The Shield - Season Five, Episode 3 "Jailbait"

They got some particularly good images of comedic grotesqueness with the opening scenes of the Mexican sex-slave ring storyline. Coming in cold, a businessman called them to report a truck driver dead in his backroom. Big chunky naked Mexican truck driver took too many enhancement drugs, and died in the saddle, right on top of the girl. The image of his big naked dead butt sticking up in the air was irreducibly wrong and funny.

It only got funnier when Officers Julien and Tina got to looking at him and suddenly realized the girl was still alive, trapped under this big corpse. A couple of hours later in the hospital, worried sick about her young brother Pablo who had been kidnapped along with her, the girl STILL had to laugh about the guy dying on top of her.

This storyline also provides the first time that new trainee officer Tina has actually done well on the job. She's incompetent, and about halfway a danger to herself and others- as her training officer Julien politely but insistently points out.

Looking for a young Mexican girl who doesn't look like a cop, Officer Tina went undercover in place of the girl under the truck driver. On the one hand, she's not shown much talent or skill generally at cop work. However, she apparently knows how to deal with men who want to screw her. In the middle of a van full of nasty Mexican gangbangers wanting to hump her, she kept her head. The story about having gonorrhea in her throat was nasty, but effective. She played it just right with her offer to fellate them as requested- just don't be mad if it starts burning later.

Councilman Aceveda, meantime, is back to wanting to get Vic. Ol' Vic is unfinished business for this powerful politician, and having been lured by Kavanaugh into becoming involved, he's obviously planning to stay with it. "This could be our last shot at him, and I'm going to be right here to make sure you don't blow it."

Shane's wife Mara makes her first appearance in a season and a half. She's not so far bringing in any drama of her own here- having done PLENTY of that with her nasty mother and the money train business. She's serving a more utilitarian role at the moment, an alternate voice giving Shane doubts about his devotion to the Strike Team, pushing him to clarify his priorities. As he puts it when she pushes a bit, "Team's one thing, but family's another."

They've gotten most of their best dramatic scenes this season with Lem being forced to wear the wire. It was the first scene of this last week when Lemansky finally found out these years later that Vic killed their old partner Crowley back in the very pilot of the series.

The first such scene this week was in the clubhouse with the guys. He comes in lifting up his shirt to show them the wire, and then we get two contrasting scenes playing very nicely over one another. The nominal scene, the show for Kavanaugh listening on the other end, was Shane covering by telling an extended dumb joke that might charitably be described as grotesquely racist and homophobic.

Meanwhile, they're having their real conversation, typed out on Ronnie's laptop computer, in which they question Lem about this wire and heroin. That generated beautiful dramatic tension between the spoken conversation and the written.

Almost as good was the other wired-Lem scene, with Vic late in the show. This time, it's just Lem and Vic in the room with the wire, and Vic's trying to deal with the underlying Crowley problem.

So, in the last few hours, Lem has figured out that his boss killed their old partner years ago during a drug bust that he was in. Not to put too fine a point on it, they've got some issues to discuss. Yet they can't with IAD watching and listening.

So with all that, they're having another of those two-level conversations, aloud and on paper. Vic's got a story for Kavanaugh's benefit about how he feels responsible for Crowley's death because he didn't clear the room- as opposed to the real truth, which was that he just blew that snitch cop's brains out.

The written conversation, however, was not nearly so involved as last time. In the midst of the bogus story, Vic reduces it to the primal essence. "We together?" When Lem nods and takes his hands, that point is settled.

Lem has been repeatedly and explicitly identified as the "conscience" of the Strike Team- which he more or less is. But he is also, as Aceveda described him last week, a soldier. With this meeting, Lem clearly indicated that he's taking his loyalty to Vic even knowing that Vic killed their snitch partner.

Danny didn't have a big part this week, but we did find out that she's expecting specifically a boy. Plus, her casual expression of utter contempt for their boss was pretty amusing, telling Vic that "Her Majesty Captain Billings" wants to see him- setting up Vic's first meeting with Lt Kavanaugh.

Forest Whitaker's Lt Kavanaugh has a hell of a presence. So far, in three appearances he really hasn't had any kind of scene chewing emotional display. He's very quiet and polite, laughs easily- and he's obviously crazy as a loon.

This guys is obsessed and possessed, though exactly with what we don't yet know. Again, with coming up to Corrine at the school, and conjuring up baroque lies to have an excuse to ask her vague, general questions about her ex-husband Vic. That sounds much more like some kind of weird personal obsession rather than any legitimate professional concern.

Indeed, the final scene of the episode spoke mostly to Kavanaugh's obsession with Vic. It's completely not time yet in his investigation to make himself known to Vic. Absolutely every practical professional consideration would be for him not to tip his hand in any way, not to let Vic know that he's after him.

Yet he just couldn't help himself from coming in and making up some really lame story about an IAD "department tour" as an excuse to finally actually meet Vic Mackey- who's already WAY ahead of him, and absolutely has Kavanaugh's dossier. Hey, he's just here trying "to put a friendlier face on the old rat squad."

Try to ponder out just what Kavanaugh is thinking about Vic Mackey. He talks about him being good 98% of the time. There's no sense that he dislikes Mackey.

In fact, he acts like he's in love with the guy. The glow on his face during their introductory remarks looked more like he wanted to perform some kind of sex act with him than anything like that he's trying to bust him. Indeed, the way he said it, despite the clear mountain of lies preceding it, he sounded all too convincing even to viewers knowing the truth when he concludes their meeting with "It is good to meet you."

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