Arrested Development - 1x02 - "Top Banana" - Platano Fuego

 

In television dramas, the second episode tends to retread the themes of the pilot, reintroduce the characters, and hold your hand through a stand-alone episode until you feel safe and have committed your life (and money to the show's advertisers) to the series. But in sitcoms, they throw in a snappy title sequence that explains the series premise and the character relationships and then just worry about making you laugh. Thankfully this seems to be a trend that's dying off as early episodes of new shows are more easily accessible than the pre-DVR days. But Arrested Development has never played by the rules but it's second episode does a fine job of making their own.

“Top Banana” hits the ground running with an in medias res opening of the Bluth banana stand on fire. Fire's a recurring visual and thematic device, with Tobias' hilarious melodramatic fire sale audition (“Amaaazing Grace...!), T-Bone “the flamer” burning down the storage locker, Lucille's banana flambe and GOB's attempt at shooting a fireball from his sleeves (“my least consistent trick...”). Michael's final decision to burn down the stand, after realizing the true destructive nature is his father, leads to one of the funniest jokes and greatest strengths of the series; wordplay. “There was $250,000 lined in the walls of the banana stand!” only works because Jeffrey Tambor played the quips of “money in the banana stand” to the connotation of insurance, only to be outraged when Michael didn't comprehend the true meaning (see also: flamer/arsonist vs flamer/homosexual).

George Michael and Maebe, Tobias and Lindsay, and GOB (kinda) all play the job market. George Michael's lust for his cousin is put to a test when confronted with her horrible business acumen (“Banana. Buck.”). Add the promotion to Mr. Manager and his belief that adults “can have fun whenever they want, we're kids, we're supposed to be working!” leads him to over-react and grab the gasoline. Tobias loses a job to Lindsay (and proceeds to cry in the shower, introducing us to his never-nude syndrome) and she confirms her incompetency (except when it comes to hair) by oversleeping and missing the commercial. Meanwhile GOB wants more responsibility but doesn't want to be in charge (but he'd like to be asked). His dramatic hurling of the letter into the sea plays off Will Arnett's talent at physical humor, buttoned with the apathetic toss of the dead rabbit into the ocean.

No Buster in this episode and the theme song has this weird electric guitar ditty that they lose henceforth, but “Top Banana” is another very funny outing into the world of the Bluths, strengthening character relationships (Lucille and Lindsay's passive aggressive rivalry, Michael realizing he's putting too much pressure on his son) and memorable moments involving ice cream sandwiches, mis-read magazine titles, and Luz lugging a rack of furs on an Los Angeles city bus.

• “No touching!”
• “I don't know what I expected.”
• “Oh, that's how we joke. She doesn't even have a house!”
• “Furs, or...I don't know, just a heads up.”
• “Don't take that tone. He's my son. I want you to make him stop calling me.”
• “We're like the Lunts!”
• “You might want to let that fire go out before you stick your face in it.”
  “Oh that's funny cause I was gonna say you might want to lean away from that fire since you're soaked in alcohol.”
  “Mine was better.”
• “Michael...having a nice day at the beach, while the rest of us are busting our asses to deliver your mail?”
• “I got a rabbit to buy.”

The Shield - 1x09 - "Throwaway" - Leave the gun, take the churro

 

I was going to start this blog post with a long-winded treatise about the act of discarding people and objects, whether it's justified or based on preconceived notions. Then tie that in to the parallel family strife storylines, both in relation to Claudette and Maynard.

But those get old, convoluted and needlessly personal for a dissection of a Shield episode. Let's talk about the best part of this episode: the Strike Team setting up Hector by impersonating the Los Mags and robbing a police evidence van. That right there is why I love The Shield, the tension created by dirty cops playing cowboys in the wild west of LA. All it took was some bandanas, spray paint, and a fake tattoo. But of course we don't feel bad for Hector, who sealed his fate when he branded Tigre's stomach with his first initial. This is how it works in Vic Mackey's world, bad guys gotta go down by any means necessary.

This is a big episode for Curtis “Lem/Lemonhead” Lemansky, our renegade cop with a conscience. He had a brief spotlight in “Dawg Days”, if you define spotlight as making sarcastic “ain't Vic crazy?” comments. After Lem accidentally shoots Chaco (to be fair, Chaco screamed guilty by running like that), Vic grabs a gun from his trunk o' guns 'n drugs and plants it on Chaco. And the guilt keeps building up once we find out that they shot the wrong guy, who's a former gangbanger with lasered-off tattoos and advises kids on how to escape the hood. So what does Lem do? He first takes a lesson from Vic and beats the fuck outta Hector, burning him with a cigarette and peeling away on his motorcycle all bad-ass. Then he participates in the setup, gets Chaco off, and sleeps with Tigre. Problem solved. And he didn't even need a medicine cabinet full of Maalox.

Meanwhile, Claudette meets the ghost of Christmas future in Maynard, a bastard who treated his family so badly that nobody wants anything to do with him, except a son who ties him up outside. We meet Claudette's father, played by the late Roscoe Lee Browne, who tells Dutch about Peaches' past as a dancer and tries to get her to accept her daughter's new boyfriend. It all pays off when Claudette takes Warner on a tour of the Barn and ends up breaking him down in the interrogation room like a perp. 

 

Canvassing Notes

• Besides wearing the ugliest green shirt ever, Vic's transgressions are getting worse, with his son obviously needing him (note Matthew clinging to Vic's leg when work calls) and Corrine just about reaching her breaking point. It's a shame, but what's Vic going to do? Crime doesn't stop and it's not like Ronnie could impersonate Hector.
• Love the aloof nature of the tattoo artist as his customer's requests get weirder and Vic becomes more exasperated.
• Haven't touched much on the opening credit sequences, which are almost always on point with setting the tone for the episode or having intense sequences introducing a villain, broken up by the shaky credits. The opening truck hijacking with the blaring death metal music and visceral beating of the driver really tells us who the Strike Team is up against.
• “Right. And a man's just as good as a vibrator.”
• “How'd it go with Warner?”
  “I didn't have enough to make an arrest.”
• “Thanks for telling me about Peaches.”
• “I'm only on page 23 and I imagine this is a fascinating place.”
• “Wanting us to be a family doesn't make me a shrew.”
• “I was a bastard.”

Pre-Cog Report

• Vic's increased absence at home and Matthew's condition worsening will lead Corrine to take the kids and leave Vic in the finale of this season and the series.

Arrested Development - 1x01 - "Pilot" - You Can't Handle the Bluth!

 

You can't choose your family.

You're born, you grow up, you learn the way of the world. You look up to your parents and take on their lessons and traits. Then you begin to hate them when their methods and ideologies conflict with what you perceive to be what everyone else is doing and thinking. But there's no such thing as an idyllic childhood. Your parents are just two people who banged and had a kid, mixing and matching the best parental guidance they can gather from books, common sense, and attempts at rectifying their own parent's mistakes. Your extended family is just as full of damaged personalities, hang-ups, annoying quirks, repeated jokes, addictions to drugs, alcohol, and being right all the time. All products of an imperfect environment. But when it comes time for celebrations and heartbreaks, who else are you going to turn to? The perfect family doesn't exist and despite what the media tells us, it's not normal to always get along with people you have frequent contact with. Human beings are hard-wired with a defense mechanism that literally prevents us from being happy. Our brain tells us “this isn't enough” and “what else?” in order to keep us moving and surviving. But what're you going to do? Blood is thicker than water, it's a family affair, you gotta be loyal to somebody! Everyone's got their shit to deal with and it's always something. There'll be fights in public, fun times in private, screaming and crying, laughter and bonding. But if you're lucky, they'll never give up on you.

Arrested Development was a show that thrived on the importance of family. Despite the broad self-interested yet lovable cartoonish characters, it's clear that these people would do anything for each other while engaging in jokes about greedy corporations, actors & magicians, and whacky socialite hijinx. Hell, incest between two cousins is one of the sources of comedy and you can't get any more familial than that. And like any family, it's impossible to choose a favorite member of the Bluth clan.

But we all know the story: the show was killed in it's prime. Despite aggressive fan campaigns, timely DVD releases, and winning an Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series after it's freshman year, it was canceled after three increasingly-shorter seasons and fifty-three episodes. Can we blame the FOX network? Sure, the show could've benefited from a few more billboards, TV spots and a post-Superbowl airing. To their credit, it was premiered after The Simpsons in it's first season. We also have to remember that 2003 was a time before DVR was a household name and little-to-no online viewing capabilities existed (unlike now, where most networks post episodes the next morning on Hulu). This was a show that practically begged for multiple viewings to absorb every joke in both the fore and background. You couldn't watch this while doing laundry, unlike shows with this-is-the-punchline-music or a three-camera sitcom that says “See? It's funny because this warmed-up-by-a-comedian-audience-being-told-to-laugh is laughing! Why aren't you, America?” It was a show before it's time.

So let's take a look at the extended pilot, first made available on the DVD set, which mainly adds funny characters moments and doesn't bleep out the word “fuck”. The plot is surprisingly simple compared to future episodes: It's George Sr.'s retirement party, we meet all the members of the Bluth family, he passes over Michael, promotes his wife, and gets arrested. Instead of moving to Arizona, Michael decides that instead of just saying that family is important to his son, he needs to act as an example and stick around during his family's time of need. It's a quick half-hour, mainly due to the cinema verite style that employs hand-held cameras and cut-aways to flashbacks, stock footage, newspaper articles and clips. The faux-documentary style, where it's acknowledged that some film crew has been capturing moments of this family since it's beginnings, is a useful narrative device for half-hour comedies, if it's done well, mainly due to the way it handles exposition. In the UK and US versions of The Office and Modern Family, they take it a step backward with frequent talking-head interviews with our characters, who expose their inner thoughts before and after moments we're currently seeing. And it's what sets Arrested Development apart from those shows, there's too much energy and too much going on to stop and have Michael explain his feelings during the retirement party. A mark of a good show is one that trusts it's audience to pay attention. And the Bluths don't do interviews.

Overall, this is one of the better comedy pilots in recent history. The characters are all clearly defined before the first act break, there's real-world conflict that they react to in a comic way, and very solid jokes in the dialogue and visuals. Jason Bateman plays a great straight man, who is perhaps the funniest character on the show with his dead-pan observations on the ridiculous nature of his family. The world of Orange County and the Bluth company's history is immediately expanded upon, from the frozen banana stand to rival housing company Sitwell. The only complaints I have is that some of the jokes' reverse engineering is a bit more blatant the umpteenth time around, such as Maeby's name. Was she named that simply for her response to George Michael's question about them being cousins? But Mitch Hurwitz seems to have an affinity for name puns (see also: George Michael, G.O.B., Tobias Funke and his latest show Running Wilde). The show was reportedly developed as a response to all the corporate accounting scandals like Enron and Worldcom, and while one can only ride the “look how crazy rich people are?” boat for so long, the show deserves credit for expanding on that premise and transcending into comedy brilliance.

This is the first sitcom I've dissected, after diving into the television criticism arena with just my wit and ability to identify variations on a theme. I'll continue to blog about the first season of The Shield, tackle about three Arrested Development episodes a week (in one post), and then possibly move onto Oz. Thanks for reading!

The Shield - 1x08 - "Cupid & Psycho" - Love and Other Drugs

 

In our everyday interactions, we have the choice to act out of fear or love. You get pulled over by a cop, you can curse the officer, the bullshit speed limit, and the other drivers with lead feet. Or you can accept the situation for what it is, realize that the officer is just doing a job to protect others and feed his family, and be thankful you weren't in a life-and-death situation where you needed to speed. Unfortunately, acting out of fear tends to be the default because it's easiest. We're always looking for someone to blame. On each of our shoulders, we have a dueling angel and demon. A cupid and a psycho.

“Cupid & Psycho” shakes things up for our characters in the Barn, and it results in one of the season's most compelling episodes yet. We have a literal shake-up from the leaked IAD Strike Team investigation, resulting in a Vic/Claudette and Shane/Dutch match-up. Aceveda reaps the rewards and gains backing for his run at City Council, even after Vic blackmails Julien into recanting, because “perception is reality.” And after watching Vic's back throughout Terry's murder and the whacky Armenian cocaine theft adventure, Gilroy's had enough and is done watching Vic's back.

But the main themes of this episode deal with love and drugs, namely a poisoned batch of meth called “Cupid” hitting the LA colleges because a bunch of incompetents skipped Walter White's science class. After a car chase mostly edited from the B-roll of America's Most Wanted ends with the driver dead and a conscious burn victim in the trunk, Vic and Claudette track down the manufacturers by alternating investigation methods (Vic's is always more fun). Meanwhile, Dutch and Shane help a grieving widow after her husband's murder case file was lost. We expect Shane to step in and pick the fruit, but Dutch ends up scoring (and canceling his date with Danny with the same excuse she used on him in “Blowback”). Julien and Tomas hit yet another rough patch, as Julien is blackmailed into backing up on his statement for fear of people finding out he's gay. I may have problems with the storyline (mostly because I just saw it as a device designed to raise the stakes against Vic) but Michael Jace delivers a fantastic monologue in the bathroom: “It's this thing inside of me. I push it down, it goes away, but then it comes back stronger. I shove it back again but it just keeps coming back until I don't have the strength to push anymore.” And finally, the Battle for the White Ghetto Woman returns, with all the flip-flopping-restraining-order goodness and juicy Von's supermarket hookups, until it ends with Lamar shooting both Fran and the grammatically-challenged Hooper. RIP (S)HOE.

Canvassing Notes

• The episode-ending music montage (this show does a lot of them, and it does them well.) is scored by The Magnetic Fields with their song “All My Little Words”, a beautiful tune about the limits of relationships and eventual heartbreak. It even matches up nicely to the images (“you tell me you're unboyfriendable” over Julien looking forlorn in the Barn).
• Written by Glen Mazzara (“The Spread”) and directed by Guy Ferland, who would later be one of the show's go-to directors.
• I hate pointing out production gaffes, and this might just be revealing my ignorance when it comes to cars, but are there any models where the lever to open the trunk is on the passenger side?
• “The chief dumped my balls like a coupla doughnuts in his morning coffee.”
• “I thought screwing sheep went out with New Wave.”
• “We hooked up at the Vons, yo!”
• “Shane wants to hit the monster truck rally on Friday.”
• “You can't go through life hating who you are.”

Pre-Cog Report

• We find out that Vic's father was a bricklayer, which is pretty much all we ever get regarding Vic's backstory. We don't even find out his middle name until the second-to-last episode of the series. According to Shawn Ryan, who's taking a page from David Mamet, “backstory is bullshit.” Which can be true, but when you're dealing with such a high-octane character like Vic Mackey, don't we want to know what fuels him?

The Shield - 1x07 - "Pay in Pain" - Psychics & Psychopaths

How do you define justice? A charge, conviction and jail sentence through an impartial legal system? An eye for an eye? Or do you have faith that forces in the universe will deliver karmic payback? We're at the half-way point of The Shield''s first season and the question of what defines the right way of punishing our fellow man for indiscretions is fast becoming the theme store's top seller. The cops are placed with the burden of sorting out citizen conflict, from the incredibly violent killers to the harmless grifters, having the power to make life-changing decisions on who's guilty and innocent. And when you have a legal system clogged with red tape and political-correctness that impedes real progress, can you really blame people for resorting to tooth-for-tooth time?

Written by series creator Shawn Ryan, “Pay in Pain” features parallel forms of justice. We have the cases of George the Random Latino Killer being handed over to the Toros for retribution and Dutch/Claudette simply warning a psychic to “find new marks”. George went nuts, as explained by his sister, due to the expanding Hispanic population in Los Angeles, but the Toros going after the man's family was going over the line. The story examines the increasing tension between the police and those they protect, with the addition of Jimenez, a vocal politician/straw man who makes some speeches about hate crimes and racial tensions, whose real importance is revealed when Aceveda leaks the IAD case. The psychic storyline seems to exist solely to show the limitations the police have against the mystical who offer a service people are willing to pay for. But of course, the medium is spot on about Dutch's case, though it could just be a very good cold reading. And she looks like Oprah Winfrey, who Vic name drops as the wrong methodology to go about when dealing with the Toros.

Vic is paired up with Carlos, a former Toros member, and both men learn different ways to handle problems on the street. Carlos believes in working with the gang and thinks he can trust Train, whose pregnant girlfriend was killed by George (off topic, but is a loud gun range really safe for a growing fetus?). He nearly loses it when he discovers that the shopowners turned George over to the Toros without telling him, almost putting a fatal bullet in Train's head before being stopped by Vic. In turn, Vic learns a few things from Carlos, namely forgiving Shane for his jokes about autism and more importantly, protecting him, not willing to give Shane up to IAD over the events in “Blowback”. Even if Shane's urine-fueled interrogation antics are immature, Vic needs to protect Shane, the only other Strike Team member who knows the truth about Terry's death.

But while I'd rank this lower on The Shield's scale of intense episodes, there's developments on the sidelines that move along, namely Julien's testimony against Vic for stealing drugs. Gilroy casually mentions that another officer saw the transgression, and Vic puts the dots together, culminating in an awkward scene where Vic arrests Tomas in front of Julien. This isn't a spoiler, but was that the point of the Julien character? To make a closeted religious cop the only witness of a major Strike Team crime, upping the tension and making the audience believe that Vic could go down until Julien's true sexual history is revealed? Judging by his diminished importance over the years (and Michael Jace never feeling comfortable as either a man of God or a cop), I'd say so.

Canvassing Notes

• The opening speech by the scorned citizen, asking what the cops are doing to make people feel safe, was a bit too grand-standing for my taste. If the event of a rapist being released due to a computer malfunction and then raping her niece was a part of the episode, or a result of the flooding of the Barn in “Cherrypoppers”, it could've worked as an ending, but as a “JUST ANOTHER DAY” moment, not so much. But at least they didn't end it with everyone applauding.
• “When you trade in your megaphone for a badge, that's when I'll seek out your opinion.”
• “We're dinosaurs, Vic. And make no mistake, the meteor's coming...”
• “What's fair for them out there has to be fair for us in here.”
• “Just think of the things I could get away with if I was banging a police captain.”

Pre-Cog Report

• Beyond the Julien and Vic development, not too much really comes back in later episodes, not even Carlos or Jimenez, though random members of the Toros will pop up here and there.

Just on a personal note for this episode, back when I was in school, I was trying to come up with a title for a film I made for a production class. I perused the episode titles of my favorite TV shows and felt that "Pay in Pain" summed up the theme of my slip-'n-fall-scheme dark comedy, later renaming it to "Paid in Pain". Enjoy:

The Shield - 1x06 - "Cherrypoppers" - Bogie Nights

Childhood is supposed to be an age of innocence, where you're expected to have fun and make mistakes, a grace period before you inevitably learn the cold hard truths of the world and are suddenly expected to grow up. Some children coming from harsh environments have this moment very early on, some learn around the right time, and some have never left. I started watching dark, disturbing television dramas like The Sopranos and Oz when I was fourteen years old, in between sneaking glimpses of naked women on HBO's weird sex shows. Later on, I got into The Wire and The Shield, and because I identified with and highly respected the characters and writing, I too wanted to be a morally flawed protagonist in my own on-going narrative. I saw my generation filled with idiot youths who didn't know or have respect for anything real. I resented being pandered to due to my age. I spent my teens and early twenties just waiting to bypass the required bullshit training of public school and expensive bubble of college, doing the bare minimum so I could finally get my life started and start laying real foundations through a real world schedule that didn't have summers off. I kind of had this weird fantasy of becoming a forty-year old bachelor with a substance abuse problem and a couple of ex-wives while making pithy remarks to my nemeses about how great things were before cell phones and the Internet. While friends looked up to athletes, politicians, and philanthropists, I wanted to be a combination of Tony Soprano, Vic Mackey, and Jimmy McNulty. And as a result, I went through those years angry, engaged in self-destructive acts, shied away from any kind of personal growth, and alienated friends and family, but at least I was right, dammit. About what, I don't even know. So Dutch's realization at the end of “Cherrypoppers”, where he starts to blame his childhood on his rant towards Danny and then back-tracks, after witnessing the horrors of pre-pubescent sex shops and underage prostitute murders, really rung true for me. At least we had a childhood free of impending doom and exploitation. We both had families that wanted nothing but the best for us and did what they could, but due to some faulty programming in our fucked-up heads, we convinced ourselves that it wasn't good enough.

“Cherrypoppers”, another solid yet disturbing Shield episode with plenty of “this ain't your mama's cop show” moments, examines our characters having their first experiences ruined by random forces. Dutch spends hours grilling his first viable suspect in the hooker murders, only to have the rug pulled out from under him when it's revealed he's been pranked. Vic does a good deed by busting a kiddie sex shop and sending a pre-teen girl back to Korea, but she'll probably be on the first boat back to America. Both characters have their moment of catharsis, with Dutch unloading a sarcastic rant on Danny when she asks his help to study, and Vic having to beat up his surrogate daughter Connie so she's not convicted of murder. And then the pipes in the Barn pop, fluid gets everywhere, and the plumber only takes cash.

Vic's descent into the horrible world of kiddie prostitution is almost too sick to watch. The group of Koreans joking about pimping out Sally and her ecstasy dealer exuding confidence in his right to a reward for information is truly deplorable, mainly because it seems to be an accepted part of life. While it can be funny to watch Vic force a friendship on Ted outside the sex club, what happens inside is quite the opposite. From the music box lullaby to the man in the cowboy boots on stage, we see everything through Vic's eyes, which get so angry that they look ready to pop out of his head. Props to FX and the producers for having the balls to depict this world seldom seen on television.

Dutch is one of those sad characters who never gets the respect he think he deserves, so he studies up on FBI criminal psychology in order to prove he's smarter than everyone else. We saw glimpses of this in “The Spread” and it comes to fruition in “Cherrypoppers”. He gets to lead the investigation, shouting out “I'm gonna get this guy!” to his fellow officers, brings in the FBI (who he probably stole the phrase “unsub” from, another callback to the pilot), and proves that he's great at interrogations, especially ones that he evokes a personal stake in. He nearly loses it when he wasted all those hours and resources on a couple of jokers, and with damn good reason. But in a way, he wins in the end, having a “mean grilled cheese” with Danny. But the green car with the broken tail light is still out there...

Canvassing Notes

• Despite the dark subject matter, there's still a few hilarious moments, such as the clueless gas station clerk who thinks the cops can dust for fingerprints because “it's his three dollars!” and Sally taking on Struthers as her surname. And I never fail to laugh at Kurt Schmidt, the kiddie porn filmmaker, and his justification that “I'm an editor, man!”
• Julien continues to press Aceveda to move forward in testifying against Vic for stealing the bricks of cocaine, mainly because he can't live with himself and has to answer to God. I'm not familiar with Christianity, but are drugs that big of an issue? Didn't God make the plants that cocaine is made out of, and the drug war is nothing more than a man-made catastrophe?
• The episode was written by Scott Rosenbaum, who later went on to write for Chuck and V, and was directed by DJ Caruso, who started out directing TV movies and recently did Disturbia, Eagle Eye, and I Am Number Four.
• Some great guest stars: FBI Agent Jim Wright was played by Richard Portnow, best known as Hal Melvoin, Uncle Junior's lawyer on The Sopranos. Also from that show was Will McCormack, who played Dr. Melfi's son. And we had Jay Harrington who later went on to play the titular character in the under-rated Better Off Ted.
• “What're you boys chewing? A little grilled Snoopy, side of Woodstock?”
• “Suspicious how?”
  “Well, he was white.”
• “She's a kid. She was.”
• “Serial cases are marathons, not sprints.”

Pre-Cog Report (SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE SERIES)

• The real hooker killer will be caught in “Dragonchasers”, one of the best Dutch episodes ever, also written by Scott Rosenbaum.
• Funny how Dutch accuses Steve of “killing cats”, since Dutch will kill himself a cat in a later season, just to see the light in its eyes go out.

The Shield - 1x05 - "Blowback" - White Lines

 

 

In the recent surge of 13-episode serialized television seasons, the fifth episode holds a lot of weight, both structurally and creatively. After the pilot is shot, months go by before the show is picked up for a season. Then more writers are brought in, sets are built, new roles are cast, everything slowly but surely starts to jive. The fifth episode is the 1/3 mile marker of the season and is where the true thematic entities come to fruition. For The Sopranos it was “College”, where Tony's mob and family life become intertwined when he runs into a rat while taking his daughter to visit colleges. And for The Shield, it's seeing how deep a hole the Strike Team can fall into before managing to dig themselves out, while racking up the tension to almost unbearable levels.

“Blowback” is about, well, the Strike Team trying to get their blow back. Vic and the gang manufacture a bust with an illegal wire tap and a fake tip to score a couple of bricks of cocaine off some Armenians in order to keep Aceveda off their backs and score a nice chunk of change off Rondell from the sale. Those drugs were going on the street anyway, so why shouldn't they profit off it? All cops put their lives on the line every day, knocking down doors without knowing who's behind them, receiving shit pay and then locking up rich scumbags whose drugs and money are sent to an evidence room, waiting to be destroyed. I could go on and on about the insanity of the drug war, but The Shield was never really about soap box issues. If The Wire is the epic byzantine tome of cop shows, then The Shield is the explosive Machiavellian graphic novel. And we're only on the first trade paperback.

But beyond the hunt for the black/blue Navigator (strictly a production design mishap), there's other instances of past events coming back to haunt our characters. When Julien witnesses the Strike Team stealing two bricks of coke, he's willing to jeopardize his career by ratting them out to Aceveda, a self-destructive move to punish himself for being continuing to hook up with Tomas. Vic's son Matthew is diagnosed with autism. Could this be cosmic payback from the universe for Vic's heinous actions?

Compared to other episodes, there's not many variations on that theme beyond Shane warning Lem of the dangers of fat in cookies. It's just a rock-solid adventure where at any second the Strike Team could go down. There's a great moment towards the end of the episode, after Vic flushes the open brick of coke down the toilet, knowing that Aceveda and other cops have arrived, and looks at himself in the mirror. Whatever he's thinking, about almost getting caught, his son, his team, whatever emotions are washing over him as the adrenaline keeps pumping, he just sets aside and puts the remaining brick in his jacket. Then he dares Aceveda to search him. That's why Vic does what he does. He thrives on chaos. And somewhere deep inside, he wants to get caught. But not yet.

Canvassing Notes

• We're introduced to an all-time great Shield villain in Margos Dezerian (played by Kurt Sutter, writer of this episode and future Sons of Anarchy creator) who murders a man because he was impatient with Margo's coke line cutting skills, and snaps the neck of a redneck in the cage because of an off-hand comment. Then he disappears into the night after escaping a police van, only speaking to compliment Danny's feet.
• Clark Johnson's back for his final episode of season 1, shooting this one back-to-back with “The Spread”.
• The episode's bookended with both Shane and Dutch exasperating “You gotta be shittin' me,” both in regards to something important being stolen from them.
• The silencer that Margos uses sounds just like the PP7 in Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64.
• “Is there anything you're not allergic to?”
  “Sheet metal.”
• “Huh. The Armenians speak Armenian.”
• “What if I stuck big blue bananas in your ears and set them on fire?”
• “We're all gonna crash and burn because of you! I mean, Christ, dude, Amy's not even that hot!”
• “We'll check the muff rippers in Little Tokyo.”

Pre-Cog Report (SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE SERIES)

• Margos and the Armenians become the big bad for the Strike Team, after robbing the Armenian's money train in season 2, Margos comes back to hunt them down, chopping off feet in the process.
• Deena the Car Thief makes a return later this season in “Pay in Pain”, as well as a cameo in season 3 and 7.