THE SHIELD
SEASON THREE NOTES
Season 3, Episode 3 “Bottom Bitch”
Air date: 3-23-04
Holy Jebus, looking at the alley scene where Vic basically orally rapes the hooker "Farrah" with his pistol, breaking her down like a pimp- you'd think that Vic Mackey must be the evilest bastard alive.
Perhaps he is. However, the scene is everything but what it might appear in that way. Vic's not getting any gratification out of breaking her down. He at least thinks that he's helping her, scaring her straight. "I just saved her life." That's how he explained it to Lem- and not entirely without logic. Of course, that only works if she WANTS her life saved.
Vic explained to her during that little pistol fellatio exercise that she was his "bottom bitch," the last one on the pecking order under him. Yet she played him the whole show, and he knew it. She went over his head to get his boss to MAKE him help bust her old pimp.
She ruthlessly played every emotional card, beating at him with the memory of Connie, the dead hooker from the first two seasons. Note how she poked and prodded different ways with her story, trying to guilty Vic in to what she wants now.
Then of course, she had her grand invention of the supposed 13 year old sister turned out by Smooth, the pimp she was using Vic to get back at. She got further on that story with Claudette than Vic, that's for sure.
Indeed, after all the nonsense and drama, Farrah finds her a new pimp, and success. "Thanks for helping make me the queen" she tells Vic.
One of the good things in the writing of The Shield has been the depth of characterization of prostitutes. Too many cop dramas trade on cheap deification as the Whore with a Heart of Gold or The Victim. The Shield creates real full-fledged characters
Connie was treated sympathetically as a helpless, needy person who was perhaps sometimes emotionally manipulative out of pure desperation. Who could she turn to but Vic? He HAD to help her.
Yet we came to see her far less favorably in her last couple of appearances (season two). Those same behavioral traits of greed and manipulativeness looked a lot less excusable when she was sober, and not in some constant immediate crisis.
Farrah looks more wicked and evil than Connie ever did, though. She might not have the brute strength to beat someone up like her old pimp Smooth, but the purely conscious emotional manipulations are just as evil.
Note also the curious "bottom bitch" egotism of Farrah. She's a "queen" among hookers at the end of the show- and proud of it. She acts as if she thinks she's accomplished something.
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It's hard to make someone who would rape a cripple into a sympathetic character, but they come somewhere close to it here with the Paul Fetz character.
A 73 year old grandmother was raped (and she was a pretty strong character herself), and a vulnerable neighbor woman (Wanda Leder) pushes Dutch toward the obvious culprit, a registered sex offender living across the street.
Mr. Fetz is obviously significantly developmentally challenged someway, slightly retarded. Of course, he's defensive and maintains his innocence.
Considering that he had molested a girl in a wheel chair some seven years ago, however, and that the neighbor reported having seen him looking in the old woman's window, obviously he was THE suspect.
Dutch leaned on him emotionally, with a tough interrogation speech about "moral compasses" that are broken in some people- and can't be fixed. Fetz eventually confesses.
Then Dutch figures out that he simply wasn't guilty. He flat didn't rape the old woman. (They never did get even a sniff of any other prospect.)
Dutch tried to undo the damage of having leaned on this poor, fragile ego who has been struggling successfully against his darker urges for these seven years- but it was too much. Dutch just broke the poor bastard in that bathroom scene, explaining that broken moral compasses can't be broken. This little impassioned speech from this authority figure was all it took to snap his already marginal control.
He ends up calling Dutch to come stop him as he's breaking into the house to rape the neighbor woman Leder, who has also been going around the neighborhood systematically telling everyone about him- ruining what little bit of quiet life he had managed to build.
Now they just have to put him away. The cops had to bust in and pull him off the neighbor.
Yet you could see how hard the guy was struggling to understand his urges and control his own behavior. You could see how bad he felt for the things that he had done years ago. You could also see the perfectly understandable rage against the neighbor who had ruined his life, and how raping her would make sense as the precise way of expressing that. Note his last line of dialogue, on the phone to Dutch as he's going into the house, "I'll try not to hurt her too bad."
Poor dumb bastard.
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So in the process of investigating the rape of the old woman- who had seen the attacker's penis but not face - Dutch conjured up a "penis line-up" consisting of several Polaroids. He's explaining it to Claudette at the Barn as she's glancing through the pictures, noting that she picked out the wrong one- evidence that Fetz was not it. Asked whose picture she had selected, Dutch started stammering about not having any volunteers.
In short, Dutch took a picture of his own dick to show to a 73 year old rape victim. It's just perfect exasperating Dutch behavior- so practical and reasonable in a sense, but so perverse and shame based. You just want to slap him.
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