Season 1, Episode 13, "Circles" [Season 1 finale]
Written by Shawn Ryan
Directed by Scott Brazil
Air date: 6-4-02
Ryan just did beautiful work here with the copkillers story. In the first place, you've got a couple of black kids who decide that police in general were responsible for the deaths of two women because cops took too long responding to their 9-1-1 call- and therefore it should be open season on killing cops.
That's a pretty tough take on the culture of victimization, uncomfortable and arguably somewhat brave territory for popular entertainment. Yet as harsh as this comes out, it's not especially unrealistic. I could see a handful of particularly hateful black folks doing something this awful in Los Angeles, or closer to home in Cincinnati.
Better yet were the dramatic implications for Vic and Shane. The scene where they caught the first copkiller at his junky father's place bears multiple viewings. Watch them leaning into torturing this punk, taking out their own unstated guilt over killing Terry in the pilot on this admittedly HIGHLY deserving perp. "Oh, you cop killing piece of shit." The more times you watch the scene, the more little shades of impacted guilt, rage and displacement can be seen washing over them.
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The copkiller's junky father himself was a striking characterization in not more than five minutes screen time. How much of the effect of the character was in Shawn Ryan's script, and how much was the nuances of the actor? Hard telling, but the pure junky solipsism fascinates me. Think about the pure cold lack of empathy in luring his son in to the cops by telling him that the long-lost mother is there to see him. "She looks good. She's got Jesus now." This phone call strikes me as quite funny, in the cruelest way.
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