"Did you grow up in a public service announcement?"

[danceswithwords]

Awesome!

• Having plane tickets to the bitchinparty! We're coming in Thursday; will anybody else be around that early?
• asta77 having plane tickets to San Francisco! She's going to get the full Beloved Money Pit experience. (Hint: don't turn the bathroom doorknob or you could be trapped forever.)
• These shoes. via The Manolo
• This story about dogs from Michael Vick's kennel of horrors being evaluated and placed in good homes. BAD RAP is the perfect organization to do this; they have a lot of experience and a good track record.
• Dalek socks!
• Last week's episodes of Chuck. Although the show stumbles when it veers too far towards the slapstick, I find myself feeling a disturbing amount of affection for Lester and Jeff. HELP ME.
• IT'S FRIDAY.

Not Awesome!

• Work, currently.
• The price tag on these shoes. WHYYYYYYYYY?

* * * * *

I have finished due South. I am not doing comments on individual episodes, because I found the second half of Season 3 and all of Season 4 to be very enjoyable on a popcorn level, but I don't have much to say about them individually. (This is possibly a good time to mention that every day is defriending amnesty day in this journal, huh?) The latter part of the show just isn't the kind of storytelling that grabs me, and I thought it was really uneven, although "Call of the Wild" was a lovely call back to the show's beginnings and some of its bigger themes.

Some random thoughts:

• The parade of guest stars was pretty fun to identify. Stephanie Romanov! Michael Hogan! Tyrone Benskin (Karl Lubinsky on Charlie Jade)! Jessica Steen, the original Elizabeth Weir! Maury Chaykin, twice! (And how weird is it that Fraser has been driven around Chicago by not one but TWO different Goa'uld.)


• I really enjoyed Ray Kowalski, and loved the little moments of intensity and vulnerability Callum Keith Rennie brought to him--moments that were all the more remarkable for the fact that they were located in the middle of mostly lighthearted slapstick. He's a hopeless romantic, and convinced that there's got to be something wrong with any woman that wants him, lonelier than he likes to let on, and frustrated with Fraser's perfection. His trust issues were something that gave him a lot of common ground with Fraser. And the end of "The Ladies Man," when he breaks down and starts weeping in the car, overcome with relief that he wasn't responsible for the death of an innocent woman, was heartbreaking.


• I understand that "Mountie on the Bounty" is a pretty popular episode in dS fandom, so I was dismayed to discover that it included the ur-plot of all Scooby Doo episodes: the criminals who dressed up as ghosts to scare away anybody who could have interfered, and would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for those meddling kids Mounties.


• I thought Frannie was a nice addition to the squad room, although her thing for Fraser was played so unevenly that it never really worked for me. The scene where she broke the suspect by using the wrong vocabulary on him and freaking him out was great, and it seemed like once she was out of Ray Vecchio's shadow, in his world but without all the baggage and history she had with the man she actually grew up with, she was discovering new parts to herself.


• I was not very happy with the way Thatcher was written for most of the latter part of the show. She was ridiculous--not funny and human and frail, but embarrassing.

But that brings me to "Call of the Wild," which made me very happy. Fraser's homesickness, his realization that that was never going to change in Chicago, that nothing was going to fill up that gaping hole but going home, and his return to the snowy North (and the lovely echo to "North," with Fraser carrying this Ray around); making peace at last with his family history, with his father's estrangement in his childhood, which shaped so much of who he was, and with the Mountie traditions that they both shared; Bob's ghost getting peace at last. Ray becoming Ray Kowalski, figuring out who he is, while Ray Vecchio picks up pieces of Stanley Kowalski's past, with Stella, and they make a sort of metaphysical trade. Ray entering Fraser's world, now, and being the fish out of water, and making another sort of trade, this time with Fraser as well as with Ray Vecchio, so that he can have his adventure. Thatcher being a capable Mountie, teaming up with Fraser to thwart evil. Diefenbaker coming home. It was lovely, and a very fitting end to the series.