Television Review: Petty Cash (The Shield, S7X11, 2008)

Petty Cash (S07E11)

Airdate: 11 November 2008

Written by: Charles H. Eegle &
Directed by: Gwyneth Horder-Payton

Running Time: 45 minutes

The conclusion of The Shield stands as one of the saddest pieces of television to emerge from the golden age of prestige drama, not because of a decline in quality, but due to the crushing emotional weight of the finale. The audience, having invested countless hours in these characters, is forced to watch their heroes finally receive long-postponed and well-deserved ends, yet they arrive in spectacularly embarrassing and humiliating fashion rather than through heroic sacrifice. The episode Petty Cash, which aired before the final two episodes were meant to deliver a devastating realisation, appears relatively quiet and uneventful on the surface. However, beneath this calm facade, the world of Vic Mackey and Shane Vendrell continues to collapse, building a sense of inevitable doom with a whimper before the inevitable bang that will define their legacy.

Vic, having lost his LAPD badge, still deludes himself that he remains a serious player in the dysfunctional world of Farmington and beyond. He believes he has found an ingenious way to finance his future by playing a double game. He presents himself to Beltran as an experienced and well-connected player who can mediate a lucrative drug distribution deal between Mexican cartels and the Black “board of directors”. Simultaneously, he attempts to win extra favour by providing ICE agent Olivia Massey with blackmail files related to her, hoping that he will somehow secure freedom and employment from the federal government through this cooperation. Yet, for all of his grandstanding and calculated manoeuvres, at least some of the players are seeing through his last machinations. Aceveda is particularly astute, correctly assuming that Pezuela’s alleged suicide was a ploy to make him a co-operative witness for the federal government.

While Vic can still play his self-described “superhero” while negotiating the deal between the Mexican cartel and Black gangsters, he is far less able to anticipate or deal with the dangers that have come from much closer to home, namely his own family. Corinne is now fully participating in Claudette’s and Dutch’s investigation and takes part in a sting operation made out of Shane’s last-ditch desperate attempt to secure 100,000 US dollars from Vic through blackmail. The operation, in which Corinne proves to be a bad actress and undercover agent, achieves nothing except sealing Ronnie’s fate. After being sent to the park to warn Corinne, Ronnie has confirmed that he is in cahoots with Vic, and it is only a matter of time before he could be arrested. Julien is asked whether he would help Claudette in bringing down his former partners, and Julien does so without hesitation, marking the final severing of loyalty within the Strike Team.

While Vic managed to somehow snatch 100,000 US dollars by deceiving Black gangsters during the negotiations, Shane has much bigger problems obtaining money. He needs it more than Vic, having been on the run together with his pregnant wife and two-year-old son. He still possesses some street smarts and the ability to obtain a well-hidden gun and evade capture, but in the end, he has to rely on his wife to help him rob her former employer’s office. The robbery, during which Shane is forced to hold a cleaning crew at gunpoint and Mara has to arrive to help him with the safe combination, is both tragic and comical in the same instant. In the end, it nets barely 2,500 US dollars, with Shane’s former acquaintance telling him that the loss of his badge meant the loss of all leverage. In the final, devastating scene, Mara tells Shane that they don’t have any friends in the world but themselves, highlighting their isolation.

Petty Cash, written by Charles H. Eegle and Jamaal Turner, was notable for being directed by Craig Brewer, a filmmaker famous for Hustle & Flow and Black Snake Moan. Those films, dealing with characters down on their luck, corresponded perfectly with the general theme of this episode. The direction brings a raw, musical energy to the despair, mirroring the characters' struggle to find rhythm in their collapsing lives. While Vic and Shane had done evil things, the script made the last-ditch efforts to humanise them. While talking with Beltran, Vic explains that his grandparents did what society expected them to do and followed the law only to die broke and unhappy. Vic is again shown as someone who, at least, was a good parent when he expresses genuine pride during his last meeting with Cassidy, who is revealed to have good grades in math. Shane is also shown as genuinely loyal to his family, having abandoned everybody and everything else to protect them.

Yet, the episode is far from perfect. It still sticks to the formula of procedural storylines, this time dealing with Cardell Rhodes, a local high school prodigy football player who got killed in the neighbourhood. Julien is sent to help with the investigation, because he knew the victim, described as something of a hero and role model with a bright future. The killing occurred while the victim was in company with a recruiter who was the actual target. The killer is revealed to be Mia, played by Virginia Watson, a grieving mother of a teenager who had been passed by the same recruiter and killed in gangland violence. Apart from showing that the tragedies will continue to happen in Farmington even without Vic and Shane around, this storyline, presented in a typical “blink and you miss it” style, does not serve any purpose at this stage of the series. It feels like a lingering habit from a procedural format that has long since outgrown its structure.

Additionally, the scene in which Shane has to retrieve a hidden gun from homeless people is also a little bit too melodramatic and tries too much to symbolically show the depths Shane has fallen to. While effective in its visual storytelling, it borders on theatricality that undermines the gritty realism the rest of the episode establishes. Ultimately, however, Petty Cash remains a pivotal moment of quiet desperation in a series defined by its chaos.

RATING: 7/10 (+++)

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