Bob's Burger - "Nude Beach" - Review

When I saw the title for this episode, “Nude Beach”, I knew I was in for something good. However, the nude beach isn’t actually the biggest element of the episode; it’s Bob’s relationship with Hugo the health inspector. The episode deals with the fairly typical sitcom situation of two individuals hating eachother and swearing eachother off, before realizing that they actually need eachother. But in the hands of Bob’s Burgers, there’s a weird charm about it, not to mention the fact that a good portion of the episode deals with a nude beach, something I don’t think you’d find in a standard sitcom.

Hugo has been a massive pain in Bob’s ass, constantly finding the most minor of infractions to hold against him. Bob wishes he didn’t have to deal with him. When Hugo goes to close down a nude beach with health violations, he ends up turning into a convert of the nudist lifestyle and abandoning his post as health inspector. A new, much more lenient health inspector Tommy shows up and befriends Bob. Tommy’s a little weird, but he’s making life at the restaurant so much easier that Bob is forced to tolerate him. But Tommy keeps asking favor after favor, until he’s staging a rock and roll show at the restaurant. Only problem is that Tommy is God-awful. He sings songs about his daddy issues and how good he is at sex, and drives away customers (except Teddy who is oddly loyal). Bob knows that this can’t last much longer, but when he breaks the news to Tommy, he doesn’t take it well, he pulls some rat poop out of his pocket (which apparently has been there the whole time), and shuts the restaurant down. The only way for Bob to save the restaurant is to convince Hugo to become a health inspector again. Hugo takes up a bet where if Bob wins the nude decathlon, he’ll return. So Bob out of sheer desperation strips down and does every event before losing in the final round to Hugo. Hugo however realizes that he wants it to be him and not some other person who shuts down Bob’s restaurant and so rescues the place.

The Belcher children meanwhile see an easy way to make cash, exploiting horny teenage boys’ desire to see nude women. They find a great vantage point of the beach and Tyler (who, played by Aziz Ansari, helped Bob play videogames in “Burgerboss”) provides them with a telescope (“basically the Hubble for boobies”) for them to check out the action. The boys are initially turned off because its nudity in all its ugly, messy glory, but Louise (in an exceptional, hilarious monologue) sells it: this is better than the nudity in magazines, THIS IS REAL LIFE! The kids end up raking in a lot of dough, even taking bets on the nude decathlon.

The series is so willing to show people doing things (things that other shows might make out to be bad or weird or wrong) and then doesn’t judge them for it. Bob and Linda have been shown to drink A LOT. Louise has practically tried to kill people on more than one occasion. And the kids are seen here ripping off people they know, while multiple characters choose to go to the nude beach and get naked. But it never makes a statement about the nude beach; it never goes out of its way to suggest that nude beaches are weird or wrong. It just makes them out to be a matter of life. In some places there happens to be nude beaches. If someone wants to go there, who are we to judge? The nude beach is almost an afterthought actually. So much of the episode is dealing with Bob putting up with Tommy and his antics that the nude beach, which felt like it would be the driving force for the story, is sidelined.  

  

Stray Observations:

-“Hands off my hands government!”

-“That’s how vendors sold food in the Bible” “Don’t bring religion into this!”

-Andre Royo (aka Bubbles from The Wire) appears in the training video on how to wash your hands.

-“It’s like the Internet but outside!”

-“We’ll be like the Louis and Clarke of nudity”

-“Where’s your fanny pack?” Hugo pulls up his belly fat to reveal his fanny pack.

-“We’re bushwhacking the a trail to the nude overlook”

-“He’s the new Hugo” “Well, there’s only one Hugo”

-“No sweat off our ass!” – Belcher children are totally cool with cursing.

-“Do you like rock?” “Like rock … music … yea” – Great delivery by H. Jon Benjamin.

-“I think dad just got to second base with that guy”

-Louise’s sales pitch: “All the dingles! All the dongles”

-“You strike me as more of an indoor nerd”

-Tommy’s other song: “That Elderly Prostitute” –An instance where saying is better than showing.

-The superimposing of Tommy singing over the nude beach was really weird.

-Tommy doesn’t even bother dumping the rat poop out of the bag; he drops the bag on the ground.

-Tommy is now at Jimmy Pesto’s. How kind of Hugo. 

Grade: B

What did everyone else think?

Girls - "It's About Time" - Review

Once you got past all the claims of nepotism and racism (both wrong in my opinion) that haunted Girls’s first season, you would find one of the most assured, confident first seasons of television. Carried by Lena Dunham’s unique, singular vision of twentysomethings in New York City, it created interesting, flawed, believable characters who could come off as complete assholes and yet you’d still like them (a sign of really, truly great writing). Dunham’s series has been compared to Louis C.K.’s Louie, both have narrative visions so unlike anything else on tv (crafted almost entirely by one person), both put themselves out there (often physically) for laughs, and each episode you don’t quite know where either is taking you until you get to the very end and go, “Oh, that’s what they were trying to say!” Girls would be required viewing for anyone obsessed with tv just for how unlike anything else it is, but the fact that it’s also really good is icing on the cake.

Hannah has started shacking up with her gay ex-boyfriend, Elijah. They seem to be getting along really well, and have gotten over some of their differences from last season. She appears to be dating Donald Glover (Hey, diversity everyone!), but she’s taking care of Adam at the same time, and keeping it secret from her supposed new boyfriend. She tells Adam she wants to see other people, and Adam is far more cool about not putting labels on the whole thing than she is. Adam lets her know that he’s never known another person quite as well as he does Hannah, and points to her weird attachment to him, asking why she’d want to go and fuck with this. Hannah does that though; she fucks up everything because she’s selfish, and mean, and bored. But we end the episode with her stopping in with her new black boyfriend and looking for sex and deep discussion of Ayn Rand objectivism. Hannah is simply refusing to face up to the facts. But for now, avoiding them sounds a lot more appealing than confronting the mess she’s gone and made for herself, yet again. 

Marnie has been fired from her job at the gallery. She’s good at her job but they can’t afford to keep her (which feels like a sly commentary on everything in her life: who can afford to put up with Marnie, she’s often just as narcissistic as Hannah). Her mother isn’t too pleased, and demands she get a new job immediately. Her mom’s back on the dating scene and over her divorced husband. She’s off shamelessly banging guys her daughter’s age (Marnie totally doesn’t approve. “Talk to me like you would your friends” “I am. I would be way harsher to them”). Marnie isn’t over Charlie if her lingering glances and semi-awkward chitchat during Hannah’s party count for anything. Or maybe not having a job AND  not having a boyfriend is a prospect she can’t deal with (we still haven’t seen anything come of her making out with the fat officiator at the wedding). Charlie’s relationship with his new girlfriend looks rocky; they’re very ill-suited for eachother, and he looks little pleased by her. Oh, and I haven’t even gotten to the best part yet: Elijah, after complaining about his boyfriend and pondering whether he may be bi, starts to have sex with Marnie. Marnie is initially reluctant, but her life is so shitty, that ya’ know what, damn if she shouldn’t at least get laid. Well, unfortunately, he can’t get it up, and Marnie ends up heading over to Charlie’s apartment: “I don’t want to cause any trouble. But I just need to sleep next to someone” (Are these two headed on a collision course to get back together?). 

Shoshanna, after finally losing her virginity to Ray last season, keeps rambling on with her usual sincerity about how she and Ray are no longer together, and she’s happy about it (Not that we ever buy it because no one talks at length about something like that without it being clear they’re lying to themselves). But of course when Ray arrives at the party, she can’t help (after some protestations) hooking up with him.

Everyone seems to be avoiding the truth of their situations. Hannah is failing to see that the go-between Donald Glover and Adam is problematic at best, and doomed to fail disastrously at worse. Marnie fails to recognize that she wants Charlie back (and that it’s probably at least partly due to her losing her job). Shoshanna fails to acknowledge that she may have feelings for Ray and that she may actually want to be with him. The one person, Jessa, who always seemed to refreshingly cut through the bullshit (but in many ways didn’t– the affair with her boss, and losing the kids she was babysitting were terrible decisions that she never fully admitted to herself about – And the last minute marriage could prove to be another instance of this) is absent for most of the episode. She shows up at the end with newlywed bliss hopping into a taxi with her new, weird fiancé, noting how she has no idea where they even live. 

Last season started out making us believe certain things and then inverting our perceptions to great effect. Adam was initially just this weird guy that Hannah seemed to be dating out of desperation. But it turned out that was just because Hannah failed to take the time to get to know him. These storylines appear to be headed in obvious directions (Hannah is going to have to choose one way or the other, as is Shoshanna about Ray, and Marnie, if she doesn’t get back with Charlie, is at least going to hook up with him at some point), but who knows if where we think we’re going is where we’re actually headed? Much of last season’s storylines didn’t totally make sense until the finale which had most of the season’s story arcs culminate rather nicely. I don’t really know where Girls is headed, but it’s funny and sincere and unlike anything else. And that’s enough for me for now.

Stray Observations:

-Nicely observed: the opening montage with Shoshanna doing a Buddhist type mantra and spraying out incense asking the universe for things, and Hannah and Elijah cuddling.

-Music Choices – The show has always had a knack for great music choices: Regina Spektor – “Your Honor” over the title sequence, Vampire Weekend – “I’m Goin’ Down” over the end credits, The Animals – “House of the Rising Sun” sung on the karaoke by Ray and Charlie.  

-“I came. You came hard. We all laughed” – Adam is often so open and honest about who he is and what he believes that he feels like the only character being straight with themselves.

-“Don’t say fired. You’re transitioning” – Well, a lot of why Marnie is the way she is has just been explained.

-“I’m deflowered, not devalued!” – Shoshanna is perhaps my favorite character on the show, but she was also the most underutilized individual last season.

-Also: her doing Karaoke = ADORBS! Song choice: Sean Kingston – “Beautiful Girls”.

-“I was watching Midnight in Paris and I was thinking, ‘I could make that’”

-“I’ll let you talk about Adam unlimited” “I don’t talk about Adam a lot” “You fucking do!” – You so fucking do Hannah.

-Shoshanna unfriended Charlie on Facebook

-“A panda next to a gun next to a wrapped present … That doesn’t make any sense”

-“We’re Mexican! We don’t know the rules!”
-"You know how hot you are. That's why you're such a bitch" - How accurate is this?

Grade: B+

What did everyone else think?

"Argo" - Film Review

The premise to Argo seems almost too absurd to be true: when 6 members of the U.S. Embassy in Iran manage to escape before the takeover, they hideout at the Canadian ambassador’s house; CIA agent Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck), when all other options seem impossible, comes up with the idea of faking the film production of a science fiction film and using location scouting in Iran for the fake film as a way to extricate them from the country. It almost sounds like the type of historical re-imagination one would expect in a film like Inglourious Basterds, not a historical drama. As Bryan Cranston’s Jack O’Donnell puts it though, “It’s the best bad idea we have”. It’s a footnote of history only brought to light in recent years when the incident was declassified under the Clinton administration, and it adds a new element to the already deeply fraught Iranian hostage crisis.

The film details just how desperate the CIA and the U.S. government had become that they would even consider such a crazy option. And even harder still at times, how to make a fake production of a film come off as real. But the film handles its historical drama well, balancing the tension between entertaining and informing (and the last twenty minutes of the film are totally plausible and yet all the more intensely nerve-racking for it). 

Ben Affleck really has made a turn in his career in about the last 5 years. Affleck had made a fairly big name for himself, but he had done little to suggest large credibility. His career had been mostly consigned to bad or forgettable movies (forgiving a Good Will Hunting here or there). But then he wrote, and directed Gone Baby Gone and The Town, two really good movies that seemed to usher in a new phase in his career. Argo is another solid film to add to his resume. It’s efficiently, tightly directed and moves with precision and a sense of purpose. It has nice, even lavish, period detail but doesn’t get bogged down in historical particularities. It’s intense without forcing intensity. Argo is what a historical drama ought to be: informative, but lacking obsession with the fact that it’s doing so, and entertaining, but without having to massively fudge historical accuracy. 

Grade: B+

"Zero Dark Thirty" - Film Review

“What other cases have you done besides Bin Laden?” –CIA Director

“Nothing … I’ve done nothing else, sir.” -Maya

When people at my college learned that Osama Bin Laden had died, many gathered at the library, the building at the center of the campus. They sang patriotic songs loudly and poorly and drank openly and unquestioned by the administration. It was a boisterous, unrestrained display of patriotism. I didn’t participate in this. I remained in my dorm room, changing little of my regular routine. When I learned how people were reacting to it, I was a little unnerved. Yes, Bin Laden had been responsible for countless deaths and unforgivable tragedy, but everyone seemed to be unphased by the violence necessary to achieve the means to this end. When I stated my particular (and apparently unpopular opinion on the subject), I got a lot of fuming glares and judgmental, unthoughtful comments. See for me, Osama Bin Laden had become a ghost, a boogey man. It had been a decade since the attacks of September 11^th, and he was the farthest thing from my mind. Of course, I was relieved, even pleased. But so many of the events, policies, and actions post-9/11 have been exhausting to bear on the country and our citizens, and killing Bin Laden felt like trying to put a bandaid on a flesh wound. It was never going to truly be healing, and Zero Dark Thirty takes little satisfaction or pleasure in his death. 

But Zero Dark Thirty really isn’t about Osama Bin Laden. In fact, at its heart, it’s much more of an exacting character study of its protagonist Maya (a magnificent performance by Jessica Chastain). CIA agent Maya’s obsession with (and it totally is an obsession) finding Bin Laden continues to wear down on every fiber on her being, and she slowly becomes consumed by the case and nothing else. We can see it in her face: she’s increasingly tired and harrowed; sad and weary, and Chastain knocks every single scene out of the park. It’s a goddamn near perfect piece of acting. By the time Bin Laden’s been found and killed, there’s no pleasure in it. Maya has spent 12 years of her life (and her whole career as part of the CIA) trying to nab this guy that once she has, she doesn’t know what to do with herself now that it’s finished. The film ends with her whole life in uncertainty and her deeply disaffected.  

Oscar winning director Kathryn Bigelow was an incredibly well-suited choice to direct the film. Coming off of some of her career’s best work in The Hurt Locker, where she brought impeccable realism and purpose to the story of a bomb squad detailed in Iraq. In the steady, capable hands of Bigelow and with a searing script by Mark Boal, the film goes step by step through the procedural work that led up to Bin Laden’s demise. Like the best historical dramas (All the President’s Men comes to mind), it makes something we already know the ending to deeply interesting and intense. Having gone step by step to learn just how Bin Laden was tracked down, it makes the Navy Seals stealth operation all the more heightened and intense (especially with Alexandre Desplat’s pulse ponding score set to it).

Not only is it deeply relevant and thoughtfully crafted, but carried by such strong performances, not just by Chastain but a cast of great supporting performances, including Kyle Chandler, Jason Clarke, Jennifer Ehle, and Chris Pratt. Zero Dark Thirty is one of 2012’s brightest, most gripping, most vital films. 

Grade: A    

30 Rock - "Game Over" - Review

Shows will almost invariably reach a point where they’ve lived too long, but remain on the air because they’re critical darlings or have great ratings. 30 Rock never had impressive ratings, but it was able to tell the stories Tina Fey and co. wanted to tell about the crazy characters residing at 30 Rockefeller Plaza season after season. Telling stories with a zippy pace and plenty of jokes that mixed highbrow and lowbrow, the series proved itself one of the funniest shows on television, but even the best of shows can outstay their welcome and the show’s 6^th season was arguably its weakest. The show had become too broad, too cartoonish, awfully repetitive, and lost sight of its characters (Jenna could become terribly grating and Kenneth could descend into a caricature of a redneck at times). When the series officially declared its 7^th season at last, the show was given a new sense of purpose that has made the 7^th season one of the series best seasons. The show feels like its aiming to sendoff its characters with satisfying resolutions, including, so far, two equally weird marriages, a surprisingly funny funeral, and what appear to be plans for Liz Lemmon to get a baby (or older child as this episode now suggests). Oh, yea, and it’s also wickedly funny!

Doing reviews like these where we get all high and mighty, and overly academic about what makes something good can make us lose sight of what makes a show good. 30 Rock isn’t just daring in its style, format, and jokes but it’s also often incredibly funny. With such well-defined characters in the main cast to play around with, the show is nailing some of its funniest stories to date. 

Last night’s episode was mostly about Jack. Having stepped out from underneath the burden of his mother’s oppression, he finds himself with new found confidence just in time to compete with his nemesis Kaylie Hooper, the granddaughter of Hank, the CEO of Kabletown (played wonderfully by Chloe Grace Moretz). It being his 70^th birthday and all, Hank decides that it’s time to make Kaylie CEO; she’ll serve on the board of the company until she graduates college, while Jack runs the company until she comes of age. Jack knows he needs to get the upper hand on her. He hires out Steve Buscemi‘s weird, cross-dressing PI to track her, and befriends his old archenemy Banks (a welcome return of Will Arnett) who appears to have information to blackmail her. According to Banks, Kaylie is not in fact Hank’s granddaughter and her father is in fact gay. Jack seems to intend to use this information to take the CEO position. But wait! Tableturning at its finest takes place in the final act. Kaylie made up this information to trick Jack and make lose him the position. And just when we think the crafty Kaylie has one-upped Jack, Jack shows his hand and lets her know that he went along with it the whole time to distract her. “The only thing Hank cares about more than family is birthdays,” Jack tells her, and Jack distracted Kaylie long enough to get Hank a gift and make her forget about it. 

Liz was dealing with some baby stuff in the background of the episode. The always amusing Dr. Spaceman (Chris Parnell) somehow tracks Liz to Westchester (where she’s gone to avoid his antics) and recommends she start taking fertility shots to improve her chances of getting pregnant (which only serve to make her hormonal and heighten her emotions). Liz wonders whether it may even be worth having a kid at her age. Won’t she just be in her seventies by the time they’ve even gotten out of college? She considers adopting instead; first a baby, but the adoption wait list for that is too long (she’s only just moved up from the “lesbian adopter” folder to “found a man comma living a lie”) and then later a kid that’s a few years older (“If you can take care of me, you can do anything,” Tracey says with unexpected inspiration). We end the episode with the prospect of Liz getting a kid in some form very soon. And ya’ know what, this being the final season, I’m totally cool with that. Liz has been hopelessly single and … well … hopeless in general really. But she’s finally starting to get some well-deserved happiness. Jack and Liz are both getting exactly what they’d hoped for in this final season, and that’s totally alright. If the show continues to be this funny and stays true to its characters and gives them the endings they deserve (in its own weird fashion that only 30 Rock can manage), than the show will surely be missed. Only four more episodes of 30 Rock left everyone. 

Stray Observations:

-The final plot of this episode involves Tracey trying to direct an equally crazy Octavia Spencer in a Harriet Tubman movie (“You’re gonna re-write the script to let me walk through walls,” she informs him). Tracey attempts to act like Liz Lemmon but discovers Liz has a much harder time putting up with his shenanigans than he could have imagined.

-Liz once starred in a play described as “too confusing to be offensive”
-Hank on his mother: “She wanted to be cremated, and died in a fire. How considerate”

-“That’s the age I started Kabletown, got married, and had my first white child”

-Jack gives a business card to cheer up a crying Liz Lemon that says, “There. There.”

-The fertility shots are making Liz oddly emotional: “Just like poor Nixon. He did good things in China”

-“Okay, I don’t know why you had to be a woman” “That’s for me to worry about”

-“How much time have we wasted on scheming and gravel voiced entendres?”

-“How gay is he on a scale from gay hunting to hunting bears?”

-“For every Little Orphan Annie there is a Russian dwarf pretending to be a child”

-“I’ll be NBC’s head of publicity. You’ll never see me. I’ll be on a beach somewhere”

-“I’m desperate for approval. I would have been a Nazi”

-“I happen to have some powerful friends at the Maury Povich Show”

-“She tried to solicit sex from a police dog”

-No, Kenneth this episode. How does everyone feel about that?

Grade: B+

The Office - "Lice" - Review

As a fan of The Office, I’ve come to accept its diminishing returns in quality. While early in its run, for me, it used to be required viewing. That sentiment no longer remains. The series, on the one hand, has burned out all the story it really needed to tell. Michael Scott and the Jim-Pam relationship were the two things at the heart of the show. Now Michael is gone, and Jim and Pam are together, and it begs the question: why do we keep watching the show?

The series was going downhill long before Michael Scott left (If you don’t believe me, just remember even “Goodbye, Michael” has a really terrible sub-plot with Will Ferrell and Andy trying to make a sales pitch). But his absence made it even more apparent just how the series had lived longer than it ought to. The series is at its best when its people staving off boredom in the workplace or dealing with awkward work situations, and those rarely seem to be the focus anymore. The episode “The Target” where a bunch of the cast builds a tower out of customer complaint cards is an example of the small scale stuff that it could get a lot of mileage out of, but now shies away from.

By comparison, “Lice” feels like a stunt episode. It provides a really contrived way to create humor. May be if it had some big laughs, the show could get away with the premise. Happy Endings is a series with really contrived scenarios but it gets in so many funny jokes that it doesn’t matter. The Office, however, is not good (especially in recent years) at these situations.

We know Pam is going to get caught, and it’s going to end up badly for her. We can similarly see how Darryl’s breakup is going to end up failing. And the third storyline with Jim playing basketball with an, admittedly, great cameo from Dr. J feels so disconnected from everything (while also not being very funny) that it feels like an afterthought. 

When Cece ends up getting lice, Pam accidentally ends up bringing it to the office, and almost everyone gets it (except Dwight, who ends up wearing a hazmat suits, and a few others). Everyone blames it on Meredith and Pam wants to tell her but doesn’t want to people to judge her. But then Meredith shaves her head to get rid of the lice, and there’s simply no going back. When Pam’s mom, on speaker, reveals that Cece has lice, everyone flips out on Pam, but Meredith, always being the one looked down upon by the office, asks her for a drink and an unexpected connection is made.

Meanwhile, Darryl breaks up with Val, claiming he doesn’t think it’s worth it with him working in Philly. But when he plays the sympathy card with fellow liceless co-workers Nelly, Phyllis, and Kevin, they tell Val that she should take him back. And so she does, much to Darryl’s chagrin. 

It all feels very pointless, which isn’t a bad thing in of itself. But this just isn’t a very funny episode of a series we know is capable of being much, much better.

Stray Observations:

-The cold open with Jim biting his lips was similarly pointless and unfunny.

-“How would I feel if I was home, and she was off in the city… go carting with John Stamos”

-Darryl’s smile after his breakup - totally sold by Craig Robinson

-Dwight thinks that for 15 years, no one would be friends with him because he had lice when he was a kid.

-“The only thing that got me through it was pie and Brandi… the singer”

-“This won’t help him. This is muffin not cake” – Great delivery by Phyllis

-Of course, Creed got lice. How is that not surprising? Also, his reaction to getting partnered with Pam: “Oh, stuck with the weirdo”

-Catherine Tate’s monologue about being single was very, very funny.

-“I was re-entering the dating pool… then Kevin asked me out”

-The Erin-Pete thing continues to brew. Andy still hasn’t returned. What do you think of that?

Grade: C+

Thoughts on Season 2 of "The Shield"

 Spoilers on Season 2 of "The Shield" Below:

If The Shield was really good in its first season; then its second season strived for greatness, and didn’t stray too far from it. The series stepped up to match season one … and then some. I didn’t think it possible, but Vic found himself even more embattled than ever before, and this allowed for even better television.

The series had made things blow up in Vic’s face before and it had cornered him before. But it had never stacked the deck so thoroughly against him like it did in the second season. The more Vic pushed back; the more things just seemed to get worse and worse. His wife had run off with his kids. An auditor was scrutinizing Farmington. The Strike Team was selling drugs on the side without his knowledge. His CI Theo was killed, and the drug kingpin who had him burnt to death was out for vengeance. When Vic began beating the hell out of Armadillo in the second episode “Dead Soldiers” out of total frustration at how much had gotten out of his control, I was tempted to give him passing approval. Vic was starting to lose his sense of self early in the season. Without his family to anchor him with a sense of purpose, he was facing a major identity crisis. On one level, Vic does what he does for the sake of his family. 

Taking things out of the characters’ control brought out the best in the show. Not just out of Vic, but all the major characters. The Dutch’s failures to save a victim brutally physically, and sexually violated by suspects he let go, caused him to sink down into a pit of self-doubt and despair. Danny found herself harassed by the wife of a man she was forced to shoot when he drew a gun on her (all the more complicated because he was an Arab-American who was being racially profiled by his neighbor). First, It costs her the chance to be a sergeant. To make matters worse, to save Vic from being ratted on by Armadillo, Shane and Curtis are forced to sneak in a knife to a person she brought in in order to kill Armadillo, thus getting Danny suspended. She just couldn’t catch a break this season; I felt terrible for Danny. She didn’t seem to deserve this treatment. Eventually she would even get fired over the knife incident, and it was the icing on the cake of a season where she was treated like the writer's proverbial punching bag. Vic and Acevada have earned whatever moral comeuppance is due for them, but Danny (if you disclude her affair with Vic, which is more on him than her) has done little to nothing wrong. 

The series put its characters into wonderful conflicts that highlighted the actors and writers’ strengths. Claudette was pushed to the limits as both Mackey and Aceveda blocked her every attempt to track down the man, Armadillo, who raped a twelve year old. After Julian continued to deny his homosexual orientation, and proposed to a woman he barely knew. Even as Danny attempted to convince him that he shouldn’t hide his feelings, he continued to suppress what he knew, and take reorientation services. (The scene where Julian tell his fiancé about being gay is Michael Jace’s performance at its finest). Covering up his gay identity continued to be a problem within his personal and professional life, and the last image we see of Julian is him lying bloody on the ground having been beaten up by officers who lost their job by harassing him for being gay. Acevada was so concerned for his political career, and still facing backlash after the riot that he found himself constantly working with Vic and allowing him to get away with more than usual. The interplay between the two as Acevada lets Vic take him down increasingly slippery slopes, feeling he has no other choice, created a welcome change of pace in the two characters’ relationship, and opened up some wonderful conflicts (particularly how it brought out the best in CCH Pounder’s great portrayal of Claudette).

CCH Pounder’s Claudette had always been my favorite supporting character. The kindhearted, steadfast detective who’s hopeful but incredibly realistic and grounded. She had always turned a blind eye to Vic and the Strike Team’s questionable activities; she had some inclination as to what they do, but the streets were clean and it hadn’t caused roadblocks for her investigations. That is, until now. Episode 2’s “Dead Soldiers” found her caught between the scheming of Acevada and Mackey, who screwed over every attempt to solve her investigation. Her monologue to the two of them where she lets them know that she’ll solve the case even if she has to get around their machinations is a season two highlight and some fine acting work by Pounder. Claudette ends up one of the few characters to survive the season unscathed. As new police captain to Farmington, I look forward to seeing how Vic manages to finagle his machinations past her scrutiny. 

Season 2 saw the series become more creative and inventive than ever, taking risks and acting with confidence not many series would have in their second season. The brilliant episode “Carte Blanche” had Vic going undercover as a “corrupt cop” to solve a case. The series felt as if it was making a shrewd, meta-commentary on the very nature of it premise. “Co-Pilot” was a structurally ambitious episode midway through the season that jumped the narrative back 14 months to the formation of the “Barn” and the establishment of the Strike Team. The season established drug kingpin Armadillo as the antagonist of the season only to kill him off in the 8^th episode.

Whatever my complaints may have been (and they were few), The Shield has built enough good faith in me and provided enough compelling, memorable drama to set it apart from many other series I’ve watched before and am watching now.