FK Season 3 episode "Fever"
Aug. 20th, 2023 09:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
switchbladeeyes"Fever" is one of season 3's better episodes though it ultimately suffers by losing the thread of social consciousness that the show is not quite brave enough to deliver on. Also, RIP Screed, we hardly knew you, but you made an impression.
We start with corporate espionage gone wrong leading to the death of an AIDS research doctor, Linda Wyatt, and the escape of a lab rat chock full of an experimental treatment for AIDS.
Our incomprehensible carouche pal Screed is scrounging for some munchies near the lab and gets the bite on the white lab rat. We, the audience, don't know it yet, but because I remember this episode well, I know that he has become infected with a novel disease that only affects vampires.
Fun fact: The white rat sold at the live auction at Bridging the Knight for $260. The fan who owns it refers to it as "the Ratsie Wot Kilt Screed." :-D
Nick and Tracy are called to the scene where Dr. Wyatt died. Outside the lab, Nick zeroes in on the dead and bloody white rat. And he picks it up WITH HIS BARE HANDS EVEN GETTING HIS FINGERS IN THE BLOOD. This is SO NASTY. Where are your gloves, Nick!? You're supposed to be a professional. AND Tracy doesn't say anything about how completely disgusting this is. Probably because Nick picking the rat up with his bare hands serves as a plot point: Nick becomes infected with the disease.
Turns out one of Dr. Wyatt's patients is Dr. Calvin Tucker, a friend and former classmate of Natalie's. Calvin's career (and I imagine everything else about his life) was derailed by an AIDS diagnosis. He was participating in Dr. Wyatt's drug trials as he is desperate for a miracle. You feel for this guy as he relates his story of his friends dying and how little time he has left.
Tracy goes to Vachon to help connect her with Screed, whom she rightfully suspects may have killed the white rat and thus may have also witnessed something related to Dr. Wyatt's death. Screed is home all right, fully vamped and looking for a bite to eat. He attacks Tracy and Vachon repels him.
We learn some things here: as a new vampire, (1) whatever your first kill is, human or animal, that's the blood you crave (aha, this is the episode that explains where carouche come from, I knew something like this was out there, but I couldn't quite remember which episode), and (2) you have almost no control with respect to the hunger you experience. Screed has that same intense "first hunger" in this scene, so much so that he starts drinking his own blood. Vachon offers his own wrist to his starving friend. Vampires being vampires kind of squicks out Tracy, but she does helpfully make an observation that wouldn't have occurred to Vachon: Screed is sick.
Vachon flies off to Nick to see about getting help from Nick's "doctor friend." (How does Vachon know about Natalie? I don't remember. It may have been addressed in an episode I skipped. Or it wasn't addressed at all??) Natalie examines Screed and yep, Screed has a disease, and that disease is going to kill him. She doesn't know if she can find a cure. The stakes in this episode ratchet WAY UP!
Tracy suspects Calvin may have had a hand in Dr. Wyatt's death because it turns out he was on a placebo. But she and Nick interview him and he didn't know about the placebo. He thought he was on the drug and that it was working. Again, you really feel for him.
Next scene, DUN DUN DUN, we see Nick stumble and then get particularly observant about Tracy's throat. He's experiencing symptoms of the vampire fever, but he doesn't know it yet.
Meanwhile, Vachon is with Screed who is in the final stage of the disease. They have a touching exchange and then Screed dies in his arms. (Cue UGLY CRYING EMOJI!)
Nick heads down to the Raven to talk to LaCroix and get LaCroix's disapproval (I mean, what were you expecting?). More importantly for the plot, he's there so he can give LaCroix the disease. There's some irony here as LaCroix steadfastly holds onto the idea of vampire invulnerability while literally catching the disease as he and Nick drink from the same glass.
Fun facts: You get a very good look at LaCroix's "thistle glass" in this scene. He always drinks from the same glass. The show wanted there to be a unique glass as a prop to associate with the character. They asked Nigel Bennett what kind of glass he thought LaCroix should drink from and he said a thistle glass. If you do a Google image search for "thistle glass," you will see what this type of glass looks like (rounded at the bottom, fluted at the top). That's not what you see on the show though because the person who ordered the glass didn't know what a thistle glass was. Instead, they ordered a wine glass with a thistle painted on it. The show just rolled with it and that's what you see LaCroix drink from in scenes at the Raven in season 3. That glass sold for $475 at the Bridging the Knight live auction in 1997.
And while you're paying close attention in this scene, you'll see some continuity gaffes as the position of the thistle changes from shot to shot even though the position of the glass has not changed.
Anyway, back to the show...
We are subjected to an incredibly uncomfortable scene between Tracy and Vachon where he thinks she smells like ripe fruit. It’s meant to be sexy and seductive, but it's absolutely, 100% not that. Not even close. The lighting isn't right. The dialog isn't right. The chemistry isn't right. Ugh. All I could think about while watching it was the time on "Friends" when a sick Monica tried to seduce Chandler. Look, I'm not going to say more about the scenes between Tracy and Vachon. Their subsequent scenes together are better but really do nothing for me to advance or improve the story.
Tracy and Nat have a discussion where Nat is feeling frustrated by her inability to help people as a doctor and Tracy is stealing packets of blood (because no one is going to notice those are missing??) Tracy takes off with her purloined blood and Nick shows up and reveals to Natalie that he's sick.
Ahhhhhhhh! We get a great scene where Natalie realizes how easily the disease is spread among vampires, Nick struggles with his hunger, and Natalie explains that not drinking blood is why the disease is progressing slowly in him. Then Nick, being Nick, becomes brooding and fatalistic, attributing the disease to "divine justice."
And Nat has F'n had it! We get such a great rebuke from her. ("Don't you dare!") This is a prime Natalie moment. I love her when she gets like this. Top form. She isn't having this "divine justice" bullshit. Good.
Meanwhile, on the radio, LaCroix's being his usual self though a bit more mopey than usual. And we quickly see why. He is sick too. And the disease has spread (probably from him, when you think about it) amongst the vampire community. We also see that he holds a paternal feeling for the vampire community at large, not just those in his immediate circle. It's kind of touching. Except, you know, it's him.
The mystery wraps up and we learn Calvin conspired to steal Dr. Wyatt's drug because he thought it was a cure and that he could bring it to market much, much faster than the company Dr. Wyatt worked for. Think of all the people who could have been saved, including Calvin. Again, you sympathize with his story.
No one is happy about Calvin being arrested. Reese says something about the courts being so backed up, maybe it won't get to trial. And I'm like, are speedy criminal trials not a thing in Canada? Then Calvin is released on his own recognizance so he can be murdered in the comfort of his own home. This is where the show loses its moral thread for me, but more on that later.
Remember Chill LaCroix from "Night in Question" and Accommodating LaCroix from "Sons of Belial"? They have exited the chat. Unhinged LaCroix is back. He has zero chill and is out for blood. How does he know about Calvin's connection to all of this? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You really feel for Calvin throughout the episode, but doubly so in the scene where LaCroix confronts him. For Calvin, an angry home intruder is suddenly just THERE and going OFF. LaCroix delivers his rant (and it's very him) to a frightened Calvin before murdering him.
But LaCroix's not done. He'd really like to rub this in Natalie's face for some reason. In classic LaCroix fashion, he does it with an elaborate setup, taking Calvin's body to the morgue, covering it up, and revealing it for shock factor. Natalie is distressed and yet also somehow unflappable as she realizes LaCroix has unwittingly come across the cure, which is apparently to infect vampires with HIV.
I gotta say, there must have been more to this scene than we saw. At Calvin's grave site later, Nick references LaCroix asking Natalie why she would save vampires. Yet, we don't see that part in the dialog at the Coroner's Office. And it also doesn't really make sense because LaCroix didn't need Natalie to save vampires. He already had the answer: the blood of a person with HIV/AIDS will cure a vampire. Why wouldn't LaCroix take off at that point and tell the vampire community what he knows? Why would he wait for Natalie to come up with some other solution (the syringe we see Nick give to Vachon)? There was more to that scene I'm curious what it was.
Finally, Vachon buries Screed according to his wishes. "See you in hell, sailor." I'm not crying, YOU'RE crying.
I like this episode a lot, but imo, it's one of the weakest of the "good episodes" of this season. This is because this episode has some Problems. And not just "Tracy smells like a sexy fruit basket" problems. Let's discuss.
Is the vampire community meant to be coded here for the gay community?
They kinda go there paralleling the spread of the vampire fever with HIV/AIDS among communities that society at large would not be interested in saving. LaCroix even refers to the vampires as a race "that dare not speak its name." Surely this is a reference to "love that dare not speak its name" aka homosexuality. So the show kinda goes there but the storytelling is, sadly, not good enough or brave enough to seriously maintain the thread or make it meaningful. It goes quite off the rails, actually.
Talk about "don't say gay." The show dances around the subject and makes oblique references ("men like Calvin"), but the word is not mentioned in this episode and, well, given the time period, it's relevant! I suspect this is grounded in the homophobia of this particular moment in time. However, given AIDS, references to "men like Calvin," and the theme of disease as a moral judgment, the subtext certainly would have been "understood" by the audiences of the time. I'd have been willing to give the show a bit of grace on this issue IF the Calvin storyline had been handled better in the end. But the end of his story is where where things unravel for me.
Really unravel. LaCroix murders Calvin because Calvin "deserves" it? Calvin's blood is "tainted"? YIKES!! I don't think this was well thought out at all.
I'm not saying this episode needed to reach "Angels in America" heights. And I'm not saying it should have devolved into "Tonight, on a Very Special Episode" territory (though it kind of does at the graveside scene), but Calvin's life, fear, desperation, and the fate we KNOW is coming are enough. He didn't actually have to die for this episode to resolve. Nat would have figured out the solution. She had all the pieces in front of her. We could have still had Unhinged LaCroix with the entirety of his anger directed at Natalie and that would have made for some intense drama. So killing off Calvin and some of the language that went with it was not a story choice I cared for.
I still really like this episode. It introduces a new concept that vampires can develop new and fatal weaknesses. The show does something it's never done by amplifying the ramifications by killing off a recurring character in the middle of the season. But the episode is certainly not immune to criticism for story aspects that fall flat.
We start with corporate espionage gone wrong leading to the death of an AIDS research doctor, Linda Wyatt, and the escape of a lab rat chock full of an experimental treatment for AIDS.
Our incomprehensible carouche pal Screed is scrounging for some munchies near the lab and gets the bite on the white lab rat. We, the audience, don't know it yet, but because I remember this episode well, I know that he has become infected with a novel disease that only affects vampires.
Fun fact: The white rat sold at the live auction at Bridging the Knight for $260. The fan who owns it refers to it as "the Ratsie Wot Kilt Screed." :-D
Nick and Tracy are called to the scene where Dr. Wyatt died. Outside the lab, Nick zeroes in on the dead and bloody white rat. And he picks it up WITH HIS BARE HANDS EVEN GETTING HIS FINGERS IN THE BLOOD. This is SO NASTY. Where are your gloves, Nick!? You're supposed to be a professional. AND Tracy doesn't say anything about how completely disgusting this is. Probably because Nick picking the rat up with his bare hands serves as a plot point: Nick becomes infected with the disease.
Turns out one of Dr. Wyatt's patients is Dr. Calvin Tucker, a friend and former classmate of Natalie's. Calvin's career (and I imagine everything else about his life) was derailed by an AIDS diagnosis. He was participating in Dr. Wyatt's drug trials as he is desperate for a miracle. You feel for this guy as he relates his story of his friends dying and how little time he has left.
Tracy goes to Vachon to help connect her with Screed, whom she rightfully suspects may have killed the white rat and thus may have also witnessed something related to Dr. Wyatt's death. Screed is home all right, fully vamped and looking for a bite to eat. He attacks Tracy and Vachon repels him.
We learn some things here: as a new vampire, (1) whatever your first kill is, human or animal, that's the blood you crave (aha, this is the episode that explains where carouche come from, I knew something like this was out there, but I couldn't quite remember which episode), and (2) you have almost no control with respect to the hunger you experience. Screed has that same intense "first hunger" in this scene, so much so that he starts drinking his own blood. Vachon offers his own wrist to his starving friend. Vampires being vampires kind of squicks out Tracy, but she does helpfully make an observation that wouldn't have occurred to Vachon: Screed is sick.
Vachon flies off to Nick to see about getting help from Nick's "doctor friend." (How does Vachon know about Natalie? I don't remember. It may have been addressed in an episode I skipped. Or it wasn't addressed at all??) Natalie examines Screed and yep, Screed has a disease, and that disease is going to kill him. She doesn't know if she can find a cure. The stakes in this episode ratchet WAY UP!
Tracy suspects Calvin may have had a hand in Dr. Wyatt's death because it turns out he was on a placebo. But she and Nick interview him and he didn't know about the placebo. He thought he was on the drug and that it was working. Again, you really feel for him.
Next scene, DUN DUN DUN, we see Nick stumble and then get particularly observant about Tracy's throat. He's experiencing symptoms of the vampire fever, but he doesn't know it yet.
Meanwhile, Vachon is with Screed who is in the final stage of the disease. They have a touching exchange and then Screed dies in his arms. (Cue UGLY CRYING EMOJI!)
Nick heads down to the Raven to talk to LaCroix and get LaCroix's disapproval (I mean, what were you expecting?). More importantly for the plot, he's there so he can give LaCroix the disease. There's some irony here as LaCroix steadfastly holds onto the idea of vampire invulnerability while literally catching the disease as he and Nick drink from the same glass.
Fun facts: You get a very good look at LaCroix's "thistle glass" in this scene. He always drinks from the same glass. The show wanted there to be a unique glass as a prop to associate with the character. They asked Nigel Bennett what kind of glass he thought LaCroix should drink from and he said a thistle glass. If you do a Google image search for "thistle glass," you will see what this type of glass looks like (rounded at the bottom, fluted at the top). That's not what you see on the show though because the person who ordered the glass didn't know what a thistle glass was. Instead, they ordered a wine glass with a thistle painted on it. The show just rolled with it and that's what you see LaCroix drink from in scenes at the Raven in season 3. That glass sold for $475 at the Bridging the Knight live auction in 1997.
And while you're paying close attention in this scene, you'll see some continuity gaffes as the position of the thistle changes from shot to shot even though the position of the glass has not changed.
Anyway, back to the show...
We are subjected to an incredibly uncomfortable scene between Tracy and Vachon where he thinks she smells like ripe fruit. It’s meant to be sexy and seductive, but it's absolutely, 100% not that. Not even close. The lighting isn't right. The dialog isn't right. The chemistry isn't right. Ugh. All I could think about while watching it was the time on "Friends" when a sick Monica tried to seduce Chandler. Look, I'm not going to say more about the scenes between Tracy and Vachon. Their subsequent scenes together are better but really do nothing for me to advance or improve the story.
Tracy and Nat have a discussion where Nat is feeling frustrated by her inability to help people as a doctor and Tracy is stealing packets of blood (because no one is going to notice those are missing??) Tracy takes off with her purloined blood and Nick shows up and reveals to Natalie that he's sick.
Ahhhhhhhh! We get a great scene where Natalie realizes how easily the disease is spread among vampires, Nick struggles with his hunger, and Natalie explains that not drinking blood is why the disease is progressing slowly in him. Then Nick, being Nick, becomes brooding and fatalistic, attributing the disease to "divine justice."
And Nat has F'n had it! We get such a great rebuke from her. ("Don't you dare!") This is a prime Natalie moment. I love her when she gets like this. Top form. She isn't having this "divine justice" bullshit. Good.
Meanwhile, on the radio, LaCroix's being his usual self though a bit more mopey than usual. And we quickly see why. He is sick too. And the disease has spread (probably from him, when you think about it) amongst the vampire community. We also see that he holds a paternal feeling for the vampire community at large, not just those in his immediate circle. It's kind of touching. Except, you know, it's him.
The mystery wraps up and we learn Calvin conspired to steal Dr. Wyatt's drug because he thought it was a cure and that he could bring it to market much, much faster than the company Dr. Wyatt worked for. Think of all the people who could have been saved, including Calvin. Again, you sympathize with his story.
No one is happy about Calvin being arrested. Reese says something about the courts being so backed up, maybe it won't get to trial. And I'm like, are speedy criminal trials not a thing in Canada? Then Calvin is released on his own recognizance so he can be murdered in the comfort of his own home. This is where the show loses its moral thread for me, but more on that later.
Remember Chill LaCroix from "Night in Question" and Accommodating LaCroix from "Sons of Belial"? They have exited the chat. Unhinged LaCroix is back. He has zero chill and is out for blood. How does he know about Calvin's connection to all of this? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You really feel for Calvin throughout the episode, but doubly so in the scene where LaCroix confronts him. For Calvin, an angry home intruder is suddenly just THERE and going OFF. LaCroix delivers his rant (and it's very him) to a frightened Calvin before murdering him.
But LaCroix's not done. He'd really like to rub this in Natalie's face for some reason. In classic LaCroix fashion, he does it with an elaborate setup, taking Calvin's body to the morgue, covering it up, and revealing it for shock factor. Natalie is distressed and yet also somehow unflappable as she realizes LaCroix has unwittingly come across the cure, which is apparently to infect vampires with HIV.
I gotta say, there must have been more to this scene than we saw. At Calvin's grave site later, Nick references LaCroix asking Natalie why she would save vampires. Yet, we don't see that part in the dialog at the Coroner's Office. And it also doesn't really make sense because LaCroix didn't need Natalie to save vampires. He already had the answer: the blood of a person with HIV/AIDS will cure a vampire. Why wouldn't LaCroix take off at that point and tell the vampire community what he knows? Why would he wait for Natalie to come up with some other solution (the syringe we see Nick give to Vachon)? There was more to that scene I'm curious what it was.
Finally, Vachon buries Screed according to his wishes. "See you in hell, sailor." I'm not crying, YOU'RE crying.
I like this episode a lot, but imo, it's one of the weakest of the "good episodes" of this season. This is because this episode has some Problems. And not just "Tracy smells like a sexy fruit basket" problems. Let's discuss.
Is the vampire community meant to be coded here for the gay community?
They kinda go there paralleling the spread of the vampire fever with HIV/AIDS among communities that society at large would not be interested in saving. LaCroix even refers to the vampires as a race "that dare not speak its name." Surely this is a reference to "love that dare not speak its name" aka homosexuality. So the show kinda goes there but the storytelling is, sadly, not good enough or brave enough to seriously maintain the thread or make it meaningful. It goes quite off the rails, actually.
Talk about "don't say gay." The show dances around the subject and makes oblique references ("men like Calvin"), but the word is not mentioned in this episode and, well, given the time period, it's relevant! I suspect this is grounded in the homophobia of this particular moment in time. However, given AIDS, references to "men like Calvin," and the theme of disease as a moral judgment, the subtext certainly would have been "understood" by the audiences of the time. I'd have been willing to give the show a bit of grace on this issue IF the Calvin storyline had been handled better in the end. But the end of his story is where where things unravel for me.
Really unravel. LaCroix murders Calvin because Calvin "deserves" it? Calvin's blood is "tainted"? YIKES!! I don't think this was well thought out at all.
I'm not saying this episode needed to reach "Angels in America" heights. And I'm not saying it should have devolved into "Tonight, on a Very Special Episode" territory (though it kind of does at the graveside scene), but Calvin's life, fear, desperation, and the fate we KNOW is coming are enough. He didn't actually have to die for this episode to resolve. Nat would have figured out the solution. She had all the pieces in front of her. We could have still had Unhinged LaCroix with the entirety of his anger directed at Natalie and that would have made for some intense drama. So killing off Calvin and some of the language that went with it was not a story choice I cared for.
I still really like this episode. It introduces a new concept that vampires can develop new and fatal weaknesses. The show does something it's never done by amplifying the ramifications by killing off a recurring character in the middle of the season. But the episode is certainly not immune to criticism for story aspects that fall flat.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-20 05:15 pm (UTC)Nick decides to bring over a righteous doctor who is willing to help the sick and suffering. In a particularly ballsy move, Nick brings him over right in the middle of a public place (what?!). Nick is then SHOCKED that as a vampire, the doctor would rather do vampire things than doctor things. Who could have seen that coming? /sarcasm. Conveniently for a disappointed Nick, the doctor is quickly dispatched by townsfolk literally wielding torches and pitchforks.
I think the flashbacks could have been a lot shorter. The only takeaway we need here is that "disease as moral punishment" is not a new concept for humanity.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-20 05:23 pm (UTC)I saw many, many plays in the 90s and early-mid 00s (including the aforementioned masterpiece, "Angels in America"). I lived near both San Francisco and Los Angeles in the this time period so had many opportunities to see some excellent productions. It was certainly fun to have the chance to see a play featuring an actor from a favorite show.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-20 05:56 pm (UTC)I completely agree with you, that Calvin's dead was completely unnecessary, and Lacroix' lines about him being tainted were a bad blunder.
What I really like is the "race that dare not speak its name" line in reference to Wilde.
I read that Libby Smith, the one who has "the ratsie wot kilt Screed", was actually friends with Greg Kramer, who played screed.
It gives me a bit of goosebumps that playing Screed, who died from the equivalent of AIDS for Vampires, actually died of AIDS.
Other than that, I wish there had been more Screed-content in general. He was such a cool character, but like Urs he was only brought in, when the plot demanded it.
I really hope you find those clippings about Ger and the play.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-20 06:54 pm (UTC)It's a situation where in trying to please everyone, they please no one. Viewers who would have been scared off by the topic would still be critical because the viewers of this time period would KNOW what's up. And viewers who think the show shouldn't have pussyfooted around the topic are likewise ticked off. Network censors may have made it difficult (I don't actually know that though, just a guess based on it being the 90s) and I'd give the show grace if the whole Calvin ending hadn't been so offensive.
Is this the last time we see Screed?
I can't remember if he shows up in any flashbacks after this point. Like you said, he and Urs really did not get enough content.
It's been interesting watching this show with someone who hasn't seen it before (my spouse). He enjoys the show, but keeps commenting, particularly this season, that he thinks the show should be rebooted on a streaming service and that he thinks a reboot could be pulled off better than the orginal. And I find myself kind of agreeing with him.
I feel like some of my critical commentary may give the impression I don't like the show, which isn't the case at all. It's just that I started typing up my thoughts while rewatching season 3, which I think is the show's weakest for many reasons. I think this season is the only one with episodes I actually loathe ("The Human Factor" and "Last Knight"). I should go back and comment on some season 2 episodes. My fave season of the show!
no subject
Date: 2023-08-21 08:17 am (UTC)You are so right! It seemed more like a creepy parody of the vampire seduction lines we'd heard before, especially in flashback scenes. I have to admit I thought that was what they intended. Then again, I've heard they meant Tracy/Vachon as a younger parallel (or substitute even) for Natalie/Nick; and I never felt that the two actors had any chemistry in that direction. Tracy and Vachon came across as pals. They got on well, but there was no sex there. Any "seductive" line came across more as joking.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-21 08:24 am (UTC)In theory, yes. Notoriously not, practice.
Right now, after a Supreme Court ruling on what constitutes a "speedy trial", it has been laid down that a case prosecuted in the provincial court must not exceed 18 months, and one prosecuted by indictment in the Superior Court of Justice (which a murder case would be) must not exceed 30 months. That's two and a half years. And a fair number of cases have actually been thrown out recently, even involving serious offences, because they've dragged on too long.
So yes: in the days before modern AIDS drugs, Calvin could well die before coming to trial.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-21 11:06 pm (UTC)