Previous eps have prepared us for this climactic double-bill; from Ben's reply to Dief's disapproval of his dinner arrangement with Mackenzie King ('Just because you were right once does not mean you are infallible'), through his subtle lack of concurrence with Buck's daughter in Manhunt, when she says 'Put you within arm's reach of a woman and you're totally lost, to the wonderful speech in YMRT prefiguring that of the confessional, we know that there has been one - and only one - love in Ben's life, and that it ended...badly. In VS she turns up - and there follows arguably the best ninety minutes (I'm a Brit, we don't get any adverts during BBC broadcasts) of television ever made. It is flawlessly acted by everyone from the three main protagonists to the old lady living next door to Jolly (who was the genius who thought to give her that Miss Arkansas sash?), and they are aided by a beautifully constructed script (not so much in terms of the plot, but in the emotional arc of the story and the various recurring motifs that support it) and some superb directorial choices.
Tempted as I am to work my way through every frame in microscopic detail, I think I'd better just stick to some of the key points in some key scenes...well, perhaps I'll indulge myself a little when it comes to the moment when Victoria returns to OFM's apartment to have her wicked way with him - hey, I'm only human <vbg>.
The first tiny sign we get that all is not as usual with Ben is when he replies to Ray's 'What's up?' with 'Nothing...I just thought I saw a woman I used to know'. Woman? Woman? Since when has Benton Fraser ever considered gender to be a defining characteristic?! Were he referring to anyone else, he would have said 'someone I used to know' - and I think the use of the word 'woman' is a little marker from PH and DS to let us know that we are in for something qualitatively different in this ep.
Then come the scenes of Ben in his apartment, cooking an unappetising meal for himself and Diefenbaker - emphasising his isolation and laying one of the foundations for his vulnerability to Victoria. And then the first strains of Sarah McLachlan are heard (her music is perfect for this ep - hands up who rushed out and bought Fumbling Towards Ecstasy and still won't let anyone in the house speak while That Track is playing!) to accompany the shots of Ben in his apartment covering his face (in despair? longing? both?) and of him and Victoria trapped on opposite sides of an endlessly revolving door as her gaze rests accusingly on him. These scenes are almost unique in the annals of DS, since they comprise one of the very few times we ever get a direct representation of what is going on inside OFM's head (his memories of Victoria in "Letting Go" is the only other time I can remember offhand) - and this signals the depth of the guilt he feels and that both he and we the viewers can expect an emotional involvement way beyond normal expectations.
Appropriately, therefore, the next major scene is the confessional speech, upon which the credibility of Ben and Victoria's relationship (and the ep) depends - and boy, does it deliver, without one wasted or misplaced word. The extremity of the circumstances - the expectation of death, the separation from the rest of society, from its duties and mores - answers the crucial question of just how OFM ever got physically or emotionally close enough to a woman to fall in love with her (book your crag in the frozen north now, Frannie <g>). The fact that Ben mentions them being at one point camped 'within sight of the church's steeple' lends a suggestion of matrimony and spirituality to complement their - how can I put this? - physical union (not described but evoked - mastery of the oblique approach is one of DS major strengths - by the womblike confinement under his coat and the sensuousness of his putting her fingers in his mouth to keep them warm, and of her beautiful, enveloping voice - 'the only thing I had to hold onto...'). And this surely compounds his feeling that he betrayed her; when they survived, duty reasserted itself over love and passion, and he chose not to let her go but to hand her over to the police and to a decade in jail. And while his ever-obtuse father may not be able to empathises with his son's situation (although please bear in mind that Fraser Sr. does not have a Sarah McLachlan soundtrack to guide him <g>), I think I can safely say that by this point in the ep, most viewers are biting their lips and telling themselves it is ridiculous to cry at a television series (the others have PMT and are already sobbing unashamedly into their sofa cushions and vowing to catch the next flight to Tuktoyaktuk <g>).
And then he meets her. Two brilliant touches - the slow-motion blurred shots of his standing in the middle of the road, conveying the uniquely disorientating effect she has on him; and the smile he gives when she finally stands before him in the doorway to the diner (what is it with these two and doorways? Freud would have a field day <g>). Do you know what I mean if I say it's one of the few times OFM lets his guard down and reacts like an ordinary, unrepressed, unstetsonned man would. And then he doesn't say 'No thank you' to the diner owner - and we know for sure we've got trouble.
CUT TO: The knock on Ben's apartment door, a.k.a. the moment we've all been waiting for, a.k.a. the moment we've all been dreading - enter Victoria and Sarah McLachlan, and I think I could watch the sequence from 'Did you think we could just forget about it?...How could you do that to me...how?' to the moment the frame dissolves into a flash of white light (do I detect a touch of sexual symbolism here?) just about forever. I love the way he goes completely still when she turns up at his door and lets her push him around before crossing some internal Rubicon that allows him finally to wrap his arms around her and not let her go. I always wonder whose decision it was not to let them go straight into a big snogfest but to keep hanging onto each other for those extra few seconds, forcing the entire audience to the edge of their seats, because it is a stroke of genius - it instantly makes the whole thing ten times sexier; anticipation is all! Using a long shot much of the time instead of the standard close-up when they kiss (and even the close-ups are dark and obscured by the falling snow) maintains the tension; and the snow adds another kind of frisson, reminding us of the circumstances in which their relationship was formed and of all its attendant, doom-laden connotations. Cue several million women torn between wanting to see Benton get seriously sexy just once and wanting to scream 'Don't do it Ben, she's the devil! And you're mine anyway - get off her!'.
We must not forget, of course, how brilliantly the other relationship (Ben and Ray's) is also being drawn. PG and DM carry off all their scenes together perfectly, moving seamlessly from the comic (when Ray turns up at Ben's apartment to find out why he is not at the Consulate - 'You got a woman in there?...An actual woman?...You?' - although the genuine delight Ray has in his friend's good fortune makes it touching as well), through increasingly tense exchanges ('Like this makes a difference?'), as Ben starts to neglect his partner and Ray responds only with loyalty ('Hey, you hurt him and I'll kill you' - all the more effective for being delivered as if a throwaway line - and 'Hey Benny - not in your lifetime', to name but two examples), and eventually culminating in the moment of the shooting.
The big question is: When exactly does Ben decide he is going with Victoria? I've read about as many different opinions on this as there are people who have seen the ep, but for my money, he doesn't intend to go with her until the moment he starts running, after she had delivered the killer blow 'You'll regret it if you don't!'; and quite possibly he can't actually be said to be consciously intending to go with her even then. It's just that the possibility of regret ('I made a mistake once, Ray...and I can't make it again' - even at the risk of making one even worse), of facing a life once more without passion and the sight of her moving off into the distance is too much for him to stand there and bear, and he starts to run without even realising it. Ray's bullet is an awful accident, but it does at least save Ben from the dire consequences which would have followed from his first ever uncalculated act. and doesn't your heart bleed for Ray when we see his utterly horrified face as he realises he has shot his partner and best friend? And Ben's look of shock and disbelief - that he has been shot, that he is about to lose Victoria again - as he falls to the platform...gulp. And the poem last heard in extremis resurfaces, and the snow starts to fall as the implicit prophecy it symbolised in the apartment scene is fulfilled and the narrative arc is completed.
Television just doesn't get any better than that.
One point I have never quite understood is the point when Ray and Benton find out Jolly's phone number from the guy across the road and Ray remarks, "Why would he phone his own hotel?" I've never found out the answer to that question!
VS is quite the most perfect piece of scriptwriting and should serve as a text-book example for all budding writers of TV drama.
I was connected to the Internet recently, and I immediately found the Due South site. What! Victoria's alive? Then why doesn't Fraser search for the love of his life? Or why doesn't she come back, and threaten or kidnap him so they can be together? Don't they love each other any more?
It seems in Part 3 that Fraser is attracted to Inspector Thatcher. I wonder what is going to happen to his love life.
Having read Marie-Andree's comments, I watched VS yet again (as if I need an excuse!). I have always thought that Victoria, for all her evil ways, really loved Ben. The speech in the strip-joint is, I think, a genuine expression of her feelings - she loves him, but hates what he did to her. He saved her life, but turned her in. Her feelings, like his, conflict. She has two opportunities to shoot him, but doesn't because she can't. She really does want him to go with her, so attempts to turn him into a fugitive from justice (which would be revenge indeed).
I can't agree that Ben "forced himself" on Victoria. After spending the evening together in a reconstruction of their nights on the mountain (huddled together by candlelight watching North by North-West/huddled together watching the Northern Lights (as Ben describes in "Invitation to Romance" - the most dramatic moment of his life), she goes back to his apartment and accuses him of betraying her, knowing his will hurt because he has been hinting all evening at how guilty he feels. She has gradually drawn him in and then strikes while he is at his most vulnerable.
The frame-up Victoria concocts is comprehensive (she's had ten years to plan it). The money from the robbery, hidden in the cabin which she burns down to attract attention; the money she slips into Ben's wallet; the fact that Jolly is shot with Ben's gun; no evidence of her being in his apartment, and then the evidence of her being dead! People have been convicted on less than this.
Victoria murdered her sister? I know the woman's evil, but not that evil, surely? Anyway, there would seem to be no evidence to support this. There was an accident when the sister borrowed Victoria's car and she "saw the opportunity and took it" to identify her sister's body as herself and thus provide herself with a new identity.
I didn't realise there could be any doubt as to who shot Dief. In a rare bit of "summing up the plot" dialogue, Ray tells a still disbelieving Ben, "She set you up. She slipped you bad money, scrubbed her prints from your apartment and stole your gun. Dief must have been trying to stop her." And earlier, the ballistics report showed that Dief and Jolly had been shot by the same gun. Which is slightly problematical from the Assistant DA's point of view. If she believes that Ben shot Jolly, what explanation would she have for why he would shoot his beloved Dief? This point is ignored, perhaps because the ADA is determined to see Ben charged with murder (or it's a hole in the plot you could drive a great big red London double-decker bus through as Marie-Andree says!).
In my view, Jolly's murder was entirely pre-meditated. Victoria stole Ben's gun to frame him, lured Jolly to a meeting, and killed him. As she says in the strip-club, "There were only two ways to end that relationship; one of them was with me dead." Implying the other was with him dead. And yes, I think they were lovers. Ben says to his Dad in the diner that Victoria had been living with the man who planned the robbery; we are not told that this is Jolly but the implication is there.
Now, those phone calls! There are two significant phone calls. The first is the call made from the apartment building across the street from Ben's - I was very wrong on the detail of this call. The guy in the apartment identifies Jolly as the man he allowed to use his phone (Marie-Andree - Victoria could not have made this call!). Having found out the number Jolly rang was a hotel, Ray and Benton go there and that is when Ben asks Ray (not the other way round, as I thought), "Why would he phone his own hotel?" Ray gives a logical answer, "Perhas he was checking his messages." Ray is in full grasp of his detective powers and thinking things through, whereas Ben is all over the place emotionally and totally unable to see what is happening. And I think that Ray is right; Jolly was checking for a message from Victoria.
The other phone call was made by Victoria from Ray's house to Jolly at the hotel to set up the meeting.
I agree with Marie-Andree that Ray was at the very least ambivalent as he took aim at Victoria and/or Ben at the end of the story. There is an image from Ray's viewpoint of Victoria aiming a gun at Ben - maybe Ray genuinely thought she still had the gun. But he knew Ben was going with her (he says as much in "Letting Go") and he stood to lose a great deal, not just his house, but also his best friend. A rather drastic way of preventing Victoria coming between them, but Ray was not one to shoot and miss! We can only wonder whether their relationship would have survived if Ray had shot Victoria instead.
I had always hoped Victoria would return in the second series, perhaps just on the phone, checking to see if Ben was alive and throwing him into turmoil again. But no. Maybe if there ever is another series, they could bring her back. I may hate her, but she's a marvellous character!
I have seen the ep countless times, and each time the meaning really hits home. There are some things (or someone) in life that is worth giving up everything for. Fraser and Victoria are soulmates. Simple. Yet, not so simple. I've gone through a similar experience myself (no shootings, however). When you meet that person who is worth the sacrifice, you'll know. And your actions will no longer be logical or rational.
That doesn't mean you'll live happily ever after. It rarely happens that way. It also doesn't mean that you HAVE to be with that person...it just means that somehow you two are linked in way that far surpasses marriage or a "relationship". Fraser knew this...Victoria knew this. Unfortunately, their lives were on different paths. They can not be together. Also, I think when Fraser says "across a thousand lifetimes" he knows it. Sure she's evil. Sure she wants revenge, but hey...love is cruel. So is fate. And all of you who think that Fraser just ran for the train in a split-second decision...I leave you with his last words:
"I SHOULD BE WITH HER"
Of course I think Ben loved Victoria and was going with her because he loved her, but if he'd succeeded in getting away with her I think nothing but misery would have awaited him. I don't believe he would have liked what he saw in the mirror once it finally hit him that he'd given up everything and gotten poor Ray in deeper for someone who'd done her level best not just to hurt him, but also his blameless friend (not to mention poor Dief). I keep thinking of two very important quotes from Dickens' "David Copperfield": "The first mistaken impulse of an undisciplined heart" and "There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability in mind and purpose" (a lesson ol' Charlie had learned the hard way).
Being a Gone with the Wind fan (you know, the movie they kept comparing Titanic to) I also tend to think of that as an analogy. Scarlett deluded herself for years that Ashley, and only Ashley, was her destined love, the one she was meant to be with. She took her first romantic feelings, based on the flimsiest of impulses, and built them up into the guiding impulse of her life. Only when it was too late did she realize that had she succeeded in winning Ashley, she would never have been happy with him--that she had, in Rhett's words, "thrown away happiness with both hands and reached out for something that could never make her happy".
So it is with Ben. I think that his love for Victoria was compounded and built up from the danger they were in (I believe Bob, when he asked if it was snowing, was hinting that danger and desperation were what drove them together), and his guilt. And yes, her manipulation of both the dangerous situation and his guilt. I like to think that he's come to terms with that, that he realizes what a terrible, terrible mistake it would have been--that real love would not ask him to betray those he loved, or his own principles. Nor would it have sought to harm him. And I like to think that should there be any more new DS stories (TV movies, maybe?) that he'll find someone with whom he can be happy the rest of his life. After all, who deserves it more?
That being said, please don't hate me for hating Victoria's Secret. The show ruined Fraser's whole character for me, he is no longer moral. As if Victoria wasn't bad enough,he also didn't help that little old lady whose purse was stolen (yes,I know he had a good reason, but still). He is no longer pure--or chaste.
Not only that, but I belive he was never really in love. He just thought he was in love from the traumatic bond of almost dying, the euphoria of coming through the blizzard alive, and the guilt of turning her in. And the northern lights. (Yes, I am a psychologist, by the way.)
However, even though I hated this episode, as I said, I still love Due South, and I think Fraser is trying to put it all behind him and redeem himself.
But this is not the first time Fraser mention Victoria. There is one episode when the whole gang had to do a stakeout, they play cards and talked about woman. When Fraser talked about the woman of his life (it turned out to be Victoria), how they survive together in the snow and how much he treasured the memories, everbody fall asleep!. (That's include Ray). Anyway, I forgot the name of the episode. And if somebody can tell me, please do.
NOTE: That particular episode is "You Must Remember This." -- war
I think that the dilemma for Fraser wasn't duty versus love, but duty versus duty. That is, his duty to the law versus his duty to the woman he loves.
Clearly Fraser couldn't honour both duties when the time came to let Victoria escape or turn her in. Now, Fraser's ruling characteristic is dutifulness. If he neglects his duty, that is a crisis for him. And he has had eight years to agonize about it, which is one reason why his feelings for Victoria remain so intense.
Conversing with his father in the diner, he asks what he *should have* done. His father's reply that 'you did your duty' cannot satisfy him, because his father sees only his duty to the law.
In the canteen at the police station, Fraser criticizes his father for neglecting his mother, and insists that he, Fraser, will be there for Victoria. Finally, as he lies injured on the train platform, he says 'I *should be* with her'. No doubt a lot of this is just Fraser rationalizing what he wants to do, but his value system clearly reinforces it all.
An especially interesting aspect is - and I apologize for my literary pretensions here - the 'chiastic' (crossed) nature of the relationship between Fraser and Victoria. When Fraser, in his apartment, imagines Victoria in the revolving door, he sees a damsel in distress. He is keen to minimize her guilt in everything she does: describing Jolly's murder as 'self-defence', for example. Later, when Victoria creates trouble, he tries to reform her, hoping (against hope) for the best, so that their relationship will have a future (on his terms). Meanwhile, Victoria clearly sees Fraser as a 'bastard', and doesn't hesistate to accuse him and play on his guilt. She is working very hard to corrupt him so that the relationship will have a future on *her* terms and/or so that he will go to prison as she did.
A more minor point is the use of subjective perception and ambiguity. While Fraser, as I said, sees Victoria as a 'damsel in distress', her appearance - long black hair, very white skin - suggests a 'wicked witch'. Just as Fraser minimizes her guilt, Ray actually exaggerates it. From Fraser's point of view, she holds out her hand to him on the train; from Ray's point of view - mistaken, I think - she is pointing a gun. When Fraser says 'I should be with her', and Welsh asks what he said, Ray replies that he said 'Get me to a hospital'. It's not clear whether Ray actually heard him say that, or whether he's protecting Fraser from incriminating himself.
Well, that's my two cents' worth, anyway.
Okay, here's my review. I LOVE this episode. Of course, we had to know Fraser was human -- now we finally get to see it. It made him all the more lovable.
Then, Victoria's Secret came along. I sat through that whole episode just trying to guess what would happen next. This was a program so well written that I would love to see a movie form done exactly the same way. The only problem would be creating characters that people would care about so much.
The plot held me in suspense the whole time, and even though it has been a few years since I've seen this episode, I still think of it often as I try to imagine how I would make a movie. It would be difficult to get better than this. I just wish that more people could have seen it and seen the quality acting and writing that this series has. I will miss this show.
The emoition that the episode had was too powerful for words. I can think of one song that would have captured Fraser's pain. "Love Takes Time" by Mariah Carey is a good choice. When I hear it, I can think of the pain that Fraser was going through with Victoria. I know that Fraser wanted to go with her, even though she caused him such pain. She was a fool to lie and hurt him the way she did. But I feel that this episode was their most emoitional ever. I just hope the fans feel the same way as I do.
And, in the end, the bullet Ray fires may have jeopardized Fraser's life, but saved his soul. Fraser would have been destroyed emotionally and morally if he had run off with Victoria.
The final moments of the episode show who really cared about Fraser. Ray was at his side, protecting him. Victoria was on the train, leaving him.
I feel there is no need to go into plot detail or summary, Lucy's review does an excellent job of that. I can only comment on how romantic and heartbreaking this episode was to me. The expressions on Fraser's face as he remembers the great wrong he has done to Victoria is heartwrenching. What was also very tragic was when he returns to his apartment, takes out all his candles and lights them up. He is standing by the window and just about crying as his ghost father tries to comfort him. What powerful scenes, and how extremely well acted it was!
All the actors are wonderful in this episode. The dialogue very well written and the plot of this episode was extremely imaginative.
I doubt if I will ever be able to see another "Due South" two part episode as good as this one. This is the best, the very best ever!
Amsterdam, August 2005
Just finished wachting the rerun from Victoria's Secret in Holland. Zucht... I won't write an extended review . Won't comment about the great use of symbols (the snowglobe, the falling snow whem they finally end up together and the polarbear swimming in the background), because people have done so before me and problably much better than I ever could.
I just like to say it's one of the best love stories I ever saw. Sad, but therefore more powerful and beautiful.
The writing is so profound that even seeing the episode for the third time, it still moves me. Great acting, great use of music. ( I know, I've used the word "great" now for the third time, but English is not my native language) Too bad that in this rerun the Sara McLachlan song "Possesion" was altered, a bit of a techno-version.
But over all: brilliant.
13/09/05
I saw it in 1996. In Aus. At the same time that I met the first woman I truly loved.
Reviewers have talked of how evil Victoria was.
Of how Ben couldn't really have lived with himself.
I saw the double ep once. Once. Never forgotten. I'd watched almost the whole series without really meaning to - must've been a convenient timeslot.
The moment I remember most is his expression when he tells the old lady he can't help her.
(Good acting on Granny's part, by the way. The setup - an old lady in distress just *happens* to be there, at that moment - could have been another 'Help me! I've fallen and I can't get up!' moment. But the old lady's distress is done with such realism it carries the moment. It could have been a stain on the other eighty-nine minutes - like a beautiful dress with just one small ink mark. Instead it carried.)
Everyone has something that this episode reveals to them. Tells them. Means to them.
I was right there with Ben when he told that old lady, in that moment, that he was prepared to put everything else in his life second to one person.
He would have had regrets. He would've missed his friend, his dog, his sense of doing justice in the world.
And he'd have her.
VS is definitely one of my fave episodes, one reason is because OFM is less of his usual “saint like” self we see him vulnerable for once. At the beginning you think Victoria… hmmm… she's been in prison, but she seems to have reformed and if OFM fell in love with her she mustn't be all that bad. Until later when viewers find out what a witch she really is. There's a neat sort of symbolism with the snow whenever OFM sees of kisses Victoria. I have no doubt that she loved Benton…until he turned her in… her hatred of what he did to her outweighed her love for him. You can slowly see OFM destroying himself as the episodes go on he's spending more and more time with Victoria and less time with his Ray.
Ray proves in this episode how loyal of a friend he really is, no matter how OFM ignores him or leaves him hanging, or forgets him, all he does is stick up for Benny. “Listen… you hurt him and I'll kill you!” There are many times when Benton does his best to help Victoria… The zoo with Jolly for one, and when he finds out that she killed him, he does his best to help her make a case that won't land her with life in prison… or worse.
You can tell in the strip club scene that Victoria loved him once, but revenge has taken over that emotion. The one scene that made me almost cry was when OFM starts to drive the car to make the exchange and an elderly woman taps on his window stating that a man has stolen her purse and asks OFM to help her and his reply is “ No ma'am I'm sorry, I can't” and drives away. That is one thing that OFM would never normally do and how much Victoria has destroyed him. When Victoria gets on the train she asks Benton to come with her. You can tell that he is totally torn. He's not sure what to do which is something that doesn't normally happen to him. She delivers those final words “You're gonna regret it if you don't” and he starts to run. He realises that she's right he will regret not going with her… but what he doesn't realise is that if he had been able to go with her all the way he would have regretted it even more. Still he goes and I just about screamed when ray shot him. That look on is face is one of pure shock and pain that it really stuck in my mind, and when he started to recite the poem and the camera zoomed out and that symbolic snow came I just couldn't believe it, but I think that if Victoria really still loved him she would have jumped off the train to help him… no matter how badly it probably would have ended for her.
Anyway VS had to be one of DS's best! I went out and rented the entire first season and must have watched at least 6 times in one week. The camera angles the snow the music EVERYTHING was done really really well in this episode. :)
I have always wondered if Benny really ran towards Victoria in the moving train at the end, to be with her... or for some other reason? I like to believe this: Ray promised to kill Victoria if she hurt Benny. Of course Benny didn't know of this exchange, but when he saw Ray and others running with their guns, he ran twoards Victoria, got himself between Victoria and the bullet meant for her... His ultimate sacrifice for his love... saving her precious life in lieu his.
I want to comment on something Jennifer said in review #7. She thought Fraser's father "was hinting that danger and desperation were what drove them [Fraser and Victoria] together" when he asked if it was snowing outside. I think he was giving Fraser a clue as to where Victoria hid the key in Ray's house. When Fraser was turning Ray's house inside out searching for the key, he picked up the snow globe but quickly put it down and moved on to something else. But then he suddenly turned back and focused on the snow globe once again. I think his father's words twigged something in Fraser's mind, returning his attention to the snow globe. Just my two cents!