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

[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.