JasonX

Army is the obvious red-shirt candidate but I'd love to see them take a chance and have Shane be the one who gets killed (preferably by Lem, so as to create a new sort of dynamic Vic, Ronnie, and Lem tied together by their killing of Shane). As it stands though, it will probably be Antwon. Shane will kill him rather than kill Vic and it will create havok as doing so will cause Vic to take Shane back with open arms but make more problems with Lem and with Army (who will be sold down the river by Shane, possibly on Vic's orders as a sign of loyalty from him) taking the fall for Shane's action. Army goes to jail, Lem tells the gang to fuck off and disappears and everything is 75% status quo until the dead girl's body surfaces and suddenly Shane finds himself in deep deep shit once again.

Interesting thing about Cloak and Dagger; supposedly the rumor goes that Bill Jemas tried to get them brought back during his tenure running the company but no A-List writer/artist at Marvel was willing to write/draw a C&D book. Also, during the whole "Epic" debacle, "Cloak and Dagger" received the most pitches from would-be Marvel writers.

The ending of the "Dutch/Vic" thing is pretty obvious: They'll fight after Vic catches his estranged wife either blowing Dutch or outright having sex with him in his car via the hidden camera Vic installed in Dutch's car. This leads to them fighting and Dutch beating Vic black and blue. Unfortunately the fighting will cause Corrine to reject Dutch/go back to being Mrs. Vic Mackey full-time. Which despite being cliched, would give Dutch the double pleasure of kicking Vic's ass AND fucking Vic's wife. Bonus points if Corrine ends up getting pregnant by Dutch if they do have sex and Vic deciding, so as to get revenge on Dutch, to convince Corrine to keep her and Dutch's lovechild and raise the kid as if he was Vic's...

Another great episode this week and one that definately moves the plots for this season into overdrive. Lem's confrontation with Shane and Vic were well done and definately did a good job of selling the notion of how fucked up the situation is with the characters with regards to Shane. But I was disappointed that they didn't go all out with the church raid being made to be a huge debacle for Monica. The interplay (or lack there of) between Dutch and Claudette was nice and gave the episode some good levity given how tense this episode was. Seems like the writers also have Dutch's main plots ready to go, between him confronting the newly arrived serial killer and his attempt to date Vic's soon-to-be-ex-wife. Given how the two were about to finally have it out over Dutch contacting Vic's estranged wife over their daughter. And nice continuity throwback between Acaveda and Julian to season one in their meeting. Though given how they brought up how Vic blackmailed Julian last time combined with Julian being outed at the end of season two, I'm suprised that they didn't have Julian tell Acaveda that Vic couldn't blackmail him do to the fact that everyone knows about his sex life? As for Army, he's definately dead man walking. If he doesn't get killed he'll end up being set up as Shane and Vic's Judas Goat who will end up taking the fall. And as for the preview, looks like we are finally going to see Glenn Close breaking out a can of bitch and taking out her frustrations of whatever Acaveda does to her out on Vic.

I disagree. Antwon can be stopped and killed if necessary ala the Armenian drug dealer from last season to basically keep him from killing Shane/exposing Shane's corruption. But that doesn't fix the problem though with the rest of the Strike Team, especially given that Lem's only reluctantly working with Vic and Ronnie at the moment. Who's to say that Lem won't snap again and be the one who will bring up murder as a sure fire way to make sure Shane doesn't sell the ST out to save his own skin, especially after what happened to the girl Antwon murdered? It would make for an interesting situation for Vic, since not only would he have Shane out of his hair and not hanging over his head like a noose but also have a major league thing to hold over Lem's head to keep him from ever ratting Vic out.

I thought the scene with Dutching singing should have been saved for the ending of the episode. Would have given a much better juxtaposition to see Dutch's singing after his blind date then cut to Shane getting the crap beaten out of him/forced to watch the little girl be shot (though I really wanted it to be Mara that Antwon brought out to kill instead, since that would make Antwon the best villain ever on the Shield). That being said, I hope we get to see some sort of follow-up on the growing war between Vic and Dutch with Dutch finding out that Ronnie planted the camera in his car, with Dutch pointing out that while Ronnie may be part of the station's cool clique, he's still a big loser since all he does is plant survaillance devices and watch monitors while Vic does all of the actual detective work as opposed to Dutch, who may even more socially inept than Ronnie but who puts his BUTT on the line every day catching psycho killers and rapists. Extra points to be given if Dutch also brings up how Ronnie couldn't even beat up the drug dealer who burned his face as a means to further his case about being better than Ronnie and said verbal lashing leading to Ronnie a. Standing up for Dutch after seeing Dutch stand up for himself nad not be the big wussy he thought he was and B. becoming more active as a detective so as to prove Dutch wrong about him being an over-qualified tech geek with a badge. Which in turn will piss off Vic even more since now he has Ronnie giving him mouth and wanting to have a bigger role in how things go between him and Vic, which makes Vic do something else bad to Dutch to escelate the feuding.,... As for the ending, Shane's even more fucked, as now if Vic doesn't kill Shane Lem will. And unless Vic can keep Lem pacified in the way that they deal with Shane, I wouldn't be suprised if Vic has TWO albatrosses around his neck. Though I can totally see Vic WANTING Lem to go after Shane and kill him since not only does it let him avoid having to do the deed himself but binds Lem to Vic's side by letting Vic hold Shane's death over his head.

I'm thinking that it's more likely that Mrs. Acaveda will find out about her husband seeing a hooker and Acaveda beating/sexually assaulting her into a coma/to death when she confronts him. Either that or he'll break one of the hooker's "rough sex rules" and kills her/put her into a coma after chocking her till she passes out from oxygen deprivation.

Wouldn't that be fucking awesome? If Lem was the real casualty of the season, the one who was actually corrupted. They blew their chance with that storyline last season when they had Lem have his nervous breakdown and Vic forgiving him out of a sense of "I can't kill him and get away with it plus I kind of need him" pragmitism, so having it happen this season would be too contrived.

It's both. The bulk of the time each episode has it's own episodic storylines involving the cast trying to catch the criminal of the week but with running subplots that carry the main storylines from week to week and usually dominate the last two-three episodes of the season. That said, this season is being written as new viewer friendly so as to bring in new viewers who may or may not have seen the previous couple of seasons. However they are still using old unresolved storylines from previous seasons for a lot of the running subplots this season.

Regarding next week's episode, I would not be suprised if Shane's partner Army is the only big casualty. Having Ronnie die would complicate/excelerate the plot too much too soon since Vic would kill not only Antwon but Shane as well, provided Lem doesn't beat him to it. That being said, the show's mislead viewers with the previews via trick editting of footage before, so I would not be suprised if next week's episode has either Shane THINKING of narcing to Antwon but not doing so at the last minute or Vic purposely giving Shane bad information to throw Antwon off, resulting in his beatdown and possibly his partner being killed so as to make an example to Shane of his fate if he should doublecross Antwon a second time. No, it's more complicated and messy than that. Vic (with Lem and Ronnie's reluctant blessing) brought Shane back to the Barn because they want to keep close watch over Shane and cover his ass so as to make sure he doesn't get put into a position to narc on them once he gets busted for corruption. The fact that he's working for Antwon and they now have proof that he is and is narcing on his fellow cops, has Vic and company facing a mother of all nightmares that they have no solutions towards fixing at the moment, especially since killing Shane isn't an option the writers are having Vic, Lem, and Ronnie acknowledge as a viable option yet.

Actually Southern Cross got completed as planned, they just had to dump all of the character development they had planned for the second half of the series and go into plot overdrive (which was a GOOD thing since the early episodes with them focusing on the characters sucked donkey balls). It was Mosepeda that was the iffy one. Originally they were going to bring Super Dimension Century Orguss in along with Southern Cross and Macross but they found that they couldn't reconcile Orguss with Macross and Southern Cross together into a single storyline. Mosepeda was bought along with Macross when Harmony Gold planned on releasing both serieses direct to video as-is and that after their plans to sell Macross direct to video with a straight-up dub fell apart, they still planned on going ahead with releasing Mosepeda direct to video (and even dubbed the first episode as such, which can be found on the bonus disc of the first three disc New Generation set). It was their desperation for the magic number of 85 that made them to assimilate Mosepeda into Robotech (and them getting the people who made Southern Cross to commission half an episode worth of new animation for the first episode of "The Masters", so as to set up the Southern Cross main heroine as Max's daughter). As for Robotech II: The Sentinels, two things need to be taken into consideration: 1. The thing was made from three episodes of the aborted Sentinels sequel series (that eventually got done as a series of comic books) and 2. the Japanese Animators blatantly tried to downplay the presence of the Macross characters in the series since they wanted to release the series as a stand-alone series instead of as a sequel to Macross. It's definately flawed but most Robotech fans admit as such, which is why a lot of them perfer the Sentinel comic series over the movie.

Nonsensical deux de machina device used to create a common link between the three Robotech Sagas together. Clash of the Bionoids (AKA "Macross: Do You Remember Love", an ultra-condensed version of Macross told with all-new animation) isn't an official Robotech film, as it was released in the US by a company that wasn't Harmony Gold. It's also ultra-rare and by all account will never see the light of day in the US outside the next to impossible to find 80s VHS release do to the liscencing problems. That being said, an "official" Robotech movie exists in the form of a redubbed/re-editted version of Megazone 23 (which was produced by the same people who did Macross). "The Robotech Movie" was Megazone 23 re-editted with footage from Southern Cross and 13 minutes worth of all new, specially commissioned animation that would make the film serve as a "Robotech Hidden Years" story to bridge the gap between "The Macross" Saga and "The Masters" Saga. Sadly "The Robotech Movie" was shelved shortly after Harmony Gold finished re-editting it and aside from a single preview screening has never seen the light of day. According to urban legend, the audience at the preview screening absolutely HATED the film for all of the usual anti-anime reasons (it was too violent, too dark, not children appropriate) and fearing losing money, Harmony Gold decided to shelve the film. The 13 minutes of all new footage eventually saw the light of day in Japan, as the footage got incorporated into an English language dub of Megazone II that was used inside of Japan to teach kids English.....

Depends; Robotech is basically three different shows editted together to create a three-generational "epic". As a result, the quality and consistancy of the story is all over the place and a healthy "suspension of disbelief" is a must to get over the numerous changes/plot holes that pop up do to the haphazard nature of the series.... My take is that you should buy the first five Robotech Macross Saga DVDs and stop as soon as you get to episode 26, since the last 10 episodes are pure garbage do to the fact that the show was originally supposed to end with episode 26 and that the last ten episodes were produced on the fly after Macross became a huge ass hit in Japan, not to mention the fact that the US dubbing episode 36's "Die Die Everyone Dies" battle to the death do to the shitty voice-over of DOOM derailing the episode and the holy shit tension of everyone getting killed off left and right. "The Masters" Saga is under-rated mainly because there are huge plotholes from where they dubbed the show from a series that has nothing to do with Macross as the second act. But it's charm comes from it's being a good old fashion, depressing as fuck war story, has a unhappy ending where the main male hero (who's story is filled with nonsensical plotholes do to the haphazard nature of the reworking of the story)'s suicide attack to stop the bad guys ends up making things even WORSE for everyone involved, the main heroine is annoying as shit for the first half of the story before she gets to be likable upon realizing that the military higher ups sent her and her team on a suicide mission so as to kill them, and the only likable character is a fucking Michael Jackson circa "Off the Wall" analoge who goes by the name Bowie (as in David Bowie). Pick up the uncut/uneditted version "Southern Cross Calvary" instead since the story is worth seeing in it's un-mangled form. "The New Generation" is liked by fans mainly because the writers didn't have to do as much tap-dancing like they did with "The Masters" Saga but it's anti-climatic as fuck since the story is predicated on the survivors of "Macross" coming to save the day only for the ending to not have any of them show up. Still it has some interesting concepts but again, splurge on the Mosepeda box set instead.

I had totaly forget about that (IE Shane, the hitman, and Gilroy). Interesting idea and would make for one hell of a reveal when Shane and Vic finally go head to head towards showing how far Shane has fallen, especially if Shane reveals that his motive for killing Gilroy personally wasn't to save him and Vic from Gilroy but part of a nhillistic "If I can kill another human being for no reason whatsoever except because I can, then I can do absolutely anything" form of self-improvement. As for the new house and stuff, given that Mara is a real estate agent they could run that angle to explain it away, especially if connected to Shane selling his own house. As for Dutch, the fact that he's a narc now is more interesting than him being out of the doghouse. That said, I can just see Claudette going apeshit on Dutch for going behind her back and promising to essentially keep her in line. As for Glenn Close, I'm waiting until the midway point of this season before deciding if she's hogging the spotlight/focus. My take: Vic and Shane work together and reconcile until news leaks out that someone in the Barn is a narc. Vic gets scared shitless and Lem/Ronnie start fingering Shane as the narc. So Vic kills/puts Shane in a coma (right after Shane apologises for being an asshole and reaffirms his wanting to make things right between him and Vic to make things even more tragic) and then finds out that Dutch is the narc from Acaveda, who stops by to tell Vic about it so as to get Vic onboard a plot to oust Glenn Close's character as Captain. Vic has a heart attack-esque nervous breakdown when he realizes what he's done and we get next season featuring Vic versus everyone as Vic goes into a full-blown "DIE! DIE! EVERYONE DIES" mode with Vic using all of his evil intelligence and ability to destroy everyone, culminating in Vic finally getting brought down.

So-So episode but one that is disappointing me with regards to the fact that we are three episodes into the season and still no concrete storyline going. If we had a 15 episode season I can see them taking their time but since they are back to the 13 episode season format, it makes no sense to drag their feet like this. That being said, anyone want to bet that the scene where Dutch agrees to narc on the Barn for the DA is going to wreck any chances of reconcilliation between Vic and Shane? I can totally see the writers having Vic find out that there is a narc inside the Barn (but not knowing it's Dutch) and using that as the justification to kill Shane. Would make for some major ass traumatic irony for Vic to murder Shane over a massive case of mistaken identity, let alone how ramification of how such a chain of events would make the rivalry between Vic and Dutch become even WORSE.......

I find it amusing that Metallica's "One" made the list, given that the just about everyone in the media have long taken up the retroactive notion that "Enter Sandman" is the group's first single.

1. Why did the Strike Team break up? --------------------------------------- Various factors but essentially TPTB told Vic that they wouldn't foot the bill to bring in replacements for Tavon (who was forced off the team do to injuries) and Lem (who had a breakdown both mentally and physically that made him decide to quit) and that if he couldn't keep Lem on the team so as to maintain a four man roster, they would pull the plug on the Strike Team. So despite Vic's best efforts to bury the hatchet, Shane drove Lem away by lying to Lem about Vic hating him and how he was only reconciling with him to keep the team together. 2. Why did Shane leave? ----------------------- Again various factors, mainly dealing with Shane being pissed at Vic willingness to take Lem back into the fold with open arms, the fact that Vic didn't approve of his new wife, and that Shane felt that Vic was taking him for granted/not trusting him as used to. 3. Why does the DA not like Claudette? What did she do? --------------------------- She exposed a public defender who had a legendary losing record in the court room as a drug addict who always cae to court high on drugs. The fall-out from this was over three dozen convictions for major felons got overturned and resulted in Claudette (and Dutch, via guilt by association) being put in the political doghouse. 4. When did Aceveda get raped? And is that why he was rubbing one out while watching that rape video? ---------------------------------- Season three, episode five. Acaveda goes after some of the money train loot that has fallen into the hands of several latino gang members so he can use the money to finally get Vic and the ST for murder/corruption charges. Vic sends two gang members to retrieve the money and they arrive just as Acaveda sends several officers who came with him away so he could look for futher proof of Vic's guilt/ties to the local gangs. They find Acaveda, beat him up, and then force him to perform oral sex on one of the gang members while the other takes a picture of it via a camera phone (the picture BTW is later destroyed by Acaveda and that the gang member never made a copy of it and that Vic is unaware of Acaveda's rape as is Acaveada unaware that Vic unknowingly set the rape into motion). It ties into the shock event of last week's episode since it's been hinted at that Acaveda has been looking for some sort of means to regain his confidence in himself after the attack, as his marriage has gone to hell as a result of the rape. 5. What ever happened to all of that money they stole? Lem burned the money after essentially having a nervous breakdown brought about by him feeling that so long as the money existed, that the ST would never be safe from gang reprisals/investigation by their fellow cops. Only several thousand dollars didn't get burned and it was split amongs Vic, Shane, and Ronnie. 6. How come Claudette didn't get the Captain job? ---------------------------- Mainly because she exposed the public defender's drug problem which resulted in numerous convictions being overturned, but the writing was on the wall that she wasn't getting the job when she blatantly ignored some critical intel that resulted in a member of the Decoy Squad (a group of undercover detectives who Claudette brought in to replace the Strike Team) being compromised in an undercover assignment. As for Lem and Shane leaving, it was stated at the end of season three that Lem was transferring out of the Barn before Vic's failed attempt at a reconciliation though from what we've seen at the start of the season he's still working in the district with Juvenile Offenders. As for Shane, his moving out of the Farmington District was partially because of his falling out with Vic and because of his wife Mara, who made it pretty clear to him as season three ended that she wanted Shane to get as far away from Vic as possible do to Vic's hate for her and her marriage to Shane. Which brings me to ask, have they stated out of which district that Shane is working out of as a Vice detective? In the season three finale, Shane had a throw-away line about going to work out of Van Nuys if the Strike Team disbanded. Did they follow up on that one-liner?

The notion of the writers doing a Vic/Corrine/Dutch love triangle this season has potential. They can have Corrine, citing that she's still legally seperate from Vic, go out on a date with Dutch only to have Vic find out about it after the fact; Vic confronts Dutch and attacks him, only to cause Dutch to finally snap and basically beat Vic to a bloody, unrecognizable pulp. Vic swears revenge on Dutch, but declares to himself that he'll do so when Dutch least expects it. Meanwhile Corrine rejects Dutch when she finds out about the fight only for Vic to reject Corrine once and for all when she comes crawling back to Vic.

"That's My Bush" wasn't satire, just Parker and Stone jacking off while singing "GEORGE W BUSH IS SO GREAT! GEORGE W BUSH IS SO GREAT!!!!". Which given the piss poor ratings that it got, showed you why the show got shitcanned as fast as it did, especially given how expensive the show was to produce.

FYI the spoilers have hit the net and without explicitly spoiling what happens, lets just say the spoilers confirm that someone at DC fucking hates Keith Giffen and the Giffen JLA.

Actually a better description would be that Black Adam is the DCU's version of Magneto not the Punisher.

He was pretty much the same person except his assholeness was toned down considerably. Julian is still married. As for Tavon vs Dani/Julian, I still think Dani/Julian are the more interesting characters. They've just been stuck in bad storylines that force them to have the same conversation over and over again ad nausea. I think the reason for his likability has to be from the fact that from the few times they've had Ronnie speak, they've made a point to make him be the resident geek of the Strike Team, which sets him apart from the rest of the team in terms of personality. Working with Juvenile Offenders.

I was actually just thinking that. Vic could take him out if Shane were to continually try to use Terry's death to exploit Vic and get away with his increasingly corrupt behaviour. Anyway, good episode this week and this season is already shaping up to be another barn burner. The issue of Terry's death and Shane is a tricky thing: It's all but been outright stated that all of Shane's assholery comes from his guilt from killing Terry and him unconsciously wanting to be punished for it (hence the assholery and self-destructive behavior). So I doubt it would be something Shane would use in the form of an idle threat towards Vic. It will probably only be evoked by Shane when they finally have Vic and Shane confront each other over Shane's current actions with Shane throwing Terry's murder in Vic's face as to the exact moment Vic turned Shane into the monster he currently is.

Given that they all but stated that Vic isn't inviting Ronnie back to join the Strike Team V2.0, they might have a good storyline to play out of this where Dutch and Ronnie end up partnered together on the hidden camera operation and the two basically bonding over how they've gotten screwed over by people they considered their friends and are generally considered to be the precinct's top geeks. Which could lead to an episode where the show's two resident geeks save the day/arrest the big time criminal and prove their worth to the rest of the Barn. As for Claudette, they should put her and Shane together if only to further the Shane/Vic plot by having Claudette try to save Shane from self-destructing/serving as the fan voice towards stating how Vic is to blame for Shane's descent into assholery, and generally make Vic ultra-nervous that Shane might rat Vic out for Terry's murder to Claudette if she succeeds in getting Shane to drop his guard down and confide to Claudette the reason behind his madness.

Yes he was accused of rape, but it was ultimately revealed that she was lying about Acaveda being the one who raped her so as to get revenge against him for revealing to everyone while they were dating that she was into rough sex. It's an extremely convoluted storyline but basically Shane is Vic's former partner/protege. They did everything together, including killing a fellow cop who was going to narc on them for their evil deeds. This freaked Shane out and when Vic refused talk to Shane about the murder and ordered Shane to repress all feelings of guilt over the crime, Shane started having a slow but steady nervous breakdown that involved him pretty much turning into a complete and total asshole. Things got worse when Shane hooked up with a woman who Vic didn't approve of and who stole stolen money from Vic and Shane. In the end, it all went into the toilet when Shane refused to forgive Lem for burning their stolen money, which basically drove Lem away from the Strike Team. The current status has Vic starting to realize how he's turned Shane into a monster as Vic has found himself having to move himself back to the straight and narrow. The fact that Shane can not only bring the shithammer of justice down onto the members of the Strike Team and Vic for murdering a fellow cop.