my constable name is constable benton fraser

[aria]

4x10 Say Amen

Thatcher, Turnbull, Fraser, and Ray all go to see movies together? And then chat about their merits afterwards? That's wonderful. ("The actors might as well have been robots!" Thatcher laments. "They were playing robots," Ray points out, and I start laughing a lot. I mean, yes, it was probably a Terminator film, but still.)

A screencap of the theatre showing, because this show is meta and kind of recursive:



Hi, Davy! He's the same kid who played Stanley Smith, and I completely love him.

I also love the discussion about love at first sight. Of course Ray is impatient and cynical about it, because Stella was love at first sight and we know how that one went (after twenty years, Ray, give yourself a little credit), Welsh's assessment of lust at first sight and Thatcher's talk of pheromones certainly explain Francesca well enough, and then Fraser looks over at Ray and says, "But I do believe [love at first sight] happens." Of course he's probably just contemplating Davy, since he follows this with "He was willing to lay down his life for her," but helloooo Captain Subtext.

The great thing, too, is that the subtext doesn't just work on the level of Fraser saying that line and the camera immediately switching over to Ray; no, Fraser also has a specific reason: the willingness to die for another person implies love. As a character point that's excellent, not least because it means that Fraser's expectations of romance as Epic have some context to them. Of course he and Meg were able to act on their feelings while in grave danger: there was every chance they'd be saving each other's lives at any moment. Of course Fraser had it bad for Victoria: on the day they met, they kept one another alive with words and bodies. (In this case I think Fraser has it confused, which is never any surprise when it comes with Victoria; obviously he was willing to lay down his life for her, but at least to begin with she helped him keep alive because he was her only chance at surviving.) Of course Fraser treats Diefenbaker more like a person than like a pet: Dief went deaf rescuing Fraser from drowning in Prince Rupert Sound. Of course Fraser counted Ray Vecchio his best friend by the second episode: Vecchio had pushed him out a window to save Fraser from a bomb, at great risk to himself. And of course Fraser was willing to be Ray Kowalski's friend just as quickly -- Ray stepped in front of a bullet for him. Out of this collection of people, Ray's the one who's most clearly and quickly been willing to lay down his life for Fraser, and there you have it: Fraser's theory of love at first sight.

Churches make Ray nervous; he's more a human sacrifices kinda guy. <3 I know a lot of fandom makes him Catholic in the church-every-Sunday-growing-up way, which isn't particularly odd, but he mostly strikes me as one of those people raised in a nominally Christian (Catholic a viable option) household that celebrated all of the major holidays but didn't really make any effort beyond that, so Ray's kind of twitchy in churches because they remind him of having to wear a nice suit at the age of seven, not because he hated confession or anything. Fraser meanwhile was probably raised on Bible readings and humanist philosophy in equal doses. (And of course the Vecchios are very Catholic, but this goes without saying.)

Oh, Frannie and Eloise! I love the scene where they talk in the station; Frannie is the perfect person to talk to if you want someone to believe your claim to performing miracles. I love Frannie's horrified sympathy at Eloise having to remain pure. I also love Eloise saying "I don't know why God would give me these feelings if they're so wrong," and how she really can perform miracles, but not all the time (the Babe Ruth's home runs metaphor is fabulous) and the fact that I'm pretty sure Eloise does continue to perform miracles while being in love with Davy at the same time. Of course there's also the deal with the hypocrisy of her adopted parents, and how it's her, not them, that deserves to have a gift. I adore how this show does even commentary on religion well; it can be deeply problematic, but not the basic beliefs that are the problem, it's how people use them.

Hee, Bob was playing the piano at the end! I absolutely did not notice that before. I'm also in love with Thatcher's singing voice, and as always with Fraser saving everyone by talking. <3


4x11 Hunting Season

Wow, I really adore Maggie Mackenzie. (I also feel weird typing that sentence because years ago I came up quite independently with a character of that name, who is nothing like this Maggie.) I suspect I mostly adore her because she is basically woman!Fraser with slightly different mannerisms and definitely different hang-ups but the same basic approach to life; I don't know why I want to claim this, because Fraser would absolutely never bluff someone with a gun, but the fact that Maggie gets her way with a gun that's unloaded gets me where I live in the same way that Fraser does.

Much more importantly, how many due South characters does it take to change a light bulb?



Answer: one. Fraser can do anything by himself and anyway all the other characters are way too busy staring at him do slightly obscene things with his mouth to actually get up and help him.

Oh, poor Maggie. She probably could have spared herself a lot of trouble with Fraser, anyway, if she'd just said she was on the trail of the killers of her husband. As is, she is kind of a Fraser-and-Ray magnet, because she reminds Fraser of home and, let's face it, she's kind of Ray's perfect woman: she's an attractive blonde woman, check, who is in all other respects freakishly like Fraser, check. Also I posit that Bob Fraser has some sort of weird genetic mutation that makes his offspring completely irresistible, considering that the men around Maggie act kind of like women do around Benton. And along with the irresistible gene, apparently Bob passed along a falls-in-love-with-bank-robbers gene. Heh.

Luckily Fraser only does the Luke and Leia Show for about two scenes before Maggie sees Bob and suddenly it is FAMILY TIME. I want to draw hearts around them, oh my god.



Turnbull, bless him, really does try to protect Fraser from the Wrath of Thatcher. Happily at this point the Wrath of Thatcher seems to mostly come in the form of "I'm becoming steadily more convinced that my entire staff are total whackjobs" rather than any particular jealousy of Maggie. Poor Thatcher, really. Her entire staff are whackjobs.

HAHA RAY AND FRASER IN ONE BATHROOM STALL. My favourite part is Welsh poking his head up and going, "Technically, as a private citizen, [Fraser]'s free to come in here and liaise his head off." I love the way Welsh constantly sticks up for Fraser, and more than that I love that he thinks it's perfectly normal for Fraser and Ray to be hiding out in one bathroom stall. Argh and then they leave and Ray repeatedly touches Fraser's shoulder. <3 The best part of all this is that, seriously? They could be shagging all the time and no one would notice the difference.

Oh god Ray and Maggie. "Hey Fraser, turn around." Kiss. "Turn around again!" If Fraser or Ray were, like, actually straight or something (ha ha) I would totally ship Ray/Maggie. Instead I want Ray and Fraser to move to Canada and both come by to be BFFs with Maggie and help her tar the roof of her trailer or help her fix her generator or give her advice about an unsolvable case or elusive criminal. Yay Maggie!

And this really is the lead-up to Call of the Wild, isn't it? It ends with Bob apologizing for being a miserable father twice; "I never intended to stay away, son. It's just that back home everywhere I looked I saw your mother." And there it is: Bob's admitted to all of his mistakes except the last one; on to the finale.


Tomorrow I will actually have time to finish the rewatch! And there will be VECCHIO and CANADA and SLEDDING INTO SUNSETS, and then I suspect I will go into immediate withdrawal and watch things about curling or the end of the world (but not both at once; how hilarious would curling & the apocalypse be?) in order to soothe the sudden emptiness. And after that I will bravely tackle the WIPs.

Comments

[carrieann]

I always feel like there should be some space of time between Hunting Season and CotW. I'm not sure exactly why. Maybe because "hey, new sis!" then right after "hey, your mom's killer!" I dunno.

[aria]

Heh, yes. I think Hunting Season is kind of the thematic lead-up, and obviously they aired back-to-back, but I suspect there's a month or two of leeway between the two.

Actually I'm sad the Maggie episode wasn't way earlier, because then they might've had her guest spot at least one other time; I think she and Fraser make awesome siblings, but that they don't really have enough sibling-time since they only discover it most of the way through the episode. Ah well.

[luzula]

Ooh, I love your theory of love at first sight for Fraser, and how it involves risking your life.

Also: yay Maggie! &hearts I have an obsession with the Fraser family.

[aria]

I'm not sure if this theory holds up quite as well if Janet the bounty hunter gets factored in, but she's also possibly the closest Fraser gets to wanting someone for normal reasons. *shrug*

I adore Maggie. :D I kind of wish her episode had come earlier so we could've been her a time or two more.

[(Anonymous)]

Of course Ray Kowalski stepped in front of a bullet for Fraser because THAT'S WHAT RAY VECCHIO WOULD HAVE DONE, and in BDTH, Kowalski was very much trying to impersonate Vecchio. But he didn't run into the burning Vecchio home to save Frannie and Tony. RayV definitely would have, as Fraser says. Really - if you look at it from a non F/K shipper POV, RayV is more likely to risk his life for Fraser than Kowalski. And that's because RayV may be more reckless in general when it comes to those he loves.