The "dogs go to the end" code between Schanke and Delahanty.
Momentary bit of cultural disconnect: when Delahanty told Nick that Schanke was "his dog", it wasn't until he started actually explaining the in-joke to Nick that I realized "dawg" (for a male buddy) actually wasn't slang yet in 1995! At least, none of the characters seem to recognize it as such; it's a reference to something totally different. For the most part I don't really find myself feeling that aware of the different time period of the show, but it's those little things that are a bit startling.
... also, speaking of time period, I JUST realized that in the FK fic I wrote for fkficfest years ago, I had made their lack of cell phones a plot point -- but in this episode, they have them! Oops! I guess that's a case of thinking the show was longer ago than it actually was.
Anyway, on the actual topic of the comment, I kinda feel like one of the reasons why the episode feels a bit scattered, thematically, is because it never really nailed down exactly what "Code" it was referring to -- code of the West, vampire code, code of friendship, Schanke and Delahanty's personal code. None of these are quite the same, thematically, and so the episode wanders from one to another, without a tight through-line between them.
Re: the three codes
Momentary bit of cultural disconnect: when Delahanty told Nick that Schanke was "his dog", it wasn't until he started actually explaining the in-joke to Nick that I realized "dawg" (for a male buddy) actually wasn't slang yet in 1995! At least, none of the characters seem to recognize it as such; it's a reference to something totally different. For the most part I don't really find myself feeling that aware of the different time period of the show, but it's those little things that are a bit startling.
... also, speaking of time period, I JUST realized that in the FK fic I wrote for fkficfest years ago, I had made their lack of cell phones a plot point -- but in this episode, they have them! Oops! I guess that's a case of thinking the show was longer ago than it actually was.
Anyway, on the actual topic of the comment, I kinda feel like one of the reasons why the episode feels a bit scattered, thematically, is because it never really nailed down exactly what "Code" it was referring to -- code of the West, vampire code, code of friendship, Schanke and Delahanty's personal code. None of these are quite the same, thematically, and so the episode wanders from one to another, without a tight through-line between them.