THE SHIELD
SEASON THREE NOTES
Season 12, Episode 12 “Riceburners”
Air date: 5-25-04
Here's a curious note thrown in to cast a bit of extra light, if not illumination, to Dutch's jarring catkiller incident from last week. By way of deflecting his personal inquiries, Claudette says "You look tired. That cat still keeping you up all night?"
Hmm. So in retrospect we learn that this cat had apparently been enough of a continuing nuisance that he had been complaining about it to his partner.
Does this constitute a mitigating factor, suggesting that he really wasn't entirely just killing it for the evil curiosity of it?
Also, the person who knows him best notices that he's not well rested. We know it's NOT because the cat is keeping him awake with squalling, that's for sure. Is he losing sleep to a guilty conscience?
Another thing, by way of making a point about a suspect, Dutch suggested that you would not necessarily know what different people were capable of. Why, you'd be surprised if you knew the five worst things I've ever done. Oh? After the cat incident last show - invoked again earlier in this episode - this might make you wonder.
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Dang, but it's nice to see Claudette finally GET SOME. She's not had any scrap of a love interest in the whole run of the series. Plus, she's turned into an insufferable authoritarian prig this season. We was ALL needing some relief.
Her behavior was so notably different tonight than recently that you shouldn't be surprised to see her making like a natural woman in the shower with the new contractor boyfriend.
Claudette (CCH Pounder) is a middle aged woman, and not technically a beauty queen (though I personally rate her pretty high). She was hired as a character actress, not a pinup girl. Yet she made an especially good impact in this scene just exactly by coming against those expectations. She managed to convey a lot of erotic tenderness and sensuality that we really hadn't seen before.
The adult sensuality of Claudette's shower scene contrasts very nicely with the scene immediately before it of Vic and his dog lady playing like high school kids in the bathroom at the Barn- and indeed they were talking about it in exactly those terms. Indeed, probably the whole point of the scene was to set up this contrast between the serious adults versus the childishness and immaturity of Vic's relationship.
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The saga of Henry and Angie Dietz turned out interesting in several ways. Suddenly, a long battered wife is out robbing convenience stores with her husband's pistol.
Before meeting him, Claudette invites Dutch to offer some of his highbrow perp profiling. Dutch did not seem to feel much need for deep explanations with this guy. "I'd say he's just an asshole."
Claudette took the obvious, sensible view. Henry was months behind on rent, and an obvious bully, so he was making the wife go pull a couple of minor hold-ups to bring in some cash. Given her non-violent history as an abuse victim, and his violent domination, this seem pretty obvious.
Dutch, however, was less willing to jump to such conclusions, referring back to the clueless wife of the cuddler rapist who had NO idea what wickedness her husband was up to.
Ah, turns out she had gone out robbing on her own to get money to get away from him- and pay his back rent. Her friend explained that Angie had a kind heart, and didn't want him to get kicked out on the sidewalk after she left. The friend calls that kind-heartedness, where a perhaps more skeptical observer would just call her an idiot.
The denouement of this storyline made with a simple tactic underlining a phenomenon sadly underrepresented on cop shows: a guy she was trying to rob pulled a gun and shot her dead. This black man running his dry cleaning store recognized her face from the wanted picture, and took her out as soon as she reached for her gun.
Claudette didn't say anything much, but she was not happy with this George Jefferson character, who exhibited no sympathy for the human that he had just killed. He showed a curious lack of any emotion, even anger. He just wanted to know how long it was going to take them to get the body gone so he could open back up for business.
Dang, that's cold- but perfectly reasonable.
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Vic gets to indulge now for the third time this season in orally raping someone, which is just EXACTLY the kind of thing that makes sense for him to do as a function of his personality. In this case, it was the Korean businessman / community liaison. Vic figured out that he was absolutely making calls to tip off the murderer they were trying to catch, so Vic shoved his cell phone into his mouth.
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The businessman was acting as an informal community representative, acting on the basis of widespread community distrust of outside authority figures. Captain Aceveda and he were old college buddies, and called him out for indulging and enabling just the kind of dysfunctional behavior in his community that he had railed against as an idealistic college student.
He had an interesting response, turning it around to ask about Aceveda's own little political compromises from the idealistic young Latino college student. As a budding politician, how much is he going to be challenging the Latino community as a city councilman? "What if they want to speak Spanish in school? What if they want driver's licenses?"
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Quote of the week: Aceveda intends to punish the Korean community for actively co-operating to stop the police from arresting the murdering Charles Kim. He's ordering all available officers into the Korean neighborhood to harass the locals.
Captain Aceveda: I want every inch of Koreatown smothered.
Vic: Like white on rice.
In short, Aceveda and Vic made a consciously announced decision to run roughshod, and make life unbearable for the entire community until the murderer is caught. Note the follow-up scene in which the Strike Team absolutely just utterly arbitrarily walk in and close up a Korean restaurant.
Perhaps one can understand the motivation, wanting to get a murderer for hire who had just randomly killed a child. Nonetheless, there are some serious and legitimate grounds for charges of racial harassment being generated in these scenes. Like white on rice, indeed.
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Vic really looks pathetic when he begs. See him begging to Aceveda for overtime, begging to him and separately to his own team for indulgence for his autistic children. Ugh.
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The ending was a little weak. They're setting up the tensions within the Strike Team, with the continuing worries about the dangerous Money Train stash. Vic is withdrawn and begging. Shane is dissatisfied with Lem and Ron voting him down 2 to 1 to NOT let Vic start dipping into the cash.
The last shot is Lem insisting to Ronnie with a certain uncertainty in his voice that they had done the right thing. I know this is setting up the internal dissent for the big season finale coming right up already. Still, in itself this scene is not particularly emotionally charged, the kind of thing that will stick with you. It's worthwhile dramatic material, but not a particularly good closer.
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