Season 4, Episode 1 “The Cure”
Air date: 3-15-05
They obviously intend this season as something of a new start. The first sign of that is that there was no "previously on The Shield" segment. Also, of course, they have the much hyped Glen Close as the new captain. Also, they've broken up the Strike Team.
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Captain Rawling got a couple of humorous scenes before she ever had to get at all serious. Indeed, her first two lines were punchlines. Defending or deflecting anger away from a uni who had shot a bulldog that was attached to his leg, Rawlings told the assistant chief that "The dog had a piece, and he was going to use it." With just the right nuance in the delivery, that comes out really funny. As does her next line, congratulating Vic on the bust - "Nice collar."
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They have a new major villain, a supposedly reformed drug dealer turned black self-help activist, leading huge crowds in the community in shouting "RESPECT" over and over. On the one hand, this Antwon Mitchell character is nominally not a pimple on the ass of the evilness of such past Farmington villains as Margos and Armadillo. So far it seems that you could cover even his whole body count on one hand. Yet his more mundane level of wickedness gets hugely aggravated by the massive abuses of public trust, with mothers bringing their children to listen to him preach about his reformed ways. And he really hasn't done anything especially bad so far.
Anthony Anderson plays Antwon. Mr Anderson has a fairly respectable resume coming into this role, gaining attention as one of Jim Carrey's sons in Me, Myself and Irene. He also provided some of the funniest moments in Barbershop as the ATM thief.
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Corrine doesn't quite seem to want to give up on the ghost of her marriage to Vic. Note how reluctant she was to sell the old house, ie the marital home.
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The central robbery-turned-murder storyline was perhaps somewhat less than the most scintillating in the history of the series in terms of seizing a viewer's imagination, but pretty nearly every scene was individually at least good. It was a good, well reasoned storyline on which they were able to successfully hang a lot of character exposition internal business.
Watching Glen Close's approach to taking control of the place will likely look actually MORE interesting to you in re-watching. Note the subtleties of her approach with Wyms in particular
"I've heard a lot about you...We'll make it work anyway." Those were pretty much Captain Rawling's first words Claudette. To that end, she arranged to throw her and Dutch an easy win, interrogating the young and easy to break "puppy" in a mass murder.
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That should have gotten them some brownie points towards getting back in with the powers that be, but the assistant prosecutor was having none of it, insisting that the newly arrived Detective Billings was the lead detective. Does the prosecutor's office get to determine that?
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The show has been very good historically at examining the dysfunctionalities of ghetto mentality. Not only the at least semi-rational dope dealing and pimping, but all the messed up value systems. In this episode, Claudette was talking to a woman who had heard the doubtless horrible screaming and tussle of a mass murder going on next door and someone yelling for help, yet hadn't bothered calling the police. Why not? "I had a mouthful of dick at the time." She says this with no hint of shame, or any idea that ignoring people's dying screams like this was bad. Indeed, she seemed rather indignant at any possible insinuation that she should have interrupted her fornication.
Similarly dysfunctional was the scene with Julien trying to talk to some kids on bikes who might likely have seen a shooting. Immediately, they reach for racial hostility. It was a white guy in a limousine, looked like the governor. They easily topped that, however, with their fairly elaborate accapella rendition of NWA's "F*ck tha Police." These boys didn't look any much older than 10, so this record was from well before they were even born. They're reciting it like it was holy scripture, though. Reckon how much scripture any of these kids could cite?
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Vic was definitely not using his better judgment in his confrontation with Aceveda. In the rush of the action, it might not look so obvious, but Captain Rawling noticed. First, Vic comes into the middle of the Barn hollering about a confidential personnel letter Aceveda had written. So Vic comes in ranting about a document that he shouldn't have been looking at. Far worse, he moves in to assault Aceveda. How dumb is that?
On the other hand, I would defend Vic against her third charge, the bar fight that Vic instigated. Seeing a schmuck beating the bejesus out of his poor defenseless son on a surveillance video, Vic went to a bar and got the guy mad enough to take a swing at him. This gave Vic an excuse to give him a badly needed beatdown, got him put away for assaulting an officer, and thus got him away from the boy. He accomplished all this without compromising the surveillance operation. That looks reasonable to me.
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It was during this frank discussion with Vic that Captain Rawling expressed and briefly explained the gist of her intended new plan to turn the Farmington district around. She's talked the department into letting her implement an aggressive asset forfeiture program against anything identifiably bought with drug money. She made a deal to split the haul with other parts of city government, keeping a third to fund her dream anti-gang unit. Reckon who's going to be in charge of that?
Boy, howdy, that sounds like stepping right into the middle of it. Abusive asset forfeiture laws are one of the top couple of specific complaints about current US drug laws. I'm sure their presentations of these practices will be fascinating.
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The final scene shows Vic and Shane making a late night re-acquaintance over a dead body after an obviously estranged separation. It's hard to put a finger on just why, but Shane looked sinister in a way he never has before. Now, obviously Shane's done some bad stuff over the course of the series- far worse than the questionable behavior here. He showed up at the dead guy's house by himself, and doesn't phone it in. Then he takes the guy's Blackberry, cause it has his name in it. That's nothing compared to stuff he's done in the past, but there was a distinct odor of sulfur coming off of him here that we've never smelled before.
It's a bit curious to see Vic playing straight man, demanding (to no avail) that Shane return the Blackberry. When Vic comes out to be the advocate of honest copping, then the world's gone a little freaky. After all, Vic flatly assassinated a brother officer right in front of Shane in the pilot. Now he's crappy over a minor bit of removing evidence?
Also, Vic really knows how pull Shane's chain. Shane's wife Mara had just had their baby. They named it Jackson.
Vic: As in Michael?
Shane: As in Stonewall.
Pretty nearly no one would be naming their child after Michael Jackson at this point, but it's a particularly good poke at Shane, who is well known for harboring resentment towards black folks in general- much less a freak like MJ.
Shane made his lick by noting Vic's failure to get an expected recent promotion. Yeah, it was a decent poke at a soft spot, but it didn't really have that really personal sting of invoking his child.
It'll be real interesting to see just how evil Shane has really become.
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