolution comes," which if it's accurate that the actor is literally a Russian prince—I mean, that is, descended from an exiled Russian princely family—is vaguely hilarious), but this Alex, holy shit.

I guess the rest of the post contains spoilers . . .

( Things from the book that were absent from the movie )

( Things that exist in the movie but did not appear in the book )

( Things I liked a lot )

( Things I wasn't bananas about )

I've been rambling about this all day. Better hit Post and move on with my life. OH, but first, I was going to come back to the Clintons and Obamas and West Wing of it all—because I am generally happier with the book plot and setting but with the movie leads and their being grownups etc., I think for the first time in my life I'm going to be happiest being a non-purist about canon and . . . combining them? That is, I'm going to take the movie as canon generally but revert Henry to being the youngest of his siblings, import June and Rafael and Leo and their storylines, and assume The West Wing as we know it was not a TV show in their universe because that allows me to cross them over and have Alex and June be friends with their immediate predecessors, Peter and Miranda Santos. [satisfied nod]

After spending more than a year doing due South annotated transcripts, I feel a bit at sea. Someone tell me not to spend a hundred bucks on the box set of The Sentinel and begin again.

Call of the Wild part 2
air date March 14, 1999

( Scene 1 )

( Scene 2 )

These scenes run together quite seamlessly, in fact, but the first one is all flashback and the second one is all new. At the same time, I know this is billed as a two-parter, but I question the need for a "previously on" when "previously" was the previous hour. All there's been is a commercial break. "Several minutes ago, on due South . . ." doesn't have the same ring to it, I guess.

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, David Marciano, Bo Svenson, Kenneth Welsh, and Leslie Nielsen as Buck Frobisher

McDermott and Loder (Turnbull and Stella) are sharing billing and Marciano (Vecchio) is behind them both. I will never understand.

( Scene 3 )

( Scene 4 )

Even if you're fluent in Morse code, you can't as a human person decipher binary computer code such as is transmitted by a hissing buzzing clanging modem unless you have some sort of decoder chip implanted in your head. Maybe not even then. I like that the show is finally allowing Fraser to just handwave the impossible things he does. No more slow your own heart rate, calculate the cubic feet of air in an ostensibly airtight room, clamp down your own saliva ducts, whatever—just don't worry how I know this, it's not important.

70°N 125°W is pretty dang close to Franklin Bay, depending how much of Amundsen Gulf is indeed Franklin Bay. My question is, how is that plane going to get there? It must have more than twice the range of the little plane Fraser and Vecchio crashed in in "North." Which—this looks like a bigger plane than that, and there are light aircraft whose range is over 1,000 and even potentially 2,000 miles, but even so, bro, I don't think this plane is starting from Chicago and getting to 70°N 125°W on a single tank of gas.

I can't think of a good reason for Fraser to have said "e'en" instead of "even."

( Scene 5 )

I don't believe Air Canada offers full-body massages, nor is it appropriate to expect that sort of service from the cabin crew of any airline, but ha ha, sexual availability of flight attendants, what a funny funny joke that isn't at all tiresome. Meanwhile, of course Thatcher will be an Air Canada partisan, but Stan Rogers died in a fire on an Air Canada flight, I'm just saying.

How has Turnbull never flown before? When he moved to Chicago, did he do it on a bus?

( Scene 6 )

Vecchio's sneering Armando persona is—well, it's not that Armando is cool, but it's good the way Vecchio can shake him off and put him back on again.

The code name is 17FOC76. Hmm.

( Scene 7 )

I'm imagining a bowling ball being sucked through forty yards of garden hose, and it's not going well for the hose. I think Fraser's analogy could use a little workshopping if he's trying to emphasize the danger to the bowling ball in this situation.

( Scene 8 )

For what feels like the first time all season, we can see Francesca below the shoulders and she's got a visible little tum. Impossible to say if that's a Milano who's about five months along or a Milano who's had the baby and is almost but not quite back in the shape she was before, but there you are.

( Scene 9 )

Fraser shoves the crate off the plane at 9:54 on the playback and Kowalski at 9:58; he jumps out himself at 10:03. This sort of plane appears to have an average speed of 175 mph (well, a cruising speed of 150 knots, and for this purpose I'm calling that close enough), which is about .05 miles per second, so in five seconds the plane will have gone about another quarter-mile.

The snow isn't bottomless, of course—there's land under it—and even if it's soft and powdery to a depth that's safe to land in after jumping out of a plane, how will the guys get out again? Conversely, if it's got a stopping depth shallow enough that they can reach the surface, how will they not break several bones (or rupture one or more internal organs, or both) when they hit it?

I wish they'd acknowledged the fact that they've done "we'll jump" / "like hell" before, but I'm glad that "Great Scott, turtles!" apparently works on everyone.

( Scene 10 )

Well, there is that. (It's not like he hasn't been back since he left, given that he had a vacation long enough for Vecchio to leave town and Kowalski to get in his place, but never mind.)

They both hit the snow at 10:10 on the playback, one after the other. So Kowalski was falling for about 12 seconds and Fraser for about seven. Accelerating at 32 feet per second per second, Kowalski has fallen about 2300 feet and Fraser only about 800, and they shouldn't land (a) at the same time nor (b) right next to each other (or, I guess, for them to land at the same time the plane can't have kept level but will have had to descend 1500 feet in eight seconds, which if Muldoon was flying and left the controls to come shoot at them I guess is not impossible?); I guess a quarter mile isn't that far, but the guys just aren't going to land side by side unless Fraser can somehow dive out of the plane in a directional way and catch up with Kowalski as he falls. Which, given that he can stay with Kowalski when they're both flying improvised fire extinguisher jetpacks, may be plausible? But come on.

Do note, though, that Kowalski is covered with snow and Fraser doesn't have a flake on him. Good to know that some things never change.

( Scene 11 )

( Scene 12 )

Fraser has put on mittens and a warmer coat and also, apparently, changed into the trousers that go with the brown or blue uniform rather than the jodhpurs that go with the red tunic. Also probably a sweater. Kowalski is wearing some bib snowpants and also evidently some more layers than he was wearing before they left the plane. When have they had time to do this? And wouldn't changing your clothes in the windswept outdoors be very cold indeed? Why is neither of them wearing a hat? WTF?

( Scene 12 )

How does Turnbull know how to drive a dogsled? If he's originally from the far north like Fraser, won't he have had to fly on a plane before, you know, ever, and probably a small one at that?

( Scene 13 )

Fraser gave Bob enough what for in "North" about the possibility of abandoning his partner; you'd think Bob (that is, Ben's subconscious) would have learned by now that it is Not Going To Happen (with the arguable addition of especially not this partner).

( Scene 14 )

Stella finds Ray Vecchio charming, which is a good thing, because why would she have given a shit that Ray Kowalski was not the real Ray Vecchio? She never thought of him as Ray Vecchio in the first place. (In fact, given that she's with the state's attorney's office, shouldn't she and Ray Vecchio have met before? When she said apparently Vecchio didn't read Guy Rankin his Miranda rights, did she just hear that from someone but never in her entire career clap eyes on the guy until now? I guess even all the time he was mixing it up with her colleague Louise St. Laurent they never managed to be in the same place at the same time.)

( Scene 15 )

There's nothing that high within a two-day walk (I mean, a difficult two-day backcountry hike) from Cape Parry, which is what's up at the north end of that peninsula we were talking about when Fraser said 70°N 125°W and Franklin Bay, because of course it's all river delta up there, but never mind.

( Scene 16 )

I'm pretty sure that's what Kowalski said, and I think he means he just shit his pants. Which, given the spill he just almost took, fair (although we don't know what, if anything, they've been eating).

( Scene 17 )

The ongoing Huey-and-Dewey-hate-each-other's-driving gag is fine, but Huey wouldn't feel that kind of whiplash if he'd wear his goddamn seatbelt.

( Scene 18 )

This was almost certainly not necessary in general, still less so given my conclusions about Thatcher's history of being sexually exploited, but I'm glad Frobisher stood in her defense rather than encouraging his boorish troops.

( Scene 19 )

At the beginning of this scene, the stars and the waning crescent moon (illuminated on the left because northern hemisphere) look very close. At that phase the moon doesn't appear until well after midnight, but it's strange that they'd have kept hiking through that many hours of darkness (in Whitehorse, YT, the sun sets at 8:00 p.m. in mid-March and rises again at about 8:15 a.m.). For a giggle, I asked timeanddate.com for moonrise times in the Yukon in March 1999, and as it turns out, third quarter is accurate! So that's fun. But it doesn't answer why the fellas weren't tucking in to sleep until three in the morning.

It's harrowing to hear Fraser admit to his own subconscious that he doesn't know whether Kowalski will survive. And even more so, of course, to hear Kowalski praying Our Father at this point.

( Scene 20 )

I mean, yes, an incapacitated Kowalski is going to be a lot of extra work for Fraser. But it's better than a dead Kowalski!

Fraser has no ice crystals on his beard stubble (of which he has none) nor his eyebrows. If it was possible for exactly one of them to sleep with his back to the wind, he should have arranged Kowalski on that side, so presumably this is his Teflon hand-laundry good luck surfacing again instead.

( Scene 21 )

( Scene 22 )

The show said Fraser and Kowalski's relationship is the same as Bob and Caroline's. They've said it twice now, along with pointing out that willingness to lay down your life for someone is true love. I don't know what else I could be meant to conclude here.

( Scene 22 continues. )

I'm sure what Kowalski means is that the pack is digging into his back in a way that's uncomfortable.

( Scene 23 )

( Scene 24 )

I'm just so glad Kowalski quoted White Heat (1949) rather than Titanic (1997) ("I'm the king of the world!") that I'll overlook the fact that right after James Cagney says "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!" he is engulfed in flames and dies.

What idiot would hear "mine field" and start running? I mean, running the other way, maybe. But running through a mine field is not the way to get through a mine field safely, am I right? I feel like even I know that. (I'm going to leave behind both "I just climbed my first mountain" and the fact that the fellas are jammed in that tight spot hip to hip. I feel like those things balance each other out.)

I mean, but listen, if either of them had fallen in there by himself, he'd have fallen much further and probably died, definitely been unrescuable. Only because they were together could they get stuck that relatively short way down as they did.

( Scene 25 )

( Scene 26 )

When Kowalski was facing death, he sang "S.O.S." by ABBA. Was that the time Marcus Ellery robbed the bank and he (at age 13) peed his pants, or another time facing death?

Where are those happy days? They seem so hard to find
I try to reach for you, but you have closed your mind
Whatever happened to our love? I wish I understood
It used to be so nice, it used to be so good

[REFRAIN] So when you're near me,
Darling, can't you hear me? S.O.S.!
The love you gave me,
Nothing else can save me. S.O.S.!
When you're gone, how can I even try to go on?
When you're gone, though I try, how can I carry on?

You seemed so far away, though you were standing near
You made me feel alive, but something died, I fear
I really tried to make it up, I wish I understood
What happened to our love? It used to be so good

(refrain)

Maybe Fraser doesn't know that one, and that's why he suggests singing "Northwest Passage" in the face of death. For the romantic atmosphere. (The romantic atmosphere.)

Anyway, I think it's delightful that Delmar asks if they want help rather than just charging ahead and assuming. It seems like a knucklehead question from a guy who repeated the fourth grade at least once, but in fact "May I help you" is much more correct than "Let me help you," so well done!

All right. Yes: In 1845, Captain Sir John Franklin did leave England in command of HMS Erebus and accompanied by HMS Terror to search for the Northwest Passage, which after late July of that year were never again seen by Europeans. (The Wikipedia article on the expedition says "In late July 1845 the whalers Prince of Wales (Captain Dannett) and Enterprise (Captain Robert Martin) encountered Terror and Erebus in Baffin Bay, where they were waiting for good conditions to cross to Lancaster Sound" and cites Richard Cyriax, Sir John Franklin's Last Arctic Expedition; a Chapter in the History of the Royal Navy (London: Methuen & Co., 1939), 66–68; I can't get Google Books to show me those pages, but I've got "The Erebus and Terror, when last seen at the end of July, 1845, were moored to an iceberg on the east side of Baffin Bay, opposite Lancaster Sound," so I'll take it. They seem not to have reached Peel Sound until the summer of 1846. But never mind: The gist of Fraser's comment is accurate, which is that the entire expedition was lost; all members were declared dead in 1854. By 1999, many had gone in search of Franklin and his lost ships, and noone (that is, no Europeans) had found more than a trace of them here and there. (Fear not: Of course we'll come back to this.)

( Scene 27 )

I don't know any of the places Delmar mentions, so I'm not going to do the map again. It sounds like he says "Trojan Valley," of which Google is unaware in Canada; there is a Diamond Head on the side of Mt. Garibaldi 50 or so miles north of Vancouver and a Mt. Sabine at about the same latitude on the eastern end of British Columbia, but those are thousands of miles from the northern areas where we've been led to understand Fraser and Kowalski jumped out of the plane on the way to Franklin Bay. There's also no King's Creek all the way up there. In short: The whole thing is a mystery, including the Argentine soccer team reference, because I think when Delmar says "an Argentine soccer team eating themselves" he is referring to the amateur Uruguayan rugby team that (with a couple of dozen others) crashed in the Andes in Argentina in 1972, which you may remember from the film Alive (1993).

( Scene 28 )

Fraser. Honestly. Not when you've just finished proposing to Kowalski, innit?

( Scene 29 )

Frobisher, of course, is attempting to echo the St. Crispin's Day speech from Henry V:

This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say "To-morrow is Saint Crispian."
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say "These wounds I had on Crispin's day."
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words—
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester—
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be rememberèd—
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

St. Crispin's Day is October 25, which I suppose is one reason Frobisher couldn't just do the regular speech. 🙄 (This episode didn't air on March 11, which is a bummer.)

( Scene 30 )

( Scene 31 )

I've got a deus ex machina for Sgt. Buck Frobisher? Sign here, please. [h/t Cleolinda Jones]

I mean, last time we had a season-ending two-parter, we had Sea Mounties, right? So why not Air Mounties this time. Pity this is the series finale so we'll never get Fire Mounties, innit.

When Fraser says "a Delta-class Russian nuclear submarine" all I can hear is Leo McGarry speaking to President Bartlet in The West Wing season 3 episode 6 "Gone Quiet" (2001):

LEO: This is one of those things we've talked about that sounds worse than it is because of your inexperience with the military.
BARTLET: What is it?
LEO: Okay. The USS Portland is a Seawolf-class, or "big," nuclear submarine.
BARTLET: Yeah.
LEO: It has a crew of a hundred and thirty-seven. It is loaded down with highly classified intelligence-gathering equipment. And it is in the waters off North Korea.
BARLET: Right.
LEO: We don't have it right now.
BARTLET: What does "we don't have it" mean?
LEO: Well, as you know, with our ships, our boats, and our submarines, we keep in pretty close touch with radar, sonar, satellites, radio, encrypted messages — and we don't have the Portland now.
BARTLET: We don't have it?
LEO: We do not.
BARTLET: And they're in North Korea?
LEO: Yes. Last we heard. So we're going to set up meetings in the next few hours. Plus, if anything happens, I don't like people knowing you were running for election while the boat was out there.
BARTLET: Nah, I think I'll go ahead and cancel that trip, Leo. If only to stick around and see how this sounds worse than it really is.
LEO: I'll stick around, too.
BARTLET: I think you will.

( Scene 32 )

When Vecchio said "Wish me luck" and Fraser said "You don't need it," the next major thing that happened was that Fraser found out Muldoon had killed his mother and Vecchio got shot. Kowalski can't know that, but still, this feels like a dangerous callback, doesn't it?

( Scene 32 continues. )

Okay, stipulated: It's a little weird to have a guy's wife play his character's mother. Nevertheless, it's a walk-on part that who would bother auditioning for? and I can see having her come in and do it more or less as a favor to the show, don't have to spend any time getting to know each other or building any kind of rapport, put her in the cold-weather gear and get the shot in 20 minutes and move on with the considerable expense of the rest of the episode. On a practical level I get it.

And the moment she creates is lovely. (It's all her, as well; he has his back to the camera and Pinsent isn't even in the frame.) I appreciate that Caroline's focus is on Bob, whom she must have been waiting for, right?, because whatever borderland/afterlife situation she found herself in, he was somewhere else, not joining her, obviously not for the first 25 years she was there, but even since he died himself, which, not unreasonable of her to expect he'd turn up, right? But as soon as Fraser calls to her, she looks at him, and look how her face changes! Because the last time she saw him, he was only six, and now here he is, a man grown, and she thought she'd never see that but here she is: What a gift. Maybe the fact that I have a six-year-old has softened me unusually. But that smile is gorgeous.

Anyway, then she turns back to Bob, as she must, because it's time for them to go. Nothing, indeed, is permanent. Poor Fraser, losing each of his parents twice, am I right?

And/but/so okay: This Bob is evidently not Fraser's subconscious, unless what's happening here in the mine shaft is Fraser having some kind of break(through). Maybe that's why Bob is (a) visible to Muldoon, (b) able to actually shoot the gun and punch him, and (c) looking so peaky and grey and then actually disappears. Last Three Minutes Of The Series hypothesis: Since "The Gift of the Wheelman," what we see as Bob has been Fraser's subconscious; but the Bob who is visible to other people (in "Bird in the Hand" and "All the Queen's Horses") is in fact Bob Fraser's ghost. I'll have to think more about what that means with respect to "Hunting Season," but I'm down with the idea that there are two Bobs.

( Scene 33 )

Last part first: You should not, repeat, should not say Stanley. How dare you.

Saddam Hussein was, at the time this episode aired, still very much in control of Iraq and the subject of considerable western sanctions and U.S. and UK missile strikes. I can't find the exact picture they've spliced Thatcher into because he was captured in 2003 and executed in 2006, so well done Ice Queen, I guess?

If Francesca "loved her babies as though they were her own," then the details of their conceptions are irrelevant, right? (Though "as though they were her own" is a shitty thing to say about an adoptive parent.) Another wasted opportunity to have had the character be pregnant at the same time as the actress, if you ask me. Which I know nobody did.

I don't have anything in particular about Turnbull's or Welsh's ever-after storylines, but let me ask this about Huey and Dewey: I don't understand how their club—a fixed address—would have played the marginal houses for any length of time, short or long. If they bought and established the One-Liner, wouldn't their place be one of the marginal houses? Also, wasn't Huey going to buy a drum machine that he could program to do the rim shot for him? What's he doing sitting behind a set?

Anyway. So Fraser and Kowalski are off to find the hand of Franklin. In 1999, of course they couldn't know—or more accurately, they certainly could have known, but nobody did, because white people had spent more than 150 years not listening to the Inuit—that the wrecks of the Erebus and the Terror would be found (by white people; the Indigenous people knew they were there) in 2014 and 2016, respectively. It's disappointing to think that Fraser, of all people, would go searching for Franklin in Nunavut and not ask the local Inuit for help, so I'll choose to believe that he did ask, and that maybe he and Kowalski were part of the greater world discovery 15 years later. Why not. Headcanon accepted.

Cumulative body count: 44
Red uniform: Only until they jump out of the plane and land in the snow; oddly, once he's in Canada, he doesn't wear it again

Previous | Index of annotated transcripts

And that's the ball game. Thanks for reading along with me, hope you've enjoyed the commentary, stand by for the whole megillah to appear at AO3 as soon as I can finish recoding the links.

Hunting Season
air date March 11, 1999

( Scene 1 )

Does he mean he wants to see more of her specifically or more of people taking those two guys down a peg?

( Scene 2 )

Head cheese probably is pretty durable; it's a terrine made from veal or pork face preserved in aspic, and I don't see why it wouldn't keep in an uninsulated light airplane in the far north in March, where the daily average high is not higher than 10°F (-12°C), much colder than an ordinary refrigerator. (Why on earth Jake is transporting 500 lbs. of the stuff is a separate question.)

( Scene 3 )

"My constable name" is cute. I'd have preferred it if the restatement of "constable" had been slightly different; I think "My constable, uh, my constable name is Benton Fraser" would have been funnier. (I mean but I'd always prefer it if he didn't say "My name is Constable Benton Fraser," because it's not. His name is Benton Fraser, and his rank or title is Constable. "I am Constable Benton Fraser," yes; "My name is Constable Benton Fraser," no. Ah well.) I don't know why he's not on a stepladder to change that light bulb, but whatever, I guess the Canadian consulate is not subject to OSHA regulations?

Also, you know, the name Mackenzie should indeed be familiar to a dude who grew up in Inuvik on account of Inuvik is on the delta of the mighty Mackenzie River, which rises at the western end of the Great Slave Lake and flows more than a thousand miles north to the Arctic Ocean, draining most of the Northwest Territories (almost all, now; about half when what is now Nunavut was still NWT), more than half of Alberta, and fair slices of northern Saskatchewan and BC. To say nothing of the fact that there is a town of Mackenzie a hundred-odd miles north of the northern bend of the Fraser River in British Columbia. My point is that these are not uncommon names.

(When I was looking for the course of the Mackenzie I learned that there is a community on its banks named Little Chicago, about which all the internet seems to know is that it's there. I put it on the map for you for free.)

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, Matt Heney, Vince Bruni, and Jessica Steen as Maggie

( Scene 4 )

Those would be the official channels, because you're not just a Mountie, you're the deputy liaison officer. Why is the fact that Fraser has a friend in the Chicago PD presented like some sort of brainstorm?

It's odd that Maggie can vaguely hear Bob, right? The only ones other than Fraser who've ever been able to see him have been Gerrard and Frobisher, although a few minutes before Gerrard saw him Bob was able to make his voice audible to the bad guys when the situation called for it. But this doesn't seem to be something he's doing on purpose. Hmm. 🤔

(I guess Fraser probably said "Here, let me have your bag.")

( Scene 5 )

It doesn't take Fraser long to go from "my friend at the Chicago Police Department might be able to help" to "back off, friend at the Chicago Police Department." But seriously, what did he think was going to happen when he put a pretty blonde woman in front of Ray Kowalski?

What's actually a little surprising is how interested in her Fraser seems to be himself, his preference having generally* run to brunettes before now (with, if you're leaning that way, just the one obvious exception. Not, of course, that hair color is the only relevant factor; Fraser, at least, isn't that shallow (though Kowalski, so far, may be), and the women he's bothered to notice and be interested in have almost all had background or interests or both that he shared. Your main control-group examples are Miss Cabot, who was all equestrian and countrified (though in a rich-girl way), but blonde, and whom he was not interested in at all; and Francesca, who is a brunette, but with whom he has very little in common except proximity to the police department, and whom he has never been especially interested in. (I feel like it's highly unlikely that he did sleep with her, but if he did, it was probably because it was easier than not?) So your outliers are Elaine, a brunette with whom he has much more in common than Francesca but whom he is also not interested in, and Katherine Burns, a blonde with whom he has nothing at all in common but for whom he leaves his post to join at the party and waltz on the patio. (I assume whatever relationship they had went nowhere.)

*I admit Mackenzie King is an edge case; she was a brunette the first time we met her and a blonde the second, but he was maybe more into her the second time than the first. And for sure she was more interested in Fraser than he was in her. But except for Victoria and Janet, about whom is that not true? Meh, leave her off this list if you want. My point holds even without her.

Anyway, it hasn't taken Fraser long to get hung up on Maggie Mackenzie, but she's from Inuvik, 1999 population just a little more than 3,000. Say a little less than a quarter of those 3,000 people are under 20 and almost 60% are over 35, that leaves maaaybe 20% between 20 and 35, which is 600 people. What are the odds Fraser meets one of the (statistically speaking) not quite 300 women in his age group of interest from his home town in Chicago? Taken that way, it's not a huge shock that he's drawn to her.

Francesca, for some reason, still thinks she has a shot at Fraser and is conflicted between solidarity with Maggie (she hasn't spoken to another woman on our screens since she asked Mama Lalla about the curse on the station, which is one of a very few times she's spoken to other women at all, only about half of which have passed the Bechdel test) and wanting to shove her at Kowalski so Fraser will be unoccupied and free to return his attention to herself, which he's not going to do.

( Scene 6 )

I see now that the "correction" re: Yukon and NWT in "A Likely Story" was probably planted for the purpose of being able to call back to it here, but that doesn't make Fraser's correction accurate, and he should stop being a dick immediately.

( Scene 6 continues. )

I was going to skip over the gross way Fraser and Kowalski are behaving toward Maggie and toward each other and just point out that Maggie has one star on her sleeve (she did say five years, and it appears she wasn't rounding up) and a marksmanship qualification for pistol but not rifle. But I'm also going to note that Bob, that is, Fraser's subconscious, isn't really sure what he wants, is he? Get some land, build a house, feel trapped? Innnteresting.

( Scene 7 )

Polygraph is useless at determining truthfulness, but never mind.

( Scene 7 continues. )

Kowalski:Maggie::Francesca:Fraser. (Oh, wait, didn't I read somewhere that they don't do analogies on the SAT anymore? How much younger than myself does a reader have to be for that notation to be meaningless? Ugh, I am feeling older every minute.) His failure to realize that his openings are being left lying on the floor is making me extremely uncomfortable.

( Scene 8 )

( Scene 9 )

Are these the Torrelli brothers?

( Scene 10 )

I feel like any minute now the words "You betcha" are going to come out of this woman's mouth.

( Scene 10 continues. )

When last we heard of Joe Obodiak, he was a janitor in Eagle River. Now he was apparently a blacksmith in Eagle Creek. Although Mackenzie and Fraser are not unusual names, I feel like Obodiak kind of is, so maybe get your show bible together, writers' room? Although the name does get me a fair few hits when I google it—generally in Saskatchewan, which, as luck would have it, is also where there is a rural municipality named Eagle Creek. (There's also an Eagle Creek in BC, in the suburbs of Vancouver, but I'm not sure someone living there would need a moose hide tanned for him every year. Of course I'm also not sure how someone in Eagle Creek, SK, would be in regular communication with someone in Inuvik, but one thing the writers of this show have been consistent about is the northwestern folks moving around a lot over there, so who knows, maybe the Mackenzies came south . . . to Saskatchewan . . . for the winter?)

( Scene 10 continues to continue. )

I ADORE Maggie asking if Bob has seen her mother. I loved that about her the first time I saw this episode mumbleteen years ago and I love it even more now, years after losing my own dad. That little moment between her and Bob is just gorgeous: the way she's kind of quickly processed that she's speaking to a ghost and decided to roll with it, and the first thing, the first thing she does is ask about her mother; and the kind of combination tone he puts on the word "No"—he's both delighted and confused to be talking to someone other than Ben and (but) sorry he doesn't have a different answer for her. Brilliant, brilliant. Nice work, Steen; beautiful work, Pinsent. ❤️

( Scene 11 )

( Scene 12 )

I was going to say something about how the pemmican always looks like jerky, but I see I've already done that. The point stands. At least they've been consistent?

( Scene 13 )

Franco Zeffirelli was the director of the Romeo and Juliet you probably saw when your high school English teacher showed it on video (but the stars of which were abused in its filming), among other things. He seems to have been an antisemite and a hypocrite. Imagine our shock.

( Scene 14 )

( Scene 15 )

Apparently Turnbull's not the giant dope people (including Fraser and Thatcher) tend to think he is. I still can't work out the basis on which Thatcher's subordinates choose to call her "sir" vs. "ma'am."

( Scene 16 )

Kowalski did his weird nasal "well, that's great" thing again. I don't care for it.

( Scene 17 )

[suspenseful chord] The plot thickens.

( Scene 18 )

See, the thing for him to do would have been to go stand by Maggie and take her by the arm as soon as Thatcher said boo on the phone, rather than huddle up and whisper about her and give her a chance to abscond.

( Scene 19 )

Fraser is hanging his head, pretty ashamed of himself, and it's not easy to watch. Is he thinking about the time he told Kowalski he'd never made a procedural mistake? Is he thinking about the last time he believed in a woman he didn't really know, who turned out to have taken advantage of him, killed people, etc.? Because I am. It's actually pretty sympathetic of Thatcher to point out that Maggie was very convincing; like, it's not at all wrong of her and Welsh to be pretty mad right now, right?

( Scene 20 )

Thatcher is not wrong on the principle: Fraser's been lucky many, many times, but his naivete was bound to catch up with him at some point, wasn't it?

( Scene 21 )

SEAT BELTS, fellas. Also: Nobody's checking for parasites in that urban bush meat. Rosie might be getting protein and culling the local rat population, but who knows what kind of public health emergency she's setting herself up to be the nexus of. Tsk.

( Scene 22 )

If the husband called himself Casey Mackenzie, then Mackenzie is Maggie's married name, so how is the fact that her mother and his father were friends contributing to his feeling that the name is familiar? (Except, as I said, that it's not an unusual name in the first place?)

His not-always-being-such-a-dope aside, I'm generally as happy to dunk on Turnbull as the next person; but I have to wonder two things.

1. Fraser had the paper in his own hands; why on earth couldn't he tear the fucking article out himself in the first place rather than handing it back to Turnbull and asking him to do it?
2. Why do they need to tear it out at all?

I have a very clear memory of watching Angels and Demons in 2009—the one in which Ewan McGregor burns his own chest with a branding iron, yes, that might have something to do with the clarity of my memory—and the biggest jump scare of all being when the female sidekick tells Tom Hanks they don't have time to copy something into their notes and tears a page out of a volume in the Vatican archives. I may have screamed out loud. My point is this: Even if they don't have a stepladder, do they not have such a thing in the Canadian consulate as a COPY MACHINE?

( Scene 23 )

Everybody's deeply involved with people they don't really know that well, it seems. (Why couldn't Thatcher stop Maggie herself? Come on, lady, are you a Mountie or aren't you?)

( Scene 24 )

Let's get Turnbull speaking French out of the way first, shall we? Yes yes the caption says "A street in Paris," so what he's supposed to have said is "Champs Élysées, mon ami," the Avenue des Champs Élysées being, yes, ho-hum, a street in Paris. Forsooth. It is the street in Paris, named for the Elysian Fields, the classical Greek heavenly afterlife. Normally the s at the end of "champs" would be silent, but because the next word begins with a vowel, in this name it is pronounced; but there's no "de" in the name anywhere, although Turnbull pronounced his second word very clearly as "d'Élysée," in which case he shouldn't have pronounced the s at all. Given that he also very clearly did pronounce the s, I've transcribed his utterance as "chance d'Élysée," which would mean "[the] luck (or fortune) of heaven." I'll absolutely grant that the subtitle is right there telling us that he was referring to the Champs Élysées, but if the show is going to spend all that time not re-recording dialogue until the actors by God pronounce things properly, I'm going to spend all this time reporting what they actually fucking said.

In either case, he probably doesn't mean "We'll always have Paris;" he probably means "This is not the end" or "Until we meet again" or something of that sort, and maybe he should have said "bonne courage" or "au revoir, not good-bye" or similar.

Thatcher defacing Fraser's uniform by snipping the lanyard is vaguely entertaining. Nobody really thought she was going to cut his throat when she came over to him with that giant knife and he uncovered his neck, but the idea that cutting a lanyard is the RCMP equivalent of handing in a shield is . . . no, okay, it's silly. Wouldn't it make more sense to slice the crown emblems off his epaulettes? And how would they demote Thatcher, if they needed to, who spends most of her time in business attire?

( Scene 25 )

My guess is, Ellen Stern must have known what kind of dad Bob Fraser was and figured he'd make the same contribution to the upbringing of his child whether he knew about her or not. And Fraser knows this, too, which is why he reminds his subconscious father that he didn't take the time to get to know either of his children.

( Scene 26 )

I have no earthly idea why that conversation had to happen in the men's room. None. Also, Francesca is back on her snacking, so one continues to be stumped about the relationship between the order in which the episodes were shot, the order in which they were aired, and the progress of Milano's pregnancy.

( Scene 27 )

This feels to me like it rhymes just a bit with Return of the Jedi:

HAN: I'm sure Luke wasn't on that thing when it blew.
LEIA: He wasn't. I can feel it.
HAN: You love him, don't you.
LEIA: Well, yes.
HAN: All right. I understand. Fine. When he comes back, I won't get in the way.
LEIA: Oh — it's not like that at all. He's my brother.

Except of course that what we've got here is Han and Luke talking about the connection between Luke and Leia (and Han not yet magnanimously offering to step aside). I think it's right for Fraser to leave it vague at this point, though, because "we're brother and sister, you and I" is the kind of news he ought to deliver to Maggie first, before he tells Kowalski.

Anyway, also, we only get the one verse of the song. The rest (which McLachlan in 1994 sings the same lyrics Gordon Lightfoot sang in 1967) goes:

The smoke is rising in the shadows overhead
My glass is almost empty
I read again between the lines upon each page
The words of love you sent me
If I could know within my heart
That you were lonely too
I would be happy just to hold the hands I love
On this winter's night with you
The fire is dying now, my lamp is growing dim
The shades of night are lifting
The morning light steals across my windowpane
Where webs of snow are drifting
If I could only have you near
To breathe a sigh or two
I would be happy just to hold the hands I love
On this winter's night with you

( Scene 27 continues. )

I am not a lawyer in the United States, much less in Canada, but based on my extremely amateur researches in the Criminal Code of Canada, the Torrellis' bank robbery gang may have constituted a criminal organization, and their murder of Casey Richmond-or-Mackenzie will have been caused by them for the benefit of or in association with that criminal organization (or while committing or attempting to commit an indictable offence for the benefit of or in association with the criminal organization), meaning that's first- rather than second-degree murder, for which the sentence in Canada —because who cares that we're in Chicago right now; the crime was done in Canada and they should be extradited forthwith—is indeed 25 years to life with parole in 12.5 years or 10 years, whichever is less (that is, 10 years). Maybe? I can't tell if they should be ineligible for parole until 25 years of the life sentence (if, I mean, that's what 25 to life means).

( Scene 28 )

So Bob has finally admitted that he was a miserable father to Ben, and it is only at that point that Fraser is able to begin to forgive him. That sounds about right. Of course "everywhere I looked I saw your mother" is not an acceptable reason for—look, motherless children haunt their widowed fathers with memories of their (the fathers') dead wives. Family therapy was probably not available to Bob in the Northwest Territories in 1967, but the way out of that situation was through, wasn't it. Running away never solved anything; just, as I've said before, ask the Mysterious Man in Into the Woods:

They disappoint, they disappear,
They die but they don't.

. . .

They disappoint in turn, I fear,
Forgive though they won't.

. . .

Running away—let's do it.
Free from the ties that bind.
No more despair
Or burdens to bear
Out there in the yonder.
Running away—go to it.
Where did you have in mind?
Have to take care;
Unless there's a "where"
You'll only be wandering blind.
Just more questions;
Different kind.

Where are we to go?
Where are we ever to go?

Running away—we'll do it.
Why sit around resigned?
Trouble is, son,
The farther you run,
The more you feel undefined
By what you have left undone
And, more, what you've left behind.

We disappoint, we leave a mess
We die, but we don't.

Cumulative body count: 39
Red uniform: The whole episode except the period in which he's suspended.

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A Likely Story
air date January 21, 1999

( Scene 1 )

Fraser himself said "Territory" when Francis Bolt asked him if it was Yukon Territory or Yukon Territories, and if it was neither he could certainly have said so. As it happens, the place in question changed its name from the Yukon Territory to Yukon in 2002 and then added back "the" in 2021, and the place immediately to its east is named the Northwest Territories. So Fraser seems to be "correcting" Kowalski with incorrect information?

This isn't the first time Fraser has talked about lichen in the context of desserts, which I have to admit puzzles me a little, lichen being a symbiosis between fungus and algae—so (correct me if I'm wrong) sort of a cross between mushrooms and pond scum? Mmm. Chokecherry is apparently related to black cherry, but the fruit is poisonous until it's entirely ripe.

( Scene 2 )

"Everything is going to be all right" is the right thing to say to someone who has just been shot, of course, even if it's not "you're going to be all right," which is less likely to be true. Poor Mr. Tucci.

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)

Francie Swift, Helen Hughes, Paulino Nunes, Billy Otis

( Scene 3 )

I feel like the Italian accents are a little clunky and stereotypical, and shouldn't Kowalski have asked Mrs. Tucci to come downtown and identify her husband's body? Or brought a picture or something? I guess we're comfortable with Fraser's acquaintance with both of them so we don't have to do the Law & Order style next-of-kin notification?

( Scene 4 )

( Scene 5 )

It is an oddly interesting question, isn't it.

( Scene 5 continues. )

Francesca (who, by the way, has Milano's pre-pregnancy slim figure, so who knows what order these episodes were shot in or how far apart or what) is not wrong about the cultural stereotyping inherent in assuming Italians are with the Mob. It's an interesting time to bring it up, there having been a Considerable Number of cases in the past five years involving Mob issues, including her own brother undercover with that very organization, but maybe Francesca has finally had enough. I'd like it if Fraser hadn't been wearing the red uniform when he said "the air of cultural stereotyping" (how far we've come from "Yeah, look who's talking"), and I'd definitely like it if Welsh hadn't said "eye-talian."

( Scene 6 )

( Scene 7 )

Look, you see or hear something enough times, you remember it, whether you're trying to or not. I don't feel like that should be such a surprise to Welsh, especially having known Fraser as long as he has.

( Scene 8 )

I think Kowalski's tattoo is pretty inoffensive, and I don't know if I'd be that interested in Francesca's dating advice, but I guess she's been out there longer and more recently than he has, so okay.

( Scene 9 )

( Scene 10 )

Aaand we're back to promising people that nothing bad will happen to them. Tsk, Fraser, you know better!

Fraser says he's going to bivouac at the Tuccis', which basically means he's going to open-air camp in the back yard; the fact that he's not going to use a tent or even a lean-to is probably why he didn't use the word "camp." I assume he's forgoing shelter so he can keep an eye on the house, because otherwise what would be the point of his staying there?

I continue to have Notes about Kowalski's bedside manner. I guess he did his best in scene 3, because what's a good way to tell someone her husband has been shot and killed? I don't know, maybe "I'm sorry to tell you that your husband has been killed" (or possibly "has died") might land a little less harshly than "I'm afraid your husband is dead"? But here, dude, you've got to make it a question, don't you? "Mrs. Tucci, did you know that your husband was ill?" is so much gentler than "Your husband was ill at the time of his murder." And you've got to be able to do it without saying "Um." (And how does Louanne get from "He didn't say anything" to "He must have known"? Wouldn't it have made more sense to put those in the opposite order? The man had advanced cancer, so he must have known, that is, his illness can't have been a secret to him, but he didn't say anything, even to his beloved wife?) And he was right the first time and shouldn't have taken the glass of wine, although the fact that he's drinking with Mrs. Tucci rather than with Louanne may make that a little less bad.

Oh! Sword of Desire was the book Francesca was reading in "Seeing is Believing", although this may be a different book by the same title.

( Scene 11 )

I'm going to give Fraser a small amount of credit for having insisted that he wasn't falling for This Week's Pretty Girl back when he was the one falling for This Week's Pretty Girl rather than snarling at Kowalski about it the way Kowalski is snarling at him about it here. Because even when Fraser was falling for the girl, he knew falling for her was a Bad Idea. Perhaps Louanne Russell isn't a poker hustler, but the point is that catching feelings for any subject of a case—witness, suspect, whatever—is generally inappropriate. Didn't Kowalski learn that when he ran off to Mexico with someone he'd previously busted for passing bad checks?

( Scene 12 )

It's the soundtrack that's making this young woman, Louanne Russell, seem like a femme fatale, right? She's a nice girl who has a job as a home health aide or some such thing, looking after Mrs. Tucci and reading to her and providing much-needed companionship especially now that her husband is gone, but the camera can't look at her without the saxophone doing its thing and turning the merest getting ready for bed into a striptease. Fraser is right to make Kowalski look away. But Kowalski should think hard about why he thinks Fraser might think Louanne had something to do with the murder, given that Fraser didn't actually say anything, which means Kowalski might think Louanne had something to do with the murder. Oh dear.

( Scene 13 )

Like, if Fraser was going to keep an eye on Mrs. Tucci, couldn't he have stayed on the sofa in her living room and made coffee in her kitchen like a normal person? I guess a guy who's feeling stifled enough to camp in a city park may be more comfortable in a sleeping bag on the lawn, but seriously.

( Scene 14 )

We have no way of assessing Huey's driving, but getting him a fake steering wheel to hold onto is pretty funny.

( Scene 15 )

There's an Eagle River, BC, and an Eagle River, Ontario. Hard to say which Fraser means, though I think the former is more likely.

( Scene 16 )

Okay so now it seems like there may be something hinky about Louanne. I haven't thought so before—the fact that she's young and pretty isn't inherently suspicious—but the fact that she's worked for enough other families where someone with money has died to know how the inheritance is going to be handled, that starts to seem like maybe Something Is Going On. Kowalski is right to wonder what's the deal with Franco Jr.; on what basis does Mrs. Tucci think the son who ran away 20 years ago is going to take care of her now? And he is wrong, wrong, wrong to put his mouth on Louanne's mouth, especially now!

( Scene 17 )

( Scene 18 )

Cash under the table,* so now Louanne seems even hinkier. Well done Kowalski finally remembering procedure and saying he has to check with his lieutenant about giving the money back to her. Phew.

*$1k/week was a decent wage in 1999, $25/hour for a normal full-time job; on the other hand, Louanne is apparently working or on call 24/7, which would put her hourly rate at . . . carry the one . . . $5.95, which is just barely above the federal minimum wage at that time ($5.15). (Though she also gets room and board and apparently has no expenses.)

( Scene 19 )

I mean, what it generally means is that you live in a cop show, dude. But yes: If you could hear the soundtrack, you'd know that they've been trying to suggest this woman is dangerous for the past half hour (of our time; two or three days of the characters' time) and you've been determined not to see it.

I do conclude that this must not be the same Sword of Desire Francesca was reading before, because that one famously had a pool boy in it rather than a castle in Tuscany. (I mean I suppose the duke and duchess could have had a swimming pool as well. But it seems like Kowalski would have mentioned it.)

( Scene 20 )

( Scene 21 )

At no time does Fraser—whose borderline estranged father was shot—say, to this young man whose father was shot, anything in the neighborhood of "I'm very sorry for your loss," and I am judging him so hard for it.

( Scene 22 )

Something something prodigal son something.

( Scene 23 )

Francesca is visibly disappointed that the Mob angle seems to be panning out. Also, I'm not sure why Fraser doesn't go with Kowalski to check out the PI but just stands there looking like something else is bothering him.

( Scene 24 )

Kowalski, thinking on his feet, when bribery doesn't work he switches to flattery immediately. Well done.

So who's trying to have whom declared legally dead, here? Calls from the Tuccis' house to this guy and the details we learned about Sammy Franks suggest that Louanne is trying to prove that Franco Jr. is no more, don't they?

( Scene 25 )

The Fraser-and-Diefenbaker stuff is good, but focusing on the young members of the Tucci household: Is Louanne telling Fraser the truth? What did Frankie promise her? This stuff is interesting enough that it should have come in way earlier in the episode.

( Scene 26 )

Commercial break!

Everybody is treating Frankie like he is (or his father was) Somebody, huh? Not just a guy who's back in town for his father's funeral, but like the son and heir to some sort of empire. I know they've talked about how Franco was a member of the Palermo Social Club (Palermo being the capital of Sicily and the original home of the Mafia), but they don't seem to be doing any further investigation into Franco himself, which doesn't seem particularly thorough of them?

( Scene 27 )

Again with the promises! Full protection? Oy vey.

( Scene 28 )

I do like Dewey for a good non sequitur. (I mean, it's shitty that cops can treat suspects this way, but being how we're here on the cops' side in a cop show, Dewey is the one with the good lines about cops being able to ask any questions they want.)

( Scene 29 )

I feel like Fraser could tell Kowalski a thing or two about falling for the wrong girl? But it sounds now like Kowalski has talked himself into thinking Louanne is in on the scam and Fraser has talked himself out of it.

( Scene 30 )

"If that's a crime, I'm guilty"—well, it totally is a crime, yes, but I continue to love the side characters on this show like the criminals who have professional standards. This guy! "Look, I'm a murderer for hire, but I'm not a cheat. My customers get the service they pay for." Good man.

( Scene 31 )

So . . . if Fahey knew Franco Junior was dead, and how he got that way, why is it news to him that pretending to be Franco Junior could be dangerous?

( Scene 32 )

This whole episode feels half-baked to me, and I feel like a lot of that is because nothing ever came of the woman on rollerskates in scene 2. She zooms past them right before Tucci is shot, she zooms back the other way right afterward, Kowalski chases her down, she kicks him in the face, and that all turns out to have been a coincidence? We never see or hear anything about that person ever again? I feel like that loose end is just flapping in the wind here and it's making the whole episode feel wrong. She could at least have turned out to be the private detective's secretary or something.

( Scene 33 )

I don't see why spaghetti cooked over an open fire would be different from spaghetti cooked over any other heat source, because you'd cook it in boiling water, which isn't changed by the means you use to boil it. Serving it without sauce on a cedar plank is weird, though.

( Scene 34 )

So . . . she thinks Ray Kowalski is Gandolfo? (Or, wait, Gabriella's passion was for Paolo. Is Paolo the pool boy, that is, is this the same Sword of Desire Francesca was reading in "Seeing is Believing," or is it a different one? I'm confused.)

Cumulative body count: 37
Red uniform: The whole episode, excluding when he's camping in the Tuccis' back yard but including when he's camping in the "woods," wtf

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Mountie Sings the Blues
air date November 18, 1998

( Scene 1 )

I didn't care for Thatcher's extreme short hair in e.g. "Seeing is Believing," but as it's been growing on her I suppose it's been growing on me. That is, by e.g. "Perfect Strangers" when it wasn't brand-new just-shorn any more, it kind of had an anticipating-Rachel-Maddow vibe, and it looked good for the 30 seconds she was on the screen in "Dead Men Don't Throw Rice," and now she's rocking a definite Hillary Clinton helmet (including the blonde highlights) and making it work. At this point I no longer miss the bubble flip she was wearing back in season 2.

( Scene 2 )

Turnbull, by the way, has pistol qualifications on his sleeves, which I don't remember noticing if he had before, but I've looked into it and can report that he had no decorations of any kind in "Bird in the Hand;" he was wearing the blue overcoat so we couldn't see his tunic sleeves in "All the Queen's Horses;" he had the pistol qualification but no stars in "Burning Down the House;" and he had, as noted at the time, one star (and also the pistol qual) starting from "Bounty Hunter."

In what percentage of movies and shows and plays would the fact that Fraser and Earl Jeffers take such an instant dislike to each other be a matter of particular interest? We'll never get the Fraser/Jeffers ship off the ground at this point, but in a Hallmark movie, the two of them would be together by the end of the first hour, wouldn't they? (Is this because Paul Gross and David Keeley, who plays Jeffers, are best buds—that is, am I seeing chemistry between the actors rather than the characters? Something they didn't bother to play down, the way they must have done with respect to Fraser and Miss Cabot as played by Teri Polo, who like Paul Gross is basically a walking chemistry generator, or Fraser and That Russian Spy as played by Martha Burns, to whom Paul Gross is in fact married?)

I feel like there's a lot of room between 200 seats and 50,000 seats. Last fall my husband and I learned that a performer we really like was going to be in town playing a very small theater (a couple hundred seats) for maybe two or three nights. It was sold out long before we even heard about it. Next thing we knew the same act was coming back like less than six months later—and had sold out two nights in an 1800-seat venue also almost before we knew it. I understand Tracy's desire to perform in an intimate space where she can make a connection with her audience, but there's a reason the really big acts play the giant arenas, and it's because when that many people want tickets to a thing it's not always great for it to be too exclusive. It sounds like scalpers are maybe the least of her problems. If she wants to play a 200-seat club, is she prepared to do the same show 100 nights in a row so all her paying customers can have a crack at her? Could she maybe compromise on something with a number of seats in the low to mid four figures, where people would count as having been in the same room with her and not have to see the whole show on a JumboTron but a riot or crush could be avoided?

( Scene 3 )

So I assume tonight's show is cancelled?

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, Michael Hogan, Ronnie Hawkins, Shawn Doyle, David Keeley, Dan Lett, and Michelle Wright as Tracy Jenkins

( Scene 4 )

I feel like Tracy's asking the wounded officer's name is a much more graceful character note—look how nice she is, she cares about people, she's a celebrity but not an asshole about it (which is not a position the show has taken about celebrities in the past)—than the "music is about getting closer to the people" thing in scene 2.

( Scene 5 )

Huey and Dewey are not being a lot less annoying here than I assume they would be if Francesca claimed she were a fan of Tracy Jenkins's music, viz., "Oh, yeah? Name three of her albums." Note, however, that when her house was burning down Francesca didn't notice at first because she had Linda Ronstadt on the tape deck, so, you know, she's going to want to be careful how hard she throws those stones.

( Scene 6 )

At last, a woman is coming to stay at the consulate on Fraser's invitation and it makes some goddamn sense. I was hoping that would happen sooner or later.

( Scene 7 )

Further evidence that Tracy is awfully nice. I guess a guest character has to have some character traits, and sure, being just a genuinely nice person could be one of them. It makes a nice change. 😃 It adds weight to the why-would-someone-want-to-hurt-her angle, sort of the obverse of the Murder, She Wrote way you can tell who the murder victim is going to be inside the first five minutes. (Likewise, in MSW, Dwight here would be an instant suspect according to local law enforcement, but we the viewers would know he couldn't possibly have done it.)

Incidentally, Tracy Jenkins is Canada's sweetheart, so how come she's based in Nashville? Don't they record country music anywhere else?

Kitty Wells did sing "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" in 1952, so Dewey wins this round.

( Scene 8 )

The saskatoon berry is the western serviceberry, which is apparently not unlike the blueberry and not, as I thought, poisonous; that must be something else. They're eaten fresh or dried; used to make jam, wine, and cider; and, fun fact, often added to pemmican.

( Scene 9 )

[sigh] Monica Lewinsky was a White House intern whose abbreviated dalliance with Bill Clinton was made national news when Linda Tripp taped their phone calls—hers and Monica's—and sold the recordings to Newsweek, eventually leading to Clinton's impeachment for perjury. (Having an affair with an intern isn't itself a crime.) She was, as she has described herself, Patient Zero of the 24-hour news cycle. I'm not going to link to her Wikipedia page, though I'm sure you can find it if you're interested; I do recommend the You're Wrong About episode about that whole chapter in U.S. history. Anyway, that was all current events in 1998 and 1999, so Kowalski's reference pins this episode firmly in its time.

( Scene 10 )

( Scene 11 )

That's pretty quick for Fraser to fess up to having been wrong, huh? Good for him. (And Kowalski enjoys every syllable of it; good for him too.)

( Scene 12 )

Kowalski does something very strange with his voice and his upper lip when he says "Oh, well! Very, very sorry." It's a strange kind of nasal overtone—strange because it's not as if his voice isn't quite nasal to start with. Puzzling.

( Scene 13 )

( Scene 14 )

She's so nice! But even the nicest people in the world have their limits, and apparently 21.5 verses of Turnbull's song might be too much for her.

( Scene 15 )

I'm finalizing this transcript in the final week of rehearsals for a concert in which my chorus is joining up with another group, the members of which who are sitting near me are . . . hmm, much less precise with their pitch than I try to be with mine. I feel Tracy's pain in this scene.

( Scene 16 )

I feel like it's important to sort out this kind of philosophical differences before you begin an artistic collaboration.

( Scene 17 )

Poor Arlene. (Though here's Tracy being genuinely nice again.) But listen: Her assignment is apparently to sing one note (C5, if you're interested), and she's blowing it. Five hundred dollars an hour? In 1998? I'm not cute and blonde, but I'd sing that note for $500/hour here in 2023. Sign me up. No, that's actually probably what they're paying for the studio space, not what they're paying Arlene herself. But here's the question: Why are they recording in Chicago? If Tracy's in town to do a couple of shows, great, but is this a time to be laying down a single?

I'm actually very impressed with the actress playing Arlene, because singing that badly on purpose—she's missing the right note and landing in the space between C and B flat—is not actually that easy and she's doing a nice job and being a sport about it.)

At $500/hour, five minutes is indeed $41.66⅔, so probably actually $41.67.

( Scene 18 )

( Scene 19 )

Okay. My whole life, I don't know what the hell this means. Release the vocal, sure, a higher key can be easier to sing in, not just because the notes are easier to reach and you might avoid the area of the singer's range where the voice breaks but also because it can just feel different. The different feeling is also true of many instruments; playing in a key with two flats (that is, B flat major or G minor) is easier on the piano, for example, than playing in a key with three sharps (A major or F sharp minor). I don't play guitar, so I couldn't tell you how easy it is to transpose just by capoing up and playing the same chords. You'd think it would be no big deal, right?, but you'd also think a singer with good relative pitch can sing in whatever key you put her in, but like I said, the different keys do feel different coming out of your mouth, so who knows. But ease the tempo? The tempo? What the fuck. Plus, Arlene was singing off pitch, but not out of time; the tempo didn't even need "easing." (Different tempos are easier and harder to sing in, but I do not believe the key affects the tempo at all. Fight me.)

Also, though, I have a little keyboard here, and I'm here to tell you that in scenes 15 and 17, Tracy Jenkins and Arlene and the band were recording the song in C. The refrain "Nobody's girl — she walks this world alone" went E-D-C-C, A-G-E-D-C-E. Fraser first picks it out on the piano in G flat—the refrain goes Bb-Ab-Gb-Gb, Eb-Db-Bb-Ab-Gb-Bb—that is, a diminished fifth above where they were playing. He then moves up to pick it out in C, but in the octave above where Tracy was singing it before—a diminished fifth above his all-the-black-keys experiment. THERE HAVE BEEN NO MINOR THIRDS IN THIS CONVERSATION. Will somebody just play this damn thing in E flat and put me out of my misery?

( Scene 20 )

Tracy's been so nice to everyone this whole time. And not just to their faces, right, because she talked about getting closer to the people and asked about Officer McCafferty, so it's not just a kind of phoniness where she's nice when you can hear her but mean behind your back. And she did tell George there was no need to be mean even when Arlene had already stomped away. So when she brings the snark—didn't know which bar to call to find Dwight, Arlene must have some talent but singing isn't it—it's even more surprising? But there's no real bite in her voice when she says it. Maybe snarking doesn't come naturally to her.

( Scene 21 )

Sure, at $500/hour, let's just try an experiment. No sense in, say, ending the session, going somewhere to rehearse in the new key, and then coming back and recording it once you've determined whether it works.

( Scene 22 )

Elvis Presley died in 1977, of course, so Jeffers is yanking Kowalski's chain here. But why did he leave the Memphis Police Department? This show has trained us to believe that with few exceptions (Laurie Zaylor), the ways to leave a police department are to die (Bob Fraser, Louis Gardino, Jake Botrelle) or to be crooked and get your ass arrested for it (Gerrard, maybe Kevin Spender if we're considering him a cop, Sgt. Kilrea, Sam Franklin). Who retires?

( Scene 23 )

TOTALLY ADORABLE.

In other news, Milano's face is looking quite a bit less puffy than it did in "Dead Men Don't Throw Rice," but the camera is keeping that TV cart right between itself and her, and when it can't, it's filming her entirely from the shoulders up, so we can assume we're still doing the must-hide-the-actress's-pregnancy thing. BUT then what's with Turnbull specifying that he's inviting Francesca for a nonalcoholic, caffeine-free, sugarless beverage? I'm now beginning to reassess my impression; maybe the show is giving us a Francesca who is trying to hide her own pregnancy (and mostly succeeding, if Turnbull is the only one—with the possible addition of the desk sergeant—who can tell).

( Scene 24 )

This time they are in fact playing the song in E flat, thank God, even though that was none of the keys Fraser plunked it in on the piano in scene 19; the refrain is now G-F-Eb-Eb, C-Bb-G-F-Eb-G. Fraser is singing the melody on the backup part, which is different than Arlene was singing; one wonders if Arlene might have been okay if she'd been asked to sing a straight Eb5. Maybe C5 was in her break? I'm just saying, two variables (the key and the actual backup line) have been changed here, so it's hard to say which one was the one that made the difference. . . . Exactly two variables, by the way, because although we're doing this a minor third up from where we were before, the tempo is exactly the same.

It will shock none of you to learn that when Michelle Wright (who plays Tracy Jenkins, of course) originally released the song in 1996, she sang it in E flat, the key they're playing it in now. (And the backup vocal wasn't Arlene's one-note thing.) Which means she was singing it in the "wrong" key in scenes 15 and 17, which must have felt weird but isn't impossible for a, you know. Professional musician. What's totally weird is how in scene 21, when Fraser is plunking (still in C) and she comes in and sings along, she does a convincing pretense of reaching for unfamiliar intervals . . . in the key she was just singing in a moment ago herself. [hands]

Whatever. We're in E flat now, and please let's stay there.

( Scene 25 )

I LOVE THEM YOUR HONOR

See, Francesca was right not to marry the German dude who looks like Fraser. Obviously she should be with Turnbull and Fraser was just not quite the right Mountie for her. I think the use of Willie Nelson is very nice here, although Turnbull doesn't actually have anything to apologize to Francesca for—it should be "Maybe I didn't love you, etc.; you were always on his mind," or "Maybe he didn't love you, etc., you were always on my mind."

Okay okay. The poem she quotes is T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men," which begins "We are the hollow men / We are the hollow men / We are the stuffed men" and ends, famously, with "This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but with a whimper." I am not convinced that she knows any of the rest of it, but the fact that she comes up with the first line shows that maybe she has retained a shred of something from her 10th grade English class? Look, she's trying to connect with Turnbull, I'm going to give her full marks for effort.

The song Turnbull refers to is "Old Rivers" by (I am not making this up) Academy Award winner Walter Brennan, in which the narrator remembers an old man (old Rivers) he knew as a child. Rivers had a mule named Midnight, who would pull his plow, and he dreamed about going to heaven where the crops would grow tall without anyone having to work hard for it. The lunch Turnbull has whipped up in his buddy's kitchen is, as near as I can work out, grilled tagliatelle with tomato and basil from Fieramosca, which is (among other things) the name of a restaurant in Toronto.

( Scene 26 )

Aww, has Fraser always been on Kowalski's mind? ❤️

( Scene 27 )

I guess finding Diefenbaker shut in whatever room that was confirms to Fraser that someone put him in there so he wouldn't make noise about Tracy's leaving? Bit tacky of her to run off alone when she knows perfectly well that someone's gunning for her.

( Scene 28 )

Ew.

( Scene 28 continues. )

(Hey, another mule.)

Well, now we know why he left the Memphis PD to work personal security. Bit surprising George wouldn't have done a background check for someone in that position, but maybe he changed his name? Which I guess is a thing people do in this universe and somehow that fools everyone for long enough.

( Scene 29 )

I like this young woman applying "which is, ugh, typical" to the guy dying before he could pay his check just as offhandedly as she applies it to her co-worker leaving her to work the floor alone (presumably again).

( Scene 30 )

"What I'm told is a form of modern dance," he says, as if he didn't himself solve a case involving an exotic dancer just, like, two years ago. (Maybe he forgets that episode as easily as, for some reason, I do.)

( Scene 31 )

I don't see why the tape isn't more informative than that when we could clearly see the guy taping the bachelor party—with Jeffers behind it—right before Jeffers was killed.

( Scene 32 )

So where did she go? When did she get back? Is that just not actually a plot point anymore? Is George's affection for her maybe not 100% avuncular?

( Scene 33 )

Oh nooo, it's another dark-haired country girl come along to break Fraser's heart. Be strong, Fraser!

I am, however, delighted to tell you that Flin Flon, Manitoba, is a real place.

(But I'd prefer if Tracy had said "stepped on a stage" or "set foot on a stage," because "step foot" has been driving me bananas since—well, at least 1998, probably before. I know it's prescriptivist. I try to do better. It's good to have areas in which one can improve.)

( Scene 34 )

Is this the first time in the history of television that an unnamed uniformed police officer has just quietly got on with doing his actual job?

( Scene 35 )

"Innocent" is probably a bit generous, but I suppose Fraser means only with respect to the particular crime they're talking about here.

( Scene 36 )

The fixation with his mother does in fact start to nudge Dunn from ordinary creep into Norman Bates–adjacent territory.

( Scene 37 )

Megafan turns out not to be completely without value? Film at 11.

( Scene 38 )

( Scene 39 )

Huey and Dewey's song is bound to be crap, but all the lyrics are in fact the lyrics to "Two Houses" by Paul Gross and David Keeley:

Don't call me for supper if you don't mean to feed me
Don't tell me you love me with that gun in your hand
'Cause I fall down dumbfounded
In the face of your beauty
Yeah, one look from you and I am a fool
In the palm of your hand

There's a house we call love built next door to hate
And both of them got lawns and a white picket gate
Their taxes don't differ and their water's the same
But in one you get comfort and the other house shame

Hey, do you mind if I speak
You know I'd like to be frank
Your cooking is wretched and this coffee is rank
But I look 'cross this table
Into the clutch of your eyes
And I'm kind of thrilled that we have been cursed
To live side by side

Sigh. (I don't know the Gross-Keeley song, so I don't know if Huey and Dewey are making up a crappier tune to it or just singing it badly. I can't get past the fact that "Their taxes don't differ and their water's the same" scans perfectly to "On top of Old Smokey, all covered with snow"—or possibly, in the circumstances, "On top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese.")

( Scene 40 )

( Scene 41 )

Do we conclude from this that it was George who killed Jeffers? I'm not sure the dots are all connected there. Why would he? I mean, if he's in love with Tracy, why would he shoot her, either, come to that. Was it him on the rooftop in scene 3? Why would he need a fan club photo—was he trying to throw suspicion on a fan? Wasn't he in on the decoy plan? Did he "miss" and only hit Officer McCafferty in the shoulder on purpose? He thinks she's going to change her management and abandon him (because he only books her into giant arenas and she wants someone handling her appearances who gives a shit about what she wants, i.e., playing smaller venues), so his idea is to scare her away from a smaller venue with the idea that a crazed fan could Get Too Close. Okay. So she wasn't in any real danger in scene 3 (or wouldn't have been even if it had been her) and wasn't really in any danger just now, either—except then he grabbed her and pressed the gun to her neck. What's that about? And, circling back to the beginning, why kill Jeffers? Because he was embarrassing her by getting trophies for Dunn? Because he wanted her to depend on him utterly? Was he going to kill Dwight next? Muddy Johnson? The rest of the band?

( Scene 42 )

Look, it's not that I don't think Paul Gross is one of those performers who's irritatingly capable at whatever it is they try to do. (Except dancing, possibly. And, as I've said, crying.) I just think he's a better actor than he is a singer. His singing is perfectly competent—I'm not even mad about how far he opened his mouth on the sustained "girl," which I usually am when people sing on TV and in movies (I mean, exhibit A: the man himself singing "Ride Forever"), so well done, really singing—but he manages to look, while he's singing, like he's just so happy and flattered to be up there, and while the audience are applauding, like he's a little bit overwhelmed by the praise, which I absolutely believe is true of Fraser but do not for one minute believe is true of Paul Gross himself, who I'm sure is a very nice guy but who I expect usually assumes, like most successful actors, that he deserves to be in whatever spotlight he finds himself in at any given time. Put another way: I find the singing to be fine and the acting to be very convincing indeed. 😄

Dewey, of course, is referring to the comedy acts Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, and Milton Berle (not Milt and Berle; what a dingus). Francesca is still on about her hat issue.

( Scene 43 )

I can't find that exact portrait of the Queen in a cursory few minutes of googling, and I don't care enough to track it all the way down, but I'd say it's from some time in the 1980s; her hair is still dark, so it's too early for the Golden Jubilee and probably even pre-1992, but her face is a little older than it appears in the Silver Jubilee portraits. She's wearing a blue dress; a dark cape or robe; a couple of orders on her left shoulder (but the ribbons look like the wrong colors to be the Royal Family Orders of George V and George VI, so I'm stumped); a necklace, earrings, and bracelet that are probably rubies because she tended to wear red jewelry for Canada; and a tiara that I can't see clearly enough to identify.

If Fraser is annoyed at the Queen for keeping him at his desk instead of going off on tour with Tracy Jenkins, it's probably just as well that he not go off on tour with Tracy Jenkins, isn't it? If she's going to reconcile with her husband, none of them needs Fraser hanging around catching feelings for yet another dark-haired woman who's going to do him wrong. (At least this one didn't lead him on in any type of way, for a change.)

The title can only be a reference to "Lady Sings the Blues," the autobiographical 1956 Billie "Lady Day" Holiday album, or the 1956 autobiography or the 1972 film by the same name starring Diana Ross. Except for Turnbull's suggestion that country music is the white man's blues, there is nothing in this episode that has a thing to do with the blues or Billie Holiday in any way.

Cumulative body count: 36
Red uniform: The whole episode, but not always with the tunic

Previous | Index of annotated transcripts | Next

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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The Ladies' Man
air date October 21, 1998

( Scene 1 )

First of all, car owner guy, your car is a shitty beat-up station wagon with rust around the gas cap, so I wouldn't worry about the paint on the hood. Second of all, the main article in the newspaper in the vending machine is clearly pasted on, and not well.

The typesetting looks a little better than the replacement headline and byline in the Chicago Tribune article about the U.S. Open Billy Butler in "Mountie on the Bounty part 1"—although there's not enough space above the headline and too much space below it, and why does it only span three and three-quarters of five columns—but I am still dinging the props department pretty hard for this. Oy vey. (The picture is no doubt the actress's head shot, but I suppose it works in the context.)

Mainly, though, this is a scene about how something is bugging Kowalski to a degree we have not previously known, dissociating wildly and then, when he looks at Fraser, haunted and scared and still ready to snap if the wind blows wrong. Lucky for everyone that he responds to Fraser's voice the way he does.

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)

Dixie Seatle, Bill MacDonald, Nancy Palk, and Art Hindle as Robert Bedford

( Scene 2 )

I'm a little puzzled by a buffet or salad bar that has nothing on it but cheese and dried fruit. Does Fraser think Kowalski is in the state he's in because he's backed up? It's probably not important. I think the bartender was maybe supposed to be some sort of comic relief? Where he was supplying the words Kowalski was looking for in a way Fraser might once have done except that he, Fraser, has (not a moment to soon) caught a clue about when such "help" is appropriate? I don't know, I feel like maybe this scene (hell, maybe this episode) could do without the levity. I do like how concerned Fraser is about Kowalski and how gently he's taking care of him.

Attention to detail alert: I'd like it if Officer Kowalski in the flashback had been wearing a wedding ring, although I suppose we don't know how long he and Stella were married, do we.

( Scene 3 )

I'm with the lawyer on this one: Not Employing Literal Medieval Torture Methods is a pretty low bar to clear. (Besides, modern prisons have torture methods of their own, so it's not 100% certain they do clear that bar.)

My dad used to sing "K-k-k-Katie" to me when I was wee. (My name's not Katie either.)

( Scene 4 )

I think I like her. The way she rolls her eyes and singsongs "It's not your fault"—like, even assuming she did kill her husband and is therefore guilty and "should" be executed (a premise I don't agree with, but we're not here to talk about the death penalty today), her execution is not something that's happening to Kowalski, right, and she is one hundred percent within her rights to make him aware of that.

( Scene 5 )

It really is a beautiful car.

I'd like to believe there are some anti–death penalty protesters there as well, not just the go-to-hell-and-stay-there crowd.

( Scene 6 )

I'd like to thank everyone involved in writing this scene for not having the bartender say "Why would she want to kill him in public?" and Fraser say "I think he meant she'd threatened, in public, to kill him."

I'm alarmed by this Despondency cocktail. St. John's wort is an herbal remedy thought to have some antidepressant qualities, but all parts of the windflower are poisonous. And what's the cuttlefish doing in there? Maybe that's how it got the brown color, because cuttlefish is where sepia ink came from? And is the bartender hitting on Kowalski or Fraser or both? Read the room, buddy. Although speaking of reading the room, if there was ever a time for Fraser not to tell the whole truth, it was in response to the question "You ever make a mistake like that?" What, I ask you, would it have cost Fraser to cut straight to "That's not important" without saying "No" first?

( Scene 7 )

What is Welsh carrying, a coffee maker? And it's not that I don't appreciate putting Dewey in the role of Chief Asshole of the precinct, because he's clearly established himself as tactless and insensitive at best, but for a guy who so obviously isn't satisfied with his job as a cop, he sure is ready to beat the in-group drum here, isn't he?

Eight years doesn't seem like that long of a time for a capital case to get all the way from arrest to final appeal, especially because if clemency from the governor is Beth Botrelle's only hope, she'll have exhausted her federal options as well. I can't find data specific to Illinois (which hasn't executed anyone since 1999 and abolished capital punishment in 2011), but here's a statistic that says in 1998 the average time between sentencing and execution was 130 months; of course averages get to be that way by some things being longer and some quite a lot shorter. Beth Botrelle's trial will have had to take place within about four months of her arrest, and given that the trial only took a week, maybe she was sentenced quickly too? But anyway, that means Kowalski was a rookie in 1990, which would make him about 29 at the time, which is old for a rookie, isn't it? Especially one who dropped out of college to go to the police academy? What was he doing in the rest of his 20s? (I mean: He was accumulating citations as early as 1988, so apparently we're being extremely generous with the word "rookie" here and are going to have to do some convolutions to make it work. When Kowalski says he was a rookie when he went to chez Botrelle eight years ago, i.e., in 1990, does he mean that was the first case he'd ever gone to by himself? Is that a reasonable use of "rookie"? Hmmmm.)

( Scene 8 )

This young woman works in an archives- or librarian-adjacent job, so it's true that she and Fraser have something in common, but where the hell has she come from? And if she and Fraser are good enough buddies to be giggling together over her misfiling of Land Acquisitions with Aboriginal Spirit Walks and she's inviting him on a bark tea date right under Kowalski's nose, would it have been too much to ask Fraser to call her by name?

Burmese marionette puppetry is a real thing, and the art was of course badly damaged by colonialism; it's been revived since the late 1990s under the patronage of the ruling junta, so the geopolitics of post-colonial Burmese puppet theatre is probably a very interesting subject and I'd like it if the show didn't treat Fraser's friend as ridiculous for giving a lecture on it (though as a white woman her standing to do so could, I suppose, legitimately be questioned). Inuit throat singing is also real, and so is Dawson Creek, BC, though I'm getting exhausted by how much Fraser seems to have moved around as a kid.

It also makes me tired that the state's attorney is named Robert Bedford, especially in a moment where we're already talking about movie stars because Ronald Reagan. Sigh. However, I appreciate the attention to continuity, that Damon Cahill was running for the position but presumably wasn't elected because he was implicated in a murder-for-hire scheme. (I mean in Chicago that might not be disqualifying. But still.)

( Scene 9 )

That was sloppy sneaking, Kowalski. Couldn't you have put the guy's sandwich back where you found it?

( Scene 10 )

It's locked? It's a fire exit. It's got a fucking crash bar on it. That shit locks from the inside. You should always be able to get out that kind of door. How did Fraser and Kowalski lock it behind them?

Anyway, if bag 1 was replaced into bag 6, bag 2 into bag 7, and so on, then bag 26 wouldn't be replaced into bag 111, would it? Wouldn't it just be in bag 31? 1-6; 2-7, 3-8, 4-9, 5-10, 6-11; 16-21; 26-31. What am I missing? Unless by "up to 20 and then the pattern repeats itself" what Fraser means is that the contents of bag 19 are in the bag marked 24 and the contents of bag 20 are in the bag marked 25 and then the contents of bag 21 are in the bag marked 106? . . . So are there no bags marked 26–105? And how much time must someone have spent so carefully changing all these things? Jesus. Why not just do a random switcheroo?

( Scene 11 )

Do the police work for the state's attorney? I really don't think they do, and I don't see where this cat gets off giving Kowalski a direct order about his lunch, never mind about what questions he's allowed to ask. On top of which, Kowalski hasn't made any statements about the situation, inflammatory or otherwise. So Bedford can probably shove it. (Also also: Everyone in this episode is going ahead and calling Kowalski Kowalski. I guess the Vecchio's-safety thing is no longer a going concern?)

Thanks for the callback to Sandor the pizza guy, Fraser. This is actually a scene about how we love Welsh a little bit more.

( Scene 12 )

( Scene 13 )

Welsh isn't in charge around here? With his known preference for not keeping records any longer than is necessary? What about Commander O'Neill? What ever happened to her?

( Scene 14 )

Now Welsh is carrying a feather duster and a toaster. I'm dying to know what kind of back story Starr had in mind for what Welsh was up to in this episode.

( Scene 15 )

( Scene 16 )

In fact the real question is can Sherman demonstrate that the state shouldn't be allowed to kill Beth Botrelle.

( Scene 17 )

( Scene 18 )

( Scene 19 )

This isn't what's important about this scene, but how did Fraser get into Kowalski's building if he wasn't even sure Kowalski was there? I think we have to stop the clock and admit that by this point Fraser has a key to Kowalski's place. Did he ever get a key to Vecchio's house? 🤔

( Scene 20 )

( Scene 21 )

( Scene 22 )

So Fraser and Kowalski were hoping to lure whomever had bugged Kowalski's apartment to Wayne and Shuster, and they were surprised when they got Huey and Dewey instead—because I guess they have immediately discarded the idea that it could have been Huey and Dewey who bugged the apartment? Or maybe they didn't discard that idea until the explanation was the tip about the drug deal. Now they know whoever placed the bug was the one who gave Huey and Dewey that bogus tip; but why didn't it occur to them that whoever was spying on them would also be after that bit of fake evidence?

Nice of Huey and Dewey to offer Fraser and Kowalski a lift back home, though. Does Fraser not want a lift in their car because he assumes it's bugged as well? Or just because it's a piece of junk?

( Scene 23 )

It didn't take Huey and Dewey long to get over being annoyed that someone was playing games with them, huh? I wonder if these scenes were edited together in a different order than they were written in.

Has the rumor of Bedford's running for governor been confirmed? I guess "Let's not talk about that right now" is different from "No."

( Scene 24 )

The toughness Beth showed Kowalski is not at all present here. Also, I love (love) Fraser saying (with the same kindness with which he said "thank you" to Garret the Dreamer "He knows" rather than "I know." ❤️

( Scene 25 )

I guess "she's guilty anyway" is supposed to have been Bedford's reasoning for why it was a good idea to destroy the evidence that Botrelle was having an affair with his wife. Which I also don't see why a guy's wife having an affair with a cop ruins his family image—not if he's the aggrieved party who's been stepped-out on—but of course it would have disqualified him from the case, and if he wanted prosecuting Beth Botrelle to make his career, okay, he destroys evidence that would reveal his own wife's affair with the victim but not (apparently) exonerate the victim's wife. . . . But if that's the story Kowalski is telling Franklin, that they're trying to prove Bedford tampered with evidence and therefore Beth Botrelle should be acquitted on a technicality, I don't see why he's also leaning on "She didn't do it."

( Scene 26 )

Okay that cash has been sitting in that storage locker for eight years. Did nobody miss it? (And what did Fraser find?)

( Scene 27 )

I can only assume that what Fraser found in the storage locker was a notebook with a page torn out (that would be the piece of paper Kowalski found under Jake Botrelle's body), and he was able to see the impressions the pen had left on the page behind it? Or something like that? The last few dots have not at all been connected here.

As for the witnesses to Beth Botrelle's execution, one imagines the older man in the back might be her father-in-law. There's also a uniformed officer (wearing their hat indoors, tsk), two women, and two youngish men in suits. I'm a little surprised none of them is her lawyer.

( Scene 28 )

I do like her. I'm fine with her continuing not to let Kowalski off the hook, although I'm not sure about the value for her in reviewing the night her husband died all over again. (I'm surprised she's already home, though I guess we don't know how much time is supposed to have passed since the previous scene; also frankly I'm surprised she still owns the house.) I think it's absolutely right for her not to want to hear Kowalski's apology, because she doesn't want to be in the position of having to forgive him—but ultimately I suppose she concludes that he was used as a scapegoat, too. (I mean. If he had read the note and knew what it said, couldn't Franklin have tampered with the evidence anyway and discredited him; ruined his, Kowalski's, career; and sent Beth Botrelle to her death?)

( Scene 29 )

Thank God Fraser doesn't feel like he has to say anything at this point. And the camera backs humanely away to give Kowalski a moment as well.

Cumulative body count: 34
Red uniform: Almost the whole episode, but a soft sweater and flannel overshirt for the very end

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Dr. Longball
air date September 23, 1998

( Scene 1 )

Yeah okay blah blah Welsh wants Fraser to give him a lift back to 1958, or failing that to Willison, which is presumably in Wisconsin because of all the dairy references, minor league baseball, crime does in fact exist even in the heartland, the announcer does some nice expository work, I guess we're going on another field trip. But WAIT JUST A SECOND, Huey called Welsh "massa," and nobody in the squad room blinked or was in any way surprised? Just me? Huey is about a millimeter shy of openly observing that the 27th precinct is run like a plantation and that is somehow not the subject of this episode? Doesn't even warrant a tiny bit of scrutiny? Nothing? I'm the only one talking about this? Holy shit.

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, Max Gail Jr., Wanda Cannon, Richard Fitzpatrick, and Bruce Weitz as Huck

( Scene 2 )

Sigh. So look, the nature of crime in the big city is different from the nature of crime out in the sticks, sure. Probably so is the staffing. A sheriff's department is a lot fewer people responsible for a lot more ground than a local police department; they may have more officers per capita, but those capitas are spread out over a huge area, so my guess is they're a lot more reactive than preventive, crime-wise. (Police departments and sheriffs' departments don't always see one another as colleagues, for some reason.) Also, this is 1998, which means out in Nowheresville there's probably a nontrivial amount of recreational meth use and the odds are pretty good Welsh's brother has seen 14-year-olds killed by hypos. I choose to live in a city myself, but I don't have a lot of use for Welsh's urban chauvinism.

I also don't have a lot of use for Fraser's "keep trying" advice, because as we all know, sometimes the best thing you can do with a relationship is let it be over, and if Welsh doesn't speak to his brother he probably has a reason and "but faaamily" UGH, though we do get it from lead characters who are sole survivors, don't we. Fraser here; Josh Lyman (who doesn't quite qualify, because his mother is still living) in The West Wing s4e11 "Holy Night" when he brings Toby Ziegler's estranged father to the White House and says "Because you don't know what I know! . . . That I would give anything to have a living father who's a felon or a sister with a past." It's well meant but he shouldn't have done it, because people's complicated relationships are their own business. In the present instance, though, I can forgive it because Welsh did ask Fraser for his advice.

So Fraser is on this trip because Welsh has busted his right foot in some manner and can't drive the car himself. Which means Fraser is driving, and this is going entirely uncommented-upon, which is bigger news than it is being treated as. And "the pros from Dover" is a M*A*S*H reference. In the book, Pierce used to run a con where he claimed to be a golf pro from Dover to cadge invitations to play for free; later in the book and also in the movie, he and Trapper are called from Korea to Tokyo to do surgery on a congressman's son, and he hollers about being the "pros from Dover" (which they really are in this instance, not a con) but not having access to recent pictures of the injury. (It never turned up in the TV series.) The fact that the character is, like the Willison baseball team, called Hawkeye (. . . does that mean we're in Iowa instead of in Wisconsin?) may mean something is happening here or just that someone in the writers' room had M*A*S*H on the brain.

( Scene 3 )

It doesn't really make sense to me that Sheriff Welsh has such a different accent than Lieutenant Welsh, but what can you do. Right now the thing is playing out like Willison, Wisconsin, is not unlike Cabot Cove, Maine, a charming little place with a sudden surge of crime. If this were Murder, She Wrote I'd be putting my money on Huck Bogart (given Bruce Weitz's and/as credit) to get a letter opener between the shoulderblades, given his lack of sympathy for the injured Hector.

( Scene 4 )

I guess I don't see why moving things from a van to a car is inherently suspicious and why Fraser and Welsh had to come along and bust it all up. I mean once they began to bust it became clear they'd come upon something totally hinky; but all this just off the fact that Fraser heard an engine? While he was out on a . . . road?

( Scene 5 )

The fact that Harding Welsh has a brother named Wilson just makes me so tired all over again.

I like that Ramona Milano is the sheriff's deputy. Big fan of alternate-reality episodes where the cast gets to do something different for a change. (See, e.g., Torchwood s2e5 "Adam," Bones s4e26 "The End in the Beginning," any of about a dozen episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.) I also like that Sheriff Welsh is pointing out to Lt. Welsh that in fact law enforcement is not dissimilar in different jurisdictions.

If Fraser has brought back the stadium payroll, which I guess was still in the back of the van, what all did Rusty and his friends put in the trunk of the car before it drove off?

( Scene 6 )

As we might have suspected, the Welsh brothers' backstory is deeper than Lt. Welsh initially suggested. And given the heat with which Harding Welsh insists he never needed his father's approval, it seems like he's actually the odd one out, not Wilson Welsh, right? Like in scene 2 it sounded as if both brothers went to the police academy and then Wilson deviated from what had always been the plan to go off and be a sheriff in a rural (or exurban at the most) county. But now it feels like both brothers went to the police academy and then Harding Welsh decided to stay in the city. Like they grew up in the country and Harding moved to the city and is kind of being a jerk about it, to be honest. Because there's no zealot like a convert.

( Scene 7 )

It's probably just as well that Bogart not drink that coffee, unless the mascot brought him decaf. I'm not sure what we're supposed to think of this guy, but it's hard to see anything except a wildly abusive boss. (The names he mentions are fictitious, and no minor league manager has ever won 3,000 games.)

I do like that for whatever issues Welsh has with his brother, he doesn't want anyone else saying anything bad about him. (Oh and I guess we're in Illinois after all.)

( Scene 8 )

( Scene 9 )

I'm thinking a lot about Bull Durham (1988) right now. Can't imagine why.

( Scene 10 )

Why does Wilson Welsh keep the mug book at his home instead of in his office?

ADR alert: "I let him go a long time ago" is not quite what Welsh said, but I can't make out what he did say before it was dubbed over in post.

I also have some questions about the travel time between Mexico (a big place, but let's assume the club couples place where he was on vacation was in, like, Cancún) and the side of the road in Willison, Wisconsin Illinois, to which Kowalski appears to have hitchhiked—after stopping off in Chicago to pick up his bat and his glove. When did Fraser even call him? And how? It cannot possibly be the same day Fraser and Welsh arrived in Willison any longer; where are they staying? Or is the whole town of Willison in some sort of temporal vortex (which might explain how Francesca and Turnbull have presences there) where the county sheriff reports to the town mayor for some reason instead of to, you know, the voters who elected him? (The sheriff being responsible for law enforcement in the town doesn't bother me, because the town is probably too small to have its own police department. But the mayor isn't the sheriff's boss, and short of losing a regularly scheduled or a recall election, I don't see how Wilson Welsh loses his job.)

( Scene 11 )

I'm handwaving Fraser's reverse psychology and handwaving Acapulco instead of Cancún and focusing on "they're only looking for someone who can hit .380." In the first place, the highest major league career batting average of all time is .366 (Ty Cobb). The best season average in the modern era was Ted Williams's .406 in 1941; since then only four players have had seasons at or above .380 (one of which was Williams himself in 1957). It just doesn't happen that often. Batting averages tend to be a little higher in the minor leagues, because pitching tends to be a little weaker, but even then it's not frequent. It's a preposterous bar to set for Kowalski to achieve. And in the second place, I don't see how Fraser wouldn't know this, having apparently read everything he could get his hands on as a child, having almost total recall of everything he's ever read or heard, and being familiar enough with baseball (or softball) to recognize that Thatcher's ERA of 1.3 over 30 games was very good. So . . . is he hoping Kowalski will think he doesn't know .380 is a lot to ask?

( Scene 12 )

It looks like Cossantino is feeling a little threatened by the arrival of Leary. Way to show team spirit, kid.

Rennie is still wearing underwear; the waistband is visible for a second when he goes to drop Kowalski's boxer briefs, but we are absolutely meant to understand that Kowalski is standing there naked when Toni Lake comes in and can't get away. I don't know what the union rules are for nudity on television or if/how they differ from broadcast rules. I mean for sure frontal male nudity is right out. Probably so is frontal female nudity below the belt, and now that I think about it I guess prime time broadcast TV doesn't show breasts either (cable TV is a whole other situation, of course). But women are topless on television all the time; the audience never sees a nip slip, but your actresses are bare to the waist and that's a thing that happens. Either she's got her back to the camera or there's a strategically placed item of set dressing or props or clothing that covers it up. And when people take their pants off it's the same; the camera and some number of objects work together to make us "believe" (not that we really believe) that a person is naked when they are wearing something as brief as possible so it looks more or less as though the obstruction is obstructing only what it needs to and not whatever underthings they're wearing so they're not displaying to the whole crew. There are occasional exceptions. John Barrowman bared it all in Doctor Who (2005) s1e7 "The Long Game," and seemingly the whole cast of NYPD Blue got their asses out at one time or another (and the show went to court to fight the fines they incurred for indecency, and won). But generally, in e.g. Friends and How I Met Your Mother as here, a person who is supposed to be naked from the waist down is visibly nothing of the sort, which is as it should be, if you ask me.

( Scene 13 )

I'm pretty sure Fraser just called either Olivia or the mayor a whore. Neither of them seems to be offended by this.

( Scene 13 continues. )

I don't know why the mayor thinks this is an incisive guess given that Fraser is wearing the red Mountie uniform. "Let me guess, you're from Canada." Where else could he be from? Disneyland, I suppose.

( Scene 13 continues to continue. )

Olivia is flirting with Fraser in a way we haven't seen in a wee while; this is kind of a return to the early days of the show where every woman he met just salivated over him. Janet Morse was a little more decorous than that, and otherwise the only women he's interacted with are Francesca and Thatcher—who do embarrass themselves a bit, but at least he already knows them, so it's somehow not the same as complete strangers flinging themselves at his feet—and the only other women he's met for the first time are Sergeant Thorne, whatshername the Russian spy, and Stella Kowalski, none of whom could have been less interested in him. He seems fractionally less uncomfortable with Olivia's attention than he used to be with other random women's, either because she's being a little subtler about it than the Tammy Markles of the world or because it's been almost five years and he's growing accustomed.

I still think Wisconsin would have made more sense if they're going to keep talking about cheese.

( Scene 14 )

Kowalski is wearing Babe Ruth's number, and I will not be told that was a coincidence.

( Scene 15 )

As you know, if the Barenaked Ladies had a million dollars, they'd buy you a K-car, a nice reliant automobile.

My feeling is there's probably room for both the police and the sheriff's department, and a little interagency cooperation (rather than competition) wouldn't be out of line, but what do I know?

( Scene 16 )

All the lockers have guys' names taped on them, too. I'd like Kowalski to have been able to come up with a better excuse than playing dumb again.

( Scene 17 )

Impressively, they can both be right and both be wrong, both (all) at the same time.

( Scene 18 )

"Did you grow up in a public service announcement?" is good.

I don't think Wilson Welsh is necessarily bad at his job, but he does seem to lack conviction, which is probably what happens when you elect your law enforcement leaders, so there's your trouble.

( Scene 19 )

If Wilson Welsh didn't have a fax machine, how did they get the Chicago mug books in the first place? Did someone courier them over? And if so, why can't they just send that person back with a copy?

( Scene 20 )

I'm not sure it's true that lawn mowers are worse polluters than cars, but I sort of enjoy that Huey and Dewey have unrelated conversations at work the same way the rest of us do.

( Scene 21 )

Okay so Wilson Welsh has been having an affair with Olivia—as apparently has Kelley Olsen, and if that's what she meant by "contract negotiations," possibly also the mayor. I'm not sure I see how he gets from there to she has a motive for sabotaging the team. (I mean, the fact that the robbers were carrying around the number to the phone in the hallway outside her office doesn't look good for her. But we're not clear yet on what her motive is supposed to be.)

( Scene 22 )

This show and its daddy issues, I tell you what.

Thank god Willison Huey and Willison Dewey didn't do any more of "Who's on First" than they did. Just a little nod in that direction and then spare us the whole megillah, thanks so much. This is sort of the point at which I start to wonder if Welsh maybe hit his head trying to shelter from a tornado and in fact this whole episode is a dream.

( Scene 23 )

Force majeure is a clause that would get Olivia out of a contract obligation based on an unforeseen circumstance other than an act of God. But if she wants to sell the team and the stadium, I don't see why she'd be sabotaging the team—wouldn't she want it to be worth as much as possible? I mean, if she's having trouble finding a buyer who'll pay what the team is worth, she could simply lower her asking price without arranging to have the payroll stolen, setting players up to be injured, etc. The scheme is entirely opaque to me here.

"A bucket of warm spit" is famously what John Nance Garner, who was FDR's first vice president, once named as the worth of the office of the Vice President of the United States, apart from spit was not the bodily fluid he spoke of at the time.

( Scene 24 )

You shouldn't expect to hear the end of this! Your boy just caught a line drive to his face for the 27th out! That is wicked impressive!

Also, one of the robbers was Hector's nephew, which means Hector getting whacked on the head really sucked, huh?

( Scene 25 )

This is sort of the first time that it's really clear to me that Wilson Welsh does in fact know exactly what he's doing and is just taking a longer, gentler route to get there than Harding Welsh wants to take. Sheriff Welsh knows perfectly well that Hector isn't a scrupulously honest bookkeeper and is annoyed when Lt. Welsh busts in to argue with him. He does a "see?" face when Fraser points out that Hector had no motive for the other acts of vandalism. He's been doing things his way, is all, not fumbling and bumbling, and it's all down to the slower pace of life out there, which is what Welsh started out talking to Fraser about to sell him on the idea of coming out to Willison in the first place.

( Scene 26 )

So was there a man in town Olivia wasn't sleeping with? Not that she shouldn't get it wherever she wants, of course, although the trope of the oversexed widow is well tiresome.

( Scene 27 )

Camilla Scott sings circles around Paul Gross, and that's all I have to say about that.

Also, this whole scene puts paid to the suggestion that Fraser didn't know .380 was an impossibly high batting average to suggest Kowalski should aim for. A pull hitter is the opposite of an opposite-field hitter, that is, a right-handed pull hitter (such as Kowalski) normally hits to left field, because he's batting from the left side of the plate; he pulls the ball toward his own field. I have no idea on what basis Fraser has identified Kowalski as a pull hitter, but that's what that means, anyway.

The idea that Diefenbaker is judging his first pitch as high and outside is hilarious to me. (And the queue to make pitching-and-catching jokes about Fraser and Kowalski forms to the right.)

( Scene 28 )

Toward the end of Chariots of Fire (1981), when (real-life historical event spoiler) Harold Abrahams wins the 100m at the 1924 Olympics in Paris, there's a scene where his coach is hanging around in his hotel or training room or some such place because, as a professional, he wasn't permitted in the stadium. (This was back when the Olympics had standards and stuck to them.) So the only way the coach knows his athlete has won the gold medal is when, through the window, he sees the flag being raised and hears the band playing "God Save the King." And the coach, played by the inimitable Sir Ian Holm, punches through his straw boater in his glee and says "Harold!" and then sits down on the edge of his bed, weeping, and whispers "My son!" Which I mention because I feel like that's what this scene is going for with Huck Bogart. Kowalski hit a walk-off grand slam, which is awesome, and with that hit he got Bogart to 3,000 career wins, and now he doesn't have to strive for that anymore, and the relief is so stupendous that all he wants to do is be somewhere by himself and sit down.

( Scene 29 )

So with respect to the crime wave in Willison . . . did they all do it? Hector was behind the payroll robbery; Woody was behind the pitching machine, the poisoned concessions, and the collapsing bleachers; and the mayor was behind the department store burglary and the arson at the factory (or the lumber mill and the warehouse, whatever)? But in fact Huck Bogart's only crime was being a bad boss, and Olivia's was . . . nothing at all? I was right about her not wanting to sabotage a team and a stadium she's trying to sell, and she can shag whomever she pleases? Actually no complaints about her at all? That's pretty refreshing, to be honest.

I am SO GLAD that Welsh didn't thank Fraser for pointing out that he only has one father, etc. This was what I was on about in scene 2; at that time, Welsh asked Fraser for his advice, but here he did not, and while there's a chance Fraser is right that Welsh would be sorry if his father died before he even attempted to reconcile, that is 100% his own, that is, Welsh's, decision to make. I'll go so far as to say there may not be anything Fraser can bring up that Welsh hasn't thought of in the past 25 years; in fact, it's just that Welsh Senior has been living wherever it is he's living for the past 25 years, but Welsh himself has been estranged from his father since, if my math is correct, before Fraser was born. So Fraser can and should, although he won't because he's the main character of the show and therefore probably can't understand that he's not the main character of other people's lives . . .

. . . shove it.

Cumulative body count: 34
Red uniform: The whole episode

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