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Post by jimmycracker on Jan 19, 2006 20:43:55 GMT -5
I'm really really loving Kavanaugh, much more than Rawlings. He's turning into one of those memorable characters like Armadillo, Sean Taylor, etc. I know when I like a character because I'm taken aback by his originality, and while he seems very new and sort of distant from what I'm used to, I still feel like I love him—and that's a sure sign that he'll blend in with TS once the season's over and everything's in focus.
Oh, I hope Billings gets replaced mid season. He's great and everything, but a whole season of him's too much.
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Post by Inside Man on Jan 19, 2006 23:51:56 GMT -5
arne, Billing's weird "Anger Shoes" comment struck me like something he picked out of a book along the lines of The One Minute Manager. Like, he has no real training in being a leader so he's trying to learn what he can out of a book and is regurgitating catchphrases that he's read.
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Post by Blanket Party on Jan 20, 2006 0:28:29 GMT -5
Re: The whole "timeline" debate Does everybody really think the creators and the writers of the show are going to get something that critical wrong. Hell, it was an actual line in the show. If they say Terry was on the Strike team 2 1/2 years ago, then he was. Give these guys some credit, they're not going to f*ck up that bad, it's the main storyline. Not to continue the debate, but I would point out that stuff like this DOES happen in shows sometimes - continuity errors and blunders, things like that... Now, the people on The Shield have usually been pretty good at avoiding that (perhaps the most questionable episode in regards to continuity has been Co-Pilot). If they say two and a half, I'm inclined to believe them, but it DOES seem strange, so I want to be sure... ...and I would also point out that I agree with the poster who mentioned that, had the gap between Seasons 2 and 3 only been two days, Julien wouldn't have been able to recover from his beating and Danny wouldn't have already found a new job... Okay. Now back to your regularly scheduled episode discission.
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Post by arne on Jan 21, 2006 11:32:50 GMT -5
Like, he has no real training in being a leader so he's trying to learn what he can out of a book and is regurgitating catchphrases that he's read. Yeah, now that I've rewatched the episode, I'm having the same thoughts, Insidestraight. Ha, that would be more than befitting Billings' character. One last point about the timeline discussion, even though there's a seperate thread about it: what about Mara? Shane and Mara seem to be together for quite some time in the beginning of S3, and I remember Vic saying they know each other for two months. Assuming that Shane didn't know Mara by the end of S2 (which I think is a safe bet), at least these two months should have passed between season 2 and 3, right? But i don't want to get off topic, just wanted to chime in on Blanket Party's thoughts.
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Post by axeman61 on Jan 24, 2006 5:53:44 GMT -5
I give this ep an A minus.
-Vic: The only words I want to hear out of your mouth are "Si, senor." Doomsday: Suck my dick, senor.
XD
-At first I was a little baffled at Dutch being mad at Claudette, but then I re-realized why. She wasn't there to help Dutch in the room with the minister. I'm not condoning it, but I understand why.
-Lem and Vic. This is the only problem I have with the episode, and the reason I give it an A minus. We are talking about the murder of a damned cop here. If it was me in Vic's shoes, I know I would have kept up the lie. When you say "I didn't do it" to killing a cop, you have to believe that shit wholeheartedly. It has to become the truth for you. Now Lem possibly knows about Terry just because Vic couldn't keep it together for a few seconds.
Still, I'm holding out hope that Lem still doubts Vic did it. They're riding together in the 503 previews. The team getting an attorney to hinder the IAD investigation implies that Lem won't rat. Vic has started his digging for dirt on Kavanaugh. I have a feeling that either he'll uncover something, or do something drastic to make IAD and Acevada look like fools for investigating. Just thoughts here.
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Post by fju2112 on Jan 24, 2006 8:54:23 GMT -5
maybe the fact that the assistant captain said "I'm not Gilroy" will come back to haunt Aceveda & Kavanaugh - meaning maybe the Ass. Cap gets a hold of what's going on and figures he owes Vic huge for not going to bat for him when he's being forced out anyway, and wants to allow Vic to go out on a good note, and somehow hinders the investigation? Just playing around with potential storylines from unlikely sources...you know something crazy like that will pop up
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TeKnOw
BANNED For Pissing Off E
Posts: 31
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Post by TeKnOw on Jan 24, 2006 15:23:20 GMT -5
maybe the fact that the assistant captain said "I'm not Gilroy" will come back to haunt Aceveda & Kavanaugh - meaning maybe the Ass. Cap gets a hold of what's going on and figures he owes Vic huge for not going to bat for him when he's being forced out anyway, and wants to allow Vic to go out on a good note, and somehow hinders the investigation? Just playing around with potential storylines from unlikely sources...you know something crazy like that will pop up I'm not connecting your logic... between "I'm not Gilroy" and [I'll save you] He's the Assistant Chief by the way, not captain... don't believe there is an assistant captain, that would be a lieutenant I believe . If this show has aspirations toward paralleling a reality then you can believe he is getting CC'd about IAD investigations... especially those as large as prior strike team actions, involving possible murder of an LEO by an LEO under his roof. ** as I write I think. Isn't it odd that they are preparing to force Vic out (that's coming from the Chief btw) while IAD actively pursues him. That was briefly mentioned between Aceveda and Kavenaugh. HMM... I'd love a twist involving all this. What 'If' Kavenaugh was rouge. I'm dreaming.
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Post by acc on Mar 22, 2007 17:00:08 GMT -5
5x02 Enemy of Good is a deceptively simple episode, in which Lem is grilled by Jon for all of the Strike Team's previous misdeeds and Vic and his guys make a bad decision by angering a thug named Doomsday.
I give the episode itself an A, primarily because the Vic-Doomsday stuff is an excellent counterpoint to the Lem-Jon stuff, which is an excellent counterpoint to the other arcs addressed in the episode.
Although more of a "settling down" episode in numerous ways--the whole episode is driven by simple back-and-forth talking, most especially the Jon-Lem scenes--it is essential because it demonstrates how both the past and the present are connected.
I'm surprised at people's reactions to the episode title because the first time I ever heard it I thought "Oh, they're referring to the enemy of good being perfection." And that's what I still think.
The whole episode is about the ostensible silliness of driving for perfection in a deeply imperfect world. The Lem-Jon/Vic-Doomsday/Dutch-Claudette-preacher/Julien-Tina arcs are most clearly addressing people settling for something less than perfection and other people calling that into question.
Most directly, Lem's answers to Jon all point out the thematic weight of the title. When Jon goes down the list of CIs killed on the streets, Lem counters, "Better them than us." Little does Lem know that he's going to join those people before too long. What Season 5 is about, in essence, is all of the terrible things Vic and his guys have done has finally started to boomerang back at them and there's just no escape from it. Hence the strong return of the Terry Crowley murder--which is mirrored in 5x11 Postpartum when Shane murders Lem. What has to be remembered, in my opinion, is that Lem knows that he is a doomed man. He knew that a long time ago. He gives Army some of the most disquieting advice I've ever seen portrayed in fiction in 4x11 A Thousand Deaths: the essence of the statement is, I may not like it, I may not want it, but we as a group are fundamentally bad and we may talk about going straight and we may actually even want to go straight somehow, some way, but we cannot do that. The level of Greek tragedy is singular here. These characters are trapped. They cannot get out, no matter how hard they try to get out.
Jon may indeed be Lem's "conscience"--just as Lem is his friends' "conscience." But unlike Lem, who, though he may be himself corrupted throuhg all of the actions he's involved himself with throughout the course of the series, Jon honestly doesn't care that much about perfection in any kind of personal sense that would tie him to people (we learn that he and his wife separated and that he ratted out his own partner--he's a man alone, almost unhinged and as others have addressed in this thread he has the looks of a man who does not look in the mirror more often than when he's brushing his teeth). Lem is like the honorable mob soldier who actually thinks his bosses are, while at times monstrous, basically worthy of his eternal loyalty. After all, they're his "only family" as he confides in a moment of supreme weakness in 3x14 All In.
I disagree with those who say that Vic made a huge error in not immediately countering Lem's attack about Terry. You can't get arrested because you're silent. Michael Chiklis' best acting comes, I think, when he shows the weakness in Vic--like the obviously rehearsed lines to Jon when the Russian bust "goes bad" in 5x05 Trophy ("I guess IAD will spin any fiction to paint good cops bad"--that's not the exact quote, but it's close) or when Vic gives Jon "that look" in 5x08 Kavanaugh, which essentially says "I know about you and your demented, crazed ex-wife and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it"). Here, the weakness is more primal. For Vic, the Terry issue is about as sensitive a subject as it gets. In 3x11 Lem *does* mention Terry, very innocently. Shane was shot at by Trik and he feels insecure because nobody seems to care and they're making a big deal with Trik to launch their whole AGC sting. Shane's angry with his friends. Lem sits down with Vic and says, "He just wants to feel safe." Vic says, "He's a member of this team. He is safe." To which Lem sadly counters, "Terry was a member of this team." Vic becomes enraged and loses all control within a second. He may suspect Shane told Lem *something* about Terry--anything, a hint, something. He fights back verbally, resorting to abandoning his own protection of Shane's whole "Tavon episode," telling Lem the truth about what happened to Tavon. When it comes to Terry, Vic can't think straight--not until he realizes he must in 5x03, when he deals with Lem's genuine knowledge of Terry's death in a very smart way.
Dutch's comment to the preacher, "...Or feel another man's wife," or something like that (sorry, I can't remember the exact quote and it's been a while since I've seen this episode) tells us that he still feels almost embarrassed grief over not only the fact that he lost his wife but *how* he lost his wife. Lucy, Dutch's wife, was an alcoholic who got treatment. She fell for her counselor and was impregnated by him behind Dutch's back. Dutch tells Claudette in 1x01 that "Lucy had intimacy issues that were unrelated to me." Uh-huh. Hence Dutch's revolsion--unreasonable but truthful--at Claudette's very imperfect approach to solving the case.
Finally, as Teri mentioned, Danny, who is now pregnant herself, is as weary as anybody at the Barn and she tells Julien to not be so righteous about Tina's "excessive force" incident. The entire episodes comes back onto itself with its themes--the enemy of good is perfection and at the Barn everybody is willing to let things "stay good," or at least as close to "good" as possible.
Again, deceptively simple. An episode that has aged exceedingly well in my estimation.
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