H is me and T is the inimitable touchmycoat. (Crossposted here on tumblr.)
ETA: I can't believe I forgot to mention alwaysalreadyangry's Ladies' Man meta! It's an amazing reading of that episode and it was heavily on our minds as we wrote this.
H: In “A Likely Story,” Ray is trapped in his ideas about his love interest (what’s her name again?). He cannot for the life of him tell when she’s lying, he can’t see her true motivations, he can’t know her. He’s just using her as a blank screen to project his internal conflicts onto. This is, as truepenny points out, a theme that due South returns to almost every single time it explores romance. How many episodes philosophize on the possibility of “love at first sight?” Off the top of my head, I’ve got “You Must Remember This,” “Victoria’s Secret,” “An Invitation To Romance,” and “Say Amen”…
As Huey and Dewey say in “Say Amen,”
“Well, you know the thing is, you can't really love someone until you know them.” “Sure you can. The hard thing is to love them after you know them.”
T: The love interest’s name is Luann— Frannie’s actually the first person to name her, well into the episode. Luann’s not introduced to us, to Ray, to Fraser by name, relation, or even profession. We’re just left to assume she has a caretaking role for Mrs. Tucci based on her age and actions. The dialogue even (intentionally?) suffers from this unknowing; Ray says, “Look Fraser, I am very sorry for Mrs. Tucci’s loss, and I will make every effort to find the killer of her husband, but the fact remains she is a very beautiful woman.” The pronoun confusion just further highlights how much it doesn’t matter who Luann is, just that she is “a beautiful woman.” This issue goes from highlight to glaring headlights when the cut from EXT. CAR, EVENING to IN. STATION, DAY is done by their conversation just rolling over, and guess what they’re talking about? Well, Ray’s talking about sex, and how little of it they’re both getting.
H: The Lou Skagnetti story and Sword of Desire, which both show up multiple times throughout the episode, explore the (gendered) stories people build around romance. The ending scene specifically juxtaposes these two stories about love by putting their endings right next to each other. Ray and Luann have retreated from each other after a failed attempt at connection, and they both soothe their disappointment by turning to fantastical love stories.
This one, told between two men, out in the “wilderness” by a campfire:
“Lou Skagnetti looked at the princess who sat across the stone table in the stone cabin high atop Sulfur Mountain, and the princess smiled at him. And for a brief second, Lou Skagnetti could hear his own inner bell ring as though it were rung by a thousand angels. And he took his hand and he placed it over his heart, and Lou Skagnetti vowed that never again would he kill and eat another princess as long as he lived. . . unless, of course, she were covered in choke cherries and brown lichen and a sprinkling of dust -”
vs. this one, read in a comfortable bedroom (with the most floral bedspread ever invented), a story that one woman read aloud to another to help her sleep:
“Gabriella's chest heaved at the sight of him. His boldness made her feel like a true princess. As he came near her, she could feel the trembling of the deep inside her most secret place…”
Notice how they could almost be the same story told from different perspectives.
Fraser’s story, though, does not offer the same easy comfort Luann’s does. His story is a funny distraction, but it's also a dark mirror held up to romance. Fraser's status as an outsider means he knows different stories than Ray and Luann. This story shows the blood and guts of love. In the context of the episode, it gestures at how the theater of "love" often leads people to act in deeply un-loving ways towards each other; how it can get in the way of people even knowing each other. (“That's one dark story.” “Yes. It is.”)
Fraser has seen Ray use his position as a police officer to stalk his ex and now he’s seen him try to date a suspect. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he’s telling Ray a story where the protagonist has been “eating princesses.” The story’s not just an accusation, though; it’s a hopeful story, a humorous story; it’s told playfully and as an act of care, and it points to the possibility of true love in the future that is not based on violence.
T: I almost wish the show had the continuity to also let this moment comment explicitly on what Fraser couldn't get from Victoria. His love for her is so mired in guilt that he thinks himself deserving of all the violences she visits on his person. It's like, Ray is pre-Lou Skagnetti and Fraser is post-Lou Skagnetti; Ray needs to stop his violence and Fraser needs to pay for his violence. The same problem of failed recognition occurs on both sides of the story.
H: I love your point about Fraser being like Ray but somewhere further along in the accountability process.
In the "love-at-first-sight vs. true knowledge of a person" saga that is this show, there is one unexpected pair of people who know and love each other deeply after very little time spent together: Beth Botrelle and Ray Kowalski. They can see right through each other. They understand each other’s motivations— so not only can they tell when the other’s lying, but they can tell you exactly why. They are bound together through shared experience. And while their story is obviously not romantic, it is shockingly loving. Beth is willing to falsely confess to a murder she is unjustly accused of just to make Ray feel better, just to give him a real shot at moving on with his life after she dies. Ray is obviously willing to risk his job and his life to exonerate her, but he is also uniquely willing to admit his mistakes to her; he tells the truth exactly as it happened, and therefore sacrifices the easy self-justifications that have kept him functioning as a cop and as a person all these years.
(and, side note— how interesting is it that Beth of all people calls Ray “queer,” and his response is to laugh and nod?)
Beth does need to be saved from a death sentence, but she is emphatically not a damsel in distress (or a "princess"). She needs to save Ray as much as he needs to save her. Both of them know that their freedom is bound up in the other's.
T: So maybe in some ways this is Ray's post-Lou Skagnetti (I'm laughing as I write these words but bear with me). This is his Victoria, but antithetically; this is where he pays for the violence. Victoria was guilty and Fraser arrested her, Beth was innocent and Ray arrested her—but they both know, to some extent, that the arrests seemed immoral (Fraser in particular, where if they did actually sleep together, he’s fully abused his power as an officer of the law). Where Victoria wanted to destroy Fraser for it, Beth wanted to save Ray from it (she sought to alleviate his conscience by telling him she was guilty). But both Fraser and Ray had to be willing to destroy themselves and the roles they occupied for Victoria and Beth. The Fraser who is whole and the Victoria who seeks his destruction cannot coexist. And, to continue your reading of "Ladies' Man" as the keystone episode where Ray just really should not be a cop anymore, the Ray who is a cop and the Beth who is innocent/alive cannot coexist. There's something very interesting about these relationships between men and women that fail due to one or both of their placement in some kind of institution, because of one or both of their duties/supposed loyalties. Fraser's commitment to duty catalyzes the break between him and Victoria. Ray's abuse of his authority is no fucking good for Stella or Luann, and even when he succumbs to the ease of police authority he fucks over Beth.
Tying Ray and Fraser and Victoria back to “A Likely Story,” everybody, particularly Ray, speaks in projections; throughout the episode, Fraser is the mirror while Ray is the puppy, as in Ray doesn’t know the other puppy isn’t real, so he’s snarling and barking at the mirror, who is merely the medium through which the reflection is transposed.
H: “FRASER IS THE MIRROR AND RAY IS THE PUPPY” WHAT THE FUCK I LOVE THIS IMAGE. IT IS ABSURD AND TRUE. YOU ARE BRILLIANT. Please, expand upon this point.
T: This one particular projection:
Ray: “Let me see if I got this right, Fraser. Luann is a beautiful woman, therefore she must be bad. And since she's a really beautiful woman, that means she's got to be really bad. Is that how it goes inside your brain?”
Of all the projections, Fraser most clearly calls this one out for what it is: “Are you sure it is my brain we are talking about?” Funny, since this is the one projection that fully echoes Fraser’s hangups about Victoria. Vecchio’s line from “Letting Go” seems resonant: “Not every woman with long dark hair tries to kill their lover.” But this is clearly about Ray: his low sense of self-worth makes him look for flaws in women he believes are “beautiful” and out of his league.
H: Yes!! They're both backed into these low-self-esteem corners with regards to romantic relationships: they’re both thinking, "there's something wrong with me." Ray projects that outwards (“what’s wrong with this woman?”), but Fraser does a slightly different thing with it: “if she's into me, she must be operating on an incomplete set of data.” Fraser knows that people think he's attractive, but also thinks that they can't see/know him enough to love him in a real way. I think that's why he was so INTO Victoria-- she knew he did bad things and wanted him anyways! And she, to his mind at the time, was clear-headed about what kind of punishment he deserved for his wrongdoing. There's something more comforting about that than waiting for the other shoe to drop.
T: Both “A Likely Story” and “Ladies’ Man” are about women that Ray Kowalski has wronged, and both end with Ray apologizing—very sincerely—to the women. Fundamentally, I love that as a narrative choice.
H: Yes. Apologize, man. (Apologize and quit your job. I think these two episodes lay out a really compelling case for exactly why Ray does not go back to being a cop post-COTW.)
to summarize:
1. Ray is a human-shaped projector. He can’t readily name his feelings, but they do warp his perceptions of reality and he does act them out. "I don't know what I want till I see what I do." -Ray Kowalski in The Teeth of the Hydra by Resonant.
2. This is terrible news for everyone involved when you're a cop!
3. These episodes both deal with the nature of love-- its relationship to truth and to police work. “A Likely Story” shows the burdensome trappings of heterosexual, romantic love, which in this case serve to obfuscate the truth; “The Ladies’ Man” shows an intense kind of "true love" between a man and a woman that has nothing to do with romance or sex and everything to do with solidarity and truth-telling.
T: And 4, we can absolutely implicate Fraser, at least thematically, in something every step of the way, el oh el.
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hexenmeister
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Date: 2019-07-04 12:33 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2019-07-04 07:18 pm (UTC)So, I can totally see the narrative that says that Ray's confidence in the system and therefore his place in it could be irrevocably shaken by learning about how badly the corruption betrayed both Beth and himself. And that therefore Ray comes to realize he Can't Do It Any More. But I think that would be a separate narrative from the one in which Ray realizes his *own* encroaching corruption, i.e., holds himself accountable for the stuff with Stella and Luanne (which he never does -- not the abuse-of-cop-power parts). Because in The Ladies' Man, Ray is the honest cop who goes out of his way to right the wrong he inadvertently contributed to and is forgiven by those who matter -- I think the moral (of this episode in isolation) actually is that the Beth who is innocent and the Ray who is a cop *can* co-exist. If Ladies' Man makes him want to leave the profession, it's out of despair at the actions of others and his inability to fix the system -- but I don't think it is related to Ray's own abuse of power, which is a different set of reasons for him to realize he needs to get out of the business.
Of course, if canon a) had more continuity and b) cared more seriously about realistic consequences -- or if we were writing fic, which we totally are! -- one could write the narrative that brings them both together, in which the fallout of Ladies' Man includes Ray taking a good, hard look at his own real failings as a cop. (Possibly with a lot of denial/avoidance/acting out first, because hey, this is Ray we're talking about.) And, given that the examples of interest are both about mixing his cop authority with his love life...maybe that leads him to take a much-needed look at his approach to women & his approach to romance...
Or, maybe the premise of the fic is that after the last scene with Beth in Ladies' Man, Ray comes to the idea that what he needs to do to turn his life around, more generally, is go around making amends to everyone he's wronged. Which could start out somewhat comically if one wanted (character gets overenthusiastic about self-imposed self-improvement program!) but get more serious as he gets down to the real problematic stuff....
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Date: 2019-07-05 04:07 am (UTC)Your comment reminded me: I am an absolute DOOFUS for not linking alwaysalreadyangry's Ladies' Man meta at the top of this post. It was definitely on both of our minds as much as truepenny's meta when we wrote this. (I just went and edited the post to include that link.) Here's a quote from that: "He fights to exonerate the woman he arrested, he fights to get her free. That's good, right? But as this episode makes clear - it’s all about structure, not individuals. Ray can't be a good cop. This system doesn't allow it."
Ray comes out of "Ladies' Man" feeling the moral weight of his job much, much more heavily-- or at least in a more conscious way than he had been before. He was already pretty tied up in knots about it subconsciously, which we can see from his behavior in other episodes like Eclipse, as well as his rant at the beginning of "Ladies' Man" and his subsequent almost-murder of the guy in the alleyway. The cognitive dissonance was already there for him.
But he didn't acknowledge or name those feelings. Because of his interactions with Beth, he became aware of his feelings-- and I think that yeah, just like you say, that would spur him towards a lot more introspection.
I agree with your point that there are two reasons why Ray should not be a cop: #1, because of his... entire personality. and #2, because the system is unjust. Ladies' Man is a catalyst for thinking mostly about reason #2. But Ray's in the middle of this total ego-death, which started with his divorce and culminates in him going on a quest for the Hand of Franklin
with his boyfriend. In the middle he literally leaves his life behind and *becomes a different person.* He's in an intense period of being torn apart and rebuilt with different components. Around the same time as this reckoning about his chosen career, his partnership with Fraser is making him look at his Stuff around relationships (especially if we read their relationship as becoming romantic). I feel like the issues of police power, how he's misused it, the emotional Stuff that spurred him to do that, and his overall place as a cog in this machine would all feel very connected for him.And if the show had continuity, we'd see more of onscreen. But the show is just not structured like that, so I feel good just headcanoning/assuming that that's happening offscreen between Ladies' Man and Call Of The Wild. (And we've come full circle back to your amazing fic ideas.)
you inspired me to make a meme.
due South:
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Date: 2019-07-05 04:10 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2019-07-05 07:37 pm (UTC)(And I think that is one of the interesting & compelling things about the character and the story. He's a guy who is slightly more than human in some ways, PC glow dialed up to 11, but he lives in a world where superheroes aren't a thing, AND he sees himself as law & order, not vigilante. He CHOOSES to do so, for reasons.)
I actually put this idea into Ray's mouth in a fic: I can imagine universes where I'm not a cop, but Fraser is a cop in all the universes. Or, sticking to the one universe, I can imagine Ray giving up his career and doing something else (though I only believe he's got enough marketable skills if we're sticking to canon-level realism). But it's much harder to imagine what canonical Fraser does next if he walks away from the RCMP.
(Not that there aren't wonderful and convincing fics on that subject! I'm just saying, it's harder to take the cop out of Fraser than Ray. Even if it might in many ways be equally good for him.)
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Date: 2019-07-05 07:41 pm (UTC)I have read various fics on the theme of Ray giving up being a cop -- I mean, where that's the focus, not just an aside to him deciding to run off to Canada with Fraser. Though I can't think of any off the top of my head where the thing that makes him snap is confronting his own misbehavior.
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Date: 2019-07-08 07:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-07-09 01:00 am (UTC)I feel like most fics I've read in which Ray leaves policework and Fraser remains are cabin-fic: they move to Canada, Fraser goes back to the wilderness version of superhero-Mountie, which is much less about encountering the corruption in the system, and that skirts the dissonance. Fics in which they both leave policework...I must have read some, but examples are not leaping to mind.
(Not counting AUs in which one or both has left or never become police, before the story starts. I have read AUs in which Fraser leaves the RCMP out of disillusionment with the system and/or himself. And there are sure plenty where Fraser leaves *Chicago* out of disillusionment with the system *there*. )
Maybe what I mean is: if Ray actually has to explicitly acknowledge that the system is broken and he can't fix it and being an individual good cop is not enough...and Fraser is still a person who will fight the damn system *even though* he can't fix it...what does Fraser do with Ray's acknowledgement? And what does Ray do with a Fraser who can't or won't acknowledge the futility if Ray has himself acknowledged it?
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Date: 2019-07-09 02:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-07-09 01:34 pm (UTC)But then, quitting because he can't beat the system might not make the latter harder for Ray -- might, indeed, make it easier.
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Date: 2019-07-10 02:52 pm (UTC)I'm going to have to disagree. I don't think that's Fraser mirroring Ray's projection back to him. I think that is Fraser's counter projection.
1) It would be nice to think that Fraser learned something about love & relationships with the return of the only woman he ever loved, his beautiful bad girl, Victoria. I think he did learn, but it wasn't in the arena of relationships; it was in bring a cop. But I'll get to that.
Fraser probably thinks he learned something, too: because of events in Letting Go, he realizes that Dr. Carter is more in his position, and much less in Victoria's position, than he initially thought. She is not the beautiful woman / Victoria stand in. She's older, she loves for real and is vulnerable, while the whole time her lover is manipulating her. She starts to say, "And to think I thought you actually cared" or words to that effect while she holds the gun pointed at him.
She's the one who's set up, like Fraser; she is betrayed, duped by *her* beautiful bad boy lover, her handsome young intern, the one who backs her into a corner of criminal behavior... Just like Fraser in VS. He doesn't know it when Vecchio has to tell him that "not every beautiful woman with long dark hair tried to kill her lover." But he knows it by the end - that's why he says that whole speech about "the power of that kind of love."
I think the episode Odds shows us that Fraser didn't really learn anything with respect to love relationships from his VS experiences. Love is a muscle you have to exercise. It might be like riding a bike for most people, but I don't think it's ever been for Fraser, & in some ways, he never even got to remove the training wheels. So he's very rusty.
Plus, beautiful women like Victoria & Ladyshoes intimidate him. They are not earthy like Janet the bounty hunter; they're not ultra competent in law enforcement in a way he respects in his superior officer Thatcher. They're almost out of his league, & if he weren't as handsome as he is, or in that bright red uniform, would they even look twice at him? I think he knows they would not.
On top of that, these beautiful women always seem to manipulate him. But does he rise above that, the way he rose above the desire to kill Gerrard, the way he's been able to rise above so many things in law enforcement? No. He lowers himself to Ladyshoes' level. & he rather horribly abuses his power as a man & Mountie after he manipulates the woman who's manipulating him.
& while she uses him as a means to an end, the fact that she does it for *family*, you would think would make him more sympathetic. But even though he "came to Chicago on the trail of [his] father's killers," he's no more sympathetic to her -- he's even less sympathetic, I'd argue, with Ladyshoes, that he is with other criminals/suspects. Yet pursuing his father's killers are literally the only reason he came to Chicago at all. It could've just as easily been Albuquerque; if that's where the killer was from, he'd have gone there if that's where the trail led.
2) It's very Fraser to think that he's got everything under control, when he actually doesn't... and he is never less in control than when he finds himself attracted to a beautiful woman. & in Odds, he's not even in control of his normally quite reliable body. Odds shows us that Fraser is not a superhero in law enforcement, not Teflon man, does not just 'bounce back' -- not anymore. He is just a man.
Odds goes to great lengths to show us Fraser's physically vulnerable qualities in an episode with a female love interest for Fraser that is closer to Victoria in appearance and apparent character / personality, than any other female love interest for Fraser in all the post-VS seasons combined.
(iirc, from an interview over 20 years ago, Paul Gross said that they tried to get Melina Kanakaredes for a Victoria's Secret follow-up/conclusion in the last season of dS. But due to scheduling conflicts, she was unavailable, and so they did Odds instead. Ergo, Ladyshoes was always meant to be like Victoria.)
That physical vulnerability is an external indicator for his mental and emotional vulnerability. It's even the reason Ladyshoes puts her hands on him, & he lets her literally manipulate his sore back muscles while making all kinds of sexy stifled moans & breathy noises (lol). He can't help but moan; his back is effed up & a beautiful woman is rubbing it. When was the last time he was touched that way by a woman? By Janet the bounty hunter? Who despite her earthiness also turned out to be lying by omission about the husband of her three kids? I don't recall her doing so, plus she's got the kids with her. I think she only gets a pass (from Fraser) because when it comes out that the suspect is her husband, Janet immediately apologizes to Fraser & admits she should have told him earlier.
So Ladyshoes is in Fraser's long johns & rubbing his sore back, touching him in a way he probably hasn't been touched by a woman in a very long time. Of course he's losing control. & I think that's one of the reasons he does what he does with her. He can't stand it; he wants it & needs it, but it's coming from someone who is using him to exact family revenge.
We've seen Fraser beaten up & physically compromised before, like in the episodes The Deal, as well as Good For The Soul. But in those eps, he placed himself in the position of getting beat the F up more for ideological & moral (ie ethics) reasons than as an occupational hazard (duty).
Jumping out a window in pursuit of a suspect (Ladyshoes' new boyfriend) in Odds, & thereby hurting his back, he does in pursuit of *duty* -- whatever he may conceive that duty to be ("maintain the right," "serve and protect," &/or the Mounties "always get their man").
Is that injury, let alone him learning he's not superman, a clue that maybe Mountie-ing will accelerate the running out of his luck? That he shouldn't be a cop in every universe, & maybe not in this one anymore? IDK. But then what happens?
3) Not only does he counter-manipulate Ladyshoes (ie stoop to her level), but then he abuses his position to . All that stuff about his messed up back in that episode -- it's not just a metaphor for his vulnerability inside, or maybe a clue that he should retire from RCMP.
It brings Fraser subtly down to the level of an ordinary man in order to subtly heighten the tension when he does that little trick, switching hands/arms holding her dangling off the side of a building, where he has all the power, & she has none.
Normally, the dS audience would not find it all that scary if super-Mountie Fraser, with his superpowers, were holding a woman by the wrist, dangling from where she almost fell off the building. That doesn't even have the same level risk or suspense it would, say, if it were one of the Rays or any other ordinary guy or ordinary cop holding her up from certain by her wrist: we KNOW Fraser's going to save her. He always does, after at least a token amount of suspense.
But through the whole episode preceding those moments, we have been repeatedly visually reminded: Fraser is not at his best. He's Samson - shorn. He's physically weakened & vulnerable, & we also have been left to think that he might have been manipulated, & only just caught on right before the big poker game. So there's more than the usual "omg, what if he drops her??" suspense than there would be.
And what does he do? He does a fucking circus trapeze trick with an unwitting partner, who doesn't know him well, but does know he's currently injured, & he's the only thing keeping her from plugging to get death. He scares the crap out of her. And the audience. Why?
Because he can. Because he's angry. Because he's hurt: was there anything there at all, ever, at any point? or was it all just manipulation, with no real heat, or chemistry? BBecause he's tired of beautiful women fucking with his head. And because her beauty makes her not more likely to get his sympathy & assistance - but less. She deserves it, in his mind. And he stoops to her level - or below.
I don't think you can imagine - maybe you can? - how much that little circus trick messed with fen during the original broadcast. Some people considered it character assassination of the Fraser we knew up to that point in dS.
There were people on the dS email discussion lists who were terribly dismayed, even disgusted, by that. Many people opined that the show & Fraser just weren't the same anymore, & hadn't been since PG took over. Some even said they were done watching it.
Personally, I think it's a sign that Fraser should maybe take some of that massive accrued vacation time & go off with Ray somewhere. Like, immediately after Odds, in my headcanon,lol.
There really was no need for that. He could've stopped her manipulation by putting his cards on the table, been frank with Ladyshoes, told her he was onto her & would protect her during the game, but that he'd also have to protect Farah but bring him to justice. He doesn't.
What did she do that was so different from what he almost did a couple times with Gerrard?
4) & contrary to the original meta here, I again just disagree that Ray shouldn't be a cop. I feel like Ray seeing the Beth Botrelle case to the bitter end, including through having all his fellow officers distrust & question not only his reluctance to rejoice at her impending death despite being a supposed cop killer -- is exactly why he should STAY a cop. The experience changes him.
It makes Ray a better cop.
Plus, so many innocent people have been convicted & sentenced to death in Illinois IRL, through beaten confessions, fake witnesses, etc. that a couple decades back, the then-governor put a moratorium on executions. I don't know how many people have been freed by The Innocencen Project, but it's a lot. A *lot*.
I understand the mentality that Ray can't be a good cop because the system/structure won't let him... But imo that's *exactly why he should stay a cop. He will be a better cop than ever.
& If he were a real cop, that what I would tell him: *now* do you get it, Ray? Now you've seen how bad things are & can be. You can't leave now. You've got to keep doing what you just did - keep doing *that*.
Because we don't need more closed cases. We need more SOLVED cases. There's a big difference. & if it's murder, then a closed case that convicts an innocent, is a murderer still out there probably murdering.
5) Fraser *did* learn from Victoria, though not the way one might think. He actually learned from the *original* experience with her - not her blasting into town to put him directly in her shoes, to show him just what slavish devotion to facts &bduty can get you.
Fraser learned that people can look guilty who aren't, or can be guilty of a crime, but for good reasons, like because they were forced or compelled or dragged into it, or they needed the money badly, for family, etc.
That's what he learned from Fortitude Pass - & from what she puts him thru when she returns. That's the whole point: doing your duty is not the same doing the right thing.
I posit that the first debacle with Victoria, the bank robbery, Fortitude Pass, & when she got sentenced to 10 yrs in prison, is the reason why Fraser is, for the most part, the one in the partnership who most often treats suspects like they actually *are* innocent until proven guilty.
Partly maybe it's because he learned to see the bigger picture, see the mitigating circumstances that Justice never would with that damn blind fold over her eyes. & he learned that the law is therefore more unfair & arbitrary than we would like, & should not be interpreted in strict blacks & whites. He learned that there ARE shades of gray.
IOW, from that first near-death/mad-love/strict law enforcement experience with Victoria, Fraser learned to be that patient cop who isn't content to just play cops & robbers & punch a clock every day like Sam 'n Ralph sheepdog & coyote, bringing in suspects regardless of the actual circumstances of their alleged crimes.
From that first Victoria event, Fraser learned to be an *investigator*. Not a cop. He made a mistake, not because he slept with her after they survived the blizzard (although that was a damn huge mistake too), but because he should have let her go.
He even says so -- when she tells him she should've shot him when she had the chance, he replies "And I should have let you go."
This is the ten years later, ten more years of policing, ten more years of experience cop Fraser talking.
This is the circumstancially guilty, but actually innocent Fraser. Victoria didn't just frame Fraser for revenge, & to force him to go with her. She did it to teach him a lesson. To show how you can be completely innocent but, on paper, look guilty as hell.
But while she's been stuck in prison, learning how to be a better criminal -- which also probably wouldn't have happened if he'd let her go ten years earlier -- & plotting her revenge & the lesson she'll teach him...
... Fraser's gotten so much more experience ten years on, that his hindsight is 20/20 now. It sees more than black & white; it sees all the shades of gray it didn't ten years earlier when, he now knows & he says, that he should have let her go. That's why he's the good cop with the Rays.
He's only needs to rid himself of that last little bit of stick-up-his-ass self-righteousness with beautiful criminal women like Ladyshoes, that makes him be so cruel in that one moment, in a way we don't see before or after.
& although that's really just writing discontinuity, it does give canonical hints of a wicked bad Fraser, or at least a wicked bad streak. One that needs some punishment & discipline. Just saying, lol!
Sorry for length.
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Date: 2019-07-10 03:29 pm (UTC)Anyway.
You raise a lot of good points! (And I tend to agree with you that Ladies' Man is more affirmation that Ray should stick with being a cop than that he should leave.)
Your comments about Odds really make me want to see *that* fic -- the one where Fraser has to own *his* abuses of power. I've seen people talk about that in the context of Victoria, but I don't think I've read much that connects his behavior in Odds to the Victoria stuff explicitly the way you do here.
And this has highlighted a problem for me: there is no one who's in a position to help/make/catalyze Fraser into that particular revelation.
There are plenty of fics where Ray or Ray help him realize some of his other issues, e.g. neglecting his relationship duties in favor of job duties/becoming his father, or not trusting/respecting his partners, or being controlling. And of course Fraser is canonically and extra-canonically a person who helps others realize their issues. But of the people Fraser trusts enough, and who know him well enough, to give him some kind of kick in the head on this point? I'm not sure either Ray has the perspective to see and call out this particular issue -- it's too close to their own blind spots. Thatcher, possibly, if you throw out S3-4 and let the S2 relationship develop a lot farther. Bob? Maaaybe...but Fraser mostly doesn't listen to him on relationship-with-women stuff, usually with good reason. And again, maybe a little too close to Bob's canonical blind spots -- though possibly having finally learned his own lesson, Bob might have the perspective to help Fraser learn his? Or, is this something a mostly-stranger like LadyShoes herself could catalyze?
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Date: 2019-07-10 04:18 pm (UTC)Or, if Fraser forces himself to leave the cage of rules and duty, and is actually a law into himself, can he learn to not abuse his superhero power in those same ways?
(Because maybe what I meant is not so much 'Fraser is a cop in all the universes' as 'Fraser is a crime-and-injustice fighter in all the universes. I could see him leaving the system, maybe, but not the job.)