This show is Shane Vendrell's dark night of the soul. He's had a couple of those through the years, but he's never looked as destroyed and despondent as he did tonight. The very first scene of the show was Shane being wheeled into the emergency room, beaten almost beyond recognition. But he's so distraught with guilt over Lem at this point, that being beaten unconscious almost seems like a relief - a blessed distraction from his turmoil. And that was the GOOD part of Shane's day.
Unfortunately, his pregnant wife Mara finds condoms in his personal effects. Putting it mildly, that's not good. She confronts him in his hospital room, screaming about how he's thrown his family away - total freak out mode. When Vic drops him off from the hospital, she immediately insists on running him off. He's not to be around little Jackson or the one she's carrying. So now Shane's wandering the streets in a daze, in pain and guilt and his wife is done with him and he's got nowhere to go. Naturally, he's crushing and snorting his pain pills.
The "go home" rapist turns out to be one the series most intensely sympathetic monsters. This Carlos Marganza did awful things, yet you can see his pain and how he got sucked into it. His wife had died several years ago, leaving him with their nine year old daughter Sabrina. In his grief for the dead wife, he eventually starts molesting the daughter who looked so much like her. But then the daughter ran away three years ago. Now he's not only lost his wife, but his daughter. Plus, he's sinned horribly, and it's all his fault.
From there, he's been turned into a monster by his grief. He's devoted himself to finding the daughter, and other lost children as well. But the police long ago gave up on looking for his daughter, and he's become a horrible rapist. The anal rapes, though, "That wasn't for pleasure. It was punishment." Partly he's some form of acting out his guilt, but consciously he's doing this trying to get police attention for his daughter.
That might sound really arcane, but it makes perfect sense in context. Knowing his guilt but not really able to prove it, Dutch offers as the incentive to confess that he will personally re-open Sabrina's case and do everything he can to find her. That was what it in fact took to get cops interested in her. He made the additional negotiated requirement of having a tv news camera there filming his confession and appeal. How did you think that brutalizing these other girls was going to get your daughter back? Well, here you are with cops and a tv news crew.
Without a lot of time or dialogue, this story became a particularly good piece for the Billings character. Interestingly for starters, it was him and not his criminal psychology expert of a partner Dutch who clued up that Carlos was the guy. He'd showed up as a community volunteer wanting to help them look for the rapist, and Dutch blew him off. Maybe it was just so obvious that it went right by him. Whereas Billings was suspicious of what kind of schmuck would go around volunteering to help the cops like this. Also, "A lot of these freaks like to insert themselves into these investigations."
His whole run on the show, Billings has been almost 100% an object of ridicule for stupidity, cowardice, greed and petty ego. But that little exchange last week about his pride in being a good father set him up for real positive simple humanity this week. Dutch in his superior sensitivity had, as he very often does, a certain sympathy for the devil. He says very little here opinion wise, but you can see a bit of empathy where he's feeling Carlos' pain as he confesses.
This is the perfect contrast for Billings' simple burning disgust for a father who would so mistreat his own daughter. He's not trying to make a self-righteous show of it. Indeed, he's trying to maintain proper professional discipline. But you can just viscerally feel his disgust as he stalks out of the room in the middle of Carlos' pleading for forgiveness from his daughter through the tv camera.
Having made their point with the character, the story wraps up quickly on an even worse note. The tv news show immediately brought in an anonymous tip that the daughter was long dead, and where the body would be found. So there's Dad in the holding cell, his life over, unable to accept the news and carrying on. Finally, Billings can't take it anymore, and ties the whole story off by screaming the summary to Dad. "Your daughter's dead. You made her run away. She got killed."
Six seasons into the show and a dozen and half episodes from the series finale, Julien finds himself cast again as the rookie cop. Captain Wymms has pushed Vic's upcoming replacement Kevin Hyatt to bring Officer Lowe into his Strike Team. Thus he's in a somewhat new game, studying and literally taking notes - which turns out to be the main no-no of strike teamin'. Separately in the clubhouse and out at the extremely grizzly San Marcos mass murder scene, Hyatt and Mackey separately and together called Julien out for taking notes. I hadn't particularly noticed it in all these years, but nobody in any version of the Strike Team has ever taken notes.
There was a scene with the Strike Team interrogating a Salvadoran banger drug out of prison in his orange jumpsuit. Just by way of being belligerent, he demands a blowjob from a "hottie" as the price of co-operation. Vic readily agrees to this, but "info first, dick sucking next." That was cute, but the real payoff is the quick reaction shot of Julien standing behind them and trying to hide his disgust and discomfort. It's a small thing that would probably only have meaning if you know Julien's history to understand why this big tough cop would be so uncomfortable with just minor passing silly guy talk such as this.
Vic Mackey and his scheduled replacement Kevin Hyatt have so far gotten along really almost freakishly well. In my calculations of the character, I would find it likely that Vic would have some urge to make his life difficult, and sandbag him. But it makes more sense that Vic would be smart enough to know that it's in his own interest to be playing nice. That was Claudette's assessment last week.
Still, if Mackey and Hyatt get any more lovey-dovey, I'd think somebody would be telling them to get a room. For his part, Hyatt has been carefully respectful of Vic, asking for his opinions and giving him the benefit of all doubts privately to Captain Wymms for one. Which Vic more than reciprocates by explicitly deferring to Hyatt's new authority. Vic formally welcomed Julien to the Strike Team, who responded with the promise, "I won't let you down." To which Vic gestured towards Hyatt. "He's the boss now. Don't let HIM down." But an obsequious Vic is a dangerous Vic, I always say.
Plus, we got more of the kinder and gentler Vic Mackey in his small private substory. His long ago disgraced and fired and still highly honored mentor Joe came recruiting him to help roust some undesirable tenants for a well-paying landlord. Their best exchange this evening: on coming to the station, Joe says "Lot of ghosts in this place." Vic agrees, "Every day is Halloween."
Vic is SO done with trying to run crazy illegal crap. He wants nothing to do with it, and isn't at all tempted by money. Joe badly needs Vic to help him, and he fears the danger of letting his old partner go rousting dope dealers without proper backup. Thus, Vic gets into this extra-legal raid purely out of his sense of loyalty.
Which brings us to the asshole of this little storyline, Joe's hired help Lester, some kind of privateering underground ex-cop or something. He's enough of an ass to be sitting in the car with his black employer carrying on about "spooks." Vic's trying to smooth over and make nice jokes about "brothers," steering him gently in a more pro-social direction. His cutest moment was describing the dreadlocked Jamaicans they were getting ready to raid as "Afro-humps."
Anyway, he's a nasty little thug with a really pronounced sadistic streak. During the raid, he was more than happy to throw one of the Jamaican tenants out of a second story window. Vic had to stop him some from some kind of torture involving superglue. As one of the tenants said in his melodious Jamaican accent, "This is some felonious bullshit." Then he climaxed with the gratuitous disgust of sticking one resident's face into the toilet full of his roommates' piss. Vic tolerated this for just a a few seconds before pulling him off and ending the presentation.
This of course did not make Vic popular with Lester, who mocked him after they left the apartment building. You're no badass. No, I guess not. But Lester of course had to go there, with a crack about most of Vic's men getting killed. This got him punched in the mouth, of course. Somebody had to do it. But then he walks off, leaving things rough between him and Joe.
In the opening hospital scene, Ronnie shows up suddenly clean shaven. This is a fairly marked transformation after these years with the 'stache, drawing Shane's attention even in his half-conscious state. As Ronnie explained it to him, "Your girlfriend likes baby smooth skin between her thighs." That transformation at this point seems like it has to mean something, though we aren't seeing anything yet.
Which might be indicative of some kind of thinking different from the boss. At one point, Shane says to Ronnie and Vic, "Did you ever think about just coming clean...about everything?" After a slightly incredulous pause, Vic emphatically replies "NO."
The idea of the Hernan character worked a couple of different ways. This is the undercover federal drug agent that some fed supervisor showed up at Dutch's house to warn him off. Hyatt got wind of the name, and came asking Dutch about it. This was the first time the characters meet, and Hyatt's cheerful determination that he would not be warned off of this fed obviously impressed Dutch. Also, Hyatt's seemingly easy ability to in fact get access to the closely guarded informant is substantially indicative of his juice.
Hernan in fact turns out to have highly interesting information for them. They're investigating the San Marcos mass murders, which he strongly suspects was internal among the Mexicans. This was as opposed the working theory that it was people involved with the Salvadoran gang Hernan's infiltrated.
Oh, and by the way, Guardo didn't have anything to do with that cop getting killed in LA. In fact, Guardo was with Hernan in Mexico at the time. As they left, even Ronnie's not processing the information. But Vic got the fact: "Guardo didn't kill Lem." We can presume to expect some upcoming scene of his remorse for murdering Guardo wrongly. And now the hunt's back on for Lem's killer.
Who shows up back at home late in the night for the big climactic last scene, begging the wife for forgiveness which she is not intending to give. Mara is an excellent dramatic character with a backbone. She is basically ambitious white trash. At least figuratively, she's come up out of the trailer parks, but she's got a real estate license, a home and family.
Still, she instinctively goes for the trailer park drama in a crunch, like that scene early in the show at the hospital. You can perhaps empathize with her lack of appreciation for being cheated on, but the immediate and total nuclear response - especially in the quasi public circumstances in the hospital, that's straight out of the trailer park. As are the extra irritating racial displays when she later figures out that angle. "Some black bitch called on your phone." That distinctly made it worse for Shane.
On the other hand, I can really appreciate her fearlessness. Shane shows up in the night breaking down and freaking out and waving his gun around, begging again for forgiveness. This doesn't phase her for a second. "Shoot me, shoot yourself - but I'm not forgiving you."
At that point, Shane finally confesses. This was not just an admission that he killed Lem, but a detailed confession. "He was still breathing. He was alive - and I just walked away." Of course, he has to frame it in that particularly contemptible pussy "I did it for us" business, lying first of all to himself. Shane was scared of prison, which is understandable if not forgivable, but spreading it around and pretending even to himself like he was doing it for his wife and children is his ultimate bitch play, hiding behind Mommy's skirt.
Yet at that point Mara relents. She might have let him shoot her rather than forgive him for marital infidelity, but she's got a distinct strain of fierce tribal loyalty that kicks in when he confesses to murder. A couple of seasons ago while she was stretched out pregnant with their first child, bitch nearly killed someone herself with a clothes iron in backing Shane up in a fight. She'll close ranks against an outside threat, even at risk to herself. She wouldn't just quietly forgive and forget a little cheating, but you could predict that she'd be willing to commit crimes herself to protect Shane here rather than protect her own interests by distancing herself.
So in the final moments of the episode, she throws him a lifeline. Mara goes to him and embraces him. Shane gets that much of a reprieve - for however short a time it lasts before Vic figures it all out.
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