This freshly-open position on the Strike Team could be a way for the writers to bring Tavon back into the mix. The LAPD brass has no idea about Shane and Tavon mixing it up, so it wouldn’t be an administrative problem to bring him back. I can’t really imagine his character would WANT to come back, certainly not if it meant working with Shane, but who knows? If Vic is as certain as I THINK he is about Shane offing Lem, he’d welcome the opportunity to set those two against one another. In fact, he might even try to manipulate Tavon into taking revenge on Shane.

Also, what will the Strike Team be missing now that Lem is gone?

For starters, it will be losing its strongest voice of conscience, that’s for sure. Even when he was on board with its shady dealings, Lem usually piped up with “what-if” scenarios and doubts.

In S5, Lem was too busy toeing the IAD/Strike Team line to bring his worries to the team, and Ronnie kind of took over the “devil’s advocate” part. If the writers don’t bring a new fourth member to the team, I’d sure like to see S6 be the year Ronnie really comes into his own and brings some baggage to the table. So far, we don’t know too much about the mysterious Ronald Gardocki, except that he’s allergic to everything (except stainless steel, ha ha ha) and he’s good with computers. There doesn’t seem to be much in his past that would rock the boat on the show, but I suppose that means it’s the perfect opportunity for the writers to inject something that WOULD rock the boat.

Oh yes, and while I’m thinking about it, I’d sure like to see the eventual payoff in this whole Aceveda-Antwon-Juan situation. For me, it boils down to this: Aceveda had someone murdered to cover up his embarrassment. That is arguably worse than Vic shooting Crowley for turning rat.

Arguably.

The point is this: I want to see the Ass Invader get his. Mackey already had an inkling that there was some shady shit going on in S4 (“Why should I look the other way on this whole weird Juan/Antwon/Aceveda triangle?”), and I gotta believe it was gonna be part of his “scorched earth” plan from S5.

AHHHH, I was just watching some of S3 this weekend, and a revelation came to me: WHAT IF Vic and the boys are running some routine case, and happen to find some information that leads to the apartment of Juan Lazano’s girlfriend? And WHAT IF they’re inside the apartment looking for some sort of corroborating evidence, and HAPPEN to stumble across a printed copy of the picture of THE INCIDENT??? Sure, his girl never did anything with it in S4, even after Juan got killed, but who’s to say she isn’t still holding onto it, or tossed it in a drawer and forgot about it?

Put yourself in the place of a “Shield” writer, and just try to IMAGINE the vast world of possibilities that this opens up. The scene (I’m envisioning it in my head right now, how sad is that?) between Mackey and Aceveda practically writes itself:

MACKEY: Councilman. Glad to see you. I just wanted to clear up this whole Juan-Antwon-You thing.

ACEVEDA: I’m not aware of anything that needs clearing up.

MACKEY: Ah, I disagree (holds up a COPY of the photo, because you KNOW he’d have had Ronnie make like six MILLION copies, just to be safe). I mean, the picture’s a little blurry, but that sure looks like the Right Honorable City Councilman David Aceveda blowin’ an armed felon.

ACEVEDA: (snatches it) Give that to me. (starts to tear it up)

MACKEY: Go ahead. I already have plenty of copies of my own.

ACEVEDA: You don’t have any proof that’s me, the picture’s all blurry.

MACKEY: Yeah, well, the six’o’clock news and the LA Times might not have such a high standard of proof.

ACEVEDA: Goddammit, what do you want?

There are so many ways that this could go. Mackey could make the Ass Invader put an end to his forced retirement; he could use it to try and get out from under IAD’s microscope; he could not show it to Aceveda at all, drop it to Kavanaugh and hang Juan’s murder on his former boss (let’s not forget, the Ass Invader basically ordered that hit on Juan, even though Antwon thought it was an off-the-books quid pro quo for the DEA)!!!

I guess the point is, this would be a great way to solve some of the Strike Team’s problems AND for Mackey to get even with the former captain who submarined him at the beginning of S4.

OR – maybe the greatest possibility of them all – I could maybe see Mackey and Aceveda making one final devil’s deal: Mackey keeps quiet about the picture, and Aceveda finds a way to dispose of Shane.

Ruminate on THAT one…

Hmmmm... a couple posts ago, I was talking about Officer Hoffman, the black undercover cop that Tina pissed off near the end of S5. Initially, I thought some shit might go down with Hoff and Tina, or she might accidentally get someone killed. It still might happen, but...

It just occurred to me that the Strike Team is now down one member. If the writers are going to follow through with this Salvadoran grenade storyline, they're going to need to add someone to the team...

What about Officer Hoffman?

It would work well in a couple of ways: well for the background and story, because from what we've seen in Hoff's few appearances, Vic and the boys know and trust him. It works well for Vic because bringing another black man to the Strike Team -- especially considering what happened the last time they tried that -- will help drive a wedge between Shane and the rest of the team.

Just a thought...

… boooy, there are a lot of new ways things could go in Season 6 (I’m just going to start calling it that, since “Season Five Extended” is just too much to write)…

For one thing, I’ll be very interested to see the payoff of several different storylines that have arced over more than one season so far:

1) the Dutchman’s suspicions that the Strike Team heisted the Armenian money train – it sure seems unlikely, barring the reappearance of Armen Sholikian (the advance man who got into an accident in front of Shane and Lem), who is really the only Armenian still alive who could reasonably tie any of them to the robbery (oh yeah, and he also got a good look at Ronnie driving the garbage truck just before the heist). Also, I get a sense that while Dutch is the charge-ahead, damn-the-torpedoes type, Billings may be less-than-ready to go head-to-head with the Strike Team.

2) Captain Wyms – I never thought I’d actually get to write that title. I have to believe that she’ll have an even harder time than Capt. Rawling (Glenn Close) getting along with the Ass Invader (Aceveda). He and Rawling simply disagreed over policy, but he and Wyms disagreed on EVERYTHING… which makes me wonder, will they finally find ONE thing to agree on in Vic? If he had both of them gunning for him (not that it hasn’t been that way in the past, but Wyms wasn’t captain then), it might get pretty dicey.

3) Of course, that brings up another issue: how COULD they come after Mackey now (“they” being anyone, Wyms, the Ass Invader or Kavanaugh)? Lem was the last weak link in the Crowley case, and he’s gone. Shane’s not going to turn on Vic, and (far as we know) Ronnie is still in the dark about what actually happened. Vic appears to be clear, at least in terms of the money train and Crowley’s murder. I can see Kavanaugh getting The Final Embarassment when he tries to hang Lem’s murder on Vic, to no avail.

4) Which brings us to Kavanaugh. Clearly, he’s comin’ back next year. Forest Whitaker created a character that was too good to simply wash out of the series. But, if does come back, what will he do? How much crazier can he go? Will he, as he suggested to Corinne, “take this fight to Mackey?” He tried at the end of S5, and appeared to be on the bottom when Vic was pulled off him. It will be interesting to see how much power the department will give him, now that his suspicions at least APPEAR to be panning out?

What is becoming even more interesting is that this coming season will present one of the larger dilemmas to have occurred throughout the course of “The Shield.” … Mackey and company, who appear to be in the clear, will have to be on their BEST behavior. At the same time, they will be forced to deal with one of the WORST things that has happened to them (Lem’s death), and it happened at the hands of a fellow member.

So here we are, in arguably the final season, and Vic will have another good reason to kill a cop (not that there’s EVER a GOOD reason, but I’d make the argument that executing a cop-killer, even if he is a fellow officer, is more righteous than offing a department snitch who might squeal on your dirty dealings).

As I mentioned previously, though, I could very easily see Vic convincing Ronnie to do the dirty deed, getting caught, and leaving Mackey, easily the dirtiest of the bunch (Shane cuts a close second, but HE didn’t shoot Crowley), getting away clean.

The only alternative, in my eyes, is Mackey’s death, and I just don’t even want to think about that.

Why do I get the feeling that Vic Mackey is going to be the only member of the Strike Team left standing at the conclusion of the next 10 episodes?

Before getting into this full bore, let’s consider the body count that is pretty much directly connected to our chrome-domed hero, starting with the first season and working forward (and I may be forgetting some): Det. Terry Crowley, Connie the Hooker, Tavon (well, okay, he didn’t get killed, but Vic sent him to Shane’s, and he certainly got put out of commission), O’Brien the Irish Money Train Patsy, Margos Dezirian, the C-4 Russian Mobster, Kern Little and the Warehouse Security Guard (okay, so they weren’t responsible for the guard, but they could have saved Kern), and now their brother in arms and the man who was ready to go down for them, Lem.

**NOTE: I forgot about Armadillo, and there's someone else, too, but I can't remember who.** AHH, I JUST REMEMBERED... SHANE'S C.I. FROM SEASON FOUR; THE KID WHO BRAGGED ABOUT TAKING HIS BUDDY'S 14-YEAR-OLD SISTER'S VIRGINITY. I knew it would come back to me... WHOOPS… I just remembered two more people: Carl and Scooby, the cops who got it in Season 4. Again, Vic wasn’t DIRECTLY responsible, but not coming forward about the whole Shane/Antwon angle – and the fact that Antwon’s hit on Vic was unsuccessful – probably precipitated the cop-killings.

**SECOND NOTE: I forgot about Diegur Levi, the Byz-Latz banger from S3. The Armenians got his ass, too, lookin' for the money train cash.

The point is, all of these people have gone down because of events surrounding or precipitated by Vic, and those are just the ones that I can remember.

I gotta say, I wasn’t thinking that Lem was gonna get it until Shane was the only Strike Teamer without a tail (and c’mon, Kavanaugh… you didn’t think they were gonna leave in three separate cars? He never even made mention of Shane… WTF?), and then when Shane turned his back to Lem and kept talking, you could just see it in his face.

But once again, good ol’ Cletus Van Damme makes a rash decision that hurts the team. On the second viewing, there are a lot of shots of Shane looking doubtful about Lem holding up. I understand that their mistrust goes all the way back to the money train, and Lem’s foolish decision to burn the cash, but I really thought they were all back to team mode this season, especially with Shane almost crying two weeks ago saying “C’mon, we’re FIGHTIN’ this, man!” In retrospect, though, maybe Shane was already thinking about offing Lem, and he was just trying to keep it from happening.

Regardless, it looks like the damage he’s done is gonna be irreparable, judging by Vic’s final line of the season: “We’re gonna find out who did this… and we’re gonna kill them.”

What a beautifully tragic final moment, with Shane falling just a step or two behind Vic and Ronnie upon hearing his death sentence.

Because, if you ask me, Vic already knows he did it.

Using a grenade was a very, very stupid thing to do. Why would the Salvadorans go after Lem? There’s no real reason for it, other than they happened to see him in this abandoned auto shop and managed to kill him with a grenade? For real?? Who the hell is going to buy that?

Which is going to bring Kavanaugh right back into the Strike Team’s lives. His “Are you happy now, Detective Mackey?” line should have uncorked a lot more violence than it did, in my opinion. Vic and Kav’s brief struggle doesn’t even begin to hint at the hate these two clearly have for one another. Kav thinks Vic is responsible for everything, including Lem’s death (wrong), and I’m sure Vic blames Kav for setting Lem up to be killed in prison and setting off the chain of events that led to this. I thought for sure Vic was going to just pound him into hamburger, but then I guess Kav is a pretty big boy.

The real question is, will Vic finally retire this all-for-one nonsense and turn on Shane? There’s no real way to do it without putting himself and his career in danger because of his involvement Terry Crowley’s murder.

Well, strike that… there’s no way to do it legally because of the whole Terry thing.

Which brings me back to my first statement; that Vic is going to be the sole Strike Teamer standing when the series ends.

Next to Lem, Ronnie was the nearest thing to a voice of conscience on the team. He’s always been more of a go-along-to-get-along type of guy, but he followed Vic’s lead and usually spoke up when he was having doubts or difficulties. I can see Vic manipulating Ronnie – maybe that’s not the right word, because while Mackey is clearly manipulative, he seems to be able to bend people’s wills to his own ends almost unconsciously… or maybe, as Becca put it, “You’ve been lying for so long you’ve forgotten what the truth is” – into taking Shane out. Then Ronnie gets busted, or maybe he and Shane shoot one another, and Vic is the only one left.

That would be a great way to end the series: just a lone shot of Mackey, gun in his hand and no one to kill. The weight of the past five seasons brought down on his shoulders and nothing to show for it. Sure, he’s made it out clean, but it has cost him everything and everyone he loved. I’m not saying Corinne and the family are going to be killed, but just think about that, being the guy who gets away with it all and having to live with everything he knows.

Because by the way, all of these events are still leading up to Vic’s forced retirement in less than four months, and I gotta believe that’s gonna play a significant part in all this: at some point, Vic will have next to nothing to lose. His pension, maybe, but certainly not his badge. It’s already going to be taken.

Anyway, let’s move on to a few lighter moments. Ohhhh, Billings and the Dutchman. Looks like they’re gonna be stuck together, since Billings’ plan is to dig himself in for the next 56 months (doesn’t sound all that bad, until you consider it adds up to almost FIVE YEARS!!) and Wyms refused Dutch’s transfer so that he could work the Lem case (and why do I feel like he’s going to use that as an excuse to start honing his suspicions about the Strike Team’s money train heist?).

Oh, and now we know why Billings has such a hard-on for those vending machines, and also why he was constantly harping on people to buy something from them. It also explains his “I think there’s chicken pot pies in the quick mealer” comment to Mackey. Apparently he’s not as stupid as he looks, on some levels.

“[Wyms] even put my desk out on the floor, so everyone can see Caesar lying in a pool of blood.”

“Really? You’re Caesar in this story?” – HA HA HA

But back to Lem for a second. It was a real bonehead move to try and help that screaming black kid out, but that’s Lem for ya. His kindness and his good streak were part of his undoing.

And it’s been his kindness and concern for others that has gotten him into trouble before (i.e. burning the money train cash). But through it all, he had the team in mind. He was trying to protect them all. Granted, burning that cash, while it kept them from being discovered by the cops, didn’t protect them from the Armenian mob, but the way things were closing in on them in that third season, I can see how it would appear to be the smart move.

Oh yeah, side note: I also liked Vic’s response to Emolia saying she’d basically allowed herself to be gang-raped and “ripped up pretty good” in order to get intel for the Strike Team… “If you’d made different choices from the beginning, none of us would be ripped up right now.”

It’s so true. But then again, if you think about it, Emolia only saw Lem take that heroin because they were trying desperately to find a 14-year-old with Shane’s bullets in her.

Which brings us to Shane. Everything he has done, whether he thought he was doing it for the team or not, has been for himself. Pissing on that black kid in the middle of a black neighborhood… tying up the team’s retirement fund in a poisoned coke shipment… marrying Mara in the middle of the night (even though they really are in love) essentially to spite Vic… getting involved with Antwon Mitchell… he did it all for himself, out of some strange desire to emulate Vic. Only whenever he tries to be The Big Badass, it never works out for him.

I’m sure he thought he was only being loyal to Vic by taking Lem out… thought he was taking care of the team. In reality he was destroying one of its original members, which Mackey clearly cannot abide. Terry was an outsider, and so was Tavon, to some extent. Note that Mackey wasn’t all broken up about Tavon almost dying… he was more concerned with keeping a lid on the money train, and had no problem manipulating Tavon to keep things on the hush.

But never, not even once, did he suggest bringing harm to Lem. Even when they were waiting for him to show up at the end of the last episode, worried to death that he’d really given them up, Vic never said “We have to find him and take care of this.” He was sure Lem would show up.

Which adds a new level of ambiguity to last night’s climax: Lem wasn’t interested in running to Mexico. He was going to take his chances in protective custody and try to ram a deal through without involving Vic, Shane and Ronnie.

Who knows if that would’ve happened? Becca told him there would probably be no deal without the other three. Kavanaugh is dead set on nailing Mackey, and now he’s probably got the new chief’s ear, especially after Lem’s fugitive run and certainly after his death.

I’ve read in one blog that “this could almost be referred to as a mercy killing,” and the same person made an argument that Lem was essentially committing suicide by refusing to go to Mexico: either he was gonna get it in prison, or someone out here was going to have to take him out.

I’m not so sure. It’s hard to believe that Shane really thought this was the best possible option, and wasn’t just out to keep his own ass out of jail, where’d he CERtainly have gotten shanked by Antwon’s boys.

So, questions that need answers for the new season:

1) Will the Dutchman eventually kill Billings?
2) Will he find out about the money train?
3) How is Wyms going to treat the Strike Team? “That renegade shit won’t fly with me, but you already knew that.” --- that’s a long way from sticking them on hooker-john duty in the Alvarado Corridor, their last assignment from her. Is she going to believe that two of the three of them really didn’t have anything to do with Lem’s death?
4) How will Wyms and Kavanaugh get along, since it’s hard to believe he won’t be all over two of her best officers next season?
5) Is Shane going to have the guts to admit what he did?
6) How is Vic going to play it, since I think he knows Shane did it?
7) I’m still waiting for the payoff to Aceveda’s involvement in this whole bizarre bedfellows, one-against-the-other tightrope act…
8) Antwon Mitchell has now been hung out to dry, in the middle of a DOC investigation into Longpoke Prison, with no leverage on Kav or the Strike Team. Well, okay, he’s still got Shane, but who’s going to believe him?

I’m sure I’ll think of more over the next few days, but at least we can put to rest the rumors about another season… it’s comin’, there’s no doubt.

Which makes me a very happy man.

Just wasting a little time here at the 2006 Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Spectroscopy in Orlando, FL.

Officer Hoffman, that's the name of the undercover officer who Tina pissed off by f'ing up his bust. Seeing as how both Vic and Shane (and possibly the rest of the Strike Team) know Hoffman, it opens up an intriguing set of possibilities.

I've postulated earlier that Tina is going to get someone killed. Who it is remains a mystery, at least to me. My best guess is Claudette, because it would bring Dutch's foolishness full circle: he's the one who was all about keeping Tina on board and teaching her detective work, and if Tina did get Wyms killed, that would be the SECOND time Dutch was cause-and-effect-responsible for injuring his partner.

I'm hoping for something involving both Hoffman and Tina in the last two episodes of this first half of Season 5. If Hoffman weren't important in some way, they wouldn't have seen the need to bring him back in; they could have just used an extra. Using someone that the Strike Team knows has to mean something.... but what?

Although the more I think about it, the more I think Lem might get killed off instead of (or maybe in addition to) Claudette, if they're REALLY thinking about ending the series with Season 5, and esPECIALLY if he's serious about taking a deal.

That "Conscience is a Killer" slogan would work really well if both Lem and Wyms get it. Lem's death, no matter how it comes about, will certainly weigh heavy on Vic's conscience, because while he'll definitely be devastated at losing a member of the team, he'll have to be at least a TEENSY bit relieved that the other shoe in Kavanaugh's case will have dropped, leaving only Emolia, and she can't very well put pressure on Lem to take a deal if he's dead. In Dutch's case, having Tina be responsible for Wyms' death would likely be the straw that breaks the Dutchman's back.

I can't wait to see... unfortunately, I have to, because the goddamn hotel doesn't have F/X....*&$#&^!!!