The Armenian/Mexican gang war really heated up this week as the Strike Team (perhaps unsurprisingly) found themselves once again stuck in the middle. Vic had to know that his plan was bound to go sideways at some point, and when Rezian demands a sitdown following a Mexican barbeque of two of his lieutenants, Vic tries to convince him otherwise. Unfortunately, Rezian is insistent on explaining to the Mexicans that he has nothing to do with their missing property, and so Vic (as his second favor to him) heads to Cruz Pezuela to set up the meet. Pezuela, in turn, offers up his right-hand man, Armando Rios, as the voice of the Mexican side, but he doesn’t see any point in talking with the Armenians if they don’t plan on returning the blackmail box.
When Vic relays the message to Rezian, he’s both surprised and confused to discover that the Armenian boss is willing to admit he’s in possession of the box. This is all Pezuela needs to hear, and the meeting is goes on as planned. What Vic doesn’t understand, however, is how Rezian is going to explain the missing box, so when Rezian sandbags him at the meeting by explaining to Rios that he never had anything to do with its disappearance, Vic is understandably pissed off. Rezian simply wants to form a true with the Mexicans, and he’s even willing to ignore the recent murders and help them track down the real owners of the box in trade for leaving him and his guys alone. Vic attempts to convince Pezuela that Rezian is only lying, but when that isn’t enough, he heads to Aceveda for help.
For as much as Aceveda has to lose by refusing to work with Vic, he sure treats him like an unwanted mouth sore. Nevertheless, when he’s brought up to speed on the day’s events, he agrees to let Vic dive into the blackmail box for a little help convincing Pezuela that Rezian was lying. What he gets is a tip about a city planner (the same one that screwed Vic out of his favor last season) who has repeatedly refused to sign off on a memorial in Little Armenia. When Vic and Ronnie threaten to release info about his insider trading if he doesn’t greenlight the latest request, however, the Armenians get their memorial, and Pezuela is led to believe that it was Rezian who set it up. Instead of gunning for the Armenians, however, Pezuela has the city planner assassinated, which upsets Aceveda greatly. Vic tries to calm him down by informing him that Agent Murray is using her federal connections to help bring down Pezuela and the drug cartel, but then Aceveda drops a bombshell. Agent Olivia Murray – the woman we know so little about, but Vic seems to trust immensely – is also in the blackmail box. In the words of Scooby-Doo: “Ruh-Roh.”
It’s nice to see Murray getting involved in the story, but the setup was so subtle that I’m really curious to see what kind of dirt Pezuela has on her. Obviously, it has something to do with why she’s trying to regain favor with her boss, but if it was anything really bad, how in the world could she still retain her status within the FBI? It’ll be interesting to see where Shawn Ryan goes with this one, but for the time being, you can hardly criticize the guy for continuing to progress the main story. Every episode has had at least one major revelation so far, and it really feels like this season has been well planned out.
Still, with as much that’s going on, I still found myself gravitating more towards Dutch’s (possibly) standalone story this week. His interactions with the kid (who he believes is a serial killer in the making) were some of the episode’s best moments, and though he got away this time, it would be really fun to watch Dutch continue to chase him down for the rest of the season. His character is clearly never going to get involved with Vic and Aceveda, and between solving cases like this and keeping tabs on Claudette, he should have more than enough to keep him busy in the short term. The whole Cassidy subplot, on the other hand, is dead weight that never should have been introduced, and if she somehow plays a role in Vic’s death/incarceration/whatever before the end of the season, it won’t be so much shocking as it will be a total disappointment.
