Sansets' Women Appreciation Day 6 Challenge
Yes, I do know I am really, really late with this. My plans for the afternoon were canceled, so I am going to hash this out while I still have time.
sansets asked for a response to a female character you've disliked, to find redeeming qualities in them.
I have pretty charged feelings about almost all the female characters on Due South. Women tend to impose on Fraser in a way I dislike, and also tend to step in the way of my slashy fun. But most of them have their moments that please me, especially Elaine, and Thatcher, from time to time.
Victoria seemed an obvious choice for this challenge at first glance, but the more I considered trying to deal with her directly, the more I just cringed. I don't like Victoria. I don't like anything about her, and I don't feel I was meant to. In the end, she's too unmixed a villain. I just can't really get my head around why poor Fraser got so whammied by her. Sure, she is beautiful, but she is so obviously cruel. I feel as though I must be missing something with her, because why else would Ben want her so much? However, I've never been able to see her as other than heartless, reckless, manipulative, cruel, controlling. She's a stereotype to me, and not much more.
Instead I wanted to talk about the women in Letting Go, and how they help Fraser deal with one of the most catastrophic events of his life. I would normally bristle at a character like Jill Kennedy, but for a long time I've had a slightly guilty secret liking for her. Is she a Mary Sue? She shows some signs. But...shrugs...she's the Mary Sue I like, I guess. She actually serves a function in the larger story of Fraser, IMO. I am usually hypersensitive and snarly about even a whiff of Mary Sueism. And yet...I enjoy Jill Kennedy.
I'm finally ready to try to explain why, because I have the feeling she is probably not well liked by many. I'd like to touch on all the women who appear in Letting Go for context.
I admit that it hurts to watch Victoria's Secret, but I am totally goofy about Letting Go. I LOVE Letting Go. (For the sake of full disclosure: I've watched Victoria's Secret maybe 4 times, all more than a year ago. I've watched Letting Go about 30 times. It's my comfort ep. Any time I can't sleep I break it out.)
Letting Go is almost entirely about Fraser dealing with his feelings about women. There is the whole Victoria flashback in the teaser, which is just enough Victoria's Secret for me. (Including the IMO hilariously transposed bits of dialogue "She had the most beautiful voice" followed with an edit of Victoria, in her horrid nasal shriek "COME WITH ME!" Ugh, beautiful voice?) But there you have it in the teaser, a capsule of Fraser's feelings for Victoria, idealized, unattainable, fantasy figure he feels he's known forever, who in reality is a force of destruction and pain. And Bob's voice saying "she's not coming back to you. Why in god's name would you *want* her to?" And the kicker hallucination, minutes after she causes him to be shot, and runs away, Victoria leaning over him, telling him "He'll be fine, won't you Ben?" She's hurt him but good, but yeah, he's going to be fine. I always interpret all the voices in the flashback as his own mind, sorting through his conflicted feelings. And even then, there is a part of him sorting through the confused loss, and telling himself that he will get better.
It's worth noting IMO, that when we see Ray Vecchio in the first post shooting scene, he's being counseled by a stern matronly shrink who is never seen on camera. This seems to be a parallel set up that women are stepping in to care for both Fraser and Ray in the aftermath.
I have always loved the whole Rear Window homage of Letting Go, which is probably one of the many reasons I love this ep so. Jill Kennedy is certainly supposed to remind us of Grace Kelly's character, Lisa, in Rear Window, as a tough, poised, beautiful, and practical woman who isn't above a bit of well placed affectionate flirtation to get her way with men. In Rear Window, Lisa is already known to the hero, Jeff, and the situation is quite different. In Letting Go, there does have to be more set up to get Jill into Fraser's sphere, including watching her teach the exercise class, and mulling about the ethical implications of watching her (and all the other women in the various windows) aloud with Dief. "I am not actually prying.... ---- Oh."
Before we actually even get to see Jill Kennedy, we once again see Fraser's continuing pain in his fantasies of Victoria when he first sees Dr. Carter and her lover. It's also painful to watch him being so angry and sarcastic with Ray in their first scene together. Fraser is still in a very bad way 21 days after his shooting when he first meets Jill.
I'm going to skip over talking about Fraser's grandmother for now, though we also see her (though Fraser does not) before he meets Jill.
I think what I first liked about Jill Kennedy, from the first scene is that she is obviously not blind to Fraser's prettiness and vulnerability, but she's not a shark. She's downright mellow compared to other women in Season 1. She's protective and almost sisterly from the first. There is some flirtation and minor sexual tension, but she seems mostly just trying to look out for him and raise his spirits. Fraser is deflecting her from the first with his "deductions" about her, while she is very gently trying to charm her way through his physical exam, despite his squirming and obvious embarrassment, making deductions right back about him, and surprising him into disclosing a lot about himself. She's not afraid to press him a bit, but she seems gentle with him in a way most women haven't been in other eps. When other women have had to care for him physically, they seem so obviously to relish touching him, and tend to flirt and glom on him more obviously. She's cheerful a la Grace Kelly, and she's keeping her professional face mostly on, while trying to poke him out of his gloom.
I find the sequences of his therapy oddly sweet. It's not just my soft spot for h/c stories. It's the fact that it is a woman nurturing him, and caring for him in the aftermath of being nearly destroyed by a woman. There's a whole lot of other bluster going on in the pool scene, but there is the moment when Fraser's fatigue overtakes him, and she holds his head above water, and lets him rest. She does flirt with him a little later in the scene, but it is the image of her just giving him a break, and holding him up and Fraser having no choice but to let go, to rest for a moment, and trust the hands of a woman...it just touches me.
Jill's interest in the whole spying on Dr. Carter is a device to prod along the Rear Window plot, and the wacky drive to find out what is going on is a nod to the characters in Rear Window who conspire to spy, including Lisa/Grace Kelly. But even taken as a straight story, I feel like chatting with him about it is an attempt to distract him from his depression.
As Ray Vecchio says when she continues to prod for evidence, I like her, she puts her cards on the table. Why yes, the plot is pretty tortured by this point, but I like her enthusiasm and doggedness as an antidote to Fraser's gloom and self doubt and worry that somehow history is going to repeat itself and someone will be hurt or killed. She's active and she's gutsy, in a 1950s movie sort of way, and she stirs him into caring again, to staying on it and Solving the Damned Crime.
I think having a substitute buddy in Jill to provoke him and cheer him when he's so alienated from Ray is what allows him to get over things enough to be honest with Ray, to finally admit he was going to go with Victoria, and later to admit he had been angry and to forgive him. She breaks his isolation. After all that, and after he admits to Ray that he was going to go with her, he stays at the window thinking, and after it is dark, he finally sees the reflection of his grandmother, the nurturing woman in his past. They exchange such a look of love and tenderness that it slays me every time. She nods at him, and I think that is the first moment he knows he will be OK some day. (This is at 37:15 or so, for those of you who have said they always miss this moment.)
And Dr. Carter? I guess she's supposed to be the prod that makes Fraser confront his whole package of feelings of helplessness and betrayal. I've wondered a little at the line about her reaction to betrayal, when he says that she tried to destroy herself. Just how did Fraser get shot? I think Fraser does see it as self destruction, and by the point he confronts Dr. Carter, I think he's realized it, and has had enough. I don't think that trying to disarm Dr. Carter was an act of self destruction. I think he believed she would not shoot. YMMV.
So that's my take on the women in Letting Go.
sansets asked for a response to a female character you've disliked, to find redeeming qualities in them.
I have pretty charged feelings about almost all the female characters on Due South. Women tend to impose on Fraser in a way I dislike, and also tend to step in the way of my slashy fun. But most of them have their moments that please me, especially Elaine, and Thatcher, from time to time.
Victoria seemed an obvious choice for this challenge at first glance, but the more I considered trying to deal with her directly, the more I just cringed. I don't like Victoria. I don't like anything about her, and I don't feel I was meant to. In the end, she's too unmixed a villain. I just can't really get my head around why poor Fraser got so whammied by her. Sure, she is beautiful, but she is so obviously cruel. I feel as though I must be missing something with her, because why else would Ben want her so much? However, I've never been able to see her as other than heartless, reckless, manipulative, cruel, controlling. She's a stereotype to me, and not much more.
Instead I wanted to talk about the women in Letting Go, and how they help Fraser deal with one of the most catastrophic events of his life. I would normally bristle at a character like Jill Kennedy, but for a long time I've had a slightly guilty secret liking for her. Is she a Mary Sue? She shows some signs. But...shrugs...she's the Mary Sue I like, I guess. She actually serves a function in the larger story of Fraser, IMO. I am usually hypersensitive and snarly about even a whiff of Mary Sueism. And yet...I enjoy Jill Kennedy.
I'm finally ready to try to explain why, because I have the feeling she is probably not well liked by many. I'd like to touch on all the women who appear in Letting Go for context.
I admit that it hurts to watch Victoria's Secret, but I am totally goofy about Letting Go. I LOVE Letting Go. (For the sake of full disclosure: I've watched Victoria's Secret maybe 4 times, all more than a year ago. I've watched Letting Go about 30 times. It's my comfort ep. Any time I can't sleep I break it out.)
Letting Go is almost entirely about Fraser dealing with his feelings about women. There is the whole Victoria flashback in the teaser, which is just enough Victoria's Secret for me. (Including the IMO hilariously transposed bits of dialogue "She had the most beautiful voice" followed with an edit of Victoria, in her horrid nasal shriek "COME WITH ME!" Ugh, beautiful voice?) But there you have it in the teaser, a capsule of Fraser's feelings for Victoria, idealized, unattainable, fantasy figure he feels he's known forever, who in reality is a force of destruction and pain. And Bob's voice saying "she's not coming back to you. Why in god's name would you *want* her to?" And the kicker hallucination, minutes after she causes him to be shot, and runs away, Victoria leaning over him, telling him "He'll be fine, won't you Ben?" She's hurt him but good, but yeah, he's going to be fine. I always interpret all the voices in the flashback as his own mind, sorting through his conflicted feelings. And even then, there is a part of him sorting through the confused loss, and telling himself that he will get better.
It's worth noting IMO, that when we see Ray Vecchio in the first post shooting scene, he's being counseled by a stern matronly shrink who is never seen on camera. This seems to be a parallel set up that women are stepping in to care for both Fraser and Ray in the aftermath.
I have always loved the whole Rear Window homage of Letting Go, which is probably one of the many reasons I love this ep so. Jill Kennedy is certainly supposed to remind us of Grace Kelly's character, Lisa, in Rear Window, as a tough, poised, beautiful, and practical woman who isn't above a bit of well placed affectionate flirtation to get her way with men. In Rear Window, Lisa is already known to the hero, Jeff, and the situation is quite different. In Letting Go, there does have to be more set up to get Jill into Fraser's sphere, including watching her teach the exercise class, and mulling about the ethical implications of watching her (and all the other women in the various windows) aloud with Dief. "I am not actually prying.... ---- Oh."
Before we actually even get to see Jill Kennedy, we once again see Fraser's continuing pain in his fantasies of Victoria when he first sees Dr. Carter and her lover. It's also painful to watch him being so angry and sarcastic with Ray in their first scene together. Fraser is still in a very bad way 21 days after his shooting when he first meets Jill.
I'm going to skip over talking about Fraser's grandmother for now, though we also see her (though Fraser does not) before he meets Jill.
I think what I first liked about Jill Kennedy, from the first scene is that she is obviously not blind to Fraser's prettiness and vulnerability, but she's not a shark. She's downright mellow compared to other women in Season 1. She's protective and almost sisterly from the first. There is some flirtation and minor sexual tension, but she seems mostly just trying to look out for him and raise his spirits. Fraser is deflecting her from the first with his "deductions" about her, while she is very gently trying to charm her way through his physical exam, despite his squirming and obvious embarrassment, making deductions right back about him, and surprising him into disclosing a lot about himself. She's not afraid to press him a bit, but she seems gentle with him in a way most women haven't been in other eps. When other women have had to care for him physically, they seem so obviously to relish touching him, and tend to flirt and glom on him more obviously. She's cheerful a la Grace Kelly, and she's keeping her professional face mostly on, while trying to poke him out of his gloom.
I find the sequences of his therapy oddly sweet. It's not just my soft spot for h/c stories. It's the fact that it is a woman nurturing him, and caring for him in the aftermath of being nearly destroyed by a woman. There's a whole lot of other bluster going on in the pool scene, but there is the moment when Fraser's fatigue overtakes him, and she holds his head above water, and lets him rest. She does flirt with him a little later in the scene, but it is the image of her just giving him a break, and holding him up and Fraser having no choice but to let go, to rest for a moment, and trust the hands of a woman...it just touches me.
Jill's interest in the whole spying on Dr. Carter is a device to prod along the Rear Window plot, and the wacky drive to find out what is going on is a nod to the characters in Rear Window who conspire to spy, including Lisa/Grace Kelly. But even taken as a straight story, I feel like chatting with him about it is an attempt to distract him from his depression.
As Ray Vecchio says when she continues to prod for evidence, I like her, she puts her cards on the table. Why yes, the plot is pretty tortured by this point, but I like her enthusiasm and doggedness as an antidote to Fraser's gloom and self doubt and worry that somehow history is going to repeat itself and someone will be hurt or killed. She's active and she's gutsy, in a 1950s movie sort of way, and she stirs him into caring again, to staying on it and Solving the Damned Crime.
I think having a substitute buddy in Jill to provoke him and cheer him when he's so alienated from Ray is what allows him to get over things enough to be honest with Ray, to finally admit he was going to go with Victoria, and later to admit he had been angry and to forgive him. She breaks his isolation. After all that, and after he admits to Ray that he was going to go with her, he stays at the window thinking, and after it is dark, he finally sees the reflection of his grandmother, the nurturing woman in his past. They exchange such a look of love and tenderness that it slays me every time. She nods at him, and I think that is the first moment he knows he will be OK some day. (This is at 37:15 or so, for those of you who have said they always miss this moment.)
And Dr. Carter? I guess she's supposed to be the prod that makes Fraser confront his whole package of feelings of helplessness and betrayal. I've wondered a little at the line about her reaction to betrayal, when he says that she tried to destroy herself. Just how did Fraser get shot? I think Fraser does see it as self destruction, and by the point he confronts Dr. Carter, I think he's realized it, and has had enough. I don't think that trying to disarm Dr. Carter was an act of self destruction. I think he believed she would not shoot. YMMV.
So that's my take on the women in Letting Go.