Melanie's Review
Laurie's Review
Melanie's Review:This episode entered my collection with one big strike against it: after I had seen every other episode at least twice, TNT was holding it back--apparently they only showed it once a year at Christmas. The buildup was so strong, I suppose I had greater expectations than the episode deserved to be saddled with--and when it didn't live up to those expectations, I was very disappointed! Perhaps if it had been shown in sequence, between Mountie Sings the Blues and Dead Men Don't Throw Rice (two other episodes that don't light my fire) I'd be kinder to it.
This is also the only episode I got as a copy from a friend--as it turns out, a friend in Canada. Since she taped it originally off of CTV, this is also the only Due South episode I have that has Canadian commercial breaks. This is a refreshing break from the cheap local cable commercials on the TNT tapes.
My main complaints about Good for the Soul are threefold.
First, Warfield is a cardboard cut-out of a cartoon villain. He growls, he shouts, he puffs on a big cigar and sneers at everything that is good and holy in the world. The great villains of fiction are subtly shaded, 3-dimensional blends of evil and civil, but Warfield is just loud and crude. Even the Bolt Brothers had more character development than Warfield.
Second, Good for the Soul shamelessly copies a scene from The Deal, in which Elaine gently treated Fraser's cuts and bruises with a Q-tip, ointment, and tiny bandages while breathlessly trying to restrain herself. Even the beating itself echoes the older episode. The Deal did it first, and The Deal did it better.
Third, well I'll let Ray say it for me: "Justice? How is that justice? That man is a killer. He's going to get a $50 fine. Look, don't do this to me. This makes his harassment crap look legit. Look, what if we get a real beef on him, you know, and Warfield's lawyer gets involved--this could screw the whole thing." This pretty much sums up how I feel about this episode. A $50 fine or a grudging apology is not Justice. Warfield's crimes are far to numerous and serious to waste the police's efforts on a nuisance prosecution. If Fraser really wanted Justice, he'd accomplish more by liaising with Chicago's Vice and Organized Crime units, and the FBI, DEA and other federal agencies to bring him down.
Guess what? Yelling at a waiter is not a crime! Fraser intervened, demanded an apology, in effect tried to enforce politeness. Only after Fraser has insisted that Warfield apologize for yelling at Tommy did the mobster actually strike the young man. Could this be why Fraser got so hung up on the case? If he hadn't interferred, there would have been no assault. (Warfield would still have been a hardened career criminal with dozens if not hundreds of serious felonies to his name, but Fraser doesn't go off the deep end about every mobster he meets. This one, he turned into an obsession.)
Warfield needs to get some new guards. Fraser asked them to tell Warfield that "Constable Benton Fraser is here to see him." They then informed him that "We got a guy out here in a red suit, says he knows you." Ah, well. Good help is so hard to find!
"Thank God! More murders, more suicides. . . ." How did Welsh deliver that line without moving his lips?
How many times has Fraser told a witness that he (or the police) would protect them? And how many times has he actually been able to provide anything approaching protection?
My goodness, but Fraser was a little careless about talking to Dad in front of witnesses--Dewey, and then Francesca.
Fans have used this episode to slam Stella for her cruelty. I'm not sure why that little exchange in Welsh's office was inserted into the script ("Stella, I was thinking if you had sometime we could have some eggnog, maybe trim the tree.") but it is way, way out of place. Did they really need to go so far out of their way to make Ray look like a jerk and Stella look like a bitch?
Okay, let me get this straight. We couldn't allow either Fraser or Ray to harass Warfield. . . so we resolved the problem by having Fraser, Ray, Huey, Dewey and Welsh harass Warfield? If you get everybody to do it, it's okay?
When Warfield was ready to apologize, Tommy suddenly appeared in the background behind Fraser. Funny, I never noticed that before. That solves my earlier gripe, which is that Warfield apologized to the wrong person--but now I gotta wonder how it is that Tommy happened to show up just in time for the apology. Too, too convenient.
Duesies:Tommy: I'm not suggesting nothing about nothing. Nothing happened. I didn't see nothing. Nobody hit me. I wasn't even there.
Frannie: Yeah, this is his statement. [waves a blank sheet of paper]Frank: This is the safe house?
Fraser: Couldn't be safer. I also have several bedrolls here.
Tommy: I thought we'd get a nice hotel room. Maybe a nice looking police woman to look after us.
Fraser: Well here comes one now.Thatcher: My point exactly. I'll leave this to you. So far, but tomorrow you, Turnbull and I shall sit down and discuss the decorations for the Consulate. What color bulbs to use, the tinsel--I found some fabulous gold ribbon for the tree. And of course spirit of giving, peace on Earth, blah, blah, blah.
Fraser: Dad, I have guests.
Robert: Well pardon us for living.
Fraser: What's going on here?
Robert: The group are making some gifts for the orphans. Brightening up their Christmas.
Fraser: You have orphans in the afterworld?
Robert: Well not really. They're just kind of lost.
Fraser: Good morning. Sleep well?
Tommy: The dog snores like Mike Ditka with a sinus condition.Robert: Ha! Back in '65 when I was heading a detachment up in Reliance, wasn't much of a detachment really, just me and Delbert Foxworth, well, Norbert Weatherway got in the sauce. Went on a tear. I sent Foxworth out to bring Norbert Weatherway in. He came back empty handed. A couple days later I found out Weatherway was married to Foxworth's half sister, Etta.
Fraser: I don't mean to interrupt but does this story have a moral?
Robert: Oh yeah. Sometimes ya have to do it yourself. That's the moral.Warfield: Ya got brass ones, I'll give you that.
Fraser: Oh yes. Yes I do. They take a lot of work to keep polished.Fraser: You know you really have to stop complaining. You've been on stakeouts before, you know what they're like. [Dief answers him] Yes, I know you'd rather be with her, but it's sort of a cliché don't you think? I mean, wolf meets poodle, poodle hooks wolf, wolf liquidates his assets. It can only end in tears.
Frannie: Well, maybe you should take off your shirt.
Ray: Frannie!
Frannie: Well he could have internal injuries.
Huey: If it's internal you can't see them.
Frannie: Yeah, I know. I could palpitate them.
Fraser: Do you mean palpate?
Frannie: Yeah, you know, feel around a little.
Ray: Personally I think he's suffered enough.Thatcher: It's a sword.
Fraser: I sword. I see.
Dewey: Well, calling Dr. Freud.
Nitpick of the Week:"When this was meant for Ray, it was to be an elk. When it was for Lt. Welsh, it was to be a grizzly bear."
Now I've already said that I don't like the speed-carving scene [gag] but there's a nitpick here, too. In the scene at the consulate when Tommy wakes up and complains about Dief's snoring, Fraser is clearly carving a bear. In the very next scene he trades names with Dewey--so he should have been carving an elk up to that point!
And Ray didn't realize until the last possible moment that Cuban cigars were an unsuitable gift for Frannie?
Dief Moment:Dief as precinct-decorating assistant, with a load of wreaths around his neck.
Moment of the Week:3-way tie on a Christmas theme:
1. Thatcher's speech about Christmas ("blah, blah, blah")
2. Turnbull's solo on Santa Drives a Pickup
3 Frannie, Bob and the mistletoe
Snack to enjoy while watching Good for the Soul:I thought perhaps a little seasonal--(Don't mind if I do!)--cheer.
Grading:
Warfield D Crime and Punishment C Christmas B Overall Grade C
Laurie's Review:It's inevitable that comparisons will be made between Good for the Soul and other eps. Is it as good a Christmas story as Gift of the Wheelman? No, I don't think so but it boils down to personal preference. Is it as good a mob/beating story as The Deal? Well, nothing is as good as that so no further comment is necessary. It's not very well balanced but what I like about it outweighs what I'm not fond of.
The Bob/Ben moments are some of the best glimpses of the entire series into their relationship: Bob's remorse about not spending more Christmases with his son, Bob standing by him (discouraging words and all) after he leaves the 27th a defeated, dejected man, and mostly the unspoken feelings at the end when Ben gives the toast and opens his gift. That quiet moment when he says "it's my family" and he and Bob wish each other a "Merry Christmas" is one of the most touching scenes from any ep. It bothers me a little that no one is curious enough to look at the picture of his family, not even Ray or Francesca.
A lot of the humor falls flat, but Bob has remained unwaveringly Bob throughout the seasons of the show. He may be the only character who didn't undergo much of a transformation. We see different sides of him, especially the side expressing regret, but he's the same man we saw in the earliest eps.
Melanie mentioned her disappointment with this ep and that it didn't live up to her expectations when she first saw it. I had no expectations at all. I wasn't part of the online world at the time and hadn't heard anything about it, so when it first aired it was an unexpected but pleasant surprise and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I didn't start nitpicking until much later!
My biggest gripe is with the caricatured Warfield. The more I watch this ep, the more critical I become, because of him. If he seemed remotely real I could accept almost everything that happens and the way Fraser behaves, but Warfield is so far from real it's pathetic. He's a big joke. He's pivotal to the story but he ruins it for me. When he's not on screen, which is often, fortunately, I can enjoy almost everything else.
I don't see Fraser as a hero in this ep. He's a man of high ideals, a crusader for justice, a man trying to right a wrong, but not a hero, just an ordinary man, albeit not as ordinary as most men. He's almost as stereotyped in this ep as he was in the earliest ones.
Fraser came face to face with hard reality, big-city style, and didn't want to accept that his efforts as a citizen were not going to get the results he's come to expect as a police officer. Chances are if he had officially pursued a similar case in Canada, where he could have done more than make a citizen's arrest, his actions would have had the desired result.
I didn't like how Meg was portrayed. One of her officers was the victim of a crime and we should have seen her in an official capacity. Instead, the two scenes she's in are frivolous and embarrassing. We see her trying to spend time alone with Fraser and at the 27th's Christmas party. Neither of these roles was essential to the plot and they would have seemed less out of place if she had made an appearance to investigate or at least inquire about Fraser's beating. If she can come to the precinct for a party, she can come there to intervene on behalf of one of her men. It would have been a perfect opportunity to showcase her skills as a police officer.
Brief observations and comments:What else do you suppose is upstairs at the Consulate besides the Queen's bedroom? Meg came from upstairs with the drinks and Turnbull said he had been upstairs listening to his Clint Black Christmas album.
This is the second ep in which Ray makes a comment about dogs having all the fun.
I really like the way the scene in front of the club was filmed, with the camera shooting from across the street while Ray and Fraser talk. It can be distracting, especially when you're trying to spot Ontario license plates, but it was very nicely done.
Duesies:Fraser to Dief: No, I assure you it's a polar bear. Well, he lives in a mall. If you keep eating those pizzas, we'll see how you look inside of a year.
Dewey: Frannie, what the hell is that?
Frannie: It's my Santa Claus. I made him in art class.
Dewey: You took a class to make that?Welsh: They're claiming Fraser was drunk and disorderly.
Ray: Disorderly? His hair's not even disorderly.
Fraser: Well it can be sometimes.
(And he has a bad hair day soon after in Hunting Season)Fraser: You know, you really have to stop complaining. You've been on stakeouts before, you know what they're like. Yes, I know you'd rather be with her but it's sort of clichéd, don't you think? I mean, wolf meets poodle, poodle hooks wolf, wolf liquidates his assets. It can only end in tears.
Now that has to be the best thinly veiled reference to you know who ever made on the show.
Keepership:I'm sure someone officially has the Mountie treetop ornament but I'll just borrow it for Christmas.
Grade:Despite the criticisms, I still give it a B. The ending and the Ben/Bob moments compensate for the flaws.
If you want to sound off, or if you'd like to add a review to the site, let me know!
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