The Shield virgin’s diary – Is Mackey the boss?

by Ivey West

One would think that cleaning up the streets would be enough motivation, but hey, I guess if you want to be mayor one day, the ends justify the means as much as they do for Vic.

Season One, Episode Four “Dawg Days”

As much as Vic tried to prevent a war on the streets, his actions went as far into inciting one as preventing it. Aceveda makes his first play at trying to parlay taking down the Strike Force into a political career (News flash: It is all about the money). One would think that cleaning up the streets would be enough motivation, but hey, I guess if you want to be mayor one day, the ends justify the means as much as they do for Vic.

Mackey really is the boss, isn’t he? I speak specifically of being the boss of the streets, and not so much the police unit, but one could easily argue that he’s king of both worlds. He’s got enough clout on the street to get a truce just by force of will. If you take Crowley’s death out of the equation, I don’t think simply calling him a dirty cop completely covers it. Just the look on his face alone when he found the boy hit by the car proves that he’s not all bad.

One of the most interesting things about the politics of The Shield is the high level protection that the Strike Force receives. As much as he’d like to believe otherwise, at this point Aceveda is really just a fly in Vic Mackey’s ointment. It looks like the Strike Force was set up at the direct instruction of Gilroy, who in turn was acting on the direction of the Chief. And, more importantly, they get results. Apparently, though, those results are coming a little more guilt-free as time goes on, as, at least this week, it seems that Crowley is a distant memory. I’m curious, though, how long the Strike Force’s guardian angel will be looking out for them.

If Aceveda’s goals weren’t clear enough before, they’ve certainly come into focus now. The political aspirations were pretty obvious, but it seems that he’s willing to both use and throw away his police career to buy his political career. He thinks that selling himself as the corruption buster might work for this city council seat, but further down the road he won’t be able to point to his law enforcement career if those unions are backing other candidates. Plus, you know, he’s a douche.

I like Danni … she’s got this whole tough girl thing going for her, but not in an over-the-top way. She is a nice counter to Vic, and I think has better chemistry with him than his wife does.

I’m not really sure what to think about the grave robbing case. It went away almost as quickly as it started, which was a good thing.