THE SHIELD
SEASON THREE NOTES
Season 3, Episode 8 “Cracking Ice”
Air date: 4-27-04
The more investment the audience has in a dramatic character, the more dramatic impact can be had from their death. It's not just saying that a character was a nice guy and you should feel sorry, but having seen the presentation of a memorable person, giving the feeling of tragedy and impact that you wouldn't feel, for example, from Kill Bill Volume 1. What makes the payoff is the creative effort in creating a personality engaging enough that the audience feels the loss.
Officer Tommy Hisk has been in nearly every episode this season, building in importance each episode. His bonding scenes with Julien were touching, particularly their "double dip of chocolate and vanilla" that they celebrated in the break room during "Bottom Bitch."
Then one dumbass mistake (having a criminal burgle the ex's house for him), and he's done. His ex and his son are dead, and he's going to be overwhelmed with guilt. Then he's losing his job, the one thing he had left, and...
Damn, that sucked. Tommy was a helluva guy. It was a strong dramatic payoff for the show, though.
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The reactions from Danny and Julien were more interesting than the death itself. Usually you expect people in these circumstances to be expressing sympathy for the dead, or to at least discreetly keep their mouth shut. Danny's harsh negative reaction, describing Tommy an hour after his death as a "coward" was an appealingly masculine response from Officer Sofer.
Julien, naturally, was more obviously understanding and sympathetic to his late partner. He gave just a sentence or two filled with proper Christian charity.
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Instead of going to see the counselor being provided by the city, however, Julien took the first chance he could to get out of the station to go masturbate into a cup.
Man, what a bizarre scene. What makes it so truly bizarre is the pure reasonableness of it. It's not just some random, arbitrary David Lynch surrealism.
It's a very life affirming scene really. The death of his partner has re-doubled his anxiousness to get his wife pregnant. This makes perfectly good sense.
The impulse just gets twisted along the way, as Julien is just not physically attracted to women, much as he may love and adore his Vanessa. So, there he is at the sperm bank, dutifully setting up a picture of him and the Mrs to look at while he stimulates himself.
Which gets to his moment of quiet admission of the truth to himself. Finding the picture of the wife inadequately stimulating (and with the offices about to close), his feeling of the need to leave the donation so he can impregnate the wife overcame his denial of his true sexuality enough for him to pick up a gay magazine from the stack. This is the most acknowledgement of continuing homosexual attraction that Julien has made even to himself since season 1.
Here's a really peculiar thing: So Julien's going to a sperm bank to masturbate into a cup with a gay magazine so he can impregnate his wife- yet there's nothing at all FUNNY about it. By the basic description, you'd have to think there were a dozen punch lines, but it plays perfectly serious.
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You have to love Trish. She kept her cool under an ugly undercover assignment at the mercy of a professional killer, even when things were going badly. Total commitment.
Also, note how she handled the aftermath of her bad sexual experience. For practical purposes, she was raped. Without going on about it, she just suggested the obvious practical medical steps, with no trace of trauma.
This comes in obvious contrast to the continuing story arc with Aceveda and The Incident, where he's still playing out his traumatic responses to that one hour for weeks and months- though not particularly this day.
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Claudette has not been on her best game this whole season. She's misstepped with her authority repeatedly, and this time she just didn't pay close attention to a critical detail and nearly got two members of the Decoy Squad killed, and did get one of them basically raped. Walon was absolutely right when he went off on her in front of everyone in the Barn for screwing up.
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Vic has done particularly skillful Machiavellian politicking this whole season, working around Aceveda's increased power and Claudette being put as his boss. These tough circumstances have brought out his best creative political work.
In this episode, note how he was working on Claudette, kissing her ass about how her screw-up wasn't really her fault. Then he slides in with his own point that she should have had HIS guys doing the job instead of the Decoy Squad, in which case it wouldn't have gotten screwed like this.
Then he finds a good opportunity to play the other side of the game as well, going to Walon about working his Decoy Squad with Vic to undermine Claudette.
If there was ever a character on television who knew how to play both ends against the middle, it's Vic Mackey.
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The backburner plotline with Dutch and Danny may not make as much an impact on first viewing as some of the other scenes. They're fishing around for a break in the ongoing "cuddler rapist" case, with Danny tagging along purely on her own time. There's no shooting or physical endangerment, or even any confrontation. They don't actually end up making any headway, much less solving the case.
Yet they got good mileage out of this pairing on several different levels. For one thing, there was the almost subliminally sexual nature. Dutch gets to be the wise and powerful Daddy teaching her detective work. Yet he's still our overly anxious Dutch man. Danny finds herself again not really quite sexually attracted to him, yet strongly drawn by certain aspects of his intellectual and professional power.
Also, Dutch showed some interesting strong intellectual self-discipline or something by accepting her debunking of his big theory tying a double murder to his rapist. She listed several disparities between the murders and the other rape scenes, and Dutch took the volunteer uni's criticism rather than dismissing her. This suggests either careful control of his pride, or the opposite- a total lack of confidence. Perhaps a little from Column A and a little from Column B.
They also had the prime comedy scene of the show. Out scouring the neighborhood of the rapes, they found a guy in a utility workers uniform peeking through the side window of a house while he fondled himself. Turned out to be the owner of the house, role playing with his wife and their big black buddy. Yikes!
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