The Blue Line

I've been surprised how many fans love this episode. I find myself wondering why it's not one of my favorites? It's not that there's anything in it that I object to, it's just that it doesn't resonate with me as deeply as it seems to for others.

Is there any other episode that gives such a deep insight into Fraser's personal life? He almost seems to be a different character in The Blue Line. Elsewhere his childhood has a mythical quality; here, he recalls playing team sports with his schoolmates until dark. Elsewhere his life seems almost exclusively focused on policework, consulate duties, time spent with Ray or time spent in solitude; here, we see the friendships he has developed with his neighbors. Elsewhere he is strait-laced and formal; here he is playful.

Mark Smithbauer is one piece of work, isn't he? I can almost understand his losing touch with the joy of playing hockey with children just for the fun of it, but I cannot understand why he felt it necessary to pretend he didn't recognize or remember his old friend. That was just petty.

Smithbauer's story is quite believable, and this lends a bleak and discouraging air to the story. There's no happy ending, no redemption for the man who has broken one of the most basic, hard and fast rules of his profession. Like the Chicago "Black" Sox of 1919, he is given the harshest sentence of exile from his sport:

Reporter 1: Look, the guy had it all and he flushed it all away. He deserves what he got.
Reporter 2: Lifetime suspension? You kidding? This is a sport where you get a couple of games for trying to take a guy's head off.
Reporter 1: You feel bad for the guy?
Reporter 2: Nah, he's a jerk.
Ray: Let it go, Fraser. People like to talk about celebrities.
Fraser: They're not always wrong.

And yet, there is one fragment of hope at the very end--Mark's expulsion from professional hockey allows him to recapture the joy of playing the game for fun.

Kid: Hey if I can find those pucks, can I keep half?
Mark: You can't find em.
Kid: Sure I can.
Mark: No you can't cause I won't let you. I'm gonna find each and everyone of em and then you can have them all. There's one. Want me to autograph it for you?
Kid: Are you somebody?
Mark: Nah. You want to play a little?

There has been some discussion about the line about the starving Inuit, that the implication was that the Inuit thought Fraser looked tasty. I never, never ever considered for one moment that cannibalism was being implied in this scene. Rather, I had interpreted Fraser's line about the starving Inuit as being a sharp rebuke of the agent's shallowness. The agent, by complimenting Fraser's bone structure, is both flirting and making a business proposition. "You're gorgeous, let me make you famous!"

Fraser responds with wisdom from his own Arctic culture, where healthy bone structure was a sign of adequate nutrition. Her words about his bone structure are not a compliment in his ears; rather, they are a reminder to be humbly thankful for his good health.

Fraser: Excuse me. Could you tell us where we might find Mark Smithbauer?
Henderson: You see a Winebago around here that looks like most single family dwellings?

Mark: I can't sleep.
Fraser: What is it?
Mark: It's seven p.m.

Mark: You remember that? 4 miles through blizzards to the rink, 4 miles back home.
Both: Uphill both ways!

Fraser: Your knee. You're not wearing your brace.
Mark: Yeah, I just wear it for sympathy.
Fraser: Forget it. I always was faster than you.
Mark: At what?
Fraser: Lacing.
Ray: Okay, I'm going to stay here cause I can't skate at all.

Ray: Officer in pursuit of black Cadillac in pursuit of two guys on ice skates. Why is that so hard to believe?

Mark: I was wondering what took you. Okay, Canadians against the Americans, eh? Kid: Are you two Canadians? That's not fair. Fraser: He's right. You can have him--he's from the United States. Kid: Okay, but we still get two goals.

Ben and Mark skating on the ice-covered streets of Chicago. How convenient that the streets were covered with smooth ice--did they just have an inch of freezing rain? Or did Chicago run out of road salt? A broken water main, perhaps?

Mark: Can you make him stop staring at me?
Fraser: No, I'm afraid that's not possible.

"Seven hundred and twenty pixels across and if you have fifty people to the screen, that's fourteen pixels per face which means you're looking at like two pixels per nose and no matter how much I blow up the image, each nose is going to look like uh, two little dots." So how could Gladys read his lips?

Ray trying to explain "his" theory about the robbery to Welsh, while Fraser coaches him in pantomime.

Moment of the Week:

They trust the audience enough to leave Gladys' signed "Your friend, idiot he?" untranslated. Fraser replies, "No, not once you get to know him," and the viewer gets to fill in the blanks.

Popcorn!

This ep is one of my favorites from any season but it took about a year of viewings for it to reach that status. This is also an ep in which the plot itself does not factor into why I like it so much. From start to finish, regardless of the action on the screen, this story is all about Ben Fraser, and it's one of the most personal Due South episodes. Not only do we learn about Ben as a child, we get to watch what makes him tick as a man.

There's the inevitable comparison between childhood and adult friendships. Ben is nostalgic for his youth but doesn't attempt to convince Mark that they were, in fact, friends. On the other hand, he's defensive enough about that long-ago friendship to take offense at Ray's snide remarks.

When Ben was 13, he was playing hockey with friends, no apparent strife, normal, for all intents and purposes; when Ray was about the same age, he was dealing with a bully named Frank Zuko and watching other friends being victimized. Nothing to wax nostalgic about, unless you're Zuko. Interesting that there are back- to-back episodes which give us a glimpse into Fraser's and Ray's teenage years and how their peer relationships may have helped shape the adults they became.

We also see Fraser interact with his neighbors, Mr. Brewer and Grace. These aren't nodding-in-the-hallway acquaintances, the interaction has been regular enough that it has become friendship. It's obvious that this is not the first time Ben has socialized with them, he knows about Grace's love of opera and how much of a hockey fan (or fanatic) Mr. Brewer is, a solid basis for friendship with both. He also moves freely and comfortably around his neighborhood, which he's very much a part of.

It's refreshing to see Fraser having fun, recapturing the magic of his boyhood. Along with that is the disheartening realization that someone he thought of as a friend has no clue who he is. Of course, Mark really does remember him but doesn't bring this to Ben's attention until he needs his help.

Ray serves as the voice of reason since Ben's judgment is clouded by personal involvement. This is a nice reversal.

Dief positively shines, and his adoration of Mark is hysterically convincing. What's so strange about a half-wolf pushing the penthouse button in an elevator? I love the looks Ray and Ben exchange.

Unrelated to anything having to do with the story, but not only are Dief and Grace deaf (questionable in Dief's case) the celebrity (Lou Ferrigno) Ray talks about meeting is also deaf.

Ray's controlled skid.

Ben: I always was faster than you.
Mark: At what?
Ben: Lacing.