Due South Overview
Greetings! When the community member who'd originally signed on to pimp due South had an unfortunate incursion of RL, I was delighted to be asked to step in and to promote this show and its fandom. Without further ado,
Overview, or: Why You Should Watch This Show
While it has garnered a large and enthusiastic slash following, due South doesn't require the slash-colored glasses to be appreciated and enjoyed. Lauded for its intelligence, humor, and fine writing and acting, dS is fundamentally a show about worlds colliding, the juxtaposition of incompatibilities: the innocent and upright Canadian Mountie and the tough street-smart Chicago cop; the Arctic wilderness, and the city streets. The show often plays these differences for humor, tweaking both American stereotypes about Canada, and Canadian stereotypes about America. Beyond that, dS is distinguished by a quality generally described as "magical realism"--an incongruous meshing of fantasy, whimsy, and surrealism with the realistic police-procedural cop/buddy-show format.
But the show also digs below the wackiness and the playing-with-incongruities, to deal with more painful issues of loss, imposture, regret, and the personal costs of duty and justice. And at its core, dS is (as my friend Taz once pointed out) a ghost story; the overriding story arc is that of Fraser moving through a period of exile and disgrace, exorcising the ghosts of his father and his past, and coming full circle to where he began, as a new and free man. And it's also the story of his partners, Ray Vecchio and Ray Kowalski, exorcising their own father-bequeathed ghosts, moving outside their old facades and living through interludes of undercover and imposture to discover the authentic qualities they truly possess.
With all this high-mindedness, let us not forget the eye-candy factor, which is formidable. Paul Gross, who plays Fraser, is really just an amazingly beautiful man. David Marciano (Ray Vecchio) is not what you'd call conventionally handsome, but he has some compelling features (lovely eyes, for one) and is great fun to watch. And Callum Keith Rennie (Ray Kowalski) is Sex. On. Legs. Still pictures don't really do him justice, you have to see the guy in motion to appreciate it.
Summary of the Show
I first came to Chicago on the trail of the killers of my father, and for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, remained, attached as liaison to the Canadian Consulate. -- Benton Fraser
Few shows come equipped with their own epigraph, but due South does; however, this statement (which every true-blue dS fan has by heart) could stand some unpacking.
In the pilot episode, Benton Fraser, an RCMP constable stationed in the Northwest Territories, comes to Chicago in pursuit of the men who killed his father, Robert Fraser, also a Mountie. He teams up with Ray Vecchio, a detective with the Chicago Police Department, and though they solve the case, the outcome, which indicts a fellow Mountie, is displeasing to RCMP higher-ups, and they consign Fraser to a posting at the Canadian Consulate in Chicago, where he is delegated to menial duties. On the side, Fraser establishes an informal, ad-hoc, but highly effective working partnership with Vecchio, and brings his own brand of justice to the mean streets, usually leaving consternation and befuddlement in his wake while solving cases in highly unorthodox ways.
After a couple of years, Vecchio abruptly disappears while Fraser is on vacation in Canada, and is replaced by Ray Kowalski, a detective who is pretending to be Vecchio. This switcheroo is likely to be confusing to those nosing around on the fringes of the fandom, and can be explained in two ways:
What really happened: Alliance Atlantis, the production company, cancelled dS after the second season; they then changed their minds and re-upped it for another season, but were unable to come to terms with David Marciano, the actor who played Vecchio, and Callum Keith Rennie was brought on at the last minute to fill the Chicago-detective role.
How it's explained in the show: Ray Vecchio goes deep undercover with the Mob, impersonating Armando Langoustini, a Las Vegas Mafia boss killed in a car accident, to whom he bears an uncanny resemblance. Kowalski is in turn brought on in an undercover role impersonating Vecchio, to protect his cover. The utter silliness of this premise is heightened by the fact that Callum Keith Rennie does not bear even the slightest resemblance to David Marciano. Just remember, it's called magical realism, folks.
Fraser continues his partnership with the new "Ray Vecchio" (hereinafter referred to as "RayK"), until the series finale, "The Call of the Wild," when he returns to Canada, in pursuit of his father's old nemesis, and decides to remain in his home country. The various main characters are given epilogue send-offs which fans usually find more or less implausible, while Fraser and RayK harness up the sled dogs and head off together into the frozen North, in search of adventure. (The plausibility of that particular send-off depends on where one stands on the RayK-vs-RayV continuum, about which more later.)
Central Characters
Benton Fraser
The Mountie. On the surface, he is (even more than Duncan MacLeod) the perfect boy scout: trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent. He is ludicrously erudite, possessed of superhuman senses and abilities, stunningly handsome, incapable of falsehood, unfailingly polite and chivalrous.
He is also described by his colleagues, at various times, as "unhinged," "a freak," and "the most annoying man in the world." Beneath his picture-perfect Mountie facade, Fraser is a man of fierce principle, relentlessly dedicated to the pursuit of justice, willing to go to unreasonable extremes and to risk his own life (and that of both Rays) toward that end.
Though he is portrayed as irresistably attractive to women, Fraser is (by and large) chaste, reserved, and oblivious to others' advances. His apparent naivete about most elements of the modern urban world is matched by his seeming cluelessness about conventional social mores (and both, I would argue, are at least partly acts). In contrast, he's deeply knowledgeable about wilderness survival, tracking and hunting, Inuit folklore, weather, botany, and a wealth of other things seemingly irrelevant in a modern city (though that knowledge surprisingly often ends up serving him well). Fraser is an anachronism, a man out of time and place, without family, in exile, grounded by his adherence to beliefs and principles that went out of fashion decades ago.
Ray Vecchio
On the surface, Vecchio is Fraser's antithesis--a cynic, an opportunist, a materialist, the city rat to Fraser's country mouse. Vecchio is a man who cares deeply about his facades; he wears flashy clothes, he drives a classic Riviera, he likes to play the big man, to come across as suave, smooth, sardonic, and stylish. Also unlike Fraser, he's a family guy, living in the family house, the man of his noisy contentious family ever since the death of his father (an abusive and hostile drunk). It's strongly implied that he's not the most conscientious cop in the world, and he's clearly willing to bend the rules and play short cuts in his cases. He works the angles, he charms and connives. But under the surface Vecchio has a rock-solid core of loyalty and decency, and no matter how much Fraser exasperates him, no matter how many times Fraser blows up Ray's car or gets his suits wrecked or almost gets him killed, Ray stands by him.
Ray Kowalski
A very different flavor of Ray from Vecchio, RayK is spiky, hyperkinetic, intense, and volatile. He wears beat-up jeans and leather jackets, he drives a muscle car, he bristles and snarls and threatens violence. But if you look past the bluster, you see a vulnerable guy who wears his emotions on his skin. When we first meet RayK, he has taken on the undercover assignment as Vecchio in an apparent attempt to get away from his own life. He's filled with self-doubt, estranged from his family (his father rejected him after he dropped out of college and joined the police); he's haunted by his recent divorce from Stella, the great love of his life; and he seems to be burned out on police work (though he's clearly a fine cop, with three commendations on his record). Through his partnership with Fraser, RayK seems to regain a sense of focus and connection, to the point where at the end of the series he leaves his Chicago existence behind to follow Fraser off into the wilderness and a new life.
Regular Secondary Characters
Diefenbaker: Fraser's deaf wolf. Well, half-wolf. Who reads lips. In several languages. (Magical realism, remember?) There's a theory held by some dS fans that Dief represents Fraser's id, his libidinous, impulsive, appetitive side. Be that as it may, Dief is definitely an animal, with all of an animal's forthright appreciation of food, sex, comfort, but he's also endowed with humanlike powers of intellect and discernment. It's also true that in conversation with him Fraser shows more of his own human side--his snarkiness, impatience, peevishness--than with anyone else.
Robert Fraser: He appears very briefly in the Pilot, where he is shot and killed; then, starting with The Gift of the Wheelman, he appears to Fraser (and, on occasion, to a few others) as a ghost. A talkative, interfering ghost, given to offering unwelcome advice and bad platitudes. Bob Fraser was in his lifetime the mountie extraordinaire, the last of his breed, a hero and a legend of the North. He was also clearly a terrible parent and husband; he was almost never around; when he was home he slept outside with the dogs; he taught the six-year-old Benton to build a fire by leaving him alone in the woods at night with a piece of flint and a hunk of granite. His journals are a source of inspiration and education to Fraser; his memory is a source of grief and resentment; his actual (or, rather, ghostly) presence in Benton's life is a recurring source of annoyance.
Frannie Vecchio: Ray Vecchio's sister. When we first meet her, she's living with her mother, working a variety of dead-end jobs, getting past a failed marriage; but Frannie is ever-hopeful, ever-ambitious, driven to make something of herself, and eventually she lands a job as Civilian Aide at the 27th. Her hopeless infatuation with Fraser is a bittersweet joke that runs the duration of the series, until she finally bids him farewell in the finale. Frannie is a romantic with a realistic core; she yearns for true love and marital bliss, but she never stops working to improve herself and her prospects, and despite continued disappointments, she remains buoyant and hopeful.
Harding Welsh: Lieutenant in charge of the 27th Precinct, hence Vecchio's and Kowalski's supervisor. A middle-aged, hard-bitten, cynical, unsentimental realist, Welsh is at the same time intensely loyal to his detectives, and will go to the wall for them. Like practically everyone else in dS, he has father issues (elucidated in Doctor Longball) and a murky romantic/domestic past.
Renfield Turnbull: A fellow constable at the Chicago Consulate, Turnbull is -- well, just plain weird. Turnbull makes Fraser look normal. Certain fans have noted that the shows uses "Canadian"--as in, "Well, he's Canadian, y'know"--as an overt shorthand for weirdness that could also be read as a coding for queerness. Turnbull, however, needs no Canadian coding; he comes canonically pre-queered for your viewing pleasure. There are those who argue that there's a lot more to Turnbull than what we see, that he's yet another character playing a facade. I don't know which is more unsettling, frankly--the idea that he really is WYSIWYG, or the idea that there's a higher intellect operating back there.
Inspector Thatcher: A.k.a. The Ice Queen, Fraser's superior officer at the Consulate for most of the series. Thatcher is a hard-nosed, abrasive, domineering officer with a whim of steel, who often seems to take pleasure in humiliating Fraser. Over time, a strange attraction develops between them, and they go so far as to engage in some passionate kissing, on top of a speeding train loaded with explosives, but the relationship is (as far as we know) never consummated, and in the end they go their separate ways.
Stella Kowalski: RayK's ex-wife, his Gold Coast girl, born to wealth and privilege, now working as a hard-driving Assistant State's Attorney. Stella's portrayed rather inconsistently in canon, and sometimes comes across as rather a bitch, but it's clear she still has strong and conflicted feelings for Ray. Ray, for his part, is obsessed with her, at least through his first few episodes, going so far as to stalk her on her dates with a new boyfriend. It's strongly implied their divorce came about in part because he wanted kids and she didn't.
The Duck Brothers: Detectives at the 27th precinct. Initially Huey and Louie (Jack Huey and Louis Gardino); later, after Louie is killed in an explosion, Huey and Dewey (Thomas Dewey). They play a supporting role in various investigations, and serve as foils for the two Rays.
One-episode characters included here because they show up in fiction with some frequency:
Victoria Metcalfe: Beautiful, ruthless, seductive, and sociopathic, Victoria is canonically the only woman Fraser ever loved. She was a bank robber whom years ago Fraser pursued into a blizzard in Fortitude Pass, rescued at risk of his own life, fell in love with, and sent to jail. The two-part episode "Victoria's Secret" features her return, and the unfolding of her complex scheme of revenge on Fraser. It's an incredibly powerful two hours of television, and marks a turning point in the development of Fraser's character, and in the tone of the show.
Mark Smithbauer: Mentioned because there is a fair body of Fraser/Smithbauer slash out there, and not without cause. Smithbauer is a boyhood friend of Fraser's who went on to fame as a pro hockey player. He turns up in Chicago, an arrogant and hostile celebrity whose fading career has led him to perilous involvement with gamblers. Fraser, loyal as ever, extricates him, and they have a reconciliation that is quite moving even to those who don't *like* Smithbauer (which would include me).
Frank Zuko: Figurehead of a longtime Chicago Mob family, and Ray Vecchio's boyhood neighbor and nemesis. A bully, a jerk, and, without his underlings for backup, ultimately a chickenshit. His sister, Irene, was a long-ago flame of Vecchio's, and the re-ignited conflict between Vecchio and Frank, in "Juliet is Bleeding," leads to her death.
A brief and cautious note on the fandom:
Those in fandom-at-large who know little else about dS have likely heard of the Ray Wars, a firestorm of bitterness and antagonism that erupted after David Marciano left the show and Callum Keith Rennie joined it. Without going further into the whole farrago, I'll just say that there remain pockets of bad feeling; a person would be wise to assess her audience and weigh her words when speaking ill of either Ray, and to be aware that some mailing lists have rules about which Ray is an appropriate subject of conversation. Over time, there's been movement toward a middle ground, and a growth of appreciation for the show in its entirety and all the characters involved, which I can only hope continues.
Resources:
Episodes: Seasons One and Two are now available on DVD; season Three is supposed to be out in January 2004. ::glaring impatiently at calendar:: You should note that the Season One DVDs do *not* include the pilot episode, alas (it's available on VHS from www.amazon.ca). The series finale, Call of the Wild, is currently available on DVD from both US and Canadian Amazon (and probably from other sources)--which raises speculation that it won't be included on the Season Three DVDs. Continuing updates should be available on dsreporter.
General info sites:
The Official Due South Web Site: Just what the name implies.
William and Elyse's Due South Site: Lots of good general info on the show.
Real Due South: Good general info, *plus* complete episode transcripts.
Fiction Archives:
Fanfiction recommendations to follow shortly.
Overview, or: Why You Should Watch This Show
While it has garnered a large and enthusiastic slash following, due South doesn't require the slash-colored glasses to be appreciated and enjoyed. Lauded for its intelligence, humor, and fine writing and acting, dS is fundamentally a show about worlds colliding, the juxtaposition of incompatibilities: the innocent and upright Canadian Mountie and the tough street-smart Chicago cop; the Arctic wilderness, and the city streets. The show often plays these differences for humor, tweaking both American stereotypes about Canada, and Canadian stereotypes about America. Beyond that, dS is distinguished by a quality generally described as "magical realism"--an incongruous meshing of fantasy, whimsy, and surrealism with the realistic police-procedural cop/buddy-show format.
But the show also digs below the wackiness and the playing-with-incongruities, to deal with more painful issues of loss, imposture, regret, and the personal costs of duty and justice. And at its core, dS is (as my friend Taz once pointed out) a ghost story; the overriding story arc is that of Fraser moving through a period of exile and disgrace, exorcising the ghosts of his father and his past, and coming full circle to where he began, as a new and free man. And it's also the story of his partners, Ray Vecchio and Ray Kowalski, exorcising their own father-bequeathed ghosts, moving outside their old facades and living through interludes of undercover and imposture to discover the authentic qualities they truly possess.
With all this high-mindedness, let us not forget the eye-candy factor, which is formidable. Paul Gross, who plays Fraser, is really just an amazingly beautiful man. David Marciano (Ray Vecchio) is not what you'd call conventionally handsome, but he has some compelling features (lovely eyes, for one) and is great fun to watch. And Callum Keith Rennie (Ray Kowalski) is Sex. On. Legs. Still pictures don't really do him justice, you have to see the guy in motion to appreciate it.
Summary of the Show
I first came to Chicago on the trail of the killers of my father, and for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, remained, attached as liaison to the Canadian Consulate. -- Benton Fraser
Few shows come equipped with their own epigraph, but due South does; however, this statement (which every true-blue dS fan has by heart) could stand some unpacking.
In the pilot episode, Benton Fraser, an RCMP constable stationed in the Northwest Territories, comes to Chicago in pursuit of the men who killed his father, Robert Fraser, also a Mountie. He teams up with Ray Vecchio, a detective with the Chicago Police Department, and though they solve the case, the outcome, which indicts a fellow Mountie, is displeasing to RCMP higher-ups, and they consign Fraser to a posting at the Canadian Consulate in Chicago, where he is delegated to menial duties. On the side, Fraser establishes an informal, ad-hoc, but highly effective working partnership with Vecchio, and brings his own brand of justice to the mean streets, usually leaving consternation and befuddlement in his wake while solving cases in highly unorthodox ways.
After a couple of years, Vecchio abruptly disappears while Fraser is on vacation in Canada, and is replaced by Ray Kowalski, a detective who is pretending to be Vecchio. This switcheroo is likely to be confusing to those nosing around on the fringes of the fandom, and can be explained in two ways:
What really happened: Alliance Atlantis, the production company, cancelled dS after the second season; they then changed their minds and re-upped it for another season, but were unable to come to terms with David Marciano, the actor who played Vecchio, and Callum Keith Rennie was brought on at the last minute to fill the Chicago-detective role.
How it's explained in the show: Ray Vecchio goes deep undercover with the Mob, impersonating Armando Langoustini, a Las Vegas Mafia boss killed in a car accident, to whom he bears an uncanny resemblance. Kowalski is in turn brought on in an undercover role impersonating Vecchio, to protect his cover. The utter silliness of this premise is heightened by the fact that Callum Keith Rennie does not bear even the slightest resemblance to David Marciano. Just remember, it's called magical realism, folks.
Fraser continues his partnership with the new "Ray Vecchio" (hereinafter referred to as "RayK"), until the series finale, "The Call of the Wild," when he returns to Canada, in pursuit of his father's old nemesis, and decides to remain in his home country. The various main characters are given epilogue send-offs which fans usually find more or less implausible, while Fraser and RayK harness up the sled dogs and head off together into the frozen North, in search of adventure. (The plausibility of that particular send-off depends on where one stands on the RayK-vs-RayV continuum, about which more later.)
Central Characters
Benton Fraser
The Mountie. On the surface, he is (even more than Duncan MacLeod) the perfect boy scout: trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent. He is ludicrously erudite, possessed of superhuman senses and abilities, stunningly handsome, incapable of falsehood, unfailingly polite and chivalrous.
He is also described by his colleagues, at various times, as "unhinged," "a freak," and "the most annoying man in the world." Beneath his picture-perfect Mountie facade, Fraser is a man of fierce principle, relentlessly dedicated to the pursuit of justice, willing to go to unreasonable extremes and to risk his own life (and that of both Rays) toward that end.
Though he is portrayed as irresistably attractive to women, Fraser is (by and large) chaste, reserved, and oblivious to others' advances. His apparent naivete about most elements of the modern urban world is matched by his seeming cluelessness about conventional social mores (and both, I would argue, are at least partly acts). In contrast, he's deeply knowledgeable about wilderness survival, tracking and hunting, Inuit folklore, weather, botany, and a wealth of other things seemingly irrelevant in a modern city (though that knowledge surprisingly often ends up serving him well). Fraser is an anachronism, a man out of time and place, without family, in exile, grounded by his adherence to beliefs and principles that went out of fashion decades ago.
Ray Vecchio
On the surface, Vecchio is Fraser's antithesis--a cynic, an opportunist, a materialist, the city rat to Fraser's country mouse. Vecchio is a man who cares deeply about his facades; he wears flashy clothes, he drives a classic Riviera, he likes to play the big man, to come across as suave, smooth, sardonic, and stylish. Also unlike Fraser, he's a family guy, living in the family house, the man of his noisy contentious family ever since the death of his father (an abusive and hostile drunk). It's strongly implied that he's not the most conscientious cop in the world, and he's clearly willing to bend the rules and play short cuts in his cases. He works the angles, he charms and connives. But under the surface Vecchio has a rock-solid core of loyalty and decency, and no matter how much Fraser exasperates him, no matter how many times Fraser blows up Ray's car or gets his suits wrecked or almost gets him killed, Ray stands by him.
Ray Kowalski
A very different flavor of Ray from Vecchio, RayK is spiky, hyperkinetic, intense, and volatile. He wears beat-up jeans and leather jackets, he drives a muscle car, he bristles and snarls and threatens violence. But if you look past the bluster, you see a vulnerable guy who wears his emotions on his skin. When we first meet RayK, he has taken on the undercover assignment as Vecchio in an apparent attempt to get away from his own life. He's filled with self-doubt, estranged from his family (his father rejected him after he dropped out of college and joined the police); he's haunted by his recent divorce from Stella, the great love of his life; and he seems to be burned out on police work (though he's clearly a fine cop, with three commendations on his record). Through his partnership with Fraser, RayK seems to regain a sense of focus and connection, to the point where at the end of the series he leaves his Chicago existence behind to follow Fraser off into the wilderness and a new life.
Regular Secondary Characters
Diefenbaker: Fraser's deaf wolf. Well, half-wolf. Who reads lips. In several languages. (Magical realism, remember?) There's a theory held by some dS fans that Dief represents Fraser's id, his libidinous, impulsive, appetitive side. Be that as it may, Dief is definitely an animal, with all of an animal's forthright appreciation of food, sex, comfort, but he's also endowed with humanlike powers of intellect and discernment. It's also true that in conversation with him Fraser shows more of his own human side--his snarkiness, impatience, peevishness--than with anyone else.
Robert Fraser: He appears very briefly in the Pilot, where he is shot and killed; then, starting with The Gift of the Wheelman, he appears to Fraser (and, on occasion, to a few others) as a ghost. A talkative, interfering ghost, given to offering unwelcome advice and bad platitudes. Bob Fraser was in his lifetime the mountie extraordinaire, the last of his breed, a hero and a legend of the North. He was also clearly a terrible parent and husband; he was almost never around; when he was home he slept outside with the dogs; he taught the six-year-old Benton to build a fire by leaving him alone in the woods at night with a piece of flint and a hunk of granite. His journals are a source of inspiration and education to Fraser; his memory is a source of grief and resentment; his actual (or, rather, ghostly) presence in Benton's life is a recurring source of annoyance.
Frannie Vecchio: Ray Vecchio's sister. When we first meet her, she's living with her mother, working a variety of dead-end jobs, getting past a failed marriage; but Frannie is ever-hopeful, ever-ambitious, driven to make something of herself, and eventually she lands a job as Civilian Aide at the 27th. Her hopeless infatuation with Fraser is a bittersweet joke that runs the duration of the series, until she finally bids him farewell in the finale. Frannie is a romantic with a realistic core; she yearns for true love and marital bliss, but she never stops working to improve herself and her prospects, and despite continued disappointments, she remains buoyant and hopeful.
Harding Welsh: Lieutenant in charge of the 27th Precinct, hence Vecchio's and Kowalski's supervisor. A middle-aged, hard-bitten, cynical, unsentimental realist, Welsh is at the same time intensely loyal to his detectives, and will go to the wall for them. Like practically everyone else in dS, he has father issues (elucidated in Doctor Longball) and a murky romantic/domestic past.
Renfield Turnbull: A fellow constable at the Chicago Consulate, Turnbull is -- well, just plain weird. Turnbull makes Fraser look normal. Certain fans have noted that the shows uses "Canadian"--as in, "Well, he's Canadian, y'know"--as an overt shorthand for weirdness that could also be read as a coding for queerness. Turnbull, however, needs no Canadian coding; he comes canonically pre-queered for your viewing pleasure. There are those who argue that there's a lot more to Turnbull than what we see, that he's yet another character playing a facade. I don't know which is more unsettling, frankly--the idea that he really is WYSIWYG, or the idea that there's a higher intellect operating back there.
Inspector Thatcher: A.k.a. The Ice Queen, Fraser's superior officer at the Consulate for most of the series. Thatcher is a hard-nosed, abrasive, domineering officer with a whim of steel, who often seems to take pleasure in humiliating Fraser. Over time, a strange attraction develops between them, and they go so far as to engage in some passionate kissing, on top of a speeding train loaded with explosives, but the relationship is (as far as we know) never consummated, and in the end they go their separate ways.
Stella Kowalski: RayK's ex-wife, his Gold Coast girl, born to wealth and privilege, now working as a hard-driving Assistant State's Attorney. Stella's portrayed rather inconsistently in canon, and sometimes comes across as rather a bitch, but it's clear she still has strong and conflicted feelings for Ray. Ray, for his part, is obsessed with her, at least through his first few episodes, going so far as to stalk her on her dates with a new boyfriend. It's strongly implied their divorce came about in part because he wanted kids and she didn't.
The Duck Brothers: Detectives at the 27th precinct. Initially Huey and Louie (Jack Huey and Louis Gardino); later, after Louie is killed in an explosion, Huey and Dewey (Thomas Dewey). They play a supporting role in various investigations, and serve as foils for the two Rays.
One-episode characters included here because they show up in fiction with some frequency:
Victoria Metcalfe: Beautiful, ruthless, seductive, and sociopathic, Victoria is canonically the only woman Fraser ever loved. She was a bank robber whom years ago Fraser pursued into a blizzard in Fortitude Pass, rescued at risk of his own life, fell in love with, and sent to jail. The two-part episode "Victoria's Secret" features her return, and the unfolding of her complex scheme of revenge on Fraser. It's an incredibly powerful two hours of television, and marks a turning point in the development of Fraser's character, and in the tone of the show.
Mark Smithbauer: Mentioned because there is a fair body of Fraser/Smithbauer slash out there, and not without cause. Smithbauer is a boyhood friend of Fraser's who went on to fame as a pro hockey player. He turns up in Chicago, an arrogant and hostile celebrity whose fading career has led him to perilous involvement with gamblers. Fraser, loyal as ever, extricates him, and they have a reconciliation that is quite moving even to those who don't *like* Smithbauer (which would include me).
Frank Zuko: Figurehead of a longtime Chicago Mob family, and Ray Vecchio's boyhood neighbor and nemesis. A bully, a jerk, and, without his underlings for backup, ultimately a chickenshit. His sister, Irene, was a long-ago flame of Vecchio's, and the re-ignited conflict between Vecchio and Frank, in "Juliet is Bleeding," leads to her death.
A brief and cautious note on the fandom:
Those in fandom-at-large who know little else about dS have likely heard of the Ray Wars, a firestorm of bitterness and antagonism that erupted after David Marciano left the show and Callum Keith Rennie joined it. Without going further into the whole farrago, I'll just say that there remain pockets of bad feeling; a person would be wise to assess her audience and weigh her words when speaking ill of either Ray, and to be aware that some mailing lists have rules about which Ray is an appropriate subject of conversation. Over time, there's been movement toward a middle ground, and a growth of appreciation for the show in its entirety and all the characters involved, which I can only hope continues.
Resources:
Episodes: Seasons One and Two are now available on DVD; season Three is supposed to be out in January 2004. ::glaring impatiently at calendar:: You should note that the Season One DVDs do *not* include the pilot episode, alas (it's available on VHS from www.amazon.ca). The series finale, Call of the Wild, is currently available on DVD from both US and Canadian Amazon (and probably from other sources)--which raises speculation that it won't be included on the Season Three DVDs. Continuing updates should be available on dsreporter.
General info sites:
The Official Due South Web Site: Just what the name implies.
William and Elyse's Due South Site: Lots of good general info on the show.
Real Due South: Good general info, *plus* complete episode transcripts.
Fiction Archives:
- Due South Archive (a.k.a. "Ex-wood"): A comprehensive archive of due South fanfiction of all kinds, slash, gen, het, both Rays, etc. This was formerly known as Hexwood, but moved a couple of years ago to a new server and new management. It certainly represents the largest repository of dS fanfic, dating from the beginning of the fandom.
- Due Slash: An all-Rays-inclusive slash fiction archive.
- Bindlestitch: Archives of fiction from the Bindlestitch mailing list. Any and all Rays/pairings/genres, of especial interest to kink-fanciers in the audience.
- Red Ships and Green Ships: A Fraser/Kowalski slash archive.
- Just the Fics: This was the archive of Fraser/Vecchio fiction from the Two Axes list. Anyone know where it's gone?
- The Welsh Fanfiction Archive: Gen and slash. I love Welsh, yes I do, and I'm pleased he's got his own digs.
- Lavender: A small e-zine archive focused on the female characters of dS. Slash and gen.
- dsreporter: A frequently-updated news bulletin posting items of interest to the fandom: announcements of new fiction, recent projects by dS actors, DVD releases, etc.
- ds_flashfiction: A community for posting short thematically-focused fiction; topic changes weekly. All characters, pairings, and genres welcome.
- ds_discourse: A community for discussion of the show (no meta, no fiction).
- ds_writers: A community for dS fanfiction writers and readers of all persuasions to congregate, talk about stories, seek betas, etc.
- ds_flashback: A source of recommendations, especially for older fiction that might not be known to newer fans.
- CallumKeithRennie.net: Probably the most comprehensive source of episode screencaps currently extant (including lots of high-quality caps from the Seasons 1 and 2 DVDs), along with plenty of pictures of CKR, PG, and others.
- The sites mentioned under "General Info" above also offer a nice assortment of publicity photos and screencaps.
Fanfiction recommendations to follow shortly.