Over the last few days, feeling compelled to re-watch due South, I rediscovered my love for the earliest episodes as well as my love for Ray Vecchio. I also realized - again - how big the difference is between the episodes of season 1 and the later ones with Ray Kowalski. Starting with the pilot, we are introduced to a Benton Fraser who's like a knight on a crusade, bringing justice, neighborliness and hope to the disenfranchised people living in the poorest part of Chicago, dragging an only semi-reluctant Ray Vecchio after him as his squire.

Fraser is snarky, manipulative, sincere, optimistic and stubborn, and it would be wrong to claim he only became more than a cardboard-cutout with the arrival of Ray Kowalski. He is also not totally overwhelmed by women as long as their interest doesn't tip over into sexual harassment; in fact, in the show's beginning, in each episode he usually encounters at least one woman who shows a certain degree of interest in him. He agrees to a date with the journalist Mackenzie King in order to sound her out ("Diefenbaker's Day Off"), he rides out with Stephanie Cabot who shares his love for horses ("They Eat Horses, Don't They?"), and he is genuinely happy to see again Julie ("Manhunt"), Frobisher's daughter (whom we somehow never meet again in Fraser/RayK fanfic, not even in stories set post-CotW), only getting uncomfortable when he has reason to think that the woman in question might have deeper feelings for him... and even then, he neither flees nor loses the power of speech, although his penchant for eyebrow-rubbing gets into overdrive.

He defends Ray Vecchio in front of Lieutenant Welsh (who, at that point in the series, is far from a supportive father figure, but rather a danger to Ray Vecchio's chances of continued employment) and is a master at inducing guilt in the former in order to make him go along with his crusade-of-the-day.

Not that Ray Vecchio ever needs much inducement. Even in the pilot, after knowing each other only for a short time, Ray Vecchio goes out of his way to solve the murder of Fraser's father once the first awkwardness is out of the way. Heck, he even flies to Canada to inform Fraser of the result of his continued investigation into the person behind Frankie Drake, the hitman, only to just arrive in time to defend Fraser's cabin against an attack by Gerard and his hired thugs.

Ray Vecchio rather passes on handling career-making, high-profile murder cases and instead supports Fraser digging into a meat scandal ("They Eat Horses, Don't They?") or a car-theft ring on stolen vehicles ("Pizzas and Promises"). Vecchio seeks Fraser's approval, instinctively knowing the Canadian's the better police officer, and becoming a better cop in the progress. He simply cannot turn his back on Fraser, even if the latter makes it clear that he expects nothing and would be perfectly alright on his own. The majority of the effort to maintain this unlikely friendship is made by Ray Vecchio, and he sticks to it despite reprimands by Welsh and ridicule by Huey and Louie.

Vecchio and Fraser are comrades, friends, best friends even. And while such a setting usually screams "slash!" to me, in this instance the little voice in the back of my head is silent. I reserve the slashy thoughts on due South for Ray Kowalski.

But sometimes, I think the earlier seasons were the better ones.

Fraser was an optimist and crusader, not a clown with a phobia of attractive women, the cases investigated were less weird and more of a means of bringing across a certain amount of social critique, and the absence of comic relief characters like Turnbull and Thatcher as depicted later in the series made the whole setting darker, more realistic, and more thought-provoking.

Not that I don't like seasons 3 and 4 of due South. I do.

I just hate the stance taken by many fanfic authors who prefer to pretend that pre-Kowalski Fraser didn't exist, or at least - perhaps apart from Victoria - didn't experience anything that might have had an impact on his character development.

Ray Vecchio's more than the guy in a suit who had the audacity to dare marry The Stella.