Season 6, Episode 8 –

Tonight’s antepenultimate episode of The Shield didn’t deliver the punch I expected. Is it me, or did not much really happen? It wasn’t that it was bad, necessarily, just not up to par (except for a plethora of fabulous one-liners). They set the bar pretty high with this show, and I’m looking for a bit of the old fire. I hope the season finale will deliver.

Okay, so Hernan might not be dead as I predicted last week, but given that the leader of the Byz Lats (who was the one who was left alone with the cell phone) said he knew that the Ecuadorians had a snitch, I believe he did check the cell phone as I suspected.

Shane is getting in deep with the Armenians. The gas station owner he threatened for them turned up dead with a gas pump shoved down his throat. So he goes to talk to the mob leader and ends up dealing with his religious “damsel in distress” daughter, Diro, who says her father is traveling. He is actually dying in a hospital and she is running his affairs, legal and otherwise. She gives Shane more money, and asks him to look into some robberies at their buildings. He discovers that it is a den of savvy Russian hookers (the blond actress was great) who were shook down by a trio of ex-cons. Diro seems to be trying to settle into her father’s shoes and is looking to set up a partnership with Shane.

A well-bred woman gets attacked outside a store in a funky neighborhood, and when Dutch and Steve question her at the hospital as to what happened, Dutch tries to establish the story: that she was knocked and the thief took her new handbags. She replies, “They weren’t handbags, two were evening clutches and one was a keepall.” You get the picture. Steve seems rankled by her privileged attitude: I like him more every week. Seems the store is selling very well-made designer knock-offs and a vandal thought her purchases were real. When he and Dutch are discussing how they don’t understand the women’s quest for handbags, Steve says, “Get a lunchbox, hit a mugger with that at least you can cause some damage.” The night before the store is going to be shut down, Tina and Corrine go to buy some Fendi clutches and Louis Vitton, and there they run into Danny. Seems the illegal bag biz doesn’t pose any ethical issues for them, but then again, what I would do for a good Coach leather tote. Claudette then sends Dutch and Steve to investigate a series of castrations, a case about “missing bags you boys can relate to.” Love it.