Some Like it Red is the twelfth episode of Due South's second season.
Storyline: Constable Fraser goes undercover as "Miss Fraser," a Catholic girls' school substitute teacher, to help one of Ray Vecchio's old friends find a missing student.
Original Air Date: March 29, 1996
Written by Luciano and Elizabeth Comici
Directed by Gilbert Shilton
Synopsis[]
Late at night, a teenage girl named Celine walks a rough Chicago neighbourhood to a meeting with a shady character in an alley. She gives him an expensive antique candlestick and is about to demand payment when he suddenly grabs her and demands the rest of her stash. She pulls a gun on him, forcing him to back off, and flees the alley.
Elsewhere in the neighbourhood, Fraser and Ray visit a bar tended by an old friend of Ray's, who has an extremely rare bottle of scotch coveted by Inspector Meg Thatcher. While Fraser negotiates payment, Ray spots an old girlfriend, Annie MacRae, entering the bar and goes over to say hello - even in spite of an incident in their teens, when Annie's father caught them being intimate and forced them to break up. Annie has become a nun, which will weigh on Ray's conscience for the rest of the episode; she tells him that she is searching for Celine, and he offers his help. But when he discloses to her that he's a cop, she balks and hastens out of the bar. When Ray tries to stop her, a rough-and-tumble patron gets in his way, resulting in a scuffle that shatters Fraser's newly acquired bottle of Glendorlan scotch.
Ray finds out that Annie is a teacher at the St. Fortunata Catholic girls' school and that Celine is one of her students. He again offers to help find her, and Annie passes him the gun she found in Celine's room. Fraser notices from the engraving on the gun that it once belonged to the legendary federal agent Eliot Ness. Though Ray has a former police officer friend lined up to go undercover at St. Fortunata, his friend is forced to back out at the last minute due to an injury. Later that day, Ray meets her replacement - none other than Fraser himself, disguised as a woman.
At the school, Fraser befriends Melissa, Celine's roommate and best friend. He discovers several clues to Celine's whereabouts in her room, including a pair of gym shoes with fungus on the soles, and a diary. The diary itself yields several poetic hints that Celine is in a relationship with Todd, the school handyman, who has priors for car theft. Ray decides to check him out, and riffles through Todd's apartment, unaware that Todd and Celine are on their way back from selling an antique flask. Seeing the owner of the antique shop following them, they make a run for it, but Todd is hit and killed by a car. A grief-stricken Celine runs away just before Ray arrives and finds the antique shop's card on Todd.
Fraser attempts to comfort a distressed Melissa and asks her to accompany him to a school dance. He thereafter meets up with Ray, and they head to the antique shop, where Fraser spies the flask Celine and Todd sold the previous day and tastes the same spores on it that he found on Celine's shoes. The flask once belonged to Frank Nitti, one of Al Capone's top henchmen. Ray gives Celine's picture to Johnstone, the shop owner - who immediately resolves to find the rest of the rare antique stash via the crest on Celine's school uniform. He and his cohorts, amongst them the fence Celine met at the beginning of the episode, pose as plumbers to infiltrate St. Fortunata and find the lode.
Celine and Melissa arrange to meet in the school's steam tunnels during the dance and flee the school. Meanwhile, Ray visits a curmudgeonly old uncle who is living very much in the past, and finds out that Capone's brother-in-law built a vault beneath the grounds of St. Fortunata in the 1930's. He meets Fraser at the dance, and following the fungus scent to the steam tunnels, they come upon the vault - and Celine and Melissa being held hostage by Johnstone and his thugs. Melissa distracts them by hurling a bottle, giving Fraser and Ray the opening to fight it out. Seeking revenge for Todd, Celine hurls another bottle, but Fraser catches it in mid-air; it's another bottle of the Glendorlan scotch Thatcher is seeking. However, in his flying leap, he loses his wig and reveals himself, causing Melissa to scream "Oh, my God, Miss Fraser - you're a cross-dresser?!"
As Johnstone and his goons are taken away, Ray and Annie reconcile. Fraser thanks Melissa in the meantime, although she is unimpressed by his duplicity and tells him that the hair colour wasn't right anyway.
Cast[]
- Camilla Scott as Inspector Meg Thatcher
- Michele Scarabelli as Sister Anne MacRae
- Marisol Nichols as Melissa
- Heather McComb as Celine
- Frank Moore as Johnstone
- Tomas Chovanec as Todd
- Nicole Crozier as Wanda
- Karyn Dwyer as Tiffany
- Dan MacDonald as Murph
- Rummy Bishop as Uncle Lorenzo
Soundtrack[]
- "Flying" by Blue Rodeo [album: Lost Together] (bar scene)
- "Heart of Glass" by Blondie [album: Parallel Lines] (dance scene)
Memorable Quotes[]
Ray Vecchio: (about Celine's gun) That's why I ran the numbers on it. You're never gonna guess who it's registered to.
Benton Fraser: Eliot Ness?
Ray Vecchio: How did you know that?!
Benton Fraser: Well, it's quite simple...
Ray Vecchio: No, simple for you is some long, drawn-out story about your grandmother's library in Runamukluk!
Benton Fraser: Actually, it is quite simple, Ray. It's engraved right here: 'E. Ness.' And guessing that the 'E' stood for 'Eliot' was just inspiration.
Ray Vecchio: Just gimme that. You're not supposed to be carryin' a gun anyway.
Ray Vecchio: Tuktoyaktuk, Runamukluk, what's the difference?
Benton Fraser: Well, about two thousand kilometres.
Ray Vecchio: Is that necessary?
Benton Fraser: Not entirely, no.
Ray Vecchio: Okay, so the question is, how does a sixteen-year-old Catholic school girl get a hold of the gun owned by the man who brought down Al Capone? That is the question, not whether or not Tuktoyaktuk and Runamukluk are two thousand miles apart!
Benton Fraser: Kilometres. And, I have no idea.
Ray Vecchio: Well, neither do I!
Benton Fraser: It takes seven fewer muscles to smile than it does to frown. Save your energy; you're going to need it in your child-bearing years.
(Fraser is changing clothes in the back of the Riv)
Ray Vecchio: What is going on back there?!
Benton Fraser: Well, let me tell you something, Ray. I think that the person who invented pantyhose should be brought up on charges of cruelty, sadism, and reckless endangerment. They pinch in the most inappropriate places.
Ray Vecchio: Yeah, well, most people who wear them don't have those places, Benny.
Due South - Uncle Lorenzo
Benton Fraser: There was a name engraved on the bottom of the flask. 'Frank Nitti', with two T's.
Ray Vecchio: Al Capone's right-hand man. Frank Nitti's flask, Eliot Ness's gun - what is this, a garage sale for the Untouchables?
Benton Fraser: Well, if we can establish - Ray! Manners!
(Ray walks grudgingly over to open the Riv's passenger door for Fraser)
Ray Vecchio: You know, Benny, there's a limit.
Benton Fraser: A limit? To good etiquette? I think not, Ray.
Ray Vecchio: Just get in the car before I beat you with your purse.
Ray Vecchio: You owe me.
Benton Fraser: For what?
Ray Vecchio: For saving you from dancing with a guy.
Benton Fraser: Well, it would appear that I am still dancing with a guy, Ray.
Ray Vecchio: They sound like they're this way.
Benton Fraser: Then I suggest we go this way.
Ray Vecchio: Do I dare ask for an explanation, or do I just take your word for it?
Benton Fraser: Well, it's similar to the Doppler effect, Ray, wherein the echoes bounce off the wall of the corridor and the pitch of the sound wave changes and amplifies...
Ray Vecchio: I'll just take your word for it.
Benton Fraser: Very good.
Melissa: You lied to me.
Benton Fraser: About what, exactly?
Melissa: Being a woman.
Benton Fraser: Oh, yes, that. Well, yeah. I did lie about that. Those weren't my clothes, that wasn't my hair...
Melissa: Those weren't your breasts?
Benton Fraser: No, those weren't my breasts. But other than that, everything I said was the truth.
Melissa: Well, that's good, because the hair colour wasn't right anyway.
Benton Fraser: Well, thank you. I'll remember that for the next time.