I've known it was coming for some time now. I longed for it. I almost prayed for it. I had a slight inkling something might be in the works when the Ass Invader made a little too-smarmy remark to Mackey ('Spend your last few hours however you want, Detective'), and as soon as Pezuela handed him the envelope, I knew what was in it.

THE INCIDENT.

Before I get into all that, a couple of quick 'hmmmmms'...

- I swear the Armenians already knew that the Strike Team were the ones who jacked the Money Train. Like I'd mentioned before, their treasury mole fed the Armenians the whole teams' addresses. That was why Vic killed Margos; to send a message to the Armenians that it was game over. Since S3, they'd been laying low, and Rehzian said a few episodes ago that the out-of-towners were around 'to teach our American-born some' blah blah blah...

- TINA'S ASS: Really, I could go on for paragraphs and paragraphs, but let me just sit here and think about it for a few minutes......

Alright, anyway, back to Aceveda's upcoming role as The Man Who Saved Mackey. It's so beautiful. One of the few people who saw through all of Mackey's deception, and now he's going to have to be the one to save him.

I've been longing for this moment ever since he made his S4 deal with Antwon Mitchell to kill Juan Lazano and save his own career. I just KNEW it would come back to haunt him, but I thought for sure that Mackey (after Aceveda's snide remark) might INTENTIONALLY seek out Lazano's old girlfriend, instead of happening to stumble onto it in the course of some other investigation. But this way of stumbling onto it was so much better. Now I see why this Pezuela cat is so plugged in to the Ass Invader (no pun intended). And it seems like Mackey's going to stop digging around, which is kind of a shame; I'd like to have seen what the Romero/Pezuela/San Marcos connection was all about.

But the hell with it, if it means Aceveda is going to have to squirm his way into keeping Mackey on the force.

In the meantime, Shane is, in his own words, 'going deeper into the belly of the Armenian beast than I ever meant to be,' and by the looks of the previews, it's going to cost him bigtime. Since the Armenians apparently didn't know [for SURE] who heisted the Money Train, Shane just punched their tickets, if Diro has anything to say about it.

My guess is she's going to go all nutsack-choppy again without getting all the info first, and maybe she's going to whack Hiatt...? Possibly Julian? With his backstory, it would make for a particularly horrifying and tragic end, him dying with his sack in his mouth, a sort of sick, twisted (and unintentional) reminder of his past.

Sorry, I don't mean to gloat, but I just can't get over having predicted the return of The Incident. It was a little easier to guess that Shane would make his confession to Mara, but as soon as things started going wrong with the comptroller, I got to thinking about the limited number of ways Mackey could save his job.

So here's my question: does Aceveda know his boy Pezuela has the picture? Or is this going to come as a complete and total surprise, as it did to Mackey? Another question: does Pezuela know it's Lazano's dick in Our Fair City Councilman's craw? That would connect a looooootta dots for Mackey ('...this whole weird Juan-Aceveda-Antwon triangle...' [S4]). And not that he could or would, but knowing it was Lazano would, legally speaking, mean Aceveda's guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, although with no datestamp on the picture, there'd be no way to prove it happened before Lazano went to prison or got killed. Aceveda might have been suckin' dicks last WEEK, for all Mackey knows!

Anyway, what seemed at first (to me, at least) to be a bit of a coasting-in-neutral season has kicked into high gear and is shaping up to be another ass-kicking season finale where A) Mackey finally gets to stick it to his old boss, B) Shane kidnaps Vic's FAMILY (?!) and...

C) I don't know about you, but Billings HAS to get some payback for the stunt he pulled tonight. Not only was it completely junior-high-Valley-girl bullshit ridiculousness, but he clearly schemed this up beforehand, to purposely humiliate Dutch and hit him in the one spot where it really hurts. The shot of Hiatt catching [what appeared, to HIM, to be] Dutch playing Peeping Tom through the window was priceless. I can only IMAGINE their next conversation. If the Dutchman ever finds out it was Billings' doing, I think that might be the straw that breaks the camel's back. It may be time for Det. Holland Waggenbach to fly right off the handle.

Maybe more after the midnight showing...

I F*CKING KNEW IT!!! AGAIN!!!!!!