Vic Mackey is back and he’s more rogue than ever! Smacking perps and throwing chairs and turning purple in the face. He dishes out justice with an iron ladle! He chews up and spits out drug dealers like breakfast tobacco! He gets the job done the way he wants to without pesky things like “laws” and “rules” and “conduct” and “human decency” getting in his way!

There’s also other people in the show but who gives a fuck? VIC MACKEY!

The Premise

The Boys are at it again! A new drug kingpin named Armadillo Quintero is amidst the urban thickets of Los Angeles! Mexican drug gangs are rising up like fuckin’ weeds and Captain Acaveda’s precinct is sucking hard at controlling it.

Speaking of Acaveda’s precinct, the department is being audited by a no-nonsense woman named Lanie Kellis who aims to sniff out the corruption. Not a good time for Acaveda, oh no! The guy’s trying to get elected on the city council!

Once the Armadillo situation is neutralized (by Shane and Lem plotting to get him killed while in the cage, lmao), Mackey’s team learns about an Armenian money train passing through with the intent of laundering illegal funds. Mackey’s team plans to rob this money train, which is supremely dumb and it doesn’t work. lmao-ing at that too!

Other stuff happens with other characters but who gives a fuck? VIC MACKEY!

And a little bit of Carl Weathers for good measure!

My Half-Baked Thoughts

This was better than Season 1, mostly because I’m familiar with the characters and their consistent behaviors and motivations. The stories seemed to progress and weave into each other a little more fluidly. Plus, it’s fun to see cops and detectives lose their shit in front of commanding officers with little to no repercussions. If I tried to hoot and holler at my boss I’d be in the bathroom trying to wash the boot mark off the back of my pants! That’s why I think Claudette has become my favorite character. There’s a whole sub-story where Aceveda makes an arrangement with Mackey that involves staying out of his way and doing his thing. It starts blowing up in Aceveda’s face when shit gets way more out-of-control then he realizes, threatening to sabotage his political endeavors. Mackey and Aceveda spend most of the season trying to stay ahead of getting busted for corruption in their precinct, to the point of obstruction on Claudette’s side of the Armadillo case. I guess the point I’m trying to make here is that Claudette does a bunch of “YOU BUTTFUCKERS ARE GETTING IN MY WAY, AND I KNOW YOU’RE IN CAHOOTS, AND IF I FIND OUT THAT YOU ARE IN CAHOOTS AND GETTING IN MY WAY, YOUR ASSES ARE FUCKING GRASS. SEACREST OUT.” It’s great. Claudette doesn’t give a shit.

Don’t make me go Cop Killa on your b-holes. I will fuck your ass shut.

I found myself hating Shane a little less this time around. I think it’s because Mackey is such an (in my opinion) unsympathetic character, who surrounds himself with incompetence, that when said incompetence fucks up his plans I’m starting to find it quite funny. Shane emptying out the storage unit’s money contents to invest in bullshit when Mackey needed it for the private investigator was hilarious! Classic Shane! Lem and Ronnie aren’t any better, with Ronnie looking like an aging Backstreet Boy and Ronnie being a complete who-cares character. Was Ronnie even in Season 1? What a forgettable mope. His mustache sucks.

Since the separation from his wife and kids, Mackey starts to lose his goddamned mind, culminating in a standoff with Armadillo where Mackey burns his face against an electric stove. I was like “fuck yeah” when I saw that happen. Best part of the season. Armadillo is a little bitch who likes to light people on fire. I think that’s totally unchill, man. Literally.

Dutch almost did a completely immoral thing! Our little golden Dutch boy planted evidence at the house of a fat nerd murderer he was trying to incriminate! Then he drove about 15 yards before running back into the house all but shouting “NOOOOOOOOOOO!!” and removing it. It worked out in the end, though. He just did his smug Dutch ridicule spiel and got the guy to confess after calling him fat about 400 times. I found this to be a pivotal moment in the show and we will all remember it for generations to come.

SHOW ME ON THE DOLL WHERE HE TOUCHED YOU!!!!

I felt bad for Danny, obviously. Not an episode went by where someone didn’t take a huge shit in her mouth (literally? figuratively? WATCH THE SEASON TO FIND OUT!), and she ended up losing her job by being a pawn in saving Mackey’s dumb bald ass. She shot the Muslim guy in self-defense and that didn’t work out for her too well. We’ll see what becomes of Danny in Season 3. My guess is that she’ll stick her head in the oven like Sylvia Plath. Man, she was cool.

David Aceveda is still a dumb hoser. “Aveceda” isn’t even a real surname.

Julian still sucks. In my Season 1 writeup I predicted that Julian will get a wife that he will barely kiss, he’ll get married, have a baby, and hang himself with a belt in the police office bathroom. I was sort of right. He has a fiancée that he barely kisses who already has a son. Hanging himself with a belt seems dire at this juncture, but we can’t rule out Season 3! He’ll fly to Thailand like David Carradine and autoerotically asphyxiate himself while seven Thai manwhores rub his abdomen with feathers. Now that’s a story arc, my friends!

The face of a man who knows that his character on The Shield sucks.

What’s Mackey’s four-man team called? The Strike Team? I hate the Strike Team! Their idea of ripping off an Armenian money train was braindead and it really pisses me off that it worked. The season ends with a pile of money on the table and Vic Mackey making weird O faces about it. I don’t care about the Strike Team. I hope someone pops a balloon full of plutonium on each of their heads.

That about does it for Season 2! Thanks for reading my insultingly simple-minded commentary.

Worth the Watch?

Yes. I’m very much enjoying this show so far and look forward to Season 3. I hear it only gets better from here. 20 years later and it holds up fantastically. JUST IMAGINE WATCHING IT AS IT AIRED, HUH GUYS? I was in high school. I would’ve hated it!