the women of due South
You know who are pretty cool? The women of due South.
[WARNING: cut tag may contain Unpopular Fannish Opinions (tm). consider "IMHO" to be included throughout.]
A very long time ago, I saw a semi-offhand comment in joandarck's journal (I think it was hers?) saying something to the effect of "due South is NOT about women." Which I agree with, at a very basic level. The show is about Fraser and Vecchio and Kowalski. All guys. We slash them in myriad combinations. It's damned fun. And there are more guys in secondary roles (Welsh, the Duck Boys, Turnbull, most of the bad guys). But running around in the background, there are all these awesome women. I'm going to focus on Frannie, Thatcher, Stella, and Victoria, with a tiny bit about Angie and Elaine.
I adore the due South women to tiny little pieces, and I wanna talk about them. A lot.
Frannie Vecchio
The first main female character we see is Frannie, in the pilot. She looks about twelve, with that awful hair. And of course, one of the first things we see her do is find out if Fraser is single. Because there's Frannie in a nutshell: panting after Fraser. All the time. Throughout the entire series. Raise your hand if you thought it got real old real fast. ::counts hands:: Yeah, me too. But you have to hand it to her, she's tenacious, and really freaking ballsy. She seemed completely oblivious to how utterly uncomfortable her advances made Fraser, and she has the guts to show up at his place in a corset and heels. Uh, damn. It almost makes you want to cheer her on. Go Frannie! Get your Mountie! (I said 'almost'.)
But it's nice to see her grow up a little over the course of the show. She becomes very capable in her Civilian Aide role, going so far as to help (I use that term loosely) with the interrogation in Mountie On The Bounty, and the investigation in Call Of The Wild. And she expresses interest in the police academy, which made me bounce with glee when I first saw it, hat issues be damned.
Ultimately though, I think Frannie's story is a bit of a tragedy. She gets saddled with SIX KIDS. My jaw hit the floor when I watched the end of Call Of The Wild for the first time. Frannie? With six kids?? Why, writers, why? She wanted to be a cop! She wanted to go to the academy and keep on doing the work she so obviously enjoys. So much for gender equality and eradication of stereotypes and hello, Frannie's characterization. She was so much more interested in having a career than a family by the end of the show. Fortunately, we have An Officer And A Gentleman by laurakaye, and if more people wrote Frannie-as-cop fic, my little heart would explode with joy.
Also, Frannie is really fun to slash. If she sets her mind on something, she goes after it. And if she can't have Fraser, well. There's wonderful Frannie/Elaine and Frannie/Stella and even Frannie/Thatcher out there, so I'll just rec Chick Habit by ignazwisdom and have done with it. :D
Meg Thatcher
Now how cool is she in season two? Yeah, way cooler than that. Ice Queen indeed. The first words out of her mouth are "You're fired." She is gorgeous and driven and I'm continually amazed at how disliked she is. Well, not really amazed; there's a lot there to dislike, but she wasn't 100% Dragon Lady either. There's a little three-sizes-too-small heart in her somewhere. Major sparkage with Fraser in and on the train, and I realize that Red White Or Blue was all about the Fraser/Vecchio, but just one word: semaphore. I love her to bits in that episode, how she just knows she has more competency in her little finger than in all those Feebs put together. Way hot.
Thatcher in the last two seasons is disappointing to me in the same way Frannie is. She basically transforms into another Frannie, just with a red uniform, less overtness, and more authority. And a bigger chance of having her way with Fraser in the guise of dragging him off to Toronto. Which I think is too bad. I mean, in season two we see this woman in a position of actual power who looks like she's had to fight her way through the Old Boys' Club to get where she is, and then she becomes just another Fraser-following female (if I may abuse alliteration), used mainly for humor. Very disappointing. I love to see a more in-depth Thatcher in fic, and the ones I'm thinking of I can't bloody find which is very frustrating. If anyone remembers these: one has Thatcher receiving her sister's wedding invitation, and another that I know is by katrin and has a very angry Meg. [edit: found katrin's! In A Cold Climate.]
Stella Kowalski
Stella tends to get written off as the bitch, the shrew, the cold woman who made Ray miserable. And that characterization is valid; that's basically what we see on the show, and if that Stella works for you, that's fine. But that Stella doesn't work for me.
I'm reminded of how every so often, dS fandom plays "cliff, shag, marry." Ray Kowalski is never (ok, hardly ever) the one you marry. He always gets cliffed or shagged. But Stella actually did marry the guy. And all the things we love about Ray-- the nervous tics, the hyperactivity, the semi-incoherency, the risk-taking and dangerous work-- Stella actually lived with it. They were together for a long time (since they were kids) and they obviously tried to make it work, and they couldn't. Divorce is never a happy thing. I have boatloads of sympathy for her, for both of them.
The thing I really love about Stella's character is her determination. Anyone who can get through law school at all, let alone become Assistant State's Attorney, has my respect. And hey, here's another woman with power on the show, and that's pretty cool too. A fic that I think gets this about Stella is Kowalski by kormantic.
And her relationship with Ray. Like I said above, she can be bitchy, and she can be cold, but I think she's completely justified in her attitude toward him. It sometimes seems like Ray doesn't really get that Stella is off-limits, like maybe the divorce was on the same level as making him sleep on the couch. The way he goes after her (see Strange Bedfellows and Good For The Soul) is totally inappropriate for a divorced couple (especially in the workplace). He acts like he's trying to pick her up in a bar. And what do you do with irritating guys in bars who won't leave you alone and are a little disturbing in their attentions? You dig around in your purse for the mace. Don't get me wrong, I love Ray. But I can see where Stella's coming from.
On the other hand, running off to Florida with Ray Vecchio at the end of the series? What was she thinking? Not that Vecchio's a bad choice (he's the one we all marry in "cliff, shag, marry"), but it doesn't really seem to be a well-thought-out decision. Does she give up her career entirely for a bowling alley, or does she do the private firm thing down there? Is she really in love with Vecchio, or has she fallen for a slick-dressed, sharp-eyed Armando Languistini? It's a neat and tidy, 'pair everyone up' end for the show, but to me it rings false. Stella's worked too hard and come too far to give it all up for margaritas on the beach. I can't see that as being her happily ever after.
Victoria Metcalfe
Yeah, Victoria. We love to hate Victoria. She makes it entirely easy, because she is of course the bitch queen from hell. But I also think she's very interesting.
Here's the thing about Victoria. She, like the other women I've talked about, is intelligent and determined and totally focused, but on all the wrong things. If she had used her powers for good instead of evil, the dS universe would be a very different place. She and Fraser would either be a happy couple, or would never have met at all (making Fraser's woman-related hangups almost nonexistent). But I'm veering into AU territory here.
Victoria is crucial to Fraser's character. She's a critical part of his past. Like Angie and Ray, we get to know more about Fraser through her. I find it difficult to talk knowledgeably about Victoria and Fraser since I'm sort of wobbly on Fraser's character in the first place, and also because Victoria's two-parter is just so painful to watch. Boy meets girl, boy saves girl from freezing to death on a mountainside, boy arrests girl, girl exacts malicious revenge. But I think Victoria actually loved Fraser, if only in a completely messed up sense. She begs him to come with her. I'm sure that has something to do with the fact that Fraser had been useful to her and she thinks she can exploit that some more while on the run, but I believe it partly has to do with love as well. Crazy fracked-up love, but still love. I mean, her face when she's reaching out to him on the train? That isn't manipulative calculation, that's desperation and maybe even hope.
Victoria is a convenient villain to bring back in fic since her story is open-ended after Victoria's Secret part 2, and in fic she's usually seen as no-holds-barred insane and bent on revenge. I think that's a fair characterization. If left to go on as she had been at the end of her appearance on the show, I think any effort at rehabilitating her would be a lost cause. Unfortunately, there isn't any fic (that I know of; prove me wrong!) that features her in a role other than villain of the week. I think that might be interesting to see.
Angie Vecchio
Okay, I realize that she shows up in just two episodes and we know next to nothing about her, but god I love Angie. She's a mysterious little piece of Ray's personal history, adding quite a lot of depth to his character. I mean, she's his ex-wife. Which is interesting, since Ray is Catholic and divorce is generally frowned upon amongst Catholics. And why did they divorce? We don't know. But then again, they did get married, so they must have been in love at some point. We know so little about her, but there are tantalizing little details if you pay attention. In the One Good Man flashback scene, Angie has a police's patch on her coat, so we know she was a cop too. We know she and Ray were married during the first Carver case, but their marriage was on the rocks at the time. We know she drives a Mustang, and that she's a bit snarky and not afraid to snip a little at Ray.
And you know, that's about it. But that's more than enough to get me interested in this cute little woman who was so important to Ray at one time in his life. Please see Backward Glance by brooklinegirl (other pairings involved as well) for a lovely little glimpse into Angie.
and... Elaine Besbriss
Just a quick bit about Elaine. She's the only female character in dS that, to me, has a satisfying ending. She works her butt off at the 27th, does grunt work for all the detectives, trains a slightly hopeless Frannie as the new Civilian Aide, and graduates the academy with an arrest already under her belt. How awesome is that? Of course she crushes on Fraser but the whole world does that, so I'll forgive her. She's dedicated and she has a good head on her shoulders, and she looks darn snappy in the uniform. (And she slashes wonderfully with Frannie.) Go Elaine!
And here's a mystery girl for you: Fraser is looking at a black and white photograph of a woman at the end of You Must Remember This. She has blonde or maybe light brown hair which obscures her face, and she wears a dark coat. Who is she? Not Victoria, that's for sure.
There are so many other cool chicks on the show: Maggie McKenzie, the mothers (Ma Vecchio; Barbara Kowalski; even dead, Caroline Fraser played a significant role), Maria, Irene Zuko, Agent Suzanne Chapin, Denny Scarpa, Agent Anita Cortez, Fraser's physical therapist Jill Kennedy, States Attorney Louise St. Laurent... I love them all. I love seeing how their influences shape our boys, and shape the stories.
So let's talk about girls! Who's your favorite female character? Tell me what I missed! Tell me why you disagree with me entirely! (By the way-- I will answer comments, just not immediately. I work nights, and it's my bedtime. So don't worry if I don't answer right away.)
[WARNING: cut tag may contain Unpopular Fannish Opinions (tm). consider "IMHO" to be included throughout.]
A very long time ago, I saw a semi-offhand comment in joandarck's journal (I think it was hers?) saying something to the effect of "due South is NOT about women." Which I agree with, at a very basic level. The show is about Fraser and Vecchio and Kowalski. All guys. We slash them in myriad combinations. It's damned fun. And there are more guys in secondary roles (Welsh, the Duck Boys, Turnbull, most of the bad guys). But running around in the background, there are all these awesome women. I'm going to focus on Frannie, Thatcher, Stella, and Victoria, with a tiny bit about Angie and Elaine.
I adore the due South women to tiny little pieces, and I wanna talk about them. A lot.
Frannie Vecchio
The first main female character we see is Frannie, in the pilot. She looks about twelve, with that awful hair. And of course, one of the first things we see her do is find out if Fraser is single. Because there's Frannie in a nutshell: panting after Fraser. All the time. Throughout the entire series. Raise your hand if you thought it got real old real fast. ::counts hands:: Yeah, me too. But you have to hand it to her, she's tenacious, and really freaking ballsy. She seemed completely oblivious to how utterly uncomfortable her advances made Fraser, and she has the guts to show up at his place in a corset and heels. Uh, damn. It almost makes you want to cheer her on. Go Frannie! Get your Mountie! (I said 'almost'.)
But it's nice to see her grow up a little over the course of the show. She becomes very capable in her Civilian Aide role, going so far as to help (I use that term loosely) with the interrogation in Mountie On The Bounty, and the investigation in Call Of The Wild. And she expresses interest in the police academy, which made me bounce with glee when I first saw it, hat issues be damned.
Ultimately though, I think Frannie's story is a bit of a tragedy. She gets saddled with SIX KIDS. My jaw hit the floor when I watched the end of Call Of The Wild for the first time. Frannie? With six kids?? Why, writers, why? She wanted to be a cop! She wanted to go to the academy and keep on doing the work she so obviously enjoys. So much for gender equality and eradication of stereotypes and hello, Frannie's characterization. She was so much more interested in having a career than a family by the end of the show. Fortunately, we have An Officer And A Gentleman by laurakaye, and if more people wrote Frannie-as-cop fic, my little heart would explode with joy.
Also, Frannie is really fun to slash. If she sets her mind on something, she goes after it. And if she can't have Fraser, well. There's wonderful Frannie/Elaine and Frannie/Stella and even Frannie/Thatcher out there, so I'll just rec Chick Habit by ignazwisdom and have done with it. :D
Meg Thatcher
Now how cool is she in season two? Yeah, way cooler than that. Ice Queen indeed. The first words out of her mouth are "You're fired." She is gorgeous and driven and I'm continually amazed at how disliked she is. Well, not really amazed; there's a lot there to dislike, but she wasn't 100% Dragon Lady either. There's a little three-sizes-too-small heart in her somewhere. Major sparkage with Fraser in and on the train, and I realize that Red White Or Blue was all about the Fraser/Vecchio, but just one word: semaphore. I love her to bits in that episode, how she just knows she has more competency in her little finger than in all those Feebs put together. Way hot.
Thatcher in the last two seasons is disappointing to me in the same way Frannie is. She basically transforms into another Frannie, just with a red uniform, less overtness, and more authority. And a bigger chance of having her way with Fraser in the guise of dragging him off to Toronto. Which I think is too bad. I mean, in season two we see this woman in a position of actual power who looks like she's had to fight her way through the Old Boys' Club to get where she is, and then she becomes just another Fraser-following female (if I may abuse alliteration), used mainly for humor. Very disappointing. I love to see a more in-depth Thatcher in fic, and the ones I'm thinking of I can't bloody find which is very frustrating. If anyone remembers these: one has Thatcher receiving her sister's wedding invitation, and another that I know is by katrin and has a very angry Meg. [edit: found katrin's! In A Cold Climate.]
Stella Kowalski
Stella tends to get written off as the bitch, the shrew, the cold woman who made Ray miserable. And that characterization is valid; that's basically what we see on the show, and if that Stella works for you, that's fine. But that Stella doesn't work for me.
I'm reminded of how every so often, dS fandom plays "cliff, shag, marry." Ray Kowalski is never (ok, hardly ever) the one you marry. He always gets cliffed or shagged. But Stella actually did marry the guy. And all the things we love about Ray-- the nervous tics, the hyperactivity, the semi-incoherency, the risk-taking and dangerous work-- Stella actually lived with it. They were together for a long time (since they were kids) and they obviously tried to make it work, and they couldn't. Divorce is never a happy thing. I have boatloads of sympathy for her, for both of them.
The thing I really love about Stella's character is her determination. Anyone who can get through law school at all, let alone become Assistant State's Attorney, has my respect. And hey, here's another woman with power on the show, and that's pretty cool too. A fic that I think gets this about Stella is Kowalski by kormantic.
And her relationship with Ray. Like I said above, she can be bitchy, and she can be cold, but I think she's completely justified in her attitude toward him. It sometimes seems like Ray doesn't really get that Stella is off-limits, like maybe the divorce was on the same level as making him sleep on the couch. The way he goes after her (see Strange Bedfellows and Good For The Soul) is totally inappropriate for a divorced couple (especially in the workplace). He acts like he's trying to pick her up in a bar. And what do you do with irritating guys in bars who won't leave you alone and are a little disturbing in their attentions? You dig around in your purse for the mace. Don't get me wrong, I love Ray. But I can see where Stella's coming from.
On the other hand, running off to Florida with Ray Vecchio at the end of the series? What was she thinking? Not that Vecchio's a bad choice (he's the one we all marry in "cliff, shag, marry"), but it doesn't really seem to be a well-thought-out decision. Does she give up her career entirely for a bowling alley, or does she do the private firm thing down there? Is she really in love with Vecchio, or has she fallen for a slick-dressed, sharp-eyed Armando Languistini? It's a neat and tidy, 'pair everyone up' end for the show, but to me it rings false. Stella's worked too hard and come too far to give it all up for margaritas on the beach. I can't see that as being her happily ever after.
Victoria Metcalfe
Yeah, Victoria. We love to hate Victoria. She makes it entirely easy, because she is of course the bitch queen from hell. But I also think she's very interesting.
Here's the thing about Victoria. She, like the other women I've talked about, is intelligent and determined and totally focused, but on all the wrong things. If she had used her powers for good instead of evil, the dS universe would be a very different place. She and Fraser would either be a happy couple, or would never have met at all (making Fraser's woman-related hangups almost nonexistent). But I'm veering into AU territory here.
Victoria is crucial to Fraser's character. She's a critical part of his past. Like Angie and Ray, we get to know more about Fraser through her. I find it difficult to talk knowledgeably about Victoria and Fraser since I'm sort of wobbly on Fraser's character in the first place, and also because Victoria's two-parter is just so painful to watch. Boy meets girl, boy saves girl from freezing to death on a mountainside, boy arrests girl, girl exacts malicious revenge. But I think Victoria actually loved Fraser, if only in a completely messed up sense. She begs him to come with her. I'm sure that has something to do with the fact that Fraser had been useful to her and she thinks she can exploit that some more while on the run, but I believe it partly has to do with love as well. Crazy fracked-up love, but still love. I mean, her face when she's reaching out to him on the train? That isn't manipulative calculation, that's desperation and maybe even hope.
Victoria is a convenient villain to bring back in fic since her story is open-ended after Victoria's Secret part 2, and in fic she's usually seen as no-holds-barred insane and bent on revenge. I think that's a fair characterization. If left to go on as she had been at the end of her appearance on the show, I think any effort at rehabilitating her would be a lost cause. Unfortunately, there isn't any fic (that I know of; prove me wrong!) that features her in a role other than villain of the week. I think that might be interesting to see.
Angie Vecchio
Okay, I realize that she shows up in just two episodes and we know next to nothing about her, but god I love Angie. She's a mysterious little piece of Ray's personal history, adding quite a lot of depth to his character. I mean, she's his ex-wife. Which is interesting, since Ray is Catholic and divorce is generally frowned upon amongst Catholics. And why did they divorce? We don't know. But then again, they did get married, so they must have been in love at some point. We know so little about her, but there are tantalizing little details if you pay attention. In the One Good Man flashback scene, Angie has a police's patch on her coat, so we know she was a cop too. We know she and Ray were married during the first Carver case, but their marriage was on the rocks at the time. We know she drives a Mustang, and that she's a bit snarky and not afraid to snip a little at Ray.
And you know, that's about it. But that's more than enough to get me interested in this cute little woman who was so important to Ray at one time in his life. Please see Backward Glance by brooklinegirl (other pairings involved as well) for a lovely little glimpse into Angie.
and... Elaine Besbriss
Just a quick bit about Elaine. She's the only female character in dS that, to me, has a satisfying ending. She works her butt off at the 27th, does grunt work for all the detectives, trains a slightly hopeless Frannie as the new Civilian Aide, and graduates the academy with an arrest already under her belt. How awesome is that? Of course she crushes on Fraser but the whole world does that, so I'll forgive her. She's dedicated and she has a good head on her shoulders, and she looks darn snappy in the uniform. (And she slashes wonderfully with Frannie.) Go Elaine!
And here's a mystery girl for you: Fraser is looking at a black and white photograph of a woman at the end of You Must Remember This. She has blonde or maybe light brown hair which obscures her face, and she wears a dark coat. Who is she? Not Victoria, that's for sure.
There are so many other cool chicks on the show: Maggie McKenzie, the mothers (Ma Vecchio; Barbara Kowalski; even dead, Caroline Fraser played a significant role), Maria, Irene Zuko, Agent Suzanne Chapin, Denny Scarpa, Agent Anita Cortez, Fraser's physical therapist Jill Kennedy, States Attorney Louise St. Laurent... I love them all. I love seeing how their influences shape our boys, and shape the stories.
So let's talk about girls! Who's your favorite female character? Tell me what I missed! Tell me why you disagree with me entirely! (By the way-- I will answer comments, just not immediately. I work nights, and it's my bedtime. So don't worry if I don't answer right away.)