yeah bro. okay. okay bro. alright. this might be better than 5x11. this isn’t recency bias i watched this a week ago. wow. what do i like. jesus christ ☠️☠️☠️ [SPOILERS] “i see you again… i will kill you” yeah i’m just gonna cut the opening. i wrote 2 intro paragraphs but it never read well because this is just one of those episodes that like. takes you out. like how are you even meant to introduce this? writing this review made the show click for me i think. shane might be my favorite deuteragonist. this is one of the most complex dynamics ever. alright bro. review time. god. “you think you’re looking at me through some window, and all you’re really doing is looking at a mirror.” the final scene is haunting. vic staring down and cursing at the man he’s created is a situation that reads like the description of a painting, and the directing / editing style makes it feel like it is. seeing the two most complex characters air out their frustrations and sadness, backed by their extremely understated dynamic was so powerful. “i would’ve spared lem” “and i stepped up and put lem down so you can go to bed at night believing that” this show starts with terry’s death for a reason. vic burdens the guilt and tells shane that if they didn’t do it they would have been taken down. that someone HAD to do it. vic wouldn’t have killed lem. i think most of us can agree on that. shane and vic have different limits to how far they will go and how impulsively they will act. but shane learned from his mentors example. he learned from terry’s death that brutality, if in the name of the team, is acceptable, and something to be admired. looking up to vic, he carries it with himself throughout the show, like in 4x8 when he was ready to shoot antwon in the interrogation room and go to prison himself. realizing antwon isn’t going to attack him, (meaning he can’t shoot him in self defense) he impulsively adapts and unplugs the camera, ready to illegally, and with no possible explanation, shoot him. with his hand on the holster of his gun, he’s interrupted by vic just in time. we forget about this, but shane was ready to kill him. it’s my belief that he would have had vic not walked through the door. vic’s original example of murder in the name of the team internalizes in shane. but while vic has limits, shane doesn’t. and so, in the name of the team, he kills lem. “lem would’ve broken. i took it on myself.” he’s influenced the wrong person. he’s given the most loyal man a justification to kill in a job where murder is often the easiest option. he’s martyred the concept of killing into being necessary in the right circumstances and now it’s embedded in him. he’s created an uncontrollable killer. “you didn’t come to me. you didn’t talk to me— we didn’t decide and now it’s too late.” vic wouldn’t have killed lem, but he isn’t looking through a window. he’s looking at an altered version of himself, with the same ideals but no limits. vic believes he isn’t like shane because he wouldn’t have killed lem. but that decision doesn’t make them any different. vic is looking at a mirror. “goddamn hypocrite.” what a powerful line. right before this is probably the most interesting piece of dialogue in the entire scene. “get in your truck, drive away. leave here before i kill you.” “no, you won’t, we’ve already been through all that.” “before… you didn’t blow lem in half with a grenade. i see you again… i will kill you.” the look in vic’s eyes when he delivers these lines is one of sincerity. maybe he’s bluffing, but i doubt it. i believe his threats are genuine, and that he was restraining himself to not kill him. this is one of the coolest parts of the episode to me: joe teaches vic how to be corrupt and not get caught. vic instills this mentality into shane but fails to recognize the violence already in him. this leads to shane, with said mentality, killing lem. and then, after this long chain of events, shane brings down vic to a lower level of violence, a level where he has to restrain himself from killing his best friend. terrifying. vic is looking straight at a mirror.