i watched the due south episode the ladiesâ man the other day, and my god i am never getting over it.
i struggle with watching cop shows, as someone who does not exactly like cops. and here is an episode of a cop show which in other places seems to prize & build up cops â suddenly showing us something totally different.
the way the system is built on shaky levels of bureaucracy that can be used to hide and falsify evidence by those with power.
the way that cops can and will be just be out for blood, will just want an arrest, a conviction, without care for whether or not somebody actually did the crime. without care for whether or not a crime was even committed.
and then thereâs kowalski, who is in some senses the good cop. the good cop people protest about when other people, especially activists, say that cops are bad in principle. but itâs about structure, not individuals. and also, the key subversion here is that: the whole episode, the whole scenario only arises because of an error kowalski made. heâs complicit, unknowingly and unwillingly, in the injustice.
so he may save the person he accidentally condemned. but there are no good cops here. because they canât exist. the system does not allow them to.
itâs notable that fraser, who is usually The Good Cop, takes more of a back seat in this episode. he exists as a moral mirror to ray, and not much else.
the whole precinct is against kowalski, who knows that something is up and that the person he arrested 8 years ago didnât do the crime sheâs about to be executed for. but more than that⊠the whole system is against him. from the top law enforcement officer in the city (state?) down to his lousy colleagues in the precinct, and the local press too.
and he made a grave error eight years earlier. he is not absolved by making sure that she gets â Justice? or at least freedom. but itâs only by going rogue, literally breaking into an evidence locker, almost getting killed, that he can in any way start to undo this wrong.
essentially this episode illustrates how the death penalty operates, and how it can be used to execute innocent people for political ends. but itâs wider⊠it shows how law enforcement as it exists is violent, illogical, a dangerous force that can be used by those with power to consolidate that power, over the bodies of the people who are in their way.
and how does the episode end? ray walks the woman he arrested and then saw freed through the apartment in which he found her husbandâs body, and in which he found her traumatised self, hiding from it. he tells her what he saw, where the body was, where she was. he gives the scene, which had been taken for a crime scene but wasnât, back to her. she canât remember, but he can.
itâs a touching and horrible scene. and a crucial inversion of the standard way that detective plots work⊠earlier in the episode we see the characters picking over videotape, the tiniest signs. itâs half of a coffee ring on a piece of paper that sees her exonerated, you know? these tiny obsessive things. like Sherlock Holmes. like⊠cosy mystery novels. like a puzzle. but here the crime was committed by the system, by those in power, and not by the person who is about to be put to death for it.
and so ray closes the loop off. he does the detective work he failed to do eight years earlier, because he trusted that someone else would do it â he trusted in the system, and it failed him and the person he arrested badly. he had good faith in a bad system. he looks at all of the signs, he solves the puzzle. and what was a crime scene, is no longer any such thing. itâs a site of tragedy; itâs the last place these two bodies were together. and all he can do is give that back. no crime scene photo, no video tape. one body leading another.
and then â and then. not for nothing does this episode end on a long shot of ray kowalski crying, unconsoled. there is no consolation to be had. one woman was saved from an atrocity that she should never have had to face. she knows that itâs not down to kowalski â he was the first imperfect actor in a chain of malicious, corrupt actors. the audience knows this too.
but this doesnât make it better. if he had been perfect, if he hadnât trusted in the system⊠he could have saved her eight years earlier. and he wasnât able to. it weighs heavily. and in a system that has been comprehensively shown to be broken, in a system which frankly was created in this way, is broken by design⊠this will and does happen.
and so the crying. the lack of consolation. we have been shown, clearly, how these systems do not work for justice. we have been walked through them, on ray kowalskiâs arm. fraser canât console him, because we and fraser and ray all know the truth.
itâs a fantastically bleak ending. we, and fraser (who in due south usually acts as the magical embodiment of both mercy and justice) just have to sit there and watch. the image quality is not great, so i have stared at that ending for a good while, wondering if fraser places an hands on rayâs arm in comfort. thatâs all. saying, i am here with you, and i have borne witness. maybe he does? i think he does. one body, reaching out to another in understanding.
but there is no consolation to come.
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