The Shield: Two-Man Job

Well that didn’t take too long.

It certainly didn’t take too long for Shane to come up with a plan to retaliate after his fellow Strike Team members’ arranged to have him murdered. Unsurprisingly, his plan appears to be a poor man’s version of Vic’s set up (really Shane? A single pimp's apprentice named Two-Man?). What WAS surprising is Shane’s apparent target.

I guess the one thing Shane does have over Vic at this point is a cohesive family unit, as he assured his wife Mara that he had a plan to take care of the problem, said a sweet goodbye to his son Jackson and went about the business of figuring out a way to arrange the deaths of his two closest friends.

Vic’s family, on the other hand, is in shambles (are we even sure Cassidy’s still alive?) — so obviously, now’s the perfect time to add a baby son to the mix! At first, I felt like Vic’s insistence in remaining a presence in baby Lee’s life was purely selfish. Now I just think it’s MOSTLY selfish. Sure, Vic wants a do-over and a chance to raise at least one of his kids properly, but his speech to Danny about a son needing a father figure in his life was pretty convincing. Too bad Danny had already packed her bags and apparently decided to leave town with Lee. That was a genuinely surprising little twist that was well played by both actors, especially in the way Catherine Dent made sure Vic didn’t come into her house.

Even if Vic DID get another crack at raising a kid, there really isn’t too much evidence that he would do a better job. If there’s one thing we’ve learned about Vic over the course of six and a half seasons is that he’s probably gone too far down the abyss to ever come back out into the light. Part of the reason is that he’s stubborn to a fault and set in his irredeemable ways no matter what attempts he makes to change.

For example, as soon as prostitute Farrah showed up (the first time we’d seen her since season 3’s “Bottom Bitch”, which echoed this episode’s title, “Bitches Brew”), we knew Vic would end up helping her, no matter how many demeaning insults he hurled her way (though Vic’s language was particularly salty last night). We also knew that Farrah would end up manipulating Vic and the Strike Team to kill her abusive pimp. Of course, if the show weren’t ending this year and Farrah showed up again, he’d probably help her out again.

My favorite part of this storyline was watching Walton Goggins convey Shane’s tentativeness in working with Vic on another case. He seemed convinced that every time he and Vic opened a door or turned a corner, someone would be waiting to gun him down (can you blame him?) In the end, Shane enlisted the help of Two-Man, a suspect Ronnie took his Shane-centered aggression out on, to take out Ronnie, making it look like a simple case of pay back. I find it interesting that Shane targeted Ronnie (pictured, left) — we, the audience know that Ronnie has been a lot more gung-ho about eliminating Shane than Vic, but Shane doesn’t know that.

Meanwhile, with the Armenian/Mexican gang war over, Aceveda turned in the blackmail box to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (minus Agt. Murray’s file). Unfortunately, they had Vic on a surveillance video talking with Pezuela cronie Armando Rios and reamed him for sitting on the blackmail box for too long. That didn’t do Vic any favors during his review, where he found out he’d be off the job in 10 days (and had more salty language for his PBA rep).

Fortunately, (as usual) Vic had a plan. After foiling an I.C.E. raid and frustrating them, he convinced them to let him have the box so he could turn it into Pezuela, get closer to him and use it to bring him down. Of course, to make the box seem complete, the info on Agt. Murray had to go back in. That might buy Vic more time on the job (since he rejected Claudette’s cold offer to clean out his locker immediately), but, to me, the Pezuela storyline has lost some heat since the war with the Armenians is over.

Then again, if Vic ends up getting expelled from the police force, he could always go into home security. That’s what Lester, back from his douche-ish outing (“If you think he did something s---ty, he probably did.”) from last season’s episode that also featured Carl Weathers as Vic’s mentor. Turns out Lester and his new partner were behind a series of breaking and entering crimes to drum up interest for their security business. In the end, Lester came out relatively clean (as Vic probably would have) after selling out his partner.

I thought the Dutch and Billings dynamic was also interesting. After imploring his partner to be more present last week, Billings delivered. The character hasn’t been changed radically (he’s still pushing his vending machine scam), but he did just enough (not complaining too much when Dutch went after an ex-cop) to let Dutch solve the case.

More interesting, of course, was the Claudette and Dutch dynamic, which was terrific, as always. Dutch ended up breaking into Claudette’s house after believing she was in danger, and found her house to be a complete mess (which is different than a hot mess). I LOVE that Dutch wasn’t too shy to hire her a cleaning lady AND that Claudette wasn’t too proud to accept one. We haven’t seen her take a swan dive down the stairs lately, but it’s obvious the job is taking a serious toll on her. It makes me wonder whether she or Vic will be the last one standing at the Barn.

So what’d you think of this episode? Are you surprised Shane’s going after Ronnie instead of Vic? Will Julien be in any sort of real trouble after killing Bombay? Does any other law enforcement agency have a cooler acronym than I.C.E.? Finally, have we seen the last of Danny and will Vic hire a P.I. to find her the way he hired one to find Corrine and the kids after she left him at the end of the first season?