Bitches Brew (S07E07)
Airdate: 14 October 2008
Written by: Charles H. Eegle & Elisabeth A. Hansen
Directed by: Stephen Kay
Running Time: 47 minutes
With Bitches Brew, the seventh and final season of The Shield reaches its midpoint. With only six episodes remaining, the narrative pace must accelerate to drive Vic Mackey's saga toward its logical and, by all appearances, increasingly grim conclusions. The episode possesses a structural elegance, generating an overarching symmetry with the preceding episode, Animal Control. In the former, Vic devised a plan revealed throughout; in Bitches Brew, elements of a plan appear, and Shane constructs a plan from those elements at the end.
Time is indeed running out for Vic, whose career will end much sooner than he expected. The mishandled investigation into the city controller Robert Martin's assassination, combined with David Aceveda handing the "blackmail box" to federal authorities, has conspired to have his police board hearing scheduled much sooner. Vic loses—and loses badly; he will be terminated from the LAPD and lose his pension in just ten days. In desperation, he attempts to win some points with Cruz Pezuela, the Mexican cartels' representative, but Pezuela suddenly loses interest in him.
Even bigger danger for Vic, although he does not know it yet, is Shane. Having evaded Vic's trap by chance and survived the Mexican attack on the Armenians, Shane knows that Vic and Ronnie want him dead. The only way to evade this fate is to strike first, while his two former friends still believe that he didn't realise that he knows about their intentions. The way he could do it comes, ironically, by reappearance of the ghost from Vic's past.
That ghost is Farrah, the street prostitute who years ago manipulated Vic to do her bidding. Vic, with palpable lack of enthusiasm, is called to investigate the case of Farrah's pimp, Bombay, who is suspected of beating another prostitute to death. Strike Team is called to investigate because Bombay is involved in meth cooking. After roughing up Two-Man (Billoah Greene), one of Bombay's enforcers, Strike Team raids Bombay's lab. However, Bombay tries to run guns blazing, forcing Julien Lowe to shoot him dead. Vic later learns that Farrah apparently warned Bombay about the raid, and did it deliberately, knowing that he would confront police and get killed. Farrah later triumphantly admits to Vic that she orchestrated the whole affair to get even with Bombay for kicking her out. While disgusted Vic realises that he has been played by crack-addict whore again, he isn't aware that Two-Man is being approached by Shane and hired to kill Ronnie.
As Vic's world continues to crumble, he still finds ways to make lives miserable for people around him. He starts a lawsuit against Danny over custody of Lee. After Danny talks with Corrine, Vic is seemingly willing to work out a compromise. However, instead, Danny has enough and begins to pack her belongings, apparently wanting to escape LA and Vic's presence, even if it would mean end of her career. This is the second time one of Vic's baby mamas has hit the road to get away from this guy.
While Vic's relations to people around him turn increasingly toxic, Dutch and Claudette actually bond because of another case. A burglar was apparently shot by home owner and Dutch's investigation discovers pattern of increasingly brazen break-ins. Claudette's home is in the neighbourhood and Dutch, being concerned for her well-being, goes there and finds her house in complete disarray. The investigation points to Lester, former policeman and security expert who organised break-ins in order to increase the sale of security systems among frightened neighbourhood. After solving the mystery, Dutch confronts Claudette who admits that her lupus is much worse than she told and that she simply can't maintain her home. Dutch offers to help her by paying cleaning lady from his pocket. Dutch telling her he was hiring a cleaning lady to help her was incredibly sweet and a great moment between the two, who have always had one of the best and most interesting relationships not only on The Shield.
Written by Charles H. Eegle and Elisabeth A. Hansen, "Bitches Brew" is one of the better episodes of Season 7, albeit not perfect. The plot concerning "blackmail box" is still confusing, turning it into MacGuffin and making the storyline about Mexican cartels, Aceveda and corrupt agent Olivia Massey too complicated and too distracting for this stage of the series. Such a crucial story beat so close to the show's endgame really shouldn't be so fundamentally illogical.
When the episode actually deals with Mackey and his apparent ignominious end, it is much better. The last three episodes, including Bitches Brew, has brought back that sick feeling with a vengeance. Frankly, it's been uncomfortable at times (in a good way) watching Vic Mackey being systematically picked apart as The Shield comes to a close. The episode works very hard to show Vic as arrogant and destructive, destroying the little sympathy he had enjoyed among audience and making his coming end look well-deserved. Vic is growing increasingly blind to what's around him, lashing out for no real reason and it's notable that he doesn't trust Farrah at all, which is why her manipulating him again is so notable.
The presence of Farrah and Lester—two side characters from previous episodes—also serves this episode well. Farrah shows that Vic is so arrogant that even crack-addicted prostitute can play him like violin despite his stated unwillingness to have anything to do with her. The last shot of Farrah, leaning back against the car in a horror parody of a pinup girl, is so vicious and exactly right for her exit.
Lester, morally challenged "security expert" shows the best possible future for Vic if he somehow keeps his life or freedom at the end of the series. If Vic somehow survives Shane's wrath, and avoids getting killed by the cartels, Lester's life is the best thing he has to look forward to, and he has no one to blame but himself.
RATING: 7/10 (+++)
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