Burbank Versifier: Due South - Victoria's Secret

I have an obsessive personality. Not enough to ruin my life, at least not yet. But enough to stop conversations dead in their tracks at parties. Or turn an off-handed movie reference into a treatise on the core relationship between The Last Starfighter's Death Blossom, the Burly Brawl in The Matrix Reloaded and the adrenaline-fueled climax of Iron Man 2.


One of the sparks that will always end with my spending long stretches explicating, arguing, reminiscing and oversharing far too much of my autobiography is the Canadian TV show Due South. Four seasons, 67 episodes and hundreds of hours of my life.


I can still close my eyes on a winter evening and feel an afghan thrown over my pajamas, some instant hot chocolate on the coffee table in front of the couch and a tape in the VCR.


I grew up on crap TV: MacGyver, Knight Rider, Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future. (No, I'm not making that last one up - the guy who did Babylon 5 wrote it, no foolin'!) It was nicely safe and predictable and formulaic, the way good Sunday night family appointment viewing ought to be. 


Even when Star Trek: The Next Generation and Alien Nation rolled around, you pretty much knew what you were going to get. Sure, there might be an interesting twist on an old trope or the occasional flash of inspiration. But by and large the drama was hokey, the jokes were corny and the dialogue was ludicrous.


This was when I was too young to see M*A*S*H for the complex situational dramedy it really is and most of the good '90s stuff like Twin Peaks and X-Files would come later for me. Due South was the first show I can remember where you never knew what you might get from one episode and even one scene to another. The jokes were quirky and fast like a screwball comedy, the action was tense. I really invested in the emotions and reactions of the characters: even the guest stars. 


There are fantastic highlights all throughout the show: even after they had to replace the secondary lead, kill off familiar faces in the cast and replace all the sets, the writing was always top-notch. But most fans will agree that the high point of the show is the first season two-parter "Victoria's Secret,"  designed to be the series finale until a last-minute renewal. 


They did an amazing job of setting up the characters and situations. Halfway through the season, nine episodes before the Victoria love interest is introduced, the protagonist stares into a window and delivers an incredible three minute monologue about meeting her while the camera creeps up from behind.









And after the detective and his femme fatale meet again, and he's drawn into her web, and there are the prerequisite crimes and betrayals.... This.









You can't hear the poem, it's purposefully obscured. That's definitely the way it was meant to be. Close comparison shows it's Gerard Manley Hopkins' "The Windhover."

The Windhover

Gerard Manley Hopkins

To Christ our Lord

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
  dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
  Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,       
  As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
  Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!


Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
  Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion       
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!


  No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.




I didn't know this, I found out much later. It's a nice bit of synchronicity: the show was really my first foray into the power and possibilities of long-form television. The poem was one of my first forays into the challenge and beauty of poetry. I'm still shocked by how much both of those are a necessity for me. I would rather spend 43 minutes with the Mad Men cast or Californication's Hank Moody than go out to almost any movie ever made. You can't get me to read all seven Harry Potter books with a carrot or a stick (my wife has tried), but I'll spend any time you'd care to name with Sylvia Plath.


Both of those got their start around the time I saw Due South. I'm still indebted to "The Windhover" and Constable Benton Fraser. I'm still a very big fan of both.


And did I mention the fantastic music?!