due South ROCKS
Feb. 8th, 2008 08:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragojustineYesterday C informed me that my grandmother regularly reads this journal. *facepalm* Maybe to be flocking the porn now? But I don't want to! Oh, the problems of self-presentation in the digital age. Oh well, I'm sure she knows the proper use of the back arrow (though she has apparently not been informed of the etiquette rule of "if your read, comment!").
So: Hi Grandma! *wave* I was going to call you this weekend to tell you about the Texas thing, but apparently you already know. I will try to call anyway. Mom says you're feeling more optimistic about your knee, which is awesome. Do your physical therapy! *kiss*
This is one of the more thoughtful pieces on writing I've read recently.
due South, season one
This was a hell of a lot of fun. For a show that has always been described to me as so weird, so deeply strange, so wacky, I was actually surprised how many elements felt deeply familiar and comfortable. The unlikely-teammates buddy-cop structure, for one. Frasier's (and Ray's! Him too!) Daddy Issues, for another. I ask you, why do all the good characters have daddy issues? When was the last time there was a good male character on TV who wasn't somehow involved in daddy issues? I SERIOUSLY can't think of one. From Slings&Arrows comes the ghost and the bizarre three-way ghost-conversation, the main character working out his daddy issues with the ghost, complete with the punch-line shots of Frasier talking to empty diner booths and such. Also familiar from Slings&Arrows, the Shakespeare quotations. Man, I gotta say, as much as I find Paul Gross unexpectedly hot as an action star, the REAL sexiness comes when he quotes Shakespeare. I'll take Paul Gross talking Shakespeare over him climbing walls any damn day of the week.
I think Ray is a sweet, sad, underappreciated character and Ray/Riviera is Good. It takes all season, but he is gradually built up- first his own daddy issues, then his fundamental alienation and isolation within the department, then his willingness to mortgage his house for Frasier (this was the big one. I cried.) then finally his reaction when Frasier is shot. By the end of the season, they two of them have moved beyond buddy-cop and to a place where their friendship hits me on a genuinely emotional level.
Frasier starts out as a very from-the-outside character (oh god. This is a way I have conceptualizing characters for a long time, but I don't know if it makes any sense. I'll try). He starts out as a collection of ticks and random oddities, a sketch rather than a person. He has a backstory, but it's done mostly for the purposes of humor and not emotional grounding, meaning that the character ends up being a collection of weird anecdotes that all serve as punchlines. (Ray looks like an idiot in a Chinese restaurant- oh look, Frasier speaks Chinese! Ray is facing down a bully- a bully once hit Frasier with an otter! Hee, how wacky!) The end result is a character that is surreally bizarre but we're never inside is head- we don't know how it FEELS to be Frasier. The character can't surprise us because he's so weird and wacky that we'll accept any new bit of information about him utterly without blinking. (What, Frasier once ran away and joined the circus, and still harbors a secret love of elephant training? Sure, whatever. Wacky!)
But then it changes. So many things- the conversations with his father, his relationship with Diefenbaker (I'm thinking of the episode where he has to face the fact that Dief is a wild animal in captivity), the way he slowly starts to understand and value Ray, and finally, the two-parter with Victoria... slowly, we start to see Frasier from the inside. We start to know how it feels to be Frasier: an exile from your home trying to stay true to who you are in a world that sometimes doesn't value that very much, intelligent and engaged with the world around you, aware that you are perpetually underestimated, wrestling with the fact that you've spent your entire life being as good a person as you can possibly be and yet your father still didn't love you much and it's left you strange and uncomfortable in your connections with other people. By the end of the series, Frasier's backstory isn't a collection of wacky punchlines anymore, it's part of him, which is why the nurse can ask him about an old scar and Frasier can tell her it was an otter and yeah, it's funny, but we also go "Oh yes, I remember, the otter- that senseless scar from cruelty and bullying that the law failed to stop. Ouch."
And that means the character can surprise us. When we first hear Frasier's story about falling in love in a blizzard, it's just another wacky moment of Frasier-being-Frasier (of COURSE his only love would be in a blizzard!). Except then we here more. We see that he really felt for her, we see that his decision to turn her in really hurt him, was really genuinely difficult for him. We see that Frasier has to struggle with his dedication to the law, has to wrestle with the conflicts, and we see him even years later, as his voice trembles and he tries to summon the strenght to be a man, to face up to the decision he made and stand firm behind it even as it costs him. Ten episodes, "Frasier fell in love but then he arrested her" would have been a punchline- but now it's heartbreaking. That's the difference between seeing a character from the inside and the outside. And then, when Frasier decides to go with her, he SURPRISES us. Because that is not what we would expect our Frasier to do, and yet it makes such perfect sense, follows so completely from the struggle we just saw. That's when you know that he's a character now, and not a collection of wacky tics.
Oh yes, I liked the show. Could you tell?
OH GOD I HAVEN'T SEEN THE NEW SPN YET AND I'M DYING OVER HERE EEEEEEEE!
So: Hi Grandma! *wave* I was going to call you this weekend to tell you about the Texas thing, but apparently you already know. I will try to call anyway. Mom says you're feeling more optimistic about your knee, which is awesome. Do your physical therapy! *kiss*
This is one of the more thoughtful pieces on writing I've read recently.
due South, season one
This was a hell of a lot of fun. For a show that has always been described to me as so weird, so deeply strange, so wacky, I was actually surprised how many elements felt deeply familiar and comfortable. The unlikely-teammates buddy-cop structure, for one. Frasier's (and Ray's! Him too!) Daddy Issues, for another. I ask you, why do all the good characters have daddy issues? When was the last time there was a good male character on TV who wasn't somehow involved in daddy issues? I SERIOUSLY can't think of one. From Slings&Arrows comes the ghost and the bizarre three-way ghost-conversation, the main character working out his daddy issues with the ghost, complete with the punch-line shots of Frasier talking to empty diner booths and such. Also familiar from Slings&Arrows, the Shakespeare quotations. Man, I gotta say, as much as I find Paul Gross unexpectedly hot as an action star, the REAL sexiness comes when he quotes Shakespeare. I'll take Paul Gross talking Shakespeare over him climbing walls any damn day of the week.
I think Ray is a sweet, sad, underappreciated character and Ray/Riviera is Good. It takes all season, but he is gradually built up- first his own daddy issues, then his fundamental alienation and isolation within the department, then his willingness to mortgage his house for Frasier (this was the big one. I cried.) then finally his reaction when Frasier is shot. By the end of the season, they two of them have moved beyond buddy-cop and to a place where their friendship hits me on a genuinely emotional level.
Frasier starts out as a very from-the-outside character (oh god. This is a way I have conceptualizing characters for a long time, but I don't know if it makes any sense. I'll try). He starts out as a collection of ticks and random oddities, a sketch rather than a person. He has a backstory, but it's done mostly for the purposes of humor and not emotional grounding, meaning that the character ends up being a collection of weird anecdotes that all serve as punchlines. (Ray looks like an idiot in a Chinese restaurant- oh look, Frasier speaks Chinese! Ray is facing down a bully- a bully once hit Frasier with an otter! Hee, how wacky!) The end result is a character that is surreally bizarre but we're never inside is head- we don't know how it FEELS to be Frasier. The character can't surprise us because he's so weird and wacky that we'll accept any new bit of information about him utterly without blinking. (What, Frasier once ran away and joined the circus, and still harbors a secret love of elephant training? Sure, whatever. Wacky!)
But then it changes. So many things- the conversations with his father, his relationship with Diefenbaker (I'm thinking of the episode where he has to face the fact that Dief is a wild animal in captivity), the way he slowly starts to understand and value Ray, and finally, the two-parter with Victoria... slowly, we start to see Frasier from the inside. We start to know how it feels to be Frasier: an exile from your home trying to stay true to who you are in a world that sometimes doesn't value that very much, intelligent and engaged with the world around you, aware that you are perpetually underestimated, wrestling with the fact that you've spent your entire life being as good a person as you can possibly be and yet your father still didn't love you much and it's left you strange and uncomfortable in your connections with other people. By the end of the series, Frasier's backstory isn't a collection of wacky punchlines anymore, it's part of him, which is why the nurse can ask him about an old scar and Frasier can tell her it was an otter and yeah, it's funny, but we also go "Oh yes, I remember, the otter- that senseless scar from cruelty and bullying that the law failed to stop. Ouch."
And that means the character can surprise us. When we first hear Frasier's story about falling in love in a blizzard, it's just another wacky moment of Frasier-being-Frasier (of COURSE his only love would be in a blizzard!). Except then we here more. We see that he really felt for her, we see that his decision to turn her in really hurt him, was really genuinely difficult for him. We see that Frasier has to struggle with his dedication to the law, has to wrestle with the conflicts, and we see him even years later, as his voice trembles and he tries to summon the strenght to be a man, to face up to the decision he made and stand firm behind it even as it costs him. Ten episodes, "Frasier fell in love but then he arrested her" would have been a punchline- but now it's heartbreaking. That's the difference between seeing a character from the inside and the outside. And then, when Frasier decides to go with her, he SURPRISES us. Because that is not what we would expect our Frasier to do, and yet it makes such perfect sense, follows so completely from the struggle we just saw. That's when you know that he's a character now, and not a collection of wacky tics.
Oh yes, I liked the show. Could you tell?
OH GOD I HAVEN'T SEEN THE NEW SPN YET AND I'M DYING OVER HERE EEEEEEEE!
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no subject
Date: 2008-02-08 05:38 pm (UTC)~waives to Dragojustine's grandmother~ Hello!
no subject
Date: 2008-02-08 08:27 pm (UTC)YES! Thank you! I agree with you 110% here. I love that they actually acomplish making Fraser a real person, not just an outline or a sketch, by the end of season 1.
I ache for Fraser at the end there and I ache for Ray, because he finally puts all of his money down (quite literally) on one horse and he loses. Fraser was going to go with her and who would have ever guessed that?
The hospital stuff worked for me on so many levels. There's the evidence that Ray feels guilty for shooting him but so very, very angry that Benny was going to leave him in the lurch. Fraser mad that he was stopped from going but greatful at the same time.
I've always been intrigued by the argument regarding Fraser's dad. Is he really a ghost and is it really his spirit OR is it something from Fraser's own mind. The differences between those two options in enormous because if it is a ghost, then the situation is giving Fraser the opportunity to have the conversations or connection that he never had in life. if it is just a figment of his imagination, what does it say about how Fraser sees himself, esp. in relation to his father.
The fact that he gets angry with OFDM (Our Favorite Dead Mountie), can be snotty and mouthy and at time rude, is something that I know Fraser never did when his father was alive and so I find those moments so intriguing. Ditto for his conversations with Dief.
I'll get season 2 together for you for tonight, if you want.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-08 08:56 pm (UTC)I don't use ghost literally, no. The main reason I think Slings&Arrows is the best TV show I've ever watched was their ghost dynamic, and the way, right up until the end of the third season, it could be read just as fruitfully (but with such different conclusions!) as Geoffrey's insanity or Oliver's actual, you know, ghost. I always prefer the figment interpretation, because of the insights it gives us into the character doing the hallucinating (in the case of Frasier, how DIFFERENTLY he treats his father from how one would expect!). But even though I prefer the figment, I LOVE the double possibilities of interpretation (and was so sad when they tried to difinitively answer the question in Slings&Arrows- I hope they don't here). The ghost isn't used as well here as in Slings- mostly because they don't have the parallels with Shakespearean ghosts to work off, I guess, but it hits some story-kinks of mine hard. I'm a SUCKER for it.
I'm not going to put Frasier on any list of "best TV characters ever" quite yet, but he certainly gets the big huge trophy for coming the farthest in one season, as far as development from the slapstick start, of any character I've ever seen.