"Do you have any other police ID?"
Here's why I've been loving this final season of The Shield. Through all the twists and turns with "the blackmail box" and the politics of gang warfare, the show has mainly continued to be about Vic (and everyone around him) lying and fronting and scrambling to cover tracks, in a situation that grows ever-more impossible. This is what The Shield has done best since Season One, showing how one bad decision begets another, until the noose tightens, and people start conceiving the most extreme solutions to their problems.
I've also liked that Season Seven has included more stand-alone cases in the context of the larger narrative, after an intense season in which Vic's troubles were more or less the sole focus. Don't get me wrong: I loved the relentlessness of last season, but if you think of each season as a chapter in a book, then the Season Six chapter had a slightly different feel than the others. I think Shawn Ryan realized that too, which is why he pushed for a Season Seven, to bring everything to a more Shield-like conclusion.
To that end, Ryan's been bringing back old characters, and introducing new subplots that may not seem immediately to have much to do with the main story, but are significant for other reasons. Tonight we had two of those subplots: one new, one old.
The new: Steve's ex-wife and daughter come to The Barn to complain that a registered sex offender has moved onto their block, and to tell Steve that they want him to do something about it. Over Dutch's objections, Steve plants kiddie porn in the guy's house and contacts the local authorities. Significance: It's a small-scale version of what's been going on with the Strike Team for the last several years, where breaking the law in order to enforce a greater good turns into using the law to pursue personal grudges. It also brings back Dutch's persistent identity crisis, as the by-the-book cop that nobody likes. (For that matter, "Moving Day" featured quite a bit of material about what it means to be a cop but not feel like one… and vice versa, in the case of the suddenly badge-less Vic trying to get information about the whereabouts of Shane.)
The old: Dutch continues to monitor junior psychopath Lloyd by cozying up to his mom Rita, though this week Rita figured out Dutch's game and called him on it. The significance to the larger story here is twofold. First, the Rita/Lloyd storyline reflects what's going on with Corrine and Mara as they deal with their wayward husbands Vic and Shane. Rita doesn't want to confront the monster her son is because he's "family;" and even as the problem dawns on her, she can't just let him go. Close relationships complicate what should be clear courses of action. Secondly, Dutch's deception of Rita is just one of myriad cases on The Shield of someone pretending to be someone they're not. (See also Aceveda this week, acting as Pezuela's puppet in order to get info for ICE.)
Of course the biggest undercover operation this week was Shane's. Or should I say Shawn's? On the lam with Mara and Jackson by his side, Shane adopts a fake name and attempts to lay low in a motel until he can plot his next move. Unfortunately, Jackson has whooping cough, and in Shane's attempts to get his son medicine and medical treatment, he gives up his position to Vic, who's in relentless pursuit, despite Mara's warnings to Corrine that she'll ruin the whole Mackey family if Vic goes after her.