THE SHIELD
SEASON THREE NOTES
Season 3, Episode 14 “All In”
Air date: 6-8-04
The scenes handling O'Brien's mutilated body last week may have been the most physically grotesque stuff ever out of the Strike Team, but this week's scenes with Tavon in the hospital must take the prize for most disgusting. Judging by the looks on his face, Lem would probably agree. Yet he went right along. Indeed, it was him that was doing the main lying, cause he's the one Tavon trusts.
Reviewing then, two months earlier Tavon got in a fight with Shane. Mara clocked Tavon on the back of the head, and he stumbled out in a daze and ended up wrecking his van and getting thrown through the windshield. He was near death, and only now halfway getting conscious and having some fuzzy memories.
Yet Tavon is set enough on telling about Shane fighting him that Vic has no influence, even with threats that he might lose his job, his pension, his health insurance. He says this as Tavon is laid up in a hospital in horrible condition.
In order to avoid any prosecution for Shane, then, and to avoid wholly unwanted IAD attention, Vic has convinced Lem - the main Strike Team member Tavon was close to - to tell a big lie to Tavon to get him to keep his mouth shut. He convinces Tavon that he had hit and seriously injured Mara- the pregnant woman- and almost cost her the baby. See, they're just trying to protect TAVON from ruining his career.
The pure guilt and suffering on poor, weak Tavon as Lem tells him made up details about Mara's non-existent injuries that he personally treated- man, that's some nasty stuff to throw on a severely injured partner. Poor Tavon was wracked with physical agony over the guilt of this total fabrication. They left him literally writhing in torment on his hospital bed.
This betrayal may be a new low. It certainly is for Lem.
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Claudette's presumptions of moral superiority do grow wearisome. She's just bound and determined to get years of convictions of dangerous jackasses thrown out because the public defender representing them had been doing oxycontin for three years. Therefore, if she can prove this, all the defendents can claim inadequate representation.
As Dutch said, "Criminals will go free."
The moral obtuseness of Claudette's masturbatory righteousness can first be measured by the fact that she's willing to let the guy get years off for actually MURDERING a public defender in return for getting him to help her establish the timeline of the PDs addiction.
Even as a staunch libertarian, I have to say this is a bunch of nonsense. Now, if there was exculpatory evidence that some particular convict was in fact innocent, then that's one thing. By any rights, you have to help get them off. But going way out of your way, and against orders to generate theoretical blanket charges of inadequate council like this is nonsense. It surely isn't what a cop needs to be doing.
On the other hand, Claudette must surely feel very good about her righteous self.
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"Babe, I've made a decision. I don't want Vic in our lives anymore." The presumptuous of Mara continues to astound. SHE has made a decision that her husband is going to quit his job. Nice of her to think she gets to say that- particularly considering how BAD she has screwed the pooch since day one. After flatly stealing $7,000 and buying them all great grief, how do you even measure the hubris of this?
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After a LOT of whining and pissing and pouting this season, Shane was pretty well holding himself together here. Perhaps this just constitutes an example of necessity being the mother of invention, as him and Mara have dug a pretty deep hole.
Still, he was pretty sharp in concocting an instant story when Aceveda unexpectedly showed up at his house asking about his storage locker which had recently been the holding spot for the Money Train stash. He was largely just LUCKY that Vic et al had moved the money, so there was nothing to find. Here's the key. Knock yourself out.
Nonetheless, he was pretty quick on his feet spinning a credible story about his furniture and his fiancee that explained the pseudonymously rented storage shed.
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Carol made for the comic relief. Danny and Julien had to absolutely arrest her for harassing the customers at the supermarket with her independent campaigning for Council candidate Aceveda. Twelve hours a day in front of this store.
Then at the station in the cage, she finally meets her hero. Aceveda nicely let her go, and asked her to tone it down. "I'm out there 12 hours a day, and this is how he thanks me?"
This deeply offended her, that she got only a minute of his attention after all those twelve hour days she was putting out for him. Naturally, she was next seen being arrested in front of the supermarket with signs protesting AGAINST Aceveda, and his "Gestapo tactics" and "stormtroopers" ie Danny and Julien.
This all makes for a nice comic riff on a certain kind of cheap narcistic moral presumption that comes especially to celebrities. Some loser decides to devote themselves to some person they don't even know, and then take it that therefore that person OWES them attention. This makes a lighter version of the type of thinking in Eminem's song "Stan."
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"Having a thankless job is bad enough. Getting shot for it is just insulting." Good ol' Dutch.
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There have been a few weaker scenes and plot situations dragging on the show a bit in the second half of this season. The story with Cayill, the Armenian drug connection, for example, was moving slow. Especially, the scenes with the Strike Team following him in traffic were not up to standards for this show. Tailing suspects in traffic rates as totally standard issue cop stuff. Hell, Starsky and Hutch could do this.
Worse, the continuing business with Tavon since his accident does not satisfy. This cheesy coma thing has been drug out for months since "Streaks and Tips," with no resolution to Tavon's position in sight. It all seems kind of raggedy and half-assed, a ridiculous soap opera contrivance barely up the standards of The Guiding Light - much less those of the greatest cop show in history.
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On the other hand, all of this does set up a classic closing sequence detailing Lem's breakdown. He just takes off with the Money Train stash, and starts stuffing it in the fire. Looks like he managed to destroy half of the cash before the team caught up with him.
But they didn't just find him and stop him, they had a good standoff, with some outstanding dialogue. Lem made a really dramatically effective performance, perhaps his best scene in the whole series. His idea of taking it on himself to protect the team because they're his only family makes a kind of sense.
Not GOOD sense, mind you. Destroying the cash only means that they would stay poor. The Armenians already have their names and pictures. It them or Marcos at this point. That's the actual danger, and making them poor won't change that.
Lem may think he's salving his conscience, but Diagar and O'Brien and all the others are still tortured and murdered, and staying poor won't help them in the least.
It's a really strong lingering last image for the show, though, as they finally subdue Lem. Vic is laying on his back panting, restraining Lem by the light of the incinerator, panting and gently intoning again and again "It's over."
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