THE SHIELD
SEASON THREE NOTES
Season 3, Episode 4 “Streaks and Tips”
Air date: 3-30-04
So I'm watching this the first time through. It's certainly interesting, but maybe it's not quite up there. Then things get all funky with a quickness at Shane's place. Holy Jumpin' Jebus. I think that's what we call "pacing." But we'll get back to that.
The first half of the show was dominated by the attempted murder case where one brother has been poisoning the other. First time through, it seemed perhaps slightly mundane- by Shield standards.
Watching it several more times over the next few hours, however, this story became more fascinating with every little detail. One such detail was the perp brother's eventual explanation. "I knew I could never pay Robert back all that money, and the thallium- it just seemed easier than disappointing him again." In another series, they'd just find some evidence and bust the guy. On this series, the guy has some interesting excuse for himself.
Beyond that, the brother poisoning story really works the Dutch/Claudette relationship in both touching and clever ways. For starters, Claudette had the best laugh line of the night. As Dutch stammers around trying to explain how he needs her partnership sometimes in interrogation, she cuts him off. "Please, don't say that I complete you." The invocation of just that exact cheap Tom Cruise movie romance into this professional relationship about caused me to pee myself. And it was genuinely touching when Dutch knowingly invoked the line at the end of the show with a gentle smile.
The basic gist of their joint effort with the brother was for Claudette to be the good cop- since Dutch had tried playing bad cop only to alienate the perp from whom they needed a confession. Her lines of conversation with the bad brother were nicely double-edged. She explains during their first meeting that, paraphrasing, she's been on the force way longer than him, but he's still always trying to teach her something. What a super schmuck!
On one hand, she's obviously set this supposed conflict up in cahoots with Dutch. Yet the whole discourse about Dutch trying to teach her smacks of truth. If you didn't like Dutch for whatever reasons, the things Claudette was saying would not be an unreasonable description.
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Attention to the nuances of relationships get rewarded, such as in the scenes with Vic and the estranged wife Corrine. They've been frantically searching for their runaway girl, and found her at the playground. She's just sitting there, ignoring polite requests to come along.
Then Vic just ever so slightly glances at Corrine, who reads the signal and takes a step back before Dad barks at the daughter as necessary to get compliance.
That tiny little bit of communication really adds to the dramatic effect of the whole scene, and the sense that this is a real family with history.
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Rarely do they waste scenes in this series. They've always had a lean, mean fighting machine. Nearly every single scene in the entire run of the series does something special and memorable, and advances story line or character.
One brief scene from "Streaks and Tip" seemed weak by these standards. It was a brief scene, probably less than a minute, where the Strike Team went to the house of a killer's girlfriend. It was empty, and the camera didn't even follow them inside. It didn't seem to accomplish much.
The somewhat interesting part, and perhaps the point, was the woman across the way. Her presence was established not by her image, but by a camera shot of the boys through her window, with music playing in the background. I'm not sure exactly what album, but it sounded like Miles Davis.
What makes it interesting is purely the site of the skinny older black woman talking to Vic. She didn't have anything particularly important to say, just a line or two. Thing is, the more I looked at her, the more she looked like latter day Miles Davis. If that was their idea, then she was probably about worth the few precious seconds of screen time they spent on her. That was kind of cool.
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Mara, Shane's pregnant fiancee, has been very controversial among the Shield fanatics on the discussion list. She's gotten about the worst reaction I've seen of any character on the show. She's been called a "bitch" pretty many times amongst the group during her so far four episode run for reasons not entirely clear to me.
On the basis of her actions in this episode though, I'd have to say that she is, as we might say out here in cracker land, a stand-up bitch. She absolutely had her man's back in the most direct and physical way. She might be pregnant and suffering morning sickness, but you do NOT want to be attacking the father of her child.
She grabbed a clothes iron, and smacked Tavon in the head with it when she came in to find him beating her man.
Now, this was not the best reaction. The boys were just having (very vigorous) fisticuffs, and she comes through with what could easily have been (and might yet turn out to be) absolutely deadly force. She overreacted.
Still, you have to love a woman that will get your back like this.
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So who's to blame for Tavon's apparent demise? Not that there isn't generally blame enough to spread around, but reluctantly I must conclude that it is primarily Tavon himself.
Of the three people involved, Shane certainly looks like the biggest JERK. He more or less purposely picked a fight with the "as long as you know your place" business, and then referring to Tavon as a "darkie." He deserved the beating he got.
However, Tavon clearly threw the first punch- and that's where he takes on the responsibility. Yes, he was there in the first place trying to be nice and, as Vic had put it, take one for the team. He was being the MUCH bigger man- until he let Shane bait him.
Now, Mara obviously did the main real damage in the fight by swinging a clothes iron up side his head. She clearly reacted badly to a fist fight. However, she just walked into the room and found Tavon on top of the father of her child. Shane is getting beaten very badly, and has blood running down his face. What's she supposed to do?
Mara simply miscalculated the use of force in a moment of crisis. She came into a scene of violence, and panicked. She's a woman- and a sickly pregnant woman at that. Tavon and Shane are cops- trained professional users of force. She is not. She likely thought that her baby's father's life was at stake, and grabbed the first thing at hand to stop it. Not to put too fine a point on it, but if Tavon weren't on top of Shane and beating him to a bloody pulp she would never have attacked him.
Leave general issues of "morality" out of it for a moment, and consider it legally. Shane was an ass, but he was just running his mouth. Tavon took the first swing. THAT was battery. After that, Shane was just defending himself. Mara was just defending her man, who was being brutalized. You can't really blame her- not legally at least- for using force to stop a violent attack on a family member in her own home.
Tavon also doubles up on getting the ultimate responsibility for his fate because of his actions AFTER Mara hit him. She damaged him pretty good, but he was still up and walking around. Well, he was up and staggering around, anyway. But it was TAVON that got behind the wheel when he couldn't even walk straight, and it was getting thrown through that windshield that did it. Neither Mara nor Shane put him behind that wheel.
That's not particularly a moral failing on his part to say that he deserved it, but it was this really bad judgment that did him in. Not being able to see or walk straight at that point, he should have just fished that cell phone out of the pocket and called 911. If he'd just sat on the sidewalk waiting for an ambulance, he'd have survived Mara's iron. It was getting behind the wheel when he obviously not even vaguely in shape to drive that really destroyed him.
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Danny can't be entirely thrilled about her place in the world at this point. She's indebted to Aceveda, and pushed into the role of something of a snitch. She hasn't exactly "snitched" on anyone, but watching her, let us say, check up on Julien feels bad.
Repeatedly over the course of the series, Vic has used Danny, getting her to unknowingly help him cover things up and such- using her without her knowledge. Now in this episode, the first words she's spoken to Vic since being back on the job were sneaky casual conversation checking up on Julien.
This does make an interesting role reversal for her and Vic, though. Unlike Julien, Vic has this kind of handling coming to him, too.
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Ah, reading between the lines- even as dedicated a fan of Dr Strangelove as me didn't quite get the point with the Julien storyline until the third viewing. The ten year old stepson had called officers to his house because he was arguing with Mommy.
Danny took Mommy out in the yard to chat, where she explained that it was nothing, and Julien wasn't violent- he was just having a rough time after the beating he took a few months ago (Season 2 finale, Episode 13 "Dominoes Falling"). He's had surgery, but he's still suffering back pain. He may need more surgery.
Later, they have a stressful bedroom scene where he pushes her away, then complains bitterly about how guys like Shane can get their women pregnant without even trying. "We're trying," says Vanessa. Then he promises to go back to the doctor.
Thinking back though, in four episodes this season, he's shown absolutely no sign of physical disability. He had plenty of vigor to chase a nothing perp down the street and tackle him across the church floor. There's nothing wrong with his back.
Oh, wait, I get it now. Julien is having performance problems with his wife because he's GAY. He's having trouble getting it up for a woman. He might be repressing, suppressing and oppressing his desires for men- but actually positively performing with a woman is another issue.
You can see how this is just the way it would get to him. He could suppress his homosexual urges, and even live without sexual gratification. But the desire to specifically father a child would be the thing that really eat at him.
Well, he's trying.
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It's hard telling what to think of this Decoy Squad that came in starting just last episode, but I fell in love with their leader tonight right at the end. Old ugly Walon really made good on his bet. Being required to streak through the Barn, he let his partners trot right through, but he took a minute to not just fulfill the bare minimum terms of the bet, but to put on a little nude floor show. Sweet.
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