Yep, and not only did Vic get his way out of all of this (assuming he can come through on his end of the deal), but he managed to out Corrine down the road, because he will find out she betrayed him, and she will not be protected from him (though I doubt he’d do anything other than just remove her from his life).
Another neat possibility is that Olivia sabotages this massive bust intentionally so that Vic can’t come through on his end of the deal (or maybe Claudette or Billings does it), thereby not being able to get immunity, and thereby has fucked himself in the confession of everything.
That would be cool.
This is providing that Olivia’s last name isn’t Crowley, and she’ going to off him anyway. It seems to me to be the only excuse for them not bedding. I mean, an attractive girl who enters the scene and Vic has no physical relationship to? There has to be a reason for it, and her being related to Crowley seems possible.
While I know it is too common for TV shows to do this sort of thing, I hope The Shield avoids it.
I left out two people on my list of the screwed - Dutch (semi-screwed as he’ll be caught up in Claudette’s screwing) and Billings (he screws himself - Vic not needed).
I wonder if Vic knew how he would have to confess his sins for the immunity deal. I didn’t (but then I’ve never sought an immunity deal for anything, nor have I know anyone who has).
I liked Vic’s closing line to Olivia. That was cold.
Ronnie could make a deal with a DA . All he’d have to do was promise to sabotage ICE’s operation, allowing the local cops to make the arrest (handling it on a city level) and thus voiding Vic’s immunity deal.
The one thing that surprised me last night was that Vic had planned to kill Terry Crowley all along. I was under the impression that he just seized the opportunity when it arose.
IMO, Vic has always had sociopathic tendencies but also had some self control. When he discovered that he had two autistic children and how much their care would cost is when he started getting reckless. The money train robbery was just the first step in Vic’s downfall.
Claudette is Kavanaugh all over again but hopefully she’s smart enough not to do something illegal to catch Vic.
Agree with The Second Stone on Dutch being set up. Dutch probably gets shot/shot at, but he will live I think.
Shane is going down–one way or the other, that is clear. Maybe a drug overdose suicide for the whole family? Possibly, but I still like the odds on Vic or Ronnie shooting him.
Vic’s deal will not hold up. I really see no way the writers let that happen. I could definitely see a scenario where ICE tells Ronnie about Vic’s signing the deal and his testimony, so then ICE turns right around with a deal for Ronnie that involves him ruining the Beltran deal so that they can get Vic for being a cop killer.
I still stick by my prediction that Vic will kill himself in the last episode.
My guess is that Mom will be the one “not invited back for next season” (which doesn’t mean much with the series finale approaching), not Dutch. Dutch, however, will be unable to prove (in the next 90 minutes) that the kid is a killer.
I can see your alternate, though, where the kid has established Dutch as a stalker and a threat, and uses that for a justified homicide. Billings, mad at Dutch, won’t work hard to prove otherwise, even though he knows Dutch’s suspicions.
RYBTB, given that Vic implicated Ronnie in everything, I don’t see anyone dealing with Ronnie to get Vic, especially at the expense of the cartel. The only deal I can see Ronnie offered, knowing what they know, is that he gets 2 hours of sunshine per day instead of 1.
But that means that the DA would have to break federal laws in order to do that. Tampering with a federal investigation is not something a DA would be interested in just to get a bust back into his jurisdiction.
There’s always the possibility that Ronnie (and Vic) set up simultaneous deals – Vic’s, which we saw, with the Feds, and Ronnie’s with local authorities off-camera. Do them at the same time, and they can both stand without anyone (like Wyms) sabotaging them.
I think that’d be a nice reveal for next week, after shit seems to be going bad for Ronnie. Followed up by some sort of bloodbath
And wasn’t Vic’s final line the best ending line ever, in any show? “I’ve done worse.” Classic.
I can’t remember now, but did Ronnie(and Lem ftm) ever actually know for sure that Vic killed Crowley? I was thinking that Shane and Vic were the only ones who truly ‘knew’ and every one else, including Ronnie and Lem, could only suspect. If that were so, than it could make it more likely that ICE does get Ronnie to flip on Vic in order to bring in the actual cop killer.
Also it just struck me after reading** Euthanasiast**‘s and D_Odds’ post, that it would be a cool little touch if while taking Vic down we learned that Olivia’s last name was Aziraphale and Terry Crowley was actually her partner back in the day. Has there been a Neil? Olivia’s current partner?
Ronnie apparently didn’t know at the time, but Shane told him earlier this season, in an effort to get Ronnie to sympathize with him (Shane) over Vic. However, it didn’t work; Ronnie brushed off Shane, and later told Vic that he wished he’d known sooner, so he could have been more helpful to Vic.
I loved that lingering silence before Vic started talking. I also loved the look on Olivia’s face when the first thing Vic confesses to is murdering a police officer in cold blood. Not exactly the “cutting a few corners” she’d been expecting.
Shane seems doomed, but I hope Mara can somehow be saved. She may not be a good person, but I don’t think she deserves death or prison, and the kid certainly doesn’t deserve to be an orphan. What I’d like to see happen is that Shane finally accepts that he can’t escape, and works out some kind of arrangement where he turns himself in and Mara goes free (Mara has now shot someone, of course, but maybe the cops could be convinced to let Shane take the blame for that).
My dream resolution to the strike team story is that we discover that Ronnie actually turned on Vic some time ago and has been playing him as part of some master plan, and when the dust clears Vic and Shane have gone down (dead or arrested) and Ronnie somehow walks away in good shape. I doubt that’ll happen though.
More than likely, you are correct. However, Ronnie didn’t know about Terry Crowley when that happened, and he certainly hasn’t been the mastermind behind all of the dirty deeds of the strike team. I could see the feds wanting Vic way more than Ronnie. A cop killer is as bad as it gets for other cops–and Ronnie had nothing to do with that murder.
What I love about all of our hypotheses is that this show could go so many different ways next week. No one really has a good feeling about exactly what will happen. We all know it will be something big–I just hope the writers truly do have something epic in store for all of us that have loved this show since day 1.
Anytime I think about the show as a whole, I flash back to the very first episode where all of the strike team guys and their families are at Vic’s place for a cookout. Everyone was so happy. Vic and the team had everything under control in those days–and all of their loved ones were clueless about any of their wrongdoings (minor things at that point compared to what has happened since). I really love that the show started that way.
The silence before his confession and the look on his face. You can see him mentally fighting on whether or not to confess. I was almost sure he was going to walk out! Vic just cleared his conscious and gets immunity, making Claudette even sicker. She’s going to totally snap in the finally.
Predictions (this changes every damn week): Shane and Mara will turn themselves in. There’s no way Mara can take the pain and Shane can’t take her suffering. Vic will get screwed somehow, but once he realizes his deal is void, he’ll help Ronnie get away. I still think Claudette will get someone killed. I think Dutch will figure out he’s getting played and catch the kid. There has to be some kind of vindication for his skills.
You guys are killing me, and this is my own thread!
I can’t watch the finale tonight (I teach until 11:30 PM) and can’t watch it until tomorrow night at the earliest…damn…
It is like they have waited until this season to pull out all of the stops and just go head long, 100mph into the story lines.
The Shield has always been an amazing show, and while many series have had a great finale epsisode, The Shield has had the wildest entire final season of any series I think I have ever seen.
It is great to see a team of writers who apparently knew what the hell they were doing from day one, and know exactly how their story is destined to end!
And again, unlike other shows where you sort of know what is going to happen, I have not got a clue how this show is going to wrap up.
Lots of dead bodies?
The ultimate scam, proving Vic is, and always will be, a survivor?
A final scene that makes my jaw drop and hit the floor?
…it will be all I can do not to look at this thread until after I have seen the finale, late Wednesday night…damn!
You should have assigned your students to watch tonight’s episode as homework. There’s got to be something in it that’s applicable to what you’re teaching.
This is weird. When I go to the bottom of page 2 of this thread, my post is here. But when I go to the Cafe Society page, this thread is near the bottom, and it’s showing Flander as making the last post. Server problems?
