Post by eekay on Feb 12, 2007 9:49:12 GMT -5
It's hard to feel sorry for someone who, like my brother-in-law once said, "wouldn't cross the street to piss on me if I was on fire." But, yeah, the way Aurora treated him was pretty hard to believe. Do you think maybe it was a cultural thing and she thought he betrayed his Latino "machismo"?
About the sympathy: I didn't really feel it the first time around, either (I mean, aside from the sympathy you'd feel for anyone forced to do what he did). After it was over, though, I just thought, "Okay, that sucked, but it's over. What's the Strike Team up to now?". But I actually felt more sympathetic towards Aceveda after watching him in Season 4 (Don't know what that says about me. . .); so going back to Season 3, I paid closer attention to him in the episodes after the rape. Benito Martinez does a fantastic job of soaking his face in pain and loss and loathing while maintaining what would at first glance be Aceveda's usual wooden, arrogant expression. As I said, it's heartbreaking.
As for Aurora, I don't know why she said what she did. I got less of a feeling that it was a Latino thing than that she shared her husband's naivete that he, as a police officer, should have been able to get out of the situation. I was mugged once by a guy who rushed me from the back and grabbed me by the throat. All I had was a small amount of cash and a few credit cards which the mugger never got to use, as it was the middle of the night and I cancelled them as soon as I was released to go home. But the next day, some friends and co-workers actually had the gall to tell me that they never would have let that guy take their wallet if it had been them. They would have fought back, or done some ninja move they'd seen on TV or something. These were not (normally) stupid people and claimed to be my friends. Did I mention that the guy also stuck a gun in my back? Yeah. They still couldn't believe that I'd "let" him rob me. I'd say that that was more or less what Aurora was thinking. Which she may have followed with the question: Since he couldn't stop them, maybe he wasn't the man she thought he was? Or maybe, he didn't really want to stop them. . .? I don't know. In the commentary for that episode, Shawn Ryan asks Benito Martinez if the ordeal was worse for a Latino because of the macho thing, and Benito started to kind of say yes but then checked himself, because that would imply that it wouldn't be so bad for other men, which is silly.
The cat strangulation was nothing compared to David's BJ scene, IMO. I think I remember Glen Mazzara commenting on how outraged cat fanciers were by that scene ... the same peeps who weren't particularly upset at seeing humans engulfed by burning tires.
Yes, I have cats. Yes, I was more disturbed by seeing Dutch strangle a cat than gangsters burned alive with tire necklaces (although that wasn't easy to watch, either). But then, I think that's the way it goes for a lot of people, isn't it? I mean, through cable TV and films you can see a lot of horrible things done to all kinds of people, but hardly anyone ever kills an animal. Certainly not a pet. And if it's in the script, the actual deed is usually done off-camera. People just don't want to see it.
Just shows how out of touch that arrogant prick, Aceveda, was with the seamier side of his people. Remember how Aceveda felt like he had to prove himself ... that he deserved his position even while acknowledging that he was just a "test taker", as opposed to someone who worked his way up through the ranks?
Just on a lighter note about that: It cracks me up when Aceveda goes out into the field. If he's in uniform, it's the cleanest, starchiest, just-out-of-the-box-looking uniform out there. If he's not in uniform, he's usually wearing his bullet-proof vest over a dress shirt so blindingly white you could see it from space. That scene in Season 3 where the Strike Team et al swarm the warehouse and grab all the Armenian mob's heroin featured a few overhead shots where you could see the whole layout of the place and all the tiny figures of cops running around checking every corner. The first Strike Team member I can spot is Lem with his big barn-door shoulders, but even before that I know exactly where Aceveda is. You can see the creases in his shirt even from that vantage point. He's the easiest target in the building.
And most share your feelings toward her [Mara] because they see her strictly as an antagonist to Vic. But there were also some interesting opposing views in the thread 'what about Mara?' (Season 5B board).
Mara may have been an antagonist to Vic, but she wasn't very good for Shane in Season 3, either. She put the whole Strike Team in jeopardy, and by antagonizing Vic was trying to alienate from her husband the one guy who would always help Shane out no matter what he did. But I'll have to check out the Season 5B board. One reason the character of Mara always bothered me was the audience never got to see why Shane was so attached to her in the first place. He claimed that she was different from his other girlfriends, and that she was "better than him", but we never got to see if it was true or if Shane was just letting himself be duped like with Tulips. I'd like to see the other side of Mara, if that's possible.