The opening scene of this episode introduces what will turn out to be an important character, showing where her heart really is. An earnest young woman is working at a sewing machine, making some kind of fancy quilt. She bags it up and rushes down the street to catch a bus to the hospital to pray over her poor comatose daddy in the hospital. It's a perfect scene of daughterly devotion as she covers him with the new quilt and talks to him about getting better and finishing his English classes.
Only this is Diro Kesakhian (Franka Potente), daughter of the local Armenian mob head, who is incapacitated and probably on his death bed. She's a good young college girl taking care of Dad's affairs while he's incapacitated, trying to protect him and not let people know that he's sick and vulnerable. In short, she's something of a female Michael Corleone.
The most interesting thing about this whole episode of the show is the development of the daughter. Shane comes looking for Dad over the murder of the gas station owner at the end of the last episode. When he finds the nice college girl getting into Daddy's business, he finds himself confused and wanting to help. "Are you a mob daughter, or a damsel in distress?"
The answer seems to be an intriguing mix of a little from column A and a little from column B. She starts out insisting that Dad's business is all legal, cause she does the books. She seems willfully ignorant of what's off the books, but seems to absorb some of the news of the less savory stuff with a pretty strong stomach as Shane gently disabuses her of her preferred illusions.
Partly Shane wants to help the damsel in distress, but those fat envelopes of cash she's handing him motivate him to check out some robberies in some of her father's apartment complexes. This mostly serves as a setup for Shane to get a Russian hooker with some humorous details about her afternoon appointment that she needs to get out of the Barn so she can prepare for. "I've got a golden shower client coming at 4 o'clock. He's a big tipper. I've got to start drinking iced tea to get it the way he likes." Shane is of course happy to get her a Snapple to start on while they talk.
The hooker gets Shane enough clues to figure out who's been robbing the whores, for which information the mob daughter pays him well. Daddy's girl has an interesting choice of response. The Armenian mob had famously been murdering people over the Money Train two years earlier, chopping off feet. Shane had invoked that and their old world assassin Margos as things that a nice girl like her didn't want to get involved in.
Daddy's girl toned it down from that. Two of the three robbers got their balls cut off. The third was probably fleeing far, far away. Really, that is a kinder and gentler Armenian. Most interesting was her self-review on the incident to Shane. "Maybe it was too much. I didn't have time to make a better decision." She wasn't expressing remorse at all, but more of a technical review of her performance at the office. She's casting a real interesting mix of quiet calm and modest sensitivity, mixed with the apparent philosophically considered willingness to do whatever is necessary to protect her birthright.
But the most telling part came as she resolved the gas station murder - totally without the need for Dad's help. Here are the names of the three Armenians who killed the guy. They'll tell you whatever you want to know. She convinced them strongly enough of what could happen to their families back in the old country, besides what could happen to them here. The killers feared their organization enough to confess to murder. Shane expressed curiosity that she would turn on her own like that. She explained her thinking metaphorically, "You want to cure cancer, you cut it out."
That led into a very eloquent bit of Diro's tough minded philosophy, talking about her father's vision and what he'd seen. "Everything was taken from our people. He taught me to never let that happen again." Yet it has that element of a hard faith, her faith in merciful Jesus and her father, and her trust in the loyalty of his men, "and now I've got you" she says to Shane in the last words of the episode.
We get the first sign tonight of Councilman Aceveda putting his sites on running for mayor in a frank discussion with a consultant and a key backer. He's going to form an exploratory committee - which leaves his options open to change to a state legislature run.
To that end, the consultant suggests that they start making moves to redraw the district boundaries in order to get a more favorable constituent mix. The heart of the scene was his explanation of what exactly they would hope to achieve in redistricting. They need to try to get rid of the Korean neighborhoods - too conservative, and not likely favorable to Aceveda's "populist Latino platform." The beautiful Machiavellian logic comes in suggesting that they want to draw in black neighborhoods into the district, even though they probably will not particularly be favorable to Aceveda. However, they mostly just don't vote at all. Thus they provide body count, ballast padding out the number of constituents without getting people who will vote against him.
The shady looking money comes into play with his backer, the contractor. Leaving the meeting, he hands Aceveda an envelope with money for his exploratory committee. Aceveda is disappointed that it was only $100,000. He was expecting twice that. The businessman is holding out on the other half till they solve the San Marcos murders. "Before I plow any more money into a war zone, I need to see the rule of law rather than the law of the jungle."
The money in politics thing sort of looks bad, but then look carefully at what influence the guy is trying to get. He doesn't seem to be angling for government contracts or such - at least not so far. He's intending to use his money to coax a politician into getting some police protection to stop violence that's bad for his community and also bad for his business - which are tied together. In a general sense, that again seems like textbook good democracy at work.
Not that I don't dig all the heavy drama, but I wish they had more low key comedic storylines like this purse snatcher. A rich matronly gal got robbed for some fancy replica purses that she had been drawn into a bad part of town to buy. For starters, there's the understated portrayal of the rich bitch victim. She starts out protesting about her rights and wanting her lawyer and such in an obviously unnecessary way counterproductive to police efforts to catch the jerk that just stabbed her. She obviously wasn't badly hurt, but they noted that she was being Medivaced to Cedar-Sinai.
From there, the story set up a classic battle of the sexes. Tina in particular shone as something of a philosopher in the allures of shopping, talking about the basic factors of manufacturing quality that make for a premium bag. She cheerfully likened her interest in a fancy catalog to men's interest in Hustler. Chatting with Corrine who was on duty at the hospital when they brought the matron in, they got to chatting dreamily about the super nice imported bags they'd like brought out a small bit of Danny confessing a bit of her insecurity around hot young face-of-the-department Tina in humor. "I bought my diaper bag at Old Navy."
Indeed, Tina is quite the little starlet as they go about their routine rounds, and the guys start gathering at the crime scene. "The department just put up a billboard. I guess I'm a celebrity now." She comes around a minute later looking for Dutch or Billings to loan her a sharpie so she can sign an autograph.
Yet with that going on, the purse storyline provided way the best bonding moments ever between Tina and Danny. For one, jerkface Billings is giving the girls grief about how dumb it is the way they carry on about shopping and purses. But maybe they can help them get this mugger "if you two can stave off her paparazzi." At which point Sgt Sofer has had about enough, and explains that it's just a girl thing. He couldn't be expected to understand it, anymore than the girls could really understand why guys love their balls so much that they spend half their time "playing pocket pool." About which time Billings sheepishly removes his hands from his pockets.
It was, however, Danny and Tina that brought in the assailant. The matron had described him as smelling like the time they'd had a dead rat in the wall of their summer home. In fact, this big nasty bastard apparently literally threw shit at the officers when they came to arrest him.
Being a woman, Claudette was sympathetic to the women's position, though seemingly not much of a shopper herself. Still, Dutch and Billings convinced her of the necessity of shutting down the little Korean shop that was selling the illegal replica handbags. The nominal offense didn't particularly concern them, but they had a legitimate point about it being a public nuisance because it drew rich women who would be likely prime crime targets into a bad neighborhood.
So Tina and Corrine come back to the shop discreetly in the evening for last chance before the warrants are served tomorrow. Being in that neighborhood, and being led up dark stairways with doors being locked behind them looked a little unnerving, at least to Corrine. But Tina noted that she was packing her service weapon. Still, there was a distinct sigh of relief as they finally got to the secret showroom - and found Danny taking advantage of the last chance as well. Tina was distinctly glad to see her, and they got to comisserate over their hard day. They deserved this indulgence after having that idiot throwing shit at them.
This was nice relief from the misery and frustration of Hernan and the San Marcos murders. He was last being not heard from a couple of days ago after Aceveda witlessly let out into the community that there was a federal plant in the Salvadoran gang. Vic is not happy to be hearing about this back from the rival Mexican gang. It's not sounding good for Hernan.
It only sounds worse when they get the call that they've found a hacked up body in a couple of trash bags - bearing Salvadoran gang ink. It was a gruesome relief when Ronnie actually looked into the trash bag and found that it was not Hernan. Vic and the crew managed to get enough info from a neighborhood teenager enough to figure out that it must have in fact been Hernan that dumped those trash bags.
Vic is going to a great deal of effort to help Hernan, who is leaning heavily on Vic and hasn't at any time in this episode contacted his actual federal bosses. For one thing, Vic and Hiatt are highly anxious for his help in the San Marcos killings, for which they don't have any other leads. (Notice that there was no mention in this episode of the one-armed Mexican bureaucrat or his bag o' cash.). But besides that, Vic is particularly motivated to protect Hernan in continuing reaction to his inability to protect Lemansky.
So Vic is communicating with Hernan by messages from his girlfriend. She explained that a gang member had been killed for a snitch, and that Hernan had been required to dispose of the body. Also, he and a couple of others were scheduled to rob a gun store that afternoon. He wanted the Strike Team to clear the civilians out of the path, and let them proceed.
This set up the first conflict between new commander Hiatt and Captain Wyms. Oh HELL no, they don't get to steal a bunch of powerful weapons and put them on the street. She specifically commanded Hiatt and the team to stop the robbery, and arrest the bangers, Hernan's wishes be damned. Vic puts a bug in Hiatt's ear for why it would be appropriate in this case to "save Claudette from herself." He worked out a perfect clever Vic compromise, wherein they let them get away from the store with the guns, and had unis set up a checkpoint for all vehicles. Then when they predictably ran - abandoning the trunk full of weapons - Shane managed to pull through the checkpoint from the other side just in time to conveniently get carjacked. Thus, they let them get away - directly contrary to Wyms' orders, but did not let them put those guns into circulation.
Naturally, Hiatt had a perfectly plausible story for the captain ie a good lie about how they'd intended to capture them, but they got away. But Captain Wyms is no fool, and she's certainly been around Mackey long enough to smell his machinations. Plus, he's put other officers in harms way with this roadblock. "Harms way is part of the job description" was Hiatt's defense. She had a piece of Hiatt, threatening his very job.
The Shane vs Vic (and Ronnie) issue is on low heat at the moment. Shane has set up the Mutually Assured Destruction of his IAD confession, leaving him at a stalemate for the moment. You might suspect that Vic put Shane in the job of being carjacked about half hoping for it to go sideways and get him conveniently dead. Meantime, they're both busy trying to not let on in the office. Shane for his part had a pretty good lie ready when Wyms pulled them both in asking why they were bothering Gilroy's widow. It was part of investigating Lem's murder see, since he was thinking about going to Mexico. He wanted to check Gilroy's contacts, looking for the possibility of "a coyote in a double cross, or something."
Finally and long delayed, Ronnie gets into the full Strike Team loop. Shane comes around wanting to buddy up, to which Ronnie reacts in a predictably cool manner, confronting him for Lem's murder - and daring him to try telling him about how he did it for everybody's protection. He assured Ronnie that he's got no beef with him, and telling him about page one of his 24 page missive that Vic didn't actually show him. This, of course, was the Crowley murder from the pilot. Ronnie looked away for a second, and wrapped up and left. That kind of took the wind out of him.
This leads to Ronnie and Vic talking business setting on a quiet dark street. After all this jumping through hoops for Hernan, the guy's hightailed it out of country without ever talking to them or his bosses. Vic deduces that in fact Hernan is all the way in, that HE must have actually killed that guy in the plastic bag in order to protect his own cover and prove himself to the bosses. That's a tough decision to make, as Ronnie notes. Yeah, said Vic, and now he's got to live with what he's done.
Just like you had to make a decision about Terry Crowley and live with it, said Ronnie - thus acknowledging that he knew. But Vic got a quieter and more sympathetic response than he might have expected. For starters, "Page one of Shane's memoirs isn't exactly a secret." That was, after all, the whole point of that six month Kavanaugh investigation. I hadn't thought about it, but of course Ronnie had a clue. He'd just chosen not to ask.
But now that it's out, he's not even a little bit mad about it. The only regret was that he'd kept the secret from him for so long. "If I'd known, I could have protected you better." Ronnie, for one, obviously makes no equivalency between killing the snitch Crowley and Shane murdering Lem.
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