A friend said to me today that he thought last night's episode was a bit anti-climactic, although he followed it up quickly with, "But then again, I just want to be entertained NOW, DAMN the storyline and plot development."

But like I said yesterday, this is the SECOND time Vic has had a good reason to off Shane, and hasn't done it, so you have to ask whether or not he's getting soft.

HOWEVA, Vic has nothing to gain from killing Shane right now except a little belated satisfaction. He just got off the hook for a murder charge that Kavannaugh was trying to pin to him, and since then he's committed a cold-blooded execution (even though Shane let it happen). I thought his line to Shane, "I'm not an executioner!" was where the hypocrisy started to show through a little bit. Because let's be honest: he was judge, jury AND executioner with Gujardo, with no proof.

Would Vic have spared Lem, as he said he would? I don't know, but I DO know that he would have tried a lot harder to convince Lem to go to Mexico before deciding to eviscerate him from the waist down.

Shane's having taken the grenade before Aceveda even lied about Lem giving them up was, I think, what really cut to the bone for Vic. Shane was already thinking about doing Lem before they had any serious doubts about him holding up. "He was strong; you were a coward," Mackey said, and that's about right.

But, I don't think Mackey pussed out. He made the smart move. If another member of his team shows up dead, appeal hearing or not, it's over. They'd probably disband the whole Strike Team, Hiatt and all, if another one of them ended up dead with no discernible suspects (except, of course, for one another).

Well, at least Mara's going to get her wish next week. Vic's going to be out of their lives. Now it's a race to see who can cover their ass the fastest. I'm not sure what that means for Shane, though. He's had some shady dealings with the One-Niners, but aside from the episode with Angie's body in season four, there's not much dirt on him besides Lem's death, and I'm not sure how he covers his tracks on that. He seems to have done it pretty well already, since the final autopsy report didn't uncover anything substantial or new.

It doesn't sound like Vic's going to 'give Dutch a nudge in [Shane's] direction,' and he can't exactly walk up to Dutch and tell him, "Oh, you know, we had this great plan to aid and abet Lem and get him out of the country, and we all split up to try and find him, and then Shane went off the reservation and blasted his ass." No, he can't say that. And without that, Kav's tidbit about there not being enough help to tail Shane doesn't mean much.

The storyline with Vic's daughter was also very interesting, I thought. I was wondering where she would initially get the idea that her dad was a sketchy cop, and then I realized: in one of the first new episodes, he's at Corinne's with Cassidy, and a piece comes on the news about Lem being a dirty cop. Mackey gets all sh*tty and sends Cassidy out of the room, saying he doesn't want her to see it. It's because Aceveda and the city brass are spinning the story to make Lem look bad... of course, Cassidy doens't know that; only Vic. So if she heard the beginning part, about him being dirty, and then her dad sends her out of the room, well, then it makes perfect sense that she might begin to question her dad's morality. I'm not real familiar with LexisNexis, so I'm not sure what she could have realistically brought up, but certainly the L.A. Times article from season three that was quite a bit critical of Mackey and Co. would have registered.

Coming from a stable, husband-wife-and-two-kids family, I have no idea what it would be like to be Cassidy, and I think she handled it alright.

Anyway, on to next week!

I'm not really sure.

It's late as hell, since I stayed up to watch the second showing, and I wanna elaborate some more later, but for now let's just hit the major point: Vic knows for a fact that not only has Shane appeared to be READY to kill a member of the Strike Team (in season four), but now he's actually DONE it.

So the central question is: is Terry's murder by Vic the same thing as Lem's murder by Shane? On one hand, there's no question about it, legally speaking; they're both premeditated murders, a 'slam dunk for the death penalty,' in Mackey's words from tonight's episode.

On the other hand, while Terry was a snitch, actively and covertly working against the Strike Team, Lem was being forced, and still had a chance of being convinced to stay on the run. While Vic AND Shane made the decision to kill Terry, only Shane made the decision to off Lem (there's no reason why he couldn't have taken him to Vic and Ronnie for some more convincing). No one one the team had any loyalty to Terry; Lem had probably saved each of their lives at least twice by season five.

Hiatt appears to share Mackey's flexibility when it comes to the tricky politics of the job. Julien, too, is coming around to seeing Vic's way of cutting through the B.S., even if it means a sidestep or two... although his disgust was pretty clear even when he blocking the clubhouse doorway while Vic was [at the very least] sexually harassing this junkie PTA mom [probably something worse, legally speaking], and he wasn't real happy about the comptroller-daughter polish job, but the OLD Julien would have run to the captain squealing.

THIS way, it works out for everyone: they still get the murder conviction, so Wyms is happy, Aceveda gets some more pull by making another political favor happen... most importantly, it works out for Vic, who gets some juice with the comptroller. My guess is that guy is going to ask around about Mackey's non-existent appeal hearing soon, and fireworks will ensue with Wyms.

So who's this strange-looking cat with the neck-beard that Shane is making a deal with next week? Looks like Mara and Cletus are going all Bonnie and Clyde. Sounds good to me!

So Apollo Creed returned to The Shield last night as Vic's former mentor (and now current role model re: his forced retirement), Joe, uhhh, Jooooe Something... well let's just stick with Joe.

I was wondering what the point was for bringing him back, and now I think it was sort of a morality tale for Vic: this guy molded Vic into the cop he is today, all the chances he takes, all the shit he gets into, he learned it from Apollo Joe. Then he agrees to go on a raid with Joe and another questionably sketchy ex-cop to clear some Jamaicans out of an apartment complex and - to my eyes - gets a mirror held up to him. This douchebag is just taking things way too far, making one guy drink piss and I don't even KNOW what the hell he tried to shove in another one's mouth. Mackey got disgusted and stopped him both times, but I think it was part disgust/part guilt over knowing that he and the team have done this type of thing over the years.

In fairness, Mackey never resorted to stuff like that unless someone was REALLY being a prick or they REALLY needed information (recall, he only dunked that Armenian guy in a oil drum to find Margos, who was out to kill the whole Strike Team). Being merciless but fair was what kept Mackey plugged in to the street: he commanded respect and wasn't as asshole until he had to be.

There was also the conversation that he and Apollo Joe had in the car about how embarassing being forced out of the department was, and Joe unknowingly stuck it to Mackey when he quietly mentioned, 'Glad that shit's not happening to you.'

Well, gotta get ready for work. PEACE!

I f*cking KNEW Shane was going to make his confession to Mara. I don't know why, but I just knew it. She didn't have any part at all in the fifth season, except for one conversation with Shane in their bedroom, and there wasn't much to it. But she was such a treacherous bitch in the third season that they just HAD to bring her back.

HOWEVAAA, it's a little tough to believe that she was so pissed off about him cheating on her, but admitting to killing Lem was enough to bring her back around. I'm not sure how the logic works on that... but it seems to me like maybe she has a plan.

Julien is proving to be the Useless Member of the Strike Team (the Masta Killa, if you will [although his two solo albums are hot, no doubt, still you gotta admit, not so much up to then]), but then again he's adjusting to a brand new role. Need to lose that polo shirt, though, and dress it down a little.

Thought it was pretty funny that Dutchman the Great Gatsby was about to let the kiddie rapist go when Beeeeeeeeeillings sniffed him out ('What kind of a douche comes in to the police station to help out?').

So where do things go from here? Shane was willing to off Lem to protect his family/keep his ass out of prison. Who else will he kill to protect himself?

Mackey took the news that Gujardo was indeed uninvolved in Lem's death pretty rough; as well he should, since he killed him in a bloodlust revenge rage and against Shane's protests. I've said before, it's hard for me to believe he hasn't figured this out yet. Then again, WE all get the omniscient perspective, don't we?

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Alright, well since I'm still a little giddy over having predicted who Shane was going to make his confession to, I'm going to make another little prediction about something I've been hoping will come back into the show since its introduction: The Incident.

Ever since the Ass Invader got, well, invaded back in season three, the whole thing seemed to disappear a little too quickly for me. I mean, there was the whole storyline where Aceveda was unraveling and he was hunting these guys down and caught 'em knocking over a liquor store, but he got the phone and that was that.

Since then, I've been envisioning a scenario where Vic and the Strike Team are busting a house for something, whatever, and it just happens to be Juan Lazano's old girlfriend. So while they're rifling through her drawers looking for a gun or whatever, Vic comes across an envelope, and inside is a cellphone picture printout of Our Fair City Councilman sharpening an ex-con's pencil.

All I'm saying is it would be a greeeeeeat way for Mackey to both keep his job and stick it to his old boss...

LINE OF THE NIGHT: 'Yeah, I don't think Shane has too many teenage black friends...' - Mackey to Tilly

Cletus is falling apart.

How about he's so far gone that he's taken up with a black girl? I mean, I'm not racist, she's BANGIN', but that's not exactly how Cletus roll, y'know?

From OUR vantage point, it seems like Mackey should know by now that Shane did it. The way he acted before Gujardo got killed, his '[Things] Don't move on; not for me,' comment in the Barn, crying outside and saying 'You think killing Gujardo made things RIGHT?'

At some point, Mara HAS to figure in to Shane's meltdown. That's why I'm thinking he's going to tell HER on Tuesday that he killed Lem. Swear her ass to secrecy and I think we all know how THAT'S gonna work out...