Season One, Episode Eight, “Cupid & Psycho”
The Shield is full of characters I can’t really stand. It is ironic that Vic Mackey is a pretty bad guy, and I still like him more than people like Aceveda and Julien. The rookie cop is just a weak character, and the Captain is only looking out for himself. The trials and tribulations of the rest of the team are interesting, but these two plain piss me off.
Aceveda’s motives diminish anything positive he might be doing. Sure, he can talk about wanting to get Mackey and his crew off of the street, but he’s really just looking for the big headline that will catapult him into public office. As I’ve talked about in the past, selling out his first career will not help him down the road in his second. You can’t be the “Tough on Crime” candidate in any election and hope to do well without the endorsements of the police unions.
Switching up who was partnering with whom in this episode was a bit of fun. Dutch and Shane are, as actor Jay Karnes (Dutch) alluded to in the DVD commentary, about as much polar opposites as two cops can be. Both, it must be noted, are effective in their own ways (that is, at least when Shane isn’t being a total idiot), and were surprisingly successful together.
Even more fun a pairing was Wyms and Mackey. These two are much more experienced, and thus much more effective. Their approach, with the whole “Your Turn, My Turn” thing, may have even seemed more juvenile, but it actually led these two to learn from each other. I’m not sure Dutch or Shane would even open themselves up to that possibility.
It was interesting to see the crazy love triangle of complaints that Dani and Julien handled in the pilot until it ended. I’m not sure why they would have brought back these actors just to play a couple of scenes, and then kill two of them off. I hope there’s more to the story that we see in later episodes, because otherwise it just seems like a waste.
Notes & Quotes
Clacked by Ivey West 
on Jul 27, 2010 @ 14:00 EST5EDT
