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pamela's dog
3x09 Dead Guy Running
Argh, I love Fraser's ear anecdotes. I love the weird and random stuff we learn about Fraser from them, too. He once went to see wrestling matches with Innusiq, presumably while quite young. He had an acquaintance who accidentally got his ear ripped off fishing, sewed it back on backwards, and claimed thereafter to be dyslexic, which both Fraser and I find kind of hilarious and confuses the hell out of Ray. And my personal favourite, about Fraser's distant relative: "One day he had a seashell up to his ear, and was listening to the gentle lapping of the surf, when a narwhal broke the surface and shoved the seashell deep into his eardrum. From that day forward, instead of the gentle lapping of the surf he had a rushing torrent raging through his cranium." Ray actually does laugh at that one, one of those little huffing grinning laughs because he knows Fraser's really trying.
I also love Stanley Smith. He's another of my favourite one-shot characters. (Part of me wishes he'd played Levon a few episodes ago, although he's not really built like a boxer, I guess; it's just that he and Ray have such wonderful energy around one another. Ah well.) I especially love the part where Ray demands, "What about the rights of the guy with the Mercedes?" and Stanley shoots back, "He don't need no rights, he's got a Mercedes," and Ray has this flash of that brilliant grin before he gets back to being a cop. I enjoy their dysfunctional bonding lots.
Sometimes I suspect that Ray needs a hug and also anger management classes. Don't hit the drywall, Ray! (To be fair, Kuzma apparently killed a Chicago cop and then bit Ray's ear, so it's not like the violent anger is particularly unjustified.) I always find it fascinating that Fraser doesn't ... react to Ray's outbursts. Part of me wants to say that Fraser just insists to himself that Ray has a better handle on his temper than he might appear (hence "I'm sure it's just a posture," although he didn't know Ray very well then, and his later inability to understand that Ray might go through with punching him) but part of me also suspects that Fraser just can't bring himself to hold Ray to quite the same standards as he does everyone else. It's this particular worrying quality he has around people he's in love with (not loves; he has very exacting standards for Vecchio and Diefenbaker, for example) -- this is particularly obvious with Victoria, but he also more or less allows Janet Morse to steal $300, and I think it sort of carries over to Ray. This is one of the more potentially unhealthy things about their relationship, but as I've pointed out previously, Ray responds beautifully to any suggestion from Fraser that he's better than he thinks, so in the end Fraser's slight willful blindness to Ray's faults actually makes them lessen. I don't know if this particularly holds true for Ray's tendency to lash out, but ... yeah, I think over time he does that a lot less. (So when he nearly punches Vecchio in CotW, it's not surprising but it is a little unexpected, because he hasn't done that sort of thing in a while.) Yay for unexpected emotional healthiness!
Considering how twitchy Ray is in the morgue, it's kind of odd how distinctly untwitchy he is around dead Guy Rankin. I guess that means it's the morgue particularly that bothers him, more than dead bodies generally; like, dead people? happen. Examining the dead people closely and willingly? not gonna happen. Or something of the sort.
Frannie's speech about Rankin has so much in it. First, oh, Frannie. You know, a lot of the time I think Frannie is just adorably shallow and wants Fraser because he's really attractive, but I don't think that's it. She had an abusive father growing up; I know she loves Ray and in the main is willing to talk back at him like a good sister should, but since she's convinced Ray killed Rankin, I suspect a very small part of her is genuinely afraid of him; we don't know anything about Frannie's ex-husband except that they're divorced and no one in the family thinks much of him, but considering that he's brought up in the pilot at dinner and directly afterwards Ray remembers that Francis Drake broke his wife's arm, there has to be some connecting line in that train of thought and I conclude that Frannie's ex wasn't a very nice guy; and she's really visibly rattled by the memory of Rankin, not just the fact that he's turned up dead in a cell. She's latched onto Fraser because she thinks he's safe, as well as attractive and polite to a fault; and that's not zany and hilarious, that's one of those quiet tragic undertones. I also think it's worth noting that when Frannie tells Fraser the story, she says that she thought they were going out for a drink but Rankin thought they were going out for a drink, and Fraser doesn't even miss a beat trying to figure that nuance out. Again, the second it's not about him he can deal with it.
Frannie's ideas about Fraser are sort of doubly apparent in the slightly later exchange where she asks Fraser not to tell anyone what she said and then says that she felt she could tell him because a Mountie from Canada is kind of like a priest. Except that she thinks of him as a man, not a priest, not that priests aren't men, but priests can't do some things ... And then Fraser deflects her with a ridiculous story about some priest in them Northwest Areas. I rest my case.
Ray's "Hey! That's my sister!" when Stanley comments on Frannie's attractiveness sort of warms my heart. I know the 'Ray is undercover' plot only gets brought out to air now and then, and this episode is one of the few times where the fact that Ray is not Ray is the issue that actually drives the plot, but Kowalski and Frannie as fake!siblings still makes me weirdly happy the few times they remember it.
HEY WAIT A SECOND. Vecchio and Stella have already met. At least, that seems to be the implication in the fact that Rankin was Vecchio and Huey's collar and that Stella was the attorney on the case. This is another one of those weird things about Call of the Wild, and can go in the same 'wtf' box as the part where it seems a lot like Ray and Ray had never previously met either, despite the fact that if Ray was going to be halfway convincing as Ray they should have spent a little bit of time together. Vecchio & the Kowalskis: I really have no fucking clue. Maybe I should write Paul Gross a stern letter lecturing on the virtues of continuity, except that my last fandom was Doctor Who and I have learned to be zen and quantum about continuity.
You know what will also make me zen about continuity? The fact that the continuity is awesome on always remembering to give Ray and Fraser no personal space. Yes, Fraser, touch Ray's chest as often as you like.
Fraser's nervous ticks really charm me, by the way. The ear-tug and the thumb-over-eyebrow, yes, but also the weird abrupt someone-just-pulled-his-strings 180-degree turns he executes sometimes. Ray sometimes does those too, but fluidly (and usually with accompanying finger-pointing), whereas Fraser looks like he's on some sort of turntable. Despite the fact that for the most part he obviously trusts his body to do what he wants it to, he's surprisingly uncomfortable in his own skin.
Ah, I think I have to take back what I said earlier about how Bob has opinions on all of Fraser's potential love life except Francesca, because when they're down in the morgue, he definitely gives Benton that twinkle-eyed look and says, "Carpe diem, son," when Frannie's going on about the whole adventure being thrilling. I love how Bob is sometimes right on the mark with his advice and sometimes miles and miles off. I also love how Mort starts inspecting under Bob's nails instead of under the corpse's. Oh ghost rules! never, ever start making any coherent sense. <3
And I particularly like this instance of Fraser getting up in front of someone holding a gun and trying to reasonably talk them down, because it's one of the few times we get a reaction shot of Ray. It's better in motion, but he has this rare wary stillness, and he's obviously busy thinking of ways he can (literally) knock Dinardo down now that Fraser has set him up, and -- hi, I really love them.
3x10 Perfect Strangers
I LOVE THAT FRASER LISTENS TO SHEET MUSIC. This is absolutely deserving of the capslock; you see, I think of people listening to sheet music and my brain goes straight to Havelock Vetinari, with whom I imagine Fraser would get on very well. (I imagine this mostly because Vetinari and Carrot have a nice understanding, and, well, I like Fraser a lot better than Carrot for reasons I'm not going to explore at this juncture, but they're alarmingly similar.) Anyway, my point is that unlike Vetinari I'm sure Fraser enjoys the small human errors of hearing a live orchestra, but that doesn't mean he can't also enjoy a good piece of sheet music.
Frannie's psychology course! Bless. I think she's just genuinely trying to self-improve, although being able to sound intelligent at Fraser is probably a good bonus. Really Frannie is a lot more complex than I usually take the time to give her credit for.
I adore Ray in Toronto. The "It's clean ... too clean," thing cracks me up every time, and his calling the RCMP headquarters the mothership makes me grin, but my favourite part is his Leafs suck/Leafs rule/Hawks rule/Hawks suck/you suck exchange with the guy trying to sell tickets by the stadium. I don't know if we ever get any "Ray likes hockey" indications besides that, but I am delighted at the cultural touchpoint, and Fraser seems quite pleased with Ray's bilingualism.
Oh thank god, I thought I was going to kind of spend parts of this episode hiding under a pillow from Fraser and Thatcher, because this is the baby episode. But Meg is so wonderfully sincere about actually wanting Fraser as a friend, which mostly makes it a damn shame that both the Fraser men are completely clueless, because I am so down with Meg thinking of Fraser as a partner as well as a subordinate. I am also used enough to their awkward that rather than cringing, the conversation following Fraser muttering at his father, "Nothing's stirring in anyone's loins," makes me crack up instead of hide more. I am so glad I've apparently made peace with Fraser and Thatcher's relationship! (Now I still want to write the fic that
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wintercreek asked me to, about Thatcher as another constable with Fraser under Moffat, and their subsequent epic adventures. Help.) And oh gosh, I thought the last scene with Fraser bringing Meg flowers and kind of babbling was going to be painful but it was actually just ... really sweet and heartfelt. And they do speak the same stammered half-language. Oh, I love them.One more and then it's Mountie on the Bounty. That one is probably going to be ... long. Ahaha.
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So, uh, I pretty much love the same parts of that episode as you do. :D
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F/T at the end: <3<3<3<3
(Now I still want to write the fic that
And they do speak the same stammered half-language.: They do, they DO. A world of <3 for them and their awkward, half-realized conversations.