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From TheSmartMarks.com Movies / TV This is up a week late because of some difficulty with the formatting as well as the fact that I was dog tired from moving the previous week.
Detective Vic Mackey- Leader of the Strike Team, a set of cops operating out of the Los Angeles Police Department's Farmington precinct, The Barn. He's married to Corrine Mackey, a nurse turned housewife, and has three kids (Eldest daughter Cassidy begins the series at age 8. Son Matthew begins at about age 4. Youngest daughter Megan begins at 18 months.). The Strike Team's official duty is to combat crime in Farmington, a majority black and Latino area. Their unofficial duty is to accomplish that by cutting deals with select gangs or drug dealers and then taking out their competition, thus regulating all crime and eliminating competition, which usually begets violence. He's very dedicated to his family but his position on the Strike Team, as well as his extracurricular activities, have kept him out of the house a lot and strained his relationship with Corrine. Things got worse when his son Matthew turned out to be autistic, as it meant that they needed to find specialized help for him and it would cost the family more money. The fit really hit the shan when Assistant Chief Gilroy began to use threats against Vic's family to keep Vic from turning him in for a series of crimes including hit and run as well as the murder of a witness. Vic's response to that, having the county sheriff's department come to the house and protect the family, scared Corrine to death and convinced her that Vic must be involved in something unusual because normal cops don't have problems like that. Corinne took the kids and fled town, but returned with them after meeting with lawyers about a divorce. She and Vic considered reconciling, but the chances of that vanished after she walked in on Vic and his new girlfriend, Emma Prince, at his apartment. Vic was subsequently barred from the house, then was arrested for trespassing when he broke in to investigate Matthew's strange behavior when he appeared to be home alone. Vic has since gained visitation rights with his children, although a period of relative peace between him and Corrine has ended because he found out that she was seeing Matthew's special education tutor. In addition, oldest daughter Cassidy has become very upset with both Vic and Corrine and has disappeared on them at least once so far. Vic is a dirty cop, but not without principles. He and the team "rent" Farmington to selected drug dealers and bust their competition, but only on the condition that violence is at a minimum and that they don't cause trouble in other ways, such as threatening cops. Vic killed a member of his team, Detective Terry Crowley, during a drug bust and blamed it on the dead dealer they'd come to arrest. As much as Vic didn't want to do that, he knew it was a choice between himself and Terry and that it was an easy decision, even if he had trouble dealing with it afterwards. Vic and Detective Shane Vendrell are tight because they were partners for a long time, teaming up after Vic's partner and mentor, Joe, was kicked off the force. (Joe was fired for his part in a police brutality incident against a gang member.) While they don't always get along due to Shane's tendency to disobey orders, Vic always backs Shane up whenever he's in trouble with other cops such as Captain Aceveda. Vic and the Strike Team have had business relationships with several drug dealers in the Farminton area over time. Their first dealer was Rondell Robinson, a thug tied in with local record producer Kern Little. Rondell had a serious problem listening to what Vic said, as he shot up Kern's club when Kern's rival producer, T-Bonz, came in and made a scene. He also ignored Vic's warning to leave everything to him on the shooting and he had his guys threaten Dani. The final straw came when the Nation of Islam decided to preach on the same corner where Rondell's dealers were dealing, which resulted in a lot of unnecessary problems because Rondell handled things improperly. Rondell's underboss, Tio, stepped up at this time and, with approval from Vic and Kern Little, killed Rondell and took over Farmington's drug trade. Tio was a much smarter dealer than Rondell, as he laundered his money through shady realtors and his comic book shop as well as staying on the down low whenever possible. Things started going wrong when a new Mexican gang, lead by Armadillo, came into town and started burning out the competition� literally. He started eating away at Tio's business by having Armadillo's brother, Tio's connection in Mexico, sell him cocaine laced with rosary pea, which is poisonous. After Vic cleared up that mess and arrested Armadillo's brother (which involved smuggling him across the border in his trunk), Armadillo responded by burning Tio alive. Since Tio died, Vic and the Strike Team have moved out of direct involvement in the drug trade, although they have had some dealings with the Latino gangs in order to get automatic weapons off of the street.
Detective Shane Vendrell- A member of the Strike Team and Vic's right-hand man. Shane means well but is an eternal screw-up, as he lets his racist tendencies interfere with his work at times, will think of his dick before his duty, and tends to ignore some of Vic's orders when left in charge of the team. Shane's carelessness at times has jeopardized the entire Strike Team, including one occasion in which he was getting laid while someone stole the LAPD Lincoln Navigator he was using, which contained drugs he and the rest of the Strike Team had stolen from a bust hours before. As of late, Shane's been ignoring a lot of orders from Vic, principally surrounding his high spending at a time when the entire team is under scrutiny and his heat with fellow Strike Team member Tevon, whom he feels threatened by. This had gone back and forth for a while before erupting into an all-out brawl at Shane's apartment when Shane dropped an N-bomb. Tevon was winning until Shane's girlfriend clocked him in the back of the head with an iron, at which point he stumbled back to his van, drove off, and crashed because he passed out. He's since been in a coma although no one's sure how much Tevon will remember of the fight and resulting accident. Shane and Vic are hoping his memory's fried but, just in case, destroyed all evidence of the fight.
Detective Curtis "Lemonhead" Lemansky- Lem is a member of the Strike Team and serves as its conscience. He's the one who questions why they support drug dealers, whether they should be crossing the Mexican border to catch a drug dealer who screwed them over, and whether they should take on the Armenian Mob. As of recently, his concerns have caused him to develop ulcers. If he screws up something, he'll go far out of his way to make it right. One such incident was when he captured a suspected gang member and planted a gun on him, only to find out that the guy was trying to get out of the gang life and was known for being on the up and up. Once he verified that the guy was, in fact, reforming himself, he and the rest of the Strike Team staged a robbery of the property van, took the gun Lem planted on the guy, and planted it on a gang member who was stalking and abusing the guy's sister, who'd been his girlfriend at one point. It was a roundabout way to clear the guy and put someone dirty behind bars, but it worked out.
Detective Ronnie Gardocki- Ronnie is a member of the Strike Team who says little but usually plays the role of MacGuyver. He can get almost anything that Vic is looking for and is capable of cracking safes and doing other quasi-legal activities. The only real expansion of his character came when Mexican drug dealer Armadillo melted half his face with a hotplate in revenge for Vic doing the same thing to him. He's since had reconstructive surgery, although he now wears a beard to cover some of the damage. Ronnie's been a bit of a shit-stirrer lately, as he was in charge of finding all of the marked bills contained within the Armenian Money Train cash that the Strike Team had stolen. When he went through the money, he found that $7000 was missing, including some marked bills, and has been stirring up questions about both Vic and Shane's credibility on the matter.
Officer Danielle "Dani" Sofer- Dani is one of the few female cops at The Barn, with Detective Claudette Wyms being the other major one. She is a patrol officer and served as Officer Julian Lowe's training officer throughout the first two seasons, teaching him both proper procedure as well as unwritten protocol of being a police officer. Dani is a bit of an outsider in her own way, as she's one of the few women in a society of men and takes a decent amount of crap because of it. She uses it in her own way as well, as she used Dutch's infatuation with her as a means to get him to tutor her for the Sergeant's Exam, which she did not pass. Had she passed the exam, she had been virtually guaranteed a sergeant position by Captain Aceveda. Dani has had a rough patch as of late, as she killed an Arabic man during a call when the man began waving a pistol wildly. When the man's widow failed in her attempt to sue the city over his death, she began covertly harassing Dani such as vandalizing her car, calling in fake reports of her mother's death, and planting a sizable amount of marijuana in her car then tipping off Internal Affairs. Once Dani resolved that problem, she was blamed for the death of Mexican drug dealer Armadillo, as a man she'd just arrested stabbed him to death while both were in the prisoner cages at The Barn. The man had been searched properly by Dani before going into the cage, but Shane and Lemonhead had slipped the man a knife so he could kill Armadillo and go back to prison as a big man in the Latino gang society. As a result of severe staff cuts imposed from above on The Barn soon afterwards, she was fired from the department. She worked as a security officer at a school until Captain Aceveda re-hired her, under the condition that she be his eyes and ears amongst the rank and file cops. Recently, she's been working with Dutch to find the Cuddler Rapist that has been attacking elderly women throughout Los Angeles. Once Claudette moves up the totem pole, there is a decent shot of Dani becoming Dutch's full-time partner.
Detective Holland "Dutch" Wagenbach- Dutch is an oddity at The Barn, as he's a highly educated detective with a background in criminal psychology but has absolutely NO interpersonal skills. He's somewhat similar to the character of private detective Darryl Zero, played by Bill Pullman in the movie Zero Effect, as Zero could tell you almost anything about someone within 30 seconds of meeting them but was VERY socially inept. His poor behavior has gotten him embarrassed more than once and assaulted by one man after Dutch made an offhand comment about his missing son. (The comment was approximately "That kid better have an ass that this guy (suspected kidnapper/rapist) likes or we're going to be finding a corpse soon.") Dutch was the source of a lot of jokes around The Barn, particularly from Vic Mackey, until he proved himself to them through his investigation of a young prostitute who'd been murdered. That minor respect grew immensely some months later when his theory that a serial killer was stalking the prostitutes of Farmington proved correct and he caught the guy after hours of interrogation. (The thing seemed like a joke at first, as the guy had been picked up for spanking his monkey in public, coincidentally at the spot where the last known victim was found. The uniformed cops let him go but Dutch brought him in, creating a bunch of masturbation jokes for the rest of the officers until Dutch proved himself right.) Part of the reason why he was a joke deals with the fact that a detective at The Barn told everyone about how Dutch's wife had left him. (She was an alcoholic and, after he put her in Alcoholics Anonymous, she fell for her AA sponsor and got pregnant with his kid before leaving Dutch) He's since gotten a new girlfriend, whom he met while investigating the death of her husband. He solved the case, which had been sitting around for a year, then things just moved on from there. Dutch comes up with wild theories for many of his cases that sound too good to be true but turn out to be right every once in a while. His problem is that he looks at things at too high a level sometimes and needs to be grounded by someone so that he can focus on the crime at hand, such as focusing on a rapist they have in custody and his attack on one victim instead of trying to prove his theory of a serial killer. Detective Claudette Wyms helps ground him and Dutch has admitted as much to her. Since her star is on the rise and she appears to be in line to replace Aceveda as Captain, Dutch will probably need a new partner very soon. There are no immediate replacements that would come to mind, although he tried to get Dani to consider moving into detective work at one point. Recently, Dani joined him on stakeout duty to catch his newest mysterious criminal, the Cuddler Rapist, although it has also been theorized that Lemonhead could switch to regular detective duty in an attempt to reduce stress and heal his newfound ulcer.
Detective Claudette Wyms- Claudette is very good at reading suspects and can manipulate them into incriminating themselves. She believes in the system and is sickened by cops such as Vic Mackey, who she knows are dirty but can do nothing about because of their protection from above. She has effectively taken over the role of Captain David Aceveda here, as Aceveda had tried to bust Vic until his run for the City Council dictated that he could not afford to bust one of his own men for corruption. At this point, Claudette is fighting a two-front war between Vic and Captain Aceveda, as she can't stand Vic but is even more pissed at Aceveda for breaking his word to step down as Captain once he won the City Council primary. (He decided to stay on until he won the general election.) Aceveda staying bumped her out of an almost guaranteed promotion to Captain, which may not materialize once Aceveda leaves for his new office. Claudette is very good at focusing on the case at hand as well as the reality of things, while partner Dutch is more of an abstract thinker and is looking at larger patterns. One example of their differences is that Claudette will focus on proving an assault and attempted rape before trying to prove that the suspect is a serial rapist. Dutch, on the other hand, will examine patterns of crimes throughout the city and decide there is a serial rapist and then try to fit their suspect to these crimes instead of the ones they've been brought in on. Claudette put a serious dent in her career future recently, as she overlooked a note about a possible mole within the department and put two members of the Decoy Squad in severe jeopardy. One of the members was pulled out right away while the other one ended up beaten but alive after a harrowing experience. This incident has forged a tenuous alliance between the Decoy Squad and the Strike Team to screw over Claudette and will probably have serious consequences considering that the two teams are responsible for a lot of high-profile busts.
Captain David Aceveda- Very politically motivated, as he probably doesn't pick his tie in the morning without talking to an image consultant and a pollster. He rose through the ranks by virtue of his Latino heritage and has no shame about it, as he feels that he can do some good no matter why he got into the position he's in. He's not a particularly good street cop, as his day of being Julian's partner proved, but he's a fairly good command officer. He backs up his guys to the public, the City Council, and even other divisions of the LAPD unless they've given him reason not to do so. He specifically backed up Julian when the other officers within The Barn gave him a hard time over rumors of him being gay, as he'd felt similar prejudice in his early days for being Latino. Aceveda backed Officer Tommy Hisk until it was proven he hired someone to break into his ex-wife's apartment. At that point, he washed his hands of him. He started out at The Barn by attempting to bust the Strike Team for employing drug dealer Rondell Robinson, although that case was set back when Detective Terry Crowley was killed in a Strike Team raid. Aceveda continued to pursue Mackey until his political aspirations made it a bad time for him to expose corruption under his reign. He has since worked with Vic under the agreement that they keep crime down and do not cause unnecessary problems, but that has been strained at times due to various problems, such as Strike Team member Shane's badge being stolen then used in the commission of a robbery/homicide. Aceveda also had a deeply disturbing experience recently while investigating a possible connection to a robbery of the Armenian Mob's money train. Aceveda remained at a suspect's house after his backup had left and was attacked by two gang members who had been abused by Vic earlier in the day. One gang member held a gun to Aceveda's head and forced him to perform oral sex, then had the other member take a picture of it with his cell phone camera. Since then, Aceveda's been showing the same signs of post-traumatic stress that Dutch and Claudette have been seeing in a string of attacks by a serial rapist on the elderly. It's only a matter of time before Aceveda completely cracks, Dutch figures out what's going on, or that picture gets leaked to the press around the time of Aceveda's City Council election.
Officer Julian Lowe- Julian is a bit of a contradiction. He is deeply torn on his sexuality, as he was gay for at least some time but his religious conscience made him undergo "therapy" to cure the "urges", leading him to marry the single mother of a juvenile offender who he'd busted. He told the woman of his past before marrying her, although it took some time for her to accept his story that he'd been "reformed." Julian's gay past was only known about two people for some time, Dani and Vic. Vic used Julian's fear of being outed to change the statement he'd given Aceveda about witnessing Vic and other stealing heroin from a bust. This all changed once his ex-boyfriend, Tomas, was released from prison. When Tomas saw Julian not only unavailable, but married to a woman, he decided to out Julian and screamed about it at The Barn. (I believe the quote was something like "Your dick in my mouth makes you gay. My dick in your ass makes you REALLY gay!") Once Tomas outed him at work, lines were drawn as some of the rank-and-file cops harassed him while people such as Dani and Aceveda stood up for him. When severe staff cuts came at The Barn soon afterwards, he kept his job while the cops who were most verbal about harassing him were fired in part because of their unprofessional behavior. They took it out on him by throwing a "blanket party" for him outside of his house and seriously injuring his back. (A "blanket party" is an attack in which the victim is covered with a blanket then assaulted by several individuals, usually with a weapon that hurts but does not leave marks.) Julian rebounded from this by following Vic's advice and assaulting one of the former cops involved in order to regain face at the station. Since then, Julian's been following Vic's lead more and more, such as ditching his assigned duty to track down a suspect accused of killing the family of Officer Tommy Hisk. (Hisk was assigned as Julian's new partner after Dani was fired, although he's been reunited with her recently by order of Aceveda.) Julian's also been troubled by his inability to get his new wife pregnant, which was made even worse when Julian discovered that Shane had gotten his girlfriend pregnant without even trying. Julian's arguments with his wife on the subject resulted in at least one domestic disturbance call, which convinced Aceveda to reunite him with Dani, if only to keep an eye on him. He's also gone to a fertility clinic and, when prompted to give a sample, had serious trouble doing so while looking at a picture of him and his wife. After some frustration, he started looking through the other "material" available to him and began flipping through a gay magazine, although the show cut away at this point. This may signal an epiphany for him soon that he can't just "train" himself not to be gay or, if that didn't work either, may just signal some other problems in his head. It's unknown where things will go from here, as Julian is very impressionable and could cross over to the Strike Team eventually if he keeps following Vic's lead. Aceveda's trying his hardest to prevent that, but he won't be there forever unless something changes very quickly.
Tevon- The newest member of the Strike Team. When Shane was suspended by Aceveda because he did not report his badge as stolen until it was used in a robbery, Aceveda used the situation to get a minority presence on the Strike Team. After Vic and others scared off a few prospective team members with horror stories of having been greenlit by Armadillo (greenlit = have a contract on your life), Tevon came in on a trial basis. Tevon not only passed his trial period but also proved himself to be a valuable member of the team. His ability to get things done that the rest of the Strike Team couldn't do, such as getting intel for a raid at a particularly violent housing project, helped make him a part of the team instead of just a cop filling a quota. Tevon has tried to be a part of the team in all respects, but noticed that conversations would stop as soon as he walked in the room. It wasn't racism as he thought but, rather, the fact that the rest of the Strike Team had committed a major heist and didn't want anyone to known unless they were 100% sure of them. Tevon came in shortly after they started planning the heist, so they didn't want to let him in on it because they weren't sure they could trust him. Tevon had heat with Shane in particular, as Shane resented Tevon from the start and would screw with any investigations Tevon did, such as sabotaging one of Tevon's sources by bringing the man in on weapons charges. Vic tried to get Shane to play nice and sent Tevon over to work things out, but Shane dropped one racial slur too many and they got into a HUGE brawl, which saw Tevon kick Shane's ass from pillar to post until Shane's girlfriend clocked him in the back of the head with an iron. Tevon then stumbled back down to his van and drove off, crashing a few blocks later and sustaining a lot of damage. Since then, he's been in a coma and, when he emerges from it, no one is quite sure how much he'll remember or what permanent damage there'll be to him. The one thing that's seemingly inevitable, though, is that he and Shane will have another confrontation down the road and one of them probably won't live to regret it. There will be a review / recap of The Shield: Season One on DVD as soon as I can get my new place in order. © Copyright by TheSmartMarks.com |
