THE SHIELD
SEASON THREE NOTES
Season 3, Episode 13 “Fire in the Hole”
Air date: 6-1-04
They framed this episode with two fires. In the opening scene, the autistic son Matthew has set off a nasty house fire playing with the stove. In an unusual move, Vic manages the crisis by telling the truth. Sometimes that works.
This fire scene underlines the basic ongoing family crisis, with the autistic children and the purely overwhelmed Corrine trying to keep it together. It's fairly grim.
On the other hand, there's a little glimmer of family hope later. The fam is bunking at Vic's while the house is repaired. Mom and the kids are arguing and miserable and counterproductive in even starting to put dinner together. Matthew throws the napkins on the floor, rather than folding them to put around the table. Then Vic comes in, and the scene immediately improves markedly. Cassidy is relieved and joyed to have Daddy home. The whole emotional tone lifts. Even Matthew gets on board, now folding the napkins and stacking them like Daddy wants.
Yet Corrine shakes it off, doesn't quite see the implications. There's one obvious answer: reconciliation. If Daddy's in the home, things run at least halfway reasonable. If it's just Mom, she can't control them. They need Daddy.
Indeed, rather than working on reconciliation, she suggests to Vic the possibility of actually institutionalizing Matthew.
-------------------------------------------
The re-introduction of ol' Walon from the Decoy Squad in the pre-credits sequence provided probably the best comedy of a mostly particularly bleak episode. So there's Vic sitting in his van doing some recon, and this smelly looking derelict comes sticking his styrofoam cup up in his face bumming for change.
Walon made a very convincing and amusing vagrant standing there looking all nasty and crazy, arguing with him.
-------------------------------------------
It didn't particularly tie in to the overriding story arcs, but the story of Claudette going undercover with the Decoy Squad to nab the kiddie pornographer made probably the best involved dramatic material of the episode.
For starters, there was the preparatory scene between Claudette and Trish, with Claudette trying to express how bad she felt about her dumb little mistake back in "Cracking Ice" that ended up with her being raped.
Then there was the pure, unadulterated repugnance of just the idea of the social worker setting up her crack whore moms to rent their little girls out for porno movies. Which was nothing compared to the scene with the buyer "Primo" setting up the mattress/set for anticipated filming. He's framing the video scene with his hands, like a movie director- and particularly pleased with the big stuffed teddy bear. "Nice touch."
There would be stiff competition for the stupidest thing that a perp has ever said in their defense on this show, but Primo would be competitive. In interrogation, he's explaining how the courts have said that pornography is protected erotic expression. He's saying this after he's been busted for not just possessing, but absolutely personally filming and apparently intending to co-star in kiddie porn, and he's saying it as though he even thought it would be considered a reasonable argument.
This story also brought out a particularly jarring moment of Evil Claudette. Back in interrogation later, speculating about the prison fate of kiddie pornographers, she reflects back to him his own inquiry to the crack mother (undercover Trish) about her supposed 8 and 10 year old daughters: "Did you ever suck a dick?" I don't recall the dignified Claudette speaking like this in the whole run of the series- not even to the cop killer at the end of "Circles," the season one finale.
Her reconciliation with Walon in the postmortem was nice, and well understated as well.
-------------------------------------------
This story with the Decoy Squad also gave Claudette the chance to somewhat redeem herself from the arrogant, authoritarian attitudes she had displayed earlier in the season. You could see in just the little subtleties of tone and body language (pretty much hanging her head at one point) that she was really swallowing her pride. Her assurances to Walon carried an unmistakable undertone of humility that she has been lacking. Very well done.
-------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------
The scene between Julien and Claudette worked real good. A married couple had their shop destroyed by some idiot, and they don't have insurance to rebuild. Officer Lowe, then, goes to Claudette for help. He's heard that she's got a new boyfriend who is a contractor, and hopes that he might help them get building materials wholesale.
This sets up a nice mixed reaction from Claudette. She's a dignified middle aged woman, and she's naturally not thrilled about everybody knowing her business. You can see just a subtle glimmer of annoyance cross her face.
Yet, Officer Lowe's request reflects just exactly the kind of behavior she wants to encourage. It was just a couple of episodes ago that she was not-so-subtly threatening his very job for- as she would take it- slacking by not going above and beyond the call of duty to help out.
So she says she'll ask- and praises Julien for making the effort.
Then she shoots Dutch just a little annoyed look. God bless socially clueless Dutch. His reaction suggests that he has no idea that talking around the office about her love life would be unappreciated.
-------------------------------------------
Vic and the boys have some particularly bad blood on their conscience tonight. Vic insists amongst his boys that they were just trying to get their patsy O'Brien set up to draw the Treasury Department's attention away from them, not to set the guy up to be murdered by the Armenian mob.
Nonsense. Vic Mackey damn well knew what kind of powerful, ruthless people these Armenians are. Attaching O'Brien's name to this marked money was the same as absolutely signing his death warrant. They're all lying to themselves to pretend otherwise.
-------------------------------------------
The scene of Diagar's corpse was particularly disturbing, even among the numerous gruesome scenes. We've gotten to know him over the course of the season. For a banger, he was a fairly reasonable fellow. He had no kind of involvement with ripping off the Armenians, and certainly didn't deserve the horrors implied by the condition of his corpse.
Thinking back through the season, Vic again gets to bear some responsibility for pushing Diagar into becoming head of the Byz Lats gang in the first place with his "field promotion" back in "Blood and Water" (episode 2). For a banger, he was really more of a kid just trying to get by.
He was more of a lover than a fighter. Memorably, he could most likely be found going down on his little girlfriend.
Also, I thought of Diagar's poor working class daddy. We saw him actually before seeing the son, and he was a highly empathetic fellow. He was the guy in "Playing Tight" driving the van full of ammo. It would have been nice if they could have thrown the heartbroken Dad back in the scene for at least a couple of seconds of mourning, to give Diagar some props. The passing of this character just seems like it didn't quite get the consideration it deserved- only the maybe five second shot of the body.
The Armenian mob, of course, gives a rat's ass about this kid's humanity. All they know is that one of his associates somehow came up holding four or five of the marked bills out of their stolen money.
That was enough to get him not just killed, but obviously tortured. There's his big, broad, beautiful body laying face down, with maybe dozens of cigarette burns all across the "DIAGAR" tattoo on his back- and of course, his feet chopped off.
-------------------------------------------
Interesting (and rare) logical hole in the show:
The Armenians have a mole in treasury telling them everything about marked money, and they have been somewhere several steps past ruthless and brutal in torturing and dismembering anyone even vaguely associated. They crucified some poor schmuck bookie just for knowing O'Brien. Diagar got destroyed because his cousin in the joint had turned up with four or five of the marked bills.
So then, why is Stella still alive? Mara's mother got tagged with that marked money by the feds. That's more direct connection than Diagar had, and certainly more than the bookie.
Also, why hasn't DUTCH picked up on the connection with Stella and Shane? It's not like there are that many leads here that you wouldn't notice. There have been exactly THREE people tagged by the feds with the marked money- and two of them are dead now. Even if she looked like a non-starter as a suspect, in this big and brutal a case she would certainly merit an hour of attention. He's already looking suspiciously at the Strike Team in all this, and the mother in law turns up with marked money.
How in HELL has no one made this HUGE, OBVIOUS connection?
-------------------------------------------
The closing scene made some excellent quiet grim drama. The Strike Team has been involved in some illegal, underhanded stuff, but this is among the uglier. They've set this innocent patsy up to get killed who had nothing to do with their business. Now here they are with his mutilated, turpentine soaked body, incinerating it in the furnace, trying to cover their tracks.
They may try to cover their tracks with the public, but they all know amongst themselves what kind of awful thing they've done. Burning a body won't take it off their consciences. Looking at them standing around that furnace, you can well imagine the burning of that ulcer down inside that Lem has complained about since they got into this money train business.
Nor will burning the body really solve much for them with the outside world. In Lem's episode closing words, "We might fool Dutch and the feds, but the Armenians know the truth."
Link Soup
morethings master
photo gallery index
MP3
sammy davis
little richard photos
buddy holly pictures
fats domino images
chuck berry pictures 01/
02/
03/
04/
05/
06/
07/
08/
09/
10/
11/
12/
01/
02/
03/
04/
05/
06/
07/
08/
09/
10/
11/
12/
01/02/
03/
04/
05/
06/
07/
08/
09/
10/
11/
12
01/
02/
03/
04/
05/
06/
07/
08/
09/
10/
11/
12/01/
02/
03/
04/
05/
06/
07/
08/
09/
10/
11/
12/08/
09/
10/
11/
12/
manchurian candidate pictures
24
lucille ball images james
blunt photos
clint eastwood pictures lena
horne images team
america pictures
robert mitchum photos
bruce springsteen pictures
mariah carey pictures
ann coulter photos
sissy spacek pictures
tanya tucker images
loretta lynn pictures
beatles pictures
white stripes pictures
andy griffith pictures
kill bill pictures
parliament funkadelic p-funk pictures
beverly hillbillies pictures
al
barger
frank zappa pictures
jerry lee lewis pictures
richard pryor photos
june carter johnny cash pictures
vic mackey shield pictures
macy gray pictures
james cagney images
elvis presley pictures
gwen stefani images
dolly parton pictures
devil whores pictures
tom petty photos
tori amos pictures
joaquin phoenix images
Quills movie images
peter lorre images
reese witherspoon pictures
flaming lips images rolling
stones photos
fiona apple images dr
strangelove pictures elvis
costello images
ray charles photos marx
brothers pictures
prince rogers nelson pictures blazing
saddles images
sinead o'connor images
eddie murphy photos all
in the family pictures
south park pictures homer
simpson images
bob dylan pictures elizabeth
taylor photos drawn
together images
saturday night live pictures hee
haw pictures james
brown images pete
townshend photos
tina turner pictures
dixie chicks photos
robert anton wilson images
guns n roses pictures
paula abdul pictures
jodie foster photos
borat
eminem
frank sinatra photos
van halen images
