SPOILERS AND I ABSOLUTELY GODDAMN MEAN MASSIVE BLUNT FORCE SPOILERS SO IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN EVERY LAST MINUTE OF THE SHIELD RUN AWAY RIGHT THE FUCK NOW
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The text of Shane's suicide note includes the lines  "[t]he guilty ones are me and Vic. Vic led, but I kept following. I don’t think one’s worse than the other, but…

". . . I find I keep wanting to talk about season three. Now that’s a roller coaster."

Hmm, that's cool.  What did you think of the movie overall?

There are also some boxes of Sunday school materials in the Strike Team's clubhouse.  That was a nice touch too.

Charisma Carpenter voice:  "you're welcome!"

Part of what impresses me so much about The Shield is how much it doesn't flesh out the characters, and doesn't need to.  "Fleshing out the characters" strikes me as a post-Shakespeare criterion for drama, and this is something in a much earlier style.  There's such a commitment on this show to restricting what we see…

SPOILERS CONTINUED

I love how he always gives everyone the absolute minimum amount of attention necessary, and when he stops talking to you, you don't exist anymore for him.

SPOILERS

“I’ve heard about this kind of slick shit of yours.  It doesn’t work on me.”

“It’s like he had to show me a negative so that I could see the positive.”  (Bryan Fuller, Hannibal)

Even more damning (and therefore better), is that Aaron doesn't go into snark mode until he sees that it's Tom doing the story.

One of my favorite scenes is Tom coaching Aaron on how to deliver the news (punching a word in each sentence, sitting on his jacket)…there's a recognition that there's craft involved in what Tom does (even Aaron recognizes it), and watching people who are good at their craft is always fun.

That's quite true.  The situation fascinated me more than the story, and if the twist had been revealed earlier, it would've required a different story, probably emphasizing different characters.

See, I'm actually cool with the impossibility of it all.  It's a crazy idea, but crazy can work in movies.  (In theater, too, and I once discussed the possibility of staged version with another fan.)  Steve Erickson once wrote about (I believe it's in Amnesiascope) "hysterical movies…they make no sense whatsoever and…

I haven't seen it in some years.  Somewhere in the comments I said that it's not so much bad as definitively OPTIONAL.

"Co-pilot."  It's a flashback episode (season 2, ep. 9) and essentially violates everything that's good about The Shield (one of which is that the storytelling is absolutely linear—no explanations, no justifications, only consequences).  It's pretty much agreed to be the worst episode by the fanbase, and I think the…

I would have truly loved The Village if the twist had been in the middle rather than at the end.  It's such a deeply crazy/brilliant idea that I wanted to see it play out.  Sadly, by then Shaylaman was becoming Twist Guy and wasn't thinking that way.

I'm good.  It's gonna be insanely hot here today, so I did some morning walking and am steeling myself to get through the Worst. Episode. Ever. of The Shield in prep for tomorrow.  (But there's also an insanely great one too, so I'm cool.)

That's the beat that sold the sketch for me.