due South: Victoria's Secret

[butterfly]

I hooked a friend of ours (thegrungediva) on due South and she's now watching it in order. Tonight, she was on the last disc of S1, so I watched Invitation to Romance, the very end of Heaven and Earth, and then all of Victoria's Secret and Letting Go with her (and roomie jic).

God, the Victoria arc guts me. And thegrungediva's never seen the show before, so I got to watch her go through the extreme rollercoaster of being so thrilled and happy to seeing Fraser in love to being devastated at where it all ends up. They did such a fantastic job with everything in this episode -- the lighting is spectacular (the contrasts and how incredibly intense the reds are), the casting is amazing (Melina is so wonderful as Victoria -- I always come out of the episode helplessly adoring her while I hate how she twists up Fraser), and the acting is... phenomenal. On the whole, it's breathtaking.

And I always... watching this always makes me so glad that Fraser will get RayK. Because RayV is a wonderful friend; Fraser couldn't have a better friend than RayV, but what Fraser talks about here, about love...

"You never saw her. You never saw who she was. You never saw her when she was angry, you never saw her when she was frightened, you never saw her when she was brave or when she was petty. You never saw her."

I think the thing that hooks me deepest in the Fraser/RayK relationship is that Fraser lets Ray see him (and Ray notices). He's angry and frightened and petty in front of Ray and Ray both sees that and calls him on it.

For all that RayV and Fraser love each other... there is an idealization going on from RayV's side ("guys like him don't marry girls like you"). And Fraser very deliberately feeds into it and encourages RayV to believe that he's more innocent than he actually is. For the most part, he keeps walls up around RayV, walls that RayK refuses to allow to stand. "We're in a rut," RayK insists in Mountie on the Bounty. The same relationship that worked for Fraser and RayV is something that RayK finds confining and not enough. He wants behind that mask of Fraser's, wants to see him dirty and real. And he lets Fraser see him that way, too.

RayK gives Fraser all the good things that he got from Victoria without any of the bad, fucked-up stuff.

Rewatching that left me with the intense urge to go read some due South fic and meta, so if there's any cool new stuff out there, I'd love to know.

Comments

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

FYI, right after I commented, new fic showed up on ds_flashfiction. Haven't read it, but it still seems like an active community.

I came into the fandom long after the show ended, so found the fandom overwhelmingly seasons 3/4 centric. Since I never was in on the episode meta, my impression was that most fans preferred those seasons (though there's been a resurgence of RayV, I know).

As a viewer, seasons 3 and 4 are great subtext. Seasons 1 and 2 are great text. Even the episodes in 3 and 4 that are feasts of subtext have gaping plot holes that make my brain hurt, and there are a few episodes I just find painful to watch. Not that there are no bad episodes in seasons 1 and 2, but I feel like the show had a clearer identity those seasons and, though it had its weirdness, still managed to tell compelling dramatic stories.

I hadn't thought about the portrayal of women in the early seasons, but it's definitely true. Is this a reaction to "Invitation to Romance"? Cause I'm not going to defend that one. :)

(Also--my favorite due South episode? "The Man Who Knew Too Little." And I know that's an unpopular opinion.)