Tonight may have been about the evilest Vic ever was. He lured this Guardo Lima back by kidnapping his girlfriend Nadia, though she never quite understood that she was being held hostage. Then he tortured him, strung up and beaten for a good long time with a chain. Most folks would likely have been beaten to death by the kind of abuse he took. Then when Vic was finally satisfied that he wasn't going to give up any names, he took it that Guardo had murdered Lem single handedly - and flatly executed him.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Vic's out of his damned mind. He took it as proof of Guardo's guilt simply that Lem was killed with a grenade like stuff that this guy uses. Even if you were inappropriately but understandably on a vigilante mission to get the guy who killed your partner, that's not even beginning to be evidence of his guilt. Vic's an experienced detective, and he knew better than what he was doing. Vic just flatly had to find somebody to kill for Lem to relieve his own mental pressure, and he wasn't going to hear anything that was going to create uncertainty about who was responsible. At least he picked a murdering gangbanger to scapegoat.
The more times you watch this, the worse Vic Mackey will likely look - and the actual murder's the least of it. Consider the pure cold heartedness of his treatment of Nadia. He doesn't actually hit or even threaten her, but gives her a truly far worse betrayal. He controls her repeatedly by her love for her man, telling her that she must do what he says in order to protect Guardo. Unlike Shane, Vic doesn't appear to have even a flicker of guilt or misgiving about this betrayal, that he's using his appeals to her love in order to lure out and murder the man she loves.
Repeat viewings of the episode might also show Guardo in increasingly positive relief. Vic lured him out on the explicit assumption that he would only truly care about business, but not really his woman. In his few minutes of actual screen time and the last hours of his life though, he seemed more concerned about protecting his beloved than about himself. [Also, bonus points for the defiance of his final words, "I'm glad your friend died."]
He repeatedly capitulated to Vic specifically in response to threats to the woman showing him at his most truly evil. He lured Guardo out on the phone by identifying himself saying, "I'm the guy who decides whether she lives or dies - and who her last lover is." A minute later when negotiations are not progressing fast enough to suit him, Vic demands that he agree to personally show up with $50K within 24 hours, "or I will rape and kill that bitch while you're listening." At that point, Vic sure looked like he might be willing to actually go that far.
Murdering Guardo did seem to be highly therapeutic for Mackey, though. After not seeming to sleep or rest in these weeks after Lem's murder, he was beside himself. Corrine went to Shane to express her concern. But after the day long beating and gruesome disposal of the body, Vic showed back up at work after several days absent. He told Claudette that he'd just had a good night's sleep, and didn't need the extra personal days he had coming. His scales were balanced, and he was ready to get back to regular business.
Meanwhile, the best stuff in this episode is the quieter shades of Shane Vendrell stewing in his guilt and remorse. The cherry on that schadenfreude sundae was Guardo's woman Narnia confessing to Shane that she was pregnant, and hadn't yet told him. She thanked him for protecting the father of her son. "I just want him to know his Daddy." Then she kissed Shane's cheek.
He did pass on to Guardo the news of her pregnancy before he died, but he was already so far gone that he couldn't even respond at all. Shane had pretty well talked himself into why it wouldn't be so bad to let Vic kill Guardo, thus his recitation back to Guardo of all the killings that he really did do. But taking away an unborn baby's daddy, that'd be a little harder for him to brush off.
Shane's torment is what really made the scenes of Vic torturing Guardo good. We've barely seen Guardo, and don't have any emotional investment in the character. But there's poor tortured, guilty Shane having to watch Vic brutalize the guy, and demand answers that Shane knew he couldn't give. He was pleading with Vic for this dumb bastard's life, watching him taking HIS beating and finally execution. Also, consider how much madder Vic's going to be when he inevitably eventually figures out that it was Shane who killed Lem - and then stood there and watched him torture and murder someone else for the crime.
Vic Mackey has killed pretty man people in the now six seasons of the show, but by my count this is only the third outright assassination. That would include of course the snitch Crowley in the pilot, and Margos Dezirian at the end of season three. Also though, he did this in front of Ronnie and Shane. This makes it the first time Vic's ever involved Ronnie, or anyone else but Shane, in an outright murder.
Billings has emerged as a character bringing outstanding and subtle comic relief to the show. Partly this has come from his low level venality and sometimes lack of self-awareness. In this episode for example, he's got a scene going on to Dutch how he'd like a little time on the Strike Team, to get some action and all. But that's just so perfectly laughably contemptible coming from this character, notable in the series for his cowardice even from his first storyline a couple seasons back with the murder at the carwash. Add to that the lack of gumption or ambition of the guy who ended last season explicitly explaining his intention of just playing out the clock until retirement for five YEARS. This fool wouldn't make it out of the parking lot with the Strike Team.
But his best stuff here was at Dutch's expense. Exactly his own weaknesses seem to give him some insight into such things in others. Thus, when Dutch specifically invited him to tell him what his weak points are, Billings cheerfully started explaining them. The best part was Billings' explanation of Dutch's emotional defense mechanisms which result in him being hateful with him, and resistant to their partnership. It made pretty good sense once Billings explained it, and Dutch confirmed the truth of it by asking Claudette about whether she thought he had pulled his weight as a partner.
Yet Billings was speaking to Dutch more or less with love. "I owe you an apology for not embracing this partnership sooner." He provided Dutch analysis that he asked for. But note how he politely - and well advisedly - turned down Dutch's offer of "constructive criticism" in return. Billings didn't figure he needed that kind of "head trip."
I'm feeling Dutch's pain regarding his hot young acolyte Officer Hanlin really acutely at this point. From her really rough rookie days partnered with Julien, she seems to actually be picking up some skills and mental prowess now from Dutch. Probably her best cop moment so far was her idea for using the murdering drug dealers they had just picked up to get at the fearsome Horde biker gang, and her persuasive argument for it to Captain Wymms - over Dutch's objections.
But you can just FEEL Dutch's palpable sense of masculine inadequacy during and following the big Horde bust with Hanlin in the middle of it. It's not like he was trying to be cowardly, but everybody else ended up with macho points on the run except for him. Officer Hanlin herself was getting to slap the cuffs on a bad biker. Even the pussy Billings managed to tackle the escaping dealer-informant, which little moment of glory he was seen re-living in pantomime through a window back at the station. Worst for Dutch was seeing her fawning admiringly (just the least little bit) over the truly badass Ronnie who led the effort and had to actually absolutely beat down the big biker.
But it gets more painful yet for Dutch. For all Dutch's self-consciousness, she's not shown any sign of disregard for him. Indeed, she's still looking to him as the mentor. She's real impressed with his explanation about training your mind to think like a detective about your whole life. He's going on about keeping years of files at home, stories and reviews of cases he's read about with interest and keeps around to review and study. To me, this would seem more like a worrisome personal compulsion than a useful professional practice. Dutch offers to show them to her sometime, and is of course thrilled when she casually suggests that the night is still young.
But she's not necessarily on the same train of thought there with Dutch, leading to an awkward moment as they pull up to his house. He suggests ordering Chinese, and breaking out a nice bottle of wine he's been saving. Wait a minute. Is this a date, she asks? A more alpha-male might have responded something like "Yes. I'm having sweet and sour pork. What would you like me to order for you?" Suddenly overwhelmed, the best Dutch-man can come up with is to smile weakly and ask tentatively, "Do you want it to be?" Not exactly the alpha-male response likely to inspire the girl to make that crucial little mental leap he so desperately wants.
So she's sitting there for a few seconds with a thinking look in her eyes, trying to decide how to react - and starts asking him about wives or girlfriends. Huh, no, what? It's not that Miss Tina is suddenly interested in his dating history - but there's some woman on his porch waiting for him - who insists on him losing his "date" so they could talk business. This leaves poor Dutch hanging at just an excruciatingly awkward unresolved point with Officer Hanlin.
Turns out the other woman was a federal law enforcement officer there to warn, nay "order" him off of a person of interest he's been asking about regarding Lemansky's murder, a Salvadoran gang contact who turns out to be a federal plant. Dutch still wants to talk to him - despite being officially federally ordered off him. That sure sounds like the setup for groovy twists to come.
So then, by the last scene they are, per the title, more or less back to square one. The whole Kavanaugh investigation is gone, and in such a dramatic manner as to likely seal Vic off from further pressure there. He has - to his own satisfaction - avenged Lem's murder and emerges feeling chipper and free. Cue the sound of the other shoe dropping from out of the blue.
Claudette assigns Vic to begin training his replacement who will be taking over the Strike Team in a month. In fact, this is completely not out of the blue. A year ago in the series, they dropped in the explanation that Vic would be required to retire after 15 years, which would be coming up soon. Then we got caught up in the Kavanaugh investigation and Lem's murder and plum forgot it.
Hmm, reckon will Vic Mackey go quietly into that good night? Ha!
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