Also, this is probably the episode of the season least related to the season's overarching IAD storyline. This would thus be one of the better episodes for someone who is not a regular viewer and not up on all the continuing personalities and storylines.
Not directly related to this episode, but the whole season has really been consumed with the Kavanaugh business to the point that there has been only minimal crime fighting the entire time. There hasn't been any great supervillain, no Antwon or Armadillo. Everybody and everything has been taken over by Kavanaugh.
Again, it's not like Vic and Shane haven't given him any legitimate sticks with which to beat them. They start out the episode with the really pointless exercise of Kavanaugh insisting on leading Shane and then separately Vic through the apartment where Officer Crowley was murdered way back in the pilot. Any sensible person would pick Shane even at his worst over Kavanaugh, but he wasn't just talking out his hat when he was in Shane's face talking about "the days and nights you spent being Antwon Mitchell's bought bitch."
But then Kavanaugh's done with him and brings in Vic. Who's this person standing over there grunting and making noises at them? Why, Kavanaugh's brought in Drew Crowley, brother of the dead officer, there to confront Vic. "He doesn't remember me because he didn't look at me or my family" at the funeral.
This was SUCH a punk-ass move on Kavanaugh's part that I hardly no how to describe it. For starters, it's totally illegitimate. It in NO way serves any legitimate investigative point, which is what they're there for. It gave me as a viewer a real strong visceral urge to shoot Kavanaugh right there for this cheap grandstanding crap.
In theory, you couldn't really fault Drew Crowley for wanting to come confront the guy who he thinks (correctly) murdered his brother. Yet I was left with a strong desire to reunite him right there and then with his dead snitch brother. Still, his final line responding to Vic's denials made a particularly good lingering hit right before the opening credits, "If you're lying, God will have your soul- and I will give it to him personally."
They're presenting it as though the weight of Vic's past transgressions has come to weigh so heavily on everything that it simply isn't possible to function normally anymore. This would be good setup if they were getting close to ending the series, as has been unsubstantiatedly rumored. But then, the noose has been tightening on Vic's neck since approximately the second episode. This has not hurt the show dramatically at all. If anything, this freaky psychological stuff makes even better drama than gunplay with dope dealers.
The main Strike Team "super weed" storyline is of course driven by Kavanaugh, though he has no involvement in it at all. It's the perfect example, though, of the true corrupting influence of Kavanaugh's Nazism. Really, Vic has pretty much been intending on playing more or less clean since the Money Train debacle. He's not been ripping off dope dealers and taking payoffs like the old days.
But suddenly Kavanaugh has Lem in county lockup over some half-assed seven month old nonsense, and ready to send him off to be murdered in prison by Antwon. Plus, he's locked down every kind of bank account and asset any of them have. Hell, poor totally co-operating Corrine has had her minor household account tied up so that she can't even buy frickin' groceries to feed their autistic children- much less pay for their education.
Vic just HAS to come up with $100,000 right away. You can't very well expect him to just leave Lem to be killed in jail by some dirtbag with a shiv. They're going to have to get creative. Hearing that there's a quarter million dollars of stolen drug money running around loose, you really can't blame him for jumping on it. It's just about a survival thing at this point.
The biggest thing from this story that stuck out to me was the buildup of the "koosh" superweed. They managed to make it sound like some legendary weed from Shel Silverstein's "Smoke Off." They paid that off pretty good with the actor playing as Jayden Reed, the shooter from whom Shane and Ronnie eventually got the cash.
Cheech and Chong themselves never managed to look more stoned than this kid. They eventually find him passed out on the bed on the money with the weed laying all around. Boy was laying there looking like he was good and satisfied, about to start drooling all over his fool self. By the time Claudette et al come in a few seconds behind and haul this kid down to the station, he's sounding like he's in another world. I'll have some of that. Of course, having killed a guy working for his stepdad to get that money and weed, he's going to be having an unhappy time of life when the weed wears off. But by the looks of it, that might be a couple of days.
This bail-for-Lem storyline gave them a good reason to bring back good ol' locksmith Schmitty. It's always good to see him. You can appreciate his exasperation with getting drug back into Strike Team shenanigans. Why do you always come to ME with this shit? "Cause you're the last honest guy we know." They needed someone else to show up in court with the $100K in bail money, and he's now a prosperous businessman who could thus withstand having Kavanaugh inevitably looking him over. That is, he could account for how he could legitimately come up with that kind of money. But of course he can't complain TOO much, given that Vic intends for him to KEEP the money when Lem shows up for court again.
He was less than usually the focus of the show tonight, but Vic had one particularly good scene, visiting his/their lawyer Becca Doyle. See, she's all torn about representing the whole Strike Team, because as a lawyer she would be advising each of them individually to testify against the others in order to make a deal. How can she represent them all?
Inevitably and with all professional good intentions, it takes on a distinctly sexual air. She's already sounding like she's ready to fellate Vic when she starts to propose bowing out. At this point, "I think I'd make a better friend than a lawyer."
Vic's response to her, his argument to keep her on board is just classic Vic. "If you can make a deal that has me switching places with him [Lem], do it. Just me- not my guys." It really is hard to argue that this is anything but a distinctly noble gesture. Still, it has the smell of cheesy high school stud posturing. I mean, this is just the schtick to seduce this bitch. If she was already about halfway there before, he's got her figuratively bent over.
Now I might be surprised, but I don't necessarily expect them to absolutely consummate this. Still, this scene was absolutely a seduction. Vic's pretty good at such things, as I noted when Danny was not specifically denying Corrine's presumptions about the paternity of her baby, due anytime. Anyway, Becca Doyle's good and thoroughly sold now, and she seems likely to be pretty much doing Vic's bidding.
Meanwhile, really the best part of the episode was the Tina storyline which was largely comedic, but nonetheless gave good dramatic payoff on several characters- Dutch in particular. She starts out the episode screwing up a bust for an undercover officer because she wasn't paying attention. Danny and Julien both (and the undercover officer) are now agitating for Captain Billings to fire her.
While this is going on, a folder of pictures of Officer Tina in various states of undress in the locker room shows up on Dutch's desk. What kind of no-good high school pranking bastard is doing such an unchivalrous thing to Tina?
Naturally, Dutch takes the pictures to Tina, cause she ought to know about it. This is just the kind of thing to tweak Dutch's painfully acute self-consciousness. He's trying to be all cool about it, mature and appropriate. He IS behaving appropriately. But when she's thanking him and he's responding in an understated manner that "We're not ALL neanderthals," there's just no way for him to not sound like a high school geek desperate to make just a couple of cool points with the hot cheerleader. But the pathos comes from knowing just how utterly and painfully conscious of this the brilliant detective must be. Likewise with his perfectly rational explanation to Tina that "I should probably keep those" He really legitimately might need this copy of these pictures that he's investigating, but imagine his painful self-consciousness in asking.
Perhaps his best scene here was playing cool in the restroom. Naturally, he has volunteered to find out who was behind this. So he's got this move to act like one of the guys by asking a likely culprit officer about it while they're both standing at the urinals. Now, this is obviously a completely unnatural move for Dutch. That's distinctly a Vic-type ploy. It works, though, at getting the guy to open up. It was an appropriately calibrated move that this officer would trust the questionably masculine geeky Dutchboy to confide in him because he asked when he's standing there with his weenie out.
But then when he's standing there vulnerable with the weenie out, he's getting reminded of just the kind of thing that would make him feel vulnerable in those type circumstances. He's guessing correctly that this guy left him the pictures, and thanking him for giving him a copy. "The way you stare at that chick, it would have been cruel not to." Everybody's apparently noticed that. Ouch. The guy's not even trying to be mean, and doesn't seem to even have a clue how bad Dutch must be wincing inside.
But it's really NOT some evil schoolboy trick being played on Tina, but a payoff on the season's worth of Captain Billing's foolishness. He's so consumed with the most petty perks of office, such as the nice couch he talked the department into getting for his office (just in time for Kavanaugh to take it over) that he's got no time to be of any use in, like, catching crooks and such. In particular, he's carried on all damned season about the new vending machines, and particularly this stupid "quick mealer." Early in this show, for example, Vic showed up on his off day looking for something juicy he could sink his teeth into at the office. Totally sincerely, Captain Billing's first response was the new chicken pot pies in this quick mealer.
Turns out that these pictures of Tina were from some stupid surveillance monitor he'd set up to try to catch someone ripping off his precious frickin' vending machines. Some idiot just found the pictures on his desk, and started passing around copies.
But here's Billings calling for her PBA rep to come down cause he's getting ready to fire her, and Dutch comes along with these stupid pictures. This dickless Billings character was in no way trying to sexually harass or degrade her, but he's responsible for these pictures and he's going to fire her besides? A woman AND a Latino besides- this is a phat lawsuit waiting to happen.
So then, instead of getting fired as she probably should be, she's finally being groomed for a promotion. Dutch is going to take her under his wings to learn detective stuff. She's struggling less than successfully with simple patrolman level logistics. I can hardly wait to see how she screws all that up.
The episode ends up back with the IAD storyline, with Vic showing up at Aceveda's house to conspire. It made sense, but it was a less than dramatically satisfying climax. It was basically exposition rather than any kind of payoff at all in its own right.
Earlier in the show, Aceveda showed up in Kavanaugh's office to surrender the reserve officer badge that he had been using to compel Aceveda's co-operation. He's going to open up his own investigation of Kavanaugh. Instead, Kavanaugh talks him down, and conspires with him lure Vic in. He congratulates him for how MAD he looked coming in. That's good, cause Vic's watching. "Leave angry" he instructs.
But now as predicted, Vic shows up looking for an ally in high places. Ah, just the setup you're expecting. But then- as you SHOULD be expecting- Vic's got something to say. Obviously, he's not just going to go down quietly, be sent off to jail without a peep. If he goes down, of course it's going to be scorched Earth- especially with Aceveda, whom he can tie in different ways to most of his dirty dealings. By the time he's done, "Your stink will smell up every voting booth in this city." That seems like a totally credible threat.
This has always been basically the ace-in-the-hole that has saved Vic in the past. Aceveda representing the political establishment needs Vic. He does their dirty work and acts as something of a lightning rod for the public heat. Aceveda despises Vic as a guilty man despises his conscience that knows the real score. And no, he definitely would not be wanting all of that made public.
But will this be enough to save Vic one more time? Does Vic know or suspect Kavanaugh's real conversations with Aceveda. "What's your plan?" he asks Vic. Not an especially scintillating or revealing final line, but it'll do.
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