Thoughts on Due South Season One

July 30th, 2008 11:52pm by rusty-halo | 4 Comments »

Due South gets really freaking good at the end of season one. I went from “I’m watching this out of historical fannish interest” to “OMG MUST KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.”

The end of “Victoria’s Secret, Part 2″ is amazing. That (and something with water in a bank vault that I haven’t gotten to yet?) is the most vivid memory I had of the series. I watched it when it aired fifteen years ago, so it’s mostly new to me with a vague sense of deja vu, but that train chase and Fraser getting shot felt like I’d seen it yesterday.

I’m not sure how I felt about Victoria–I like that she’s conflicted and morally ambiguous. She’s immensely dark and yet so in love, and so torn between that and her desire for vengeance. But mostly I feel like this show treats women like we’re some kind of mysterious and inexplicable alien species.

However, I LOVE Fraser’s part in that storyline. Just … that he’s so lonely, and so naive, and so in love. It’s brilliant character exploration. It’s like watching him unravel, watching as the “honor” and “duty” we’ve seen him uphold unflinchingly for twenty episodes come crashing down when his whole world becomes Victoria. And that underneath the calm, collected surface we see 99% of the time, Fraser is overflowing with such passionate, immense emotions–loneliness and love and obsession and need. And that most of the time he can’t express these things, and no one even knows that they’re there. (Well, Ray is starting to get it. *loves Ray*) And that he’s a bit nuts, which expresses itself in, y’know, delusions of his dead father, which is adorable, and disturbing, and you’re not sure how much you’re supposed to take it seriously and worry and how much is just the surrealism of the show.

It’s interesting that this is presented as a cop show, but it’s really a story about friendship and about love. It returns to those themes over and over; they’re at the core of almost everything.

And, Ray. RAY LOVES FRASER SO MUCH. I think I love Ray nearly as much as I love Fraser–that he’s got this deep cynicism that comes from a hard life and a horrible father, but that he’s got this amazing core of decency, that he wants so desperately to hope. And that as much as he may scoff at Fraser’s idealism, deep down he admires it and is inspired by it. And just, his friendship with Fraser, the way it’s two needy people coming together and finding each other, filling this gap in each others’ lives, and not needing to articulate it, but just “getting” each other so well.

Um, and also … he’s so jealous when Fraser gets a girlfriend! And they keep locking themselves in the closet together! I mean… the writers didn’t know this was slashy?

Oh, and I like that Gardino, Huey, and Welsh stuck up for Ray at the end, after spending most of the season as one-dimensional adversaries. Yay for multiple dimensions!

Best episodes: “The Gift of the Wheelman” (for digging into every character’s daddy issues), “You Must Remember This” (for Ray’s love story paralleling Fraser’s later one, and Fraser’s speech about Victoria that no one hears), “The Blue Line” (because friendship is such a big theme for the show), “The Deal” (because Ray absolutely shines in this one… and also the evil h/c fan in me likes watching Fraser get beaten up), and the “Victoria’s Secret” two parter (for Fraser being amazing, and Ray being jealous, and a sex scene that manages to be unbelievably hot for 1994 prime time U.S. television). And “Letting Go” was dumb in terms of plot, but Fraser’s issues were really nicely and subtly handled, as was his relationship with Ray.

“Dumb in terms of plot” seems to be my biggest problem with this show, actually. Although it gets better at the end, doesn’t it? Or maybe I’m just not remembering the earlier episodes as well. There’s some major duds in there, but at least pretty much everything has nice Fraser/Ray interaction. This is definitely a show you watch for the characters rather than the story.

(I clearly watched way too much 1990s television, btw; I was going “Hey, it’s that guy!” every episode. Most obviously there was young Ryan Phillippe. And that blonde chick was Marita Covarrubias! I barely recognized her without the sultry voice. And she was Debra Campbell in “Highlander”? I never knew that.)

Oh, and don’t spoil me for the rest of the series. I know I’ve seen it all before, but I don’t remember most of what’s going to happen, so I’d rather be as surprised as I can be when I watch it again.

Current Mood: thoughtful