due South meta: Did Bob take the hush money in the pilot?

[luzula]

I've been discussing this with desireearmfeldt a couple of times, and I'm curious to see what other people think.

My personal head-canon is that Bob did not take the hush-money, and before I discussed it, this wasn't something I'd reflected much over--it was just my spontaneous assumption. Desiree had spontaneously gone in the opposite direction. Anyway, now that I've thought more about it, my reasons for thinking he didn't take the money are:

1) What we see of his character later in the show: we know he bends the rules sometimes, but when we see him doing that, it's not for personal gain (hmm, can you think of any instance?). I just don't see him as putting that much value on money/material gain. And he's a sergeant, it's not like he wouldn't get a decent pay anyway, enough for what he'd need.
2) Gerard absolutely has a motive for faking the evidence, because he wants Fraser to back off and not turn him in.
3) At the end of the pilot, one of the RCMP superiors (Underhill?) says: "There is no record of your father making any withdrawals. None of the deposits were made in person. People will believe what they want to believe. I know what I do." Which I guess means it could easily have been faked?

Of course, it could also be that I don't want to believe Bob took the money because I like him. So, what do you think?

Comments

[alassenya]

I never believed he took the money -- it was part of Gerard's back-up plan just in case the murder attempt went wrong, to make sure that Bob's testimony would be invalidated. I think if Bob had taken the money (even if he told himself that it was for a good cause, like an education fund) it would have eaten away at him like the memory of Victoria ate away at Ben, and we would have seen some evidence of that through the series.

[luzula]

I think if Bob had taken the money (even if he told himself that it was for a good cause, like an education fund) it would have eaten away at him like the memory of Victoria ate away at Ben, and we would have seen some evidence of that through the series.

Yeah, I've thought of that, but OTOH due South is not always good about continuity, so they could've just decided to forget about it. But yes, it is still a good point! I wish we could've seen Ben asking Bob about it, because surely he would?

[alassenya]

I think it might have been a while before Ben had the courage to ask about it. After all he had known and trusted Gerard for a while and that trust was betrayed, so he couldn't risk another betrayal so soon. I think that if he had had any remaining doubts he would have asked his father sometime during "Easy Money", where the dam is again the centre of the story.

[desireearmfeldt]

I've said this to luz in our discussions elsewhere, but I'll say it here:

I agree that character-wise, if Bob had taken the money, we ought to have seen some effect on him. When I was assuming that the intent of the Pilot story was that he had taken the money, I think I was also mostly assuming that the fact that it never came up again and Bob didn't seem bothered by it was a lack-of-continuity issue. As luz says, DS only sort of cares about continuity, and there's often a lack of continuity between a show's pilot and the rest of it.

I'm no longer convinced that the Pilot intended us to believe Bob took the money. But I really *like* the story we get if Bob did take the money -- not that I want Bob to be a bad guy, but it's an interesting thing to have happened and creates a dramatic situation for Benton to deal with. I think it'd be interesting to see him come to terms with it and/or interact with a ghost!Bob who had done it for whatever reasons and had whatever feelings and regrets about it. Though the whole Muldoon thing -- which was made up much later, and wasn't in Pilot!Bob's history, so to speak -- plays more or less that narrative role.

[luzula]

I agree, it could make for an interesting story if he'd taken it. I'd definitely read that (and I'll put it up in my story idea file to see if it sparks anything). Though as you say, thinking that he'd killed Muldoon does play a similar narrative role, and I do think killing Muldoon out of anger/vengeance/grief is a more plausible thing for Bob to do than taking bribes out of greed.

Talking about things that "double up" narratively, it is kind of weird that Bob was betrayed by two of his close associates: Gerard and Muldoon. (And hmm, bghost wrote a story where they'd actually been working together, which makes it less of a coincidence.)

[desireearmfeldt]

Greed does seem an unlikely motivator for Bob (and, he didn't use the money!). So maybe he did it for some more interesting and complicated reason?