Meta: Ray Kowalski As Hero
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Ray Kowalski as Hero
Many thanks to jamethiel_bane, secret_garden, and the_antichris for helping to make this a much better essay than it was. Thanks also to china_shop for poking my brain about RayK, and to all of my rat_jam co-mods for all their hard work in helping put this con together! Yay team of champions!!
PART ONE
I think it goes without saying that when we think about Due South and then see the word "hero", we automatically think of Fraser. This is by design: from the very beginning, Fraser is the heart of the story. His personal mission to solve his father's murder drives the pilot. As a result, he's effectively exiled by the RCMP to Chicago and a large part of the story focuses on his struggle to cope with this alien environment.
Because the story begins with such a close focus on Fraser, Due South is not set up like a typical buddy cop show. If it were, then both partners would have completely equal footing, like Starsky and Hutch or Cagney and Lacey, and they'd face equal repercussions before the same boss. As you can imagine, a show called Fraser & Vecchio would probably be organized in a very different fashion.
So, as the central character of the series, Fraser may be considered our default "hero", but he isn't exactly Hercules dragging Iolaus around rural Greece to slay monsters. Neither is Ray Vecchio a good match for Iolaus-and nor for that matter is Ray Kowalski. Both detectives have a fair bit more to do in the grand scheme of the series than be relegated to life as Fraser's sidekick.
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Before we start looking at characters, let's take a moment to consider what's meant by the term "hero".
For my purposes here, I'm going to invoke Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces, since it's a classic text on the subject and I happen to have it at hand. Campbell posits that all heroes do three things: they begin their journey, they're transformed by their journey (whether they succeed or not), and they share the lessons or fruits of their journey.
In Campbell's view all heroes are traveling the same essential path, but they may have very different impetuses for beginning their adventures-and nothing says a hero must be a willing adventurer.
Furthermore, Campbell barely distinguishes between heroes of divine myth, such as Hercules, and heroes of folktale. They're all representatives of the "monomyth", the path that all people walk through life and the story that each heroic myth tells when stripped down to its base elements.
A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.
While the adventures, victories, and boons differ, you can apply this framework as easily to Hercules as to Moses as to Hansel and Gretel.
Notice the examples: Hercules has divine superpowers. Moses has divine guidance, but no particular superhuman skills of his own. Hansel and Gretel have Gretel's brains and courage (while Hansel is locked in a cage, Gretel tricks the witch into climbing into the oven and locks her inside. Then the children steal the witch's jewels and run home to their father). In all three legends, the heroes are set on their path by someone else's hand (divine or otherwise), but each hero accepts the call to adventure for a different reason or set of reasons (atonement, true faith, survival).
Campbell's point is that their paths are the same, no matter their origin. Each hero represents the Everyman (or Everywoman or Everyperson) in the course of a life's adventure and while people may come from different backgrounds, the ability to embark on the heroic journey is universal.
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In Due South terms, Fraser's adventure begins when he puts his entire life aside to bring his father's killers to justice. He does so, but the larger mytharc of his journey requires his mother's killer to be brought to justice as well-only then can his father's ghost rest. Fraser is rather more traditional mythic hero than folk hero: he has a skill set that compares favorably with mid-range comic book superheroes, and his journey is literally supernatural in nature. But his isn't the only heroic journey in the show.
So, what about the Rays?
In S1-2, while Fraser is making his way in gritty, tough Chicago, Ray Vecchio is the streetwise native who plays foil to Fraser's backcountry innocence and sometimes-deliberate naïveté. When we meet Vecchio, he has no interest in getting involved with Fraser's case at all. He has a terrible solve-rate, he doesn't have much faith in the system, and we have to wonder why he's a cop in the first place.
Let's take a minute to look at that: In choosing to become a cop Vecchio sets himself against his father, a large part of the community he grew up in, and notably, his would-be girlfriend's family. He and Irene Zuko were star-crossed from the beginning, but there seems to be a particular, stridently rebellious note in Vecchio choosing to become a police officer at all.
And yet, in most of his episodes we see Vecchio whining, bitching, moaning, complaining, and working very hard to avoid doing any actual policework until Fraser, Welsh, or Frannie twists his arm. It doesn't seem terribly "heroic" of him, and I think there are several ways to read that. One, it's an easy way for the writers to make Fraser look good and doesn't really have much to do with Veccchio's character. Two, it's an easy dig at Chicago cops (who have their own notorious past that, arguably, exceeds any other US city police department) and doesn't have much to do with Vecchio's character. Three, Vecchio's not really much of a hero and it totally has to do with his character. Four, something else entirely.
One and two are superficial points, and three doesn't satisfy me since we see Vecchio do his fair share of heroic deeds-although not often with much enthusiasm. In discussing this with the_antichris, she suggested that Vecchio's complaints could be "him trying to reconcile being a cop and doing what he knows is the right thing with feeling bad about tearing himself out of the structure he grew up in. Pretending he hates his job means he doesn't have to face the conflict straight on."
And that makes a lot of sense to me, especially when taking into consideration his traditional Italian-American Catholic upbringing. Vecchio has to feel guilty for letting down the expectations of the people he loves; and yet, you don't pursue a career in criminal justice on a lark. Being a cop represents a sacrifice on his part, and so he's loud about his resentment. This correlates nicely with point four: something else entirely. Campbell's framework allows for a hero "refusing the call" to adventure, thus forcing external factors to grab Vecchio by the scruff of the neck and throw him into the journey whether he likes it or not.
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Meanwhile, Ray Kowalski's adventure begins very differently.
In S3-4, Fraser's been refitted to seem less like a crazy Mountie in an ordinary city than a reasonably sane Mountie in a very (very) strange place. By necessity, the brand new "Ray Vecchio", Ray Kowalski, is playing a different sort of foil to this differently-performed Fraser.
Unlike Vecchio, Ray Kowalski voluntarily accepts the journey-and the beginning of S3 takes us through Fraser's process of learning who Kowalski is. We find out that he's a good cop, he has commendations on his record, he's brave (he takes a bullet for Fraser within hours of their first meeting), he has a temper, he's unpredictable, and he has experience doing undercover work. He's setting out on this adventure because his marriage has just ended and he wants to be someone new for a while: "I was weak, I was down. I say, well I'll think about it. And I'm thinking about it. Hey, my life's not great at the moment. I think maybe I can use a change, a change of scene, a change of luck, go undercover, get a new life." (BDtH)
In theory, it seems like a reasonably good transitional gig for him while he figures out what his life is going to be like post-divorce; and failing that, it's a pair of someone else's shoes for him to hide in for a while and not actually deal with his grief.
Kowalski does not know how much weirdness he's getting himself into by saying yes, but he jumps into being Fraser's partner willingly, he's willing to be changed by the experience, and he integrates the adventure of their partnership so well into his life that the series finale-the culmination of the present heroic journey-finds him consciously desiring more adventure, an explicitly legendary (King Tut's tomb, headwaters of the Nile) kind of adventure-as his exploits with Fraser have given him a sense of what he can survive and an ambition for attempting a notable discovery.
PART TWO
That, then, is the rough map of how the journey begins, but let's backtrack and take a look at the heroic adventure's context with specific emphasis on Ray Kowalski.
Campbell stresses that in traditional hero myths, the hero has a distinct relationship with his or her community. Siddhartha leaves his home and family to become the Buddha, and then spends his life teaching. So does Jesus. Beowulf slays Grendel to protect the Danes. In short, being a hero is something one does with relation to a group of people.
However, Campbell ends The Hero with a Thousand Faces by suggesting the hero-community dependency dissolves in contemporary society-that today's Everyman is an Individual first and can't be relied upon to act on behalf of the larger group. It's a good point as far as taking into account the sheer size of modern communities. A hamlet of forty people or a village of four hundred can rely on the aid of individual heroes, but a city of four million people needs more than a single champion.
Most of the time, Kowalski represents Chicago in the same way Fraser represents Canada, which gels nicely with the traditional heroic model where the hero serves his community or family group.
How does Ray Kowalski fit in? He is Stella's ex-husband, Damien and Barbara's son, the guy who keeps Vecchio and his family safe while Vecchio is in Vegas, and most relevant to the show: Fraser's partner. He is not defined as an absolute, such as: a detective, a car-lover, a sharp-shooter, a dancer, etc. Other people are always his reference points.
As far as his family, Kowalski, like Vecchio, sacrificed his relationship with his father when he became a cop. Damien eventually makes amends, but we're never told exactly why Damien takes his son's becoming a cop as such a betrayal (if there had been an overt reference to Damien's rage over the 1968 DNC police riot, then that would've given some valuable context). When we meet Kowalski, his parents live in Arizona and aren't immediately present parts of his life, but he has a mostly civil (if unhealthy) relationship with his ex-wife, he takes on Vecchio's family as his own, he volunteers at a community center mentoring gang members, and he's been a detective (and thus part of the cop community) for a long time.
Nevertheless, Kowalski has what we might call a crisis of individuality at least once: it's most notable in "Eclipse", where Kowalski stalks Marcus Ellery, the bank robber who caused him to become a cop in the first place, to his mother's funeral, and in the process leaves the detective division in the lurch. Kowalski's ready to give up his career to get his vengeance until Fraser and the three other people in the crypt remind him of his place in the community and how much he is valued both personally and professionally.
Kowalski's second crisis of individual identity is in "The Ladies Man", when he comes very close to shooting a perp in cold blood, and again it's Fraser who reminds Kowalski that he isn't the kind of person (or cop) who would do that. This is critical because Due South makes a point of not glamorizing murder and being very particular about its depiction of firearm use, despite the gross number of shots fired in any given episode.
It's not heroic in the show for the hero to kill the monster, and it's not an accident that the main tragedies of Fraser's life involve gunfire: both his parents were shot and murdered and Fraser has a bullet lodged in his spine. It isn't really a surprise that he refuses to carry a gun (except in Canada), despite having the right to carry in Chicago.
Ray Vecchio's two great tragedies involve gunfire, too: Vecchio shoots Fraser in the spine (while supposedly aiming at Victoria) and nearly paralyzes him; Irene Zuko is accidentally shot in the heart and dies in Vecchio's arms.
Ray Kowalski's great tragedy is condemning an innocent woman (who was thought to have shot her husband) to be executed. Kowalski shoots weapons out of assailants' hands; he doesn't ever shoot to maim or kill people. Rejoicing in the execution of a cop killer might be okay, except our hero suspects she's actually innocent, and he cannot morally be a party to murder.
Which doesn't necessarily mean he's gentle with suspects. There's an edge of violence or loose-cannon-ness that Kowalski uses to be more intimidating when he needs to be, but it isn't the same thing as commiting or condoning murder. Crossing that line would fundamentally divorce Kowalski from the rest of his community, and that would run contrary to his character.
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The question of Kowalski's character itself raises the problem of how to interpret his actions as "Vecchio".
Kowalski isn't mimicking Vecchio-apparently it's enough to have someone at CPD purporting to be Vecchio, regardless of what he looks like. And yet, in the few scenes where old Vecchio continuity gets pulled forward-where Kowalski has to traverse the discontinuity between himself and his cover-we see him actively manipulating the role of Vecchio in ways he doesn't normally have to. Normally he only has to fill the chair or be the guy standing next to the guy in the bright red suit-no one's going to look at him because all eyes are on the Mountie.
When Kowalski plays Vecchio, as in "Burning Down the House" and "Eclipse", he gets more violent, more belligerent, and turns into more of a smartass (a one and a happy face? Really?). Contrast that with how he is with Stella in "Strange Bedfellows", with Albert Hanrahan in "Spy vs. Spy", and with Stanley Smith and Frannie in "Dead Guy Running". Even when he's yelling at people, he isn't as confrontational about it as when he's performing "Vecchio".
The show gives us other clues to the difference between Kowalski and the role he's playing, too. Fraser recites part of his service record: In December 1988 a young boy was being held in a warehouse. You went in even though you knew your cover had been blown. You drew fire, you were wounded, yet you managed to rescue the boy. Your first citation. In December 1990, in a jewelry store you singlehandedly held off three gunmen, saving four innocent lives. Your second citation. In September1993 you faced down three escaped murderers and you brought them to justice. Your third citation. You're a good policeman, Ray. And I would be proud to call you my partner... and my friend. (Eclipse)
We also get context for his aloneness via seeing his history with Stella and the changes in their relationship as he (stops stalking her and) comes to terms with their divorce. When Kowalski's parents return to Chicago, we learn what his car means to him (his entire relationship with his father wrapped up in two tons of steel) and how open he is with his mother (she comes over to iron his shirts-and he lets her!).
Meanwhile his only potential hookups with women are doomed-and necessarily so: in "Strange Bedfellows" he and Stella show that their marriage didn't end out of lack of love for or attraction to each other. At the opening of "Doctor Longball" he's gone to Acapulco with a hot-check writer who ditches him as soon as they land. In "Likely Story" he gets one goodbye kiss with Luanne Russell, but nothing indicating a future relationship. In "Ladies Man" he and Beth Botrelle share a long, distressed nuzzle which may be read to be more given the way the scene's cut, but it's anything but romantic. And in "Hunting Season" he flirts with Maggie Mackenzie (Fraser's half-sister), but she leaves town after a kiss goodbye.
Kowalski's failure to establish relationships with women can be read as a requirement of his journey: his role as an undercover cop demands the sacrifice of "normal" family life. At this stage in his adventure, his partnership with Fraser is the most important relationship in his life.
Which isn't to say it's easy. In "Mountie on the Bounty", when they both have transfer offers on the table and Kowalski actively wants to quit the partnership, he says, "The problem is we're stale," which really reflects Fraser's failure to grow sufficiently in his trust of Kowalski over the course of S3. They're out of balance, but the partnership is restored when Fraser finally starts treating Kowalski as an equal (and not as "the temp" standing in for his real partner). This reconciliation also represents an active choice on both their parts to be partners with the other. Working with Fraser is no longer a passive mechanism for Kowalski to avoid dealing with his divorce, and they both now have the same agency in determining their partnership that Fraser and Vecchio had from the beginning.
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It's strange to think of "weak sense of self" as a positive trait, especially in a heroic context, but it's key to Kowalski's job to blend in and be the guy his peers want him to be. When Kowalski forgets who he is, he relies on people he respects-who have strong personalities-to remind him. Welsh, Stella, Fraser, and eventually Vecchio and Inspector Thatcher all serve as frames of reference for Kowalski's attempts at (re-)defining who he is and is not. Kowalski gets burned by it by his old mentor in "The Ladies Man", but Welsh stands at Kowalski's back and Fraser stands at his side, thus creating a mildly brain-breaking (and severely cover-breaking) abutment of Kowalski history and Vecchio allies. It's a case where I wonder what portion of Kowalski's actions in his final standoff with Sam Franklin are genuine to his personality, what portion of attitude he's borrowing from "Vecchio" (and the entire 27th division) to serve as emotional armor, and what portion of the Vecchio persona he's permanently absorbed.
When we see Vecchio again in the series finale "Call of the Wild", it's somewhat of a shock because (to some degree) we've grown so used to Kowalski-as-Vecchio. So has everyone else-except for Vecchio-because Kowalski has totally absorbed the outward elements of Ray Vecchio's life into his own (filling in the gaps left open after his divorce) and has taken the best parts of two lives to form the identity of the person he's supposed to be. Integrating a cover identity is exactly what a cop who is deep undercover for a long period of time is prone to do: he lives the role and the role becomes his life, and so surfacing from undercover is as hard for Kowalski to cope with as his divorce.
The scene at the station where Kowalski and Vecchio fight and make up (at Frannie's insistence) really represents the end of Kowalski's primary adventure. He shares what he's learned with Vecchio and Fraser while still in Chicago, and there's a nice sense of Kowalski recovering some of his personal footing-not to mention the lovely (traditionally romantic) moment where Fraser recommits to their partnership, thus reassuring Kowalski that he can still rely on Fraser to help anchor his still wavering identity.
The action plot requiring a return to Canada in "Call of the Wild" serves as the conclusion of Fraser's great "southern" adventure, but it's the start of a whole new adventure for Kowalski. Like Vecchio through so much of S1 and S2, Kowalski tries hard to refuse the call to this new and frightening journey. Nerve gas, jumping out of a plane, and traversing snowy wilderness all see Kowalski whining and moaning in Vecchio-esque camp humor, but Fraser and circumstance push him along.
Kowalski doesn't have much to do in the grand finale once the nuclear submarine and the bad guys have all been captured. Justice has been served. Meanwhile, Fraser needs to put his past (and parents' ghosts) to rest, and as the active symbol of Fraser's present and future, Kowalski doesn't need to be there for that.
Campbell's formula says the heroes have their decisive victory and then return, graced with the power to bestow boons unto the community. Here, along with the RCMP, Fraser and Kowalski stop an international incident, an action which serves justice on both sides of the border and helps Thatcher's career (and presumably their own, too). But Fraser and Kowalski break the formula because they don't return: Kowalski doesn't return to Chicago and Fraser doesn't return to the waiting arms of the RCMP. Instead, they go on vacation.
Ironically, this draws us back to Campbell's conclusion positing that Individual heroes have supplanted community heroes. Fraser and Kowalski go their own way and don't apologize for it. Fraser salutes Sgt. Frobisher as they leave, signifying that Fraser isn't actually leaving the RCMP, but it's significant that all of Kowalski and Fraser's other relationships have fallen by the wayside next to the strength of their partnership. Their easy intimacy is one of the strongest themes permeating S3-4, and it seems apt that one of the boons they get to bestow unto each other is the freedom to sled off into the sunrise (together) in pursuit of their "happily ever after", the quest for Franklin's hand.
Ray Kowalski as Hero
Many thanks to jamethiel_bane, secret_garden, and the_antichris for helping to make this a much better essay than it was. Thanks also to china_shop for poking my brain about RayK, and to all of my rat_jam co-mods for all their hard work in helping put this con together! Yay team of champions!!
PART ONE
I think it goes without saying that when we think about Due South and then see the word "hero", we automatically think of Fraser. This is by design: from the very beginning, Fraser is the heart of the story. His personal mission to solve his father's murder drives the pilot. As a result, he's effectively exiled by the RCMP to Chicago and a large part of the story focuses on his struggle to cope with this alien environment.
Because the story begins with such a close focus on Fraser, Due South is not set up like a typical buddy cop show. If it were, then both partners would have completely equal footing, like Starsky and Hutch or Cagney and Lacey, and they'd face equal repercussions before the same boss. As you can imagine, a show called Fraser & Vecchio would probably be organized in a very different fashion.
So, as the central character of the series, Fraser may be considered our default "hero", but he isn't exactly Hercules dragging Iolaus around rural Greece to slay monsters. Neither is Ray Vecchio a good match for Iolaus-and nor for that matter is Ray Kowalski. Both detectives have a fair bit more to do in the grand scheme of the series than be relegated to life as Fraser's sidekick.
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Before we start looking at characters, let's take a moment to consider what's meant by the term "hero".
For my purposes here, I'm going to invoke Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces, since it's a classic text on the subject and I happen to have it at hand. Campbell posits that all heroes do three things: they begin their journey, they're transformed by their journey (whether they succeed or not), and they share the lessons or fruits of their journey.
In Campbell's view all heroes are traveling the same essential path, but they may have very different impetuses for beginning their adventures-and nothing says a hero must be a willing adventurer.
Furthermore, Campbell barely distinguishes between heroes of divine myth, such as Hercules, and heroes of folktale. They're all representatives of the "monomyth", the path that all people walk through life and the story that each heroic myth tells when stripped down to its base elements.
A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.
While the adventures, victories, and boons differ, you can apply this framework as easily to Hercules as to Moses as to Hansel and Gretel.
Notice the examples: Hercules has divine superpowers. Moses has divine guidance, but no particular superhuman skills of his own. Hansel and Gretel have Gretel's brains and courage (while Hansel is locked in a cage, Gretel tricks the witch into climbing into the oven and locks her inside. Then the children steal the witch's jewels and run home to their father). In all three legends, the heroes are set on their path by someone else's hand (divine or otherwise), but each hero accepts the call to adventure for a different reason or set of reasons (atonement, true faith, survival).
Campbell's point is that their paths are the same, no matter their origin. Each hero represents the Everyman (or Everywoman or Everyperson) in the course of a life's adventure and while people may come from different backgrounds, the ability to embark on the heroic journey is universal.
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In Due South terms, Fraser's adventure begins when he puts his entire life aside to bring his father's killers to justice. He does so, but the larger mytharc of his journey requires his mother's killer to be brought to justice as well-only then can his father's ghost rest. Fraser is rather more traditional mythic hero than folk hero: he has a skill set that compares favorably with mid-range comic book superheroes, and his journey is literally supernatural in nature. But his isn't the only heroic journey in the show.
So, what about the Rays?
In S1-2, while Fraser is making his way in gritty, tough Chicago, Ray Vecchio is the streetwise native who plays foil to Fraser's backcountry innocence and sometimes-deliberate naïveté. When we meet Vecchio, he has no interest in getting involved with Fraser's case at all. He has a terrible solve-rate, he doesn't have much faith in the system, and we have to wonder why he's a cop in the first place.
Let's take a minute to look at that: In choosing to become a cop Vecchio sets himself against his father, a large part of the community he grew up in, and notably, his would-be girlfriend's family. He and Irene Zuko were star-crossed from the beginning, but there seems to be a particular, stridently rebellious note in Vecchio choosing to become a police officer at all.
And yet, in most of his episodes we see Vecchio whining, bitching, moaning, complaining, and working very hard to avoid doing any actual policework until Fraser, Welsh, or Frannie twists his arm. It doesn't seem terribly "heroic" of him, and I think there are several ways to read that. One, it's an easy way for the writers to make Fraser look good and doesn't really have much to do with Veccchio's character. Two, it's an easy dig at Chicago cops (who have their own notorious past that, arguably, exceeds any other US city police department) and doesn't have much to do with Vecchio's character. Three, Vecchio's not really much of a hero and it totally has to do with his character. Four, something else entirely.
One and two are superficial points, and three doesn't satisfy me since we see Vecchio do his fair share of heroic deeds-although not often with much enthusiasm. In discussing this with the_antichris, she suggested that Vecchio's complaints could be "him trying to reconcile being a cop and doing what he knows is the right thing with feeling bad about tearing himself out of the structure he grew up in. Pretending he hates his job means he doesn't have to face the conflict straight on."
And that makes a lot of sense to me, especially when taking into consideration his traditional Italian-American Catholic upbringing. Vecchio has to feel guilty for letting down the expectations of the people he loves; and yet, you don't pursue a career in criminal justice on a lark. Being a cop represents a sacrifice on his part, and so he's loud about his resentment. This correlates nicely with point four: something else entirely. Campbell's framework allows for a hero "refusing the call" to adventure, thus forcing external factors to grab Vecchio by the scruff of the neck and throw him into the journey whether he likes it or not.
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Meanwhile, Ray Kowalski's adventure begins very differently.
In S3-4, Fraser's been refitted to seem less like a crazy Mountie in an ordinary city than a reasonably sane Mountie in a very (very) strange place. By necessity, the brand new "Ray Vecchio", Ray Kowalski, is playing a different sort of foil to this differently-performed Fraser.
Unlike Vecchio, Ray Kowalski voluntarily accepts the journey-and the beginning of S3 takes us through Fraser's process of learning who Kowalski is. We find out that he's a good cop, he has commendations on his record, he's brave (he takes a bullet for Fraser within hours of their first meeting), he has a temper, he's unpredictable, and he has experience doing undercover work. He's setting out on this adventure because his marriage has just ended and he wants to be someone new for a while: "I was weak, I was down. I say, well I'll think about it. And I'm thinking about it. Hey, my life's not great at the moment. I think maybe I can use a change, a change of scene, a change of luck, go undercover, get a new life." (BDtH)
In theory, it seems like a reasonably good transitional gig for him while he figures out what his life is going to be like post-divorce; and failing that, it's a pair of someone else's shoes for him to hide in for a while and not actually deal with his grief.
Kowalski does not know how much weirdness he's getting himself into by saying yes, but he jumps into being Fraser's partner willingly, he's willing to be changed by the experience, and he integrates the adventure of their partnership so well into his life that the series finale-the culmination of the present heroic journey-finds him consciously desiring more adventure, an explicitly legendary (King Tut's tomb, headwaters of the Nile) kind of adventure-as his exploits with Fraser have given him a sense of what he can survive and an ambition for attempting a notable discovery.
PART TWO
That, then, is the rough map of how the journey begins, but let's backtrack and take a look at the heroic adventure's context with specific emphasis on Ray Kowalski.
Campbell stresses that in traditional hero myths, the hero has a distinct relationship with his or her community. Siddhartha leaves his home and family to become the Buddha, and then spends his life teaching. So does Jesus. Beowulf slays Grendel to protect the Danes. In short, being a hero is something one does with relation to a group of people.
However, Campbell ends The Hero with a Thousand Faces by suggesting the hero-community dependency dissolves in contemporary society-that today's Everyman is an Individual first and can't be relied upon to act on behalf of the larger group. It's a good point as far as taking into account the sheer size of modern communities. A hamlet of forty people or a village of four hundred can rely on the aid of individual heroes, but a city of four million people needs more than a single champion.
Most of the time, Kowalski represents Chicago in the same way Fraser represents Canada, which gels nicely with the traditional heroic model where the hero serves his community or family group.
How does Ray Kowalski fit in? He is Stella's ex-husband, Damien and Barbara's son, the guy who keeps Vecchio and his family safe while Vecchio is in Vegas, and most relevant to the show: Fraser's partner. He is not defined as an absolute, such as: a detective, a car-lover, a sharp-shooter, a dancer, etc. Other people are always his reference points.
As far as his family, Kowalski, like Vecchio, sacrificed his relationship with his father when he became a cop. Damien eventually makes amends, but we're never told exactly why Damien takes his son's becoming a cop as such a betrayal (if there had been an overt reference to Damien's rage over the 1968 DNC police riot, then that would've given some valuable context). When we meet Kowalski, his parents live in Arizona and aren't immediately present parts of his life, but he has a mostly civil (if unhealthy) relationship with his ex-wife, he takes on Vecchio's family as his own, he volunteers at a community center mentoring gang members, and he's been a detective (and thus part of the cop community) for a long time.
Nevertheless, Kowalski has what we might call a crisis of individuality at least once: it's most notable in "Eclipse", where Kowalski stalks Marcus Ellery, the bank robber who caused him to become a cop in the first place, to his mother's funeral, and in the process leaves the detective division in the lurch. Kowalski's ready to give up his career to get his vengeance until Fraser and the three other people in the crypt remind him of his place in the community and how much he is valued both personally and professionally.
Kowalski's second crisis of individual identity is in "The Ladies Man", when he comes very close to shooting a perp in cold blood, and again it's Fraser who reminds Kowalski that he isn't the kind of person (or cop) who would do that. This is critical because Due South makes a point of not glamorizing murder and being very particular about its depiction of firearm use, despite the gross number of shots fired in any given episode.
It's not heroic in the show for the hero to kill the monster, and it's not an accident that the main tragedies of Fraser's life involve gunfire: both his parents were shot and murdered and Fraser has a bullet lodged in his spine. It isn't really a surprise that he refuses to carry a gun (except in Canada), despite having the right to carry in Chicago.
Ray Vecchio's two great tragedies involve gunfire, too: Vecchio shoots Fraser in the spine (while supposedly aiming at Victoria) and nearly paralyzes him; Irene Zuko is accidentally shot in the heart and dies in Vecchio's arms.
Ray Kowalski's great tragedy is condemning an innocent woman (who was thought to have shot her husband) to be executed. Kowalski shoots weapons out of assailants' hands; he doesn't ever shoot to maim or kill people. Rejoicing in the execution of a cop killer might be okay, except our hero suspects she's actually innocent, and he cannot morally be a party to murder.
Which doesn't necessarily mean he's gentle with suspects. There's an edge of violence or loose-cannon-ness that Kowalski uses to be more intimidating when he needs to be, but it isn't the same thing as commiting or condoning murder. Crossing that line would fundamentally divorce Kowalski from the rest of his community, and that would run contrary to his character.
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The question of Kowalski's character itself raises the problem of how to interpret his actions as "Vecchio".
Kowalski isn't mimicking Vecchio-apparently it's enough to have someone at CPD purporting to be Vecchio, regardless of what he looks like. And yet, in the few scenes where old Vecchio continuity gets pulled forward-where Kowalski has to traverse the discontinuity between himself and his cover-we see him actively manipulating the role of Vecchio in ways he doesn't normally have to. Normally he only has to fill the chair or be the guy standing next to the guy in the bright red suit-no one's going to look at him because all eyes are on the Mountie.
When Kowalski plays Vecchio, as in "Burning Down the House" and "Eclipse", he gets more violent, more belligerent, and turns into more of a smartass (a one and a happy face? Really?). Contrast that with how he is with Stella in "Strange Bedfellows", with Albert Hanrahan in "Spy vs. Spy", and with Stanley Smith and Frannie in "Dead Guy Running". Even when he's yelling at people, he isn't as confrontational about it as when he's performing "Vecchio".
The show gives us other clues to the difference between Kowalski and the role he's playing, too. Fraser recites part of his service record: In December 1988 a young boy was being held in a warehouse. You went in even though you knew your cover had been blown. You drew fire, you were wounded, yet you managed to rescue the boy. Your first citation. In December 1990, in a jewelry store you singlehandedly held off three gunmen, saving four innocent lives. Your second citation. In September1993 you faced down three escaped murderers and you brought them to justice. Your third citation. You're a good policeman, Ray. And I would be proud to call you my partner... and my friend. (Eclipse)
We also get context for his aloneness via seeing his history with Stella and the changes in their relationship as he (stops stalking her and) comes to terms with their divorce. When Kowalski's parents return to Chicago, we learn what his car means to him (his entire relationship with his father wrapped up in two tons of steel) and how open he is with his mother (she comes over to iron his shirts-and he lets her!).
Meanwhile his only potential hookups with women are doomed-and necessarily so: in "Strange Bedfellows" he and Stella show that their marriage didn't end out of lack of love for or attraction to each other. At the opening of "Doctor Longball" he's gone to Acapulco with a hot-check writer who ditches him as soon as they land. In "Likely Story" he gets one goodbye kiss with Luanne Russell, but nothing indicating a future relationship. In "Ladies Man" he and Beth Botrelle share a long, distressed nuzzle which may be read to be more given the way the scene's cut, but it's anything but romantic. And in "Hunting Season" he flirts with Maggie Mackenzie (Fraser's half-sister), but she leaves town after a kiss goodbye.
Kowalski's failure to establish relationships with women can be read as a requirement of his journey: his role as an undercover cop demands the sacrifice of "normal" family life. At this stage in his adventure, his partnership with Fraser is the most important relationship in his life.
Which isn't to say it's easy. In "Mountie on the Bounty", when they both have transfer offers on the table and Kowalski actively wants to quit the partnership, he says, "The problem is we're stale," which really reflects Fraser's failure to grow sufficiently in his trust of Kowalski over the course of S3. They're out of balance, but the partnership is restored when Fraser finally starts treating Kowalski as an equal (and not as "the temp" standing in for his real partner). This reconciliation also represents an active choice on both their parts to be partners with the other. Working with Fraser is no longer a passive mechanism for Kowalski to avoid dealing with his divorce, and they both now have the same agency in determining their partnership that Fraser and Vecchio had from the beginning.
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It's strange to think of "weak sense of self" as a positive trait, especially in a heroic context, but it's key to Kowalski's job to blend in and be the guy his peers want him to be. When Kowalski forgets who he is, he relies on people he respects-who have strong personalities-to remind him. Welsh, Stella, Fraser, and eventually Vecchio and Inspector Thatcher all serve as frames of reference for Kowalski's attempts at (re-)defining who he is and is not. Kowalski gets burned by it by his old mentor in "The Ladies Man", but Welsh stands at Kowalski's back and Fraser stands at his side, thus creating a mildly brain-breaking (and severely cover-breaking) abutment of Kowalski history and Vecchio allies. It's a case where I wonder what portion of Kowalski's actions in his final standoff with Sam Franklin are genuine to his personality, what portion of attitude he's borrowing from "Vecchio" (and the entire 27th division) to serve as emotional armor, and what portion of the Vecchio persona he's permanently absorbed.
When we see Vecchio again in the series finale "Call of the Wild", it's somewhat of a shock because (to some degree) we've grown so used to Kowalski-as-Vecchio. So has everyone else-except for Vecchio-because Kowalski has totally absorbed the outward elements of Ray Vecchio's life into his own (filling in the gaps left open after his divorce) and has taken the best parts of two lives to form the identity of the person he's supposed to be. Integrating a cover identity is exactly what a cop who is deep undercover for a long period of time is prone to do: he lives the role and the role becomes his life, and so surfacing from undercover is as hard for Kowalski to cope with as his divorce.
The scene at the station where Kowalski and Vecchio fight and make up (at Frannie's insistence) really represents the end of Kowalski's primary adventure. He shares what he's learned with Vecchio and Fraser while still in Chicago, and there's a nice sense of Kowalski recovering some of his personal footing-not to mention the lovely (traditionally romantic) moment where Fraser recommits to their partnership, thus reassuring Kowalski that he can still rely on Fraser to help anchor his still wavering identity.
The action plot requiring a return to Canada in "Call of the Wild" serves as the conclusion of Fraser's great "southern" adventure, but it's the start of a whole new adventure for Kowalski. Like Vecchio through so much of S1 and S2, Kowalski tries hard to refuse the call to this new and frightening journey. Nerve gas, jumping out of a plane, and traversing snowy wilderness all see Kowalski whining and moaning in Vecchio-esque camp humor, but Fraser and circumstance push him along.
Kowalski doesn't have much to do in the grand finale once the nuclear submarine and the bad guys have all been captured. Justice has been served. Meanwhile, Fraser needs to put his past (and parents' ghosts) to rest, and as the active symbol of Fraser's present and future, Kowalski doesn't need to be there for that.
Campbell's formula says the heroes have their decisive victory and then return, graced with the power to bestow boons unto the community. Here, along with the RCMP, Fraser and Kowalski stop an international incident, an action which serves justice on both sides of the border and helps Thatcher's career (and presumably their own, too). But Fraser and Kowalski break the formula because they don't return: Kowalski doesn't return to Chicago and Fraser doesn't return to the waiting arms of the RCMP. Instead, they go on vacation.
Ironically, this draws us back to Campbell's conclusion positing that Individual heroes have supplanted community heroes. Fraser and Kowalski go their own way and don't apologize for it. Fraser salutes Sgt. Frobisher as they leave, signifying that Fraser isn't actually leaving the RCMP, but it's significant that all of Kowalski and Fraser's other relationships have fallen by the wayside next to the strength of their partnership. Their easy intimacy is one of the strongest themes permeating S3-4, and it seems apt that one of the boons they get to bestow unto each other is the freedom to sled off into the sunrise (together) in pursuit of their "happily ever after", the quest for Franklin's hand.