THE SHIELD
SEASON THREE NOTES
Season 3, Episode 7 “Safe”
Air date: 4-20-04
There sure was a hell of a lot of jacking around with getting the list of serial numbers out of Aceveda's office safe. They were really, really pushing the point, stealing the safe out of the office, replacing it. There was the thing about the president coming through town to have the office somewhat empty and distracted. Still, they're carrying safes in and out of the office.
One way of looking at it would be to say that the Strike Team was lucky that Aceveda is so personally overwhelmed with this rape trauma that no one even knows about. You'd have to think that any other time, Aceveda would have picked up on this much monkey business absolutely in his own office.
The resolution was nice. Vic managed to slip the city his own handpicked locksmith when Aceveda couldn't get the (substitute) safe open. Just have him get the combination from Aceveda, problems rapidly solved.
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The "crime songs" story makes classic fodder for this show. I've heard whisps of some kind of popular Mexican songs celebrating criminals, which is just enough to make this seem credible. The addition of the idea of the singer getting special confessions to use as the basis for his songs brings in whole new levels of complication. The singer is a "journalist" protecting his "sources."
Since they found no less than eight bodies buried where his song called for one, one would not expect the officers to be satisfied with his First Amendment defense.
What's intriguing is the social psychology. The premise is that consumers are paying good money to buy self-marketed recordings telling the stories of unsolved pillage and murder, clearly based on special insider information. You can see the sick appeal of this as a kind of next step of wickedness past the whole "authenticity" of rap, and the indisputable commercial appeal of plain ignorant street thugs like 50 Cent.
They got good mileage, however, out of playing this Mexican troubadour against the gangster type. For being the tough gangster mariachi, the singer in person was one of the biggest pussy men ever in the building. He started screaming for help, and about to wet himself just from Vic looking at him. Oh, that bit was just hilarious.
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Vic left us a nice moment of ambiguity with the videotape of his and Aceveda's interrogation of a suspect. After Aceveda went nuts on the guy, kicking the bejesus out of this guy so hard that- according to his confession to his brother later- he started to piss himself.
He was that out of control, and Vic had to haul him off the perp. How out of control does another cop have to be for VIC MACKEY to be the "good" cop?
Shortly thereafter, Vic discreetly nabbed the VHS out of the monitoring deck for the interrogation room, with the footage of Aceveda, let us say, violating the perps civil liberties with wanton abandon. The obvious question, is Vic taking this incriminating tape to protect Aceveda, or to use as leverage against him?
A lesser show might have milked that scenario, but they paid it off within the show. They let it lay for a couple of segments, left it linger in the air a bit. Then Vic simply showed up at Aceveda's house and handed him the tape, noting that this made him even for the captain's understanding indulgence from the week previous.
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Again with Dutch's shame based personality. He's a great guy, but he just keeps managing to do these dumbass things to continually humiliate himself.
In this case, he's lost a departmental laptop computer- loaded with kiddie porn. He had taken out a computer to do some extracurricular work trying to catch child predators who might be cruising online. When he's not getting anywhere with it, he carelessly leaves this valuable piece of equipment laying around and forgets it for ten months.
Then it gets noticed, and he has to explain what he's done to Danny, in whom he still has a lingering interest. Even knowing and believing him, how much more humiliating an innocent thing could you have to explain?
Eventually, they need to explain what the hell is wrong with Dutch. What were the vaguely hinted at childhood traumas that cause him to keep doing stuff like this and the "penis lineup" from "Bottom Bitch?"
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Claudette does not seem to be handling her little bit of power very well so far, in numerous ways. For starters, she's liking the feel of being the boss too much. She had even Dutch calling her out for giving him orders, when she's his partner and not his boss. Dutch is her closest partner and friend in the building, and when she starts to alienate even HIM, she ought to take a clue that something needs re-considered.
She may indeed be getting, as we would say in Kentucky, too big for her britches. She took it on herself to override Captain Aceveda's direct orders on handling a prisoner.
Granted she had a little subtle nudge from Vic. There was a whole little subplot here that slipped by me entirely on the first viewing. The more you watch it, though, the funnier it is.
Vic played Claudette like a Stradivarius fiddle. Captain Aceveda made a bad call on several counts in ordering this guy held. Vic, the bottom bitch in this deal, said just the thing to play her good cop buttons. Surely the captain doesn't want us to just drum up some charges to continue holding this guy- though in fact that was Aceveda's clear demand. Vic then let her suggest letting the perp go so they could follow him- which was obviously what he wanted to do anyway.
Claudette was so caught up in liking the sound of exercising her superior judgment by letting the guy go that she didn't smell the obvious big fat Mackey rat. Vic was taken aback. He about needed the smelling salts to handle the suggestion that he might be expected to just drum up some crappy charges as an excuse to hold a suspect. Oh my!
By the time Vic got done, Claudette had done what HE wanted, and thought it was all her own idea. On top of which, SHE was absolutely the one on the hook with the captain, who was even more upset than might have been expected.
For the cherry on top of that, Vic made the motion of acting like he was going to try to take the responsibility with Aceveda. Now, obviously Claudette would not, could not just sit there and let her subordinate take a rap. Yet he gets full credit with her for trying. Then for that last little manipulative touch, he thanks her later for taking the heat from Aceveda.
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Aceveda's assistant Nina could sure use some humanization. So far she has been portrayed as a grasping, petty, officious bitch. The first use of her name was as the author of a crappy note on the break room refrigerator in "Posse Up." Far worse, she finds it necessary to report Dutch's missing laptop to IAD. Regulations require reporting any missing property worth over $500 to Internal Affairs.
This was totally a non-productive action, likely only to cause unnecessary grief in the station- even without her knowing about the issue with what Dutch has on that computer. Most people with any sense would have at least given him a couple of days to look for the thing before reporting him.
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Now THIS was a worthy closing scene. Aceveda finally these weeks later after The Incident from "Mum" confides in a male family member- brother, cousin? He's coming apart at the seams and spilling his guts, and the loving relative gives him a good pep talk about what a powerful, important man he is. Take control.
What to do, then? Aceveda acknowledges that he could find the two guys without much trouble- which is probably about right. They have to be Byz Lats. Wouldn't be that hard to figure out.
But what would Aceveda do then? He's sure not going to arrest them for raping him, and stand in front of a jury recounting the incident.
Then his brother comes in with the closing line, charged with the promise of very bad possibilities in consideration of Aceveda's obviously unstable and suggestible mental condition. Very quietly and considered, he tells David,
"If it was me...I'd kill them."
Hold the silent reaction shot from the captain for a few seconds indicating that he was taking the suggestion seriously and...cut to black. Damn.
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