Parricide:

1. The murdering of one's father, mother, or other near relative.
2. One who commits such a murder.

Parracide:

1. The latest episode of The Shield.
   

That mild dig aside (mostly made so that I'd have both spellings in this post for the search engines) let's push on and look at this weeks episode of The Shield. Something I have no hesitation now in calling "The Best Thing On TV Right Now", in this season of rather lackluster shows and below average performances from drama across the board The Shield stands mighty and tall with it's broken bronze badge and brutality charges.

Read about motorbikes, the priesthood and confessions beyond the link...

As I thought last week Shane decided to try and pull the one-two on Ronnie and Vic at the same time, unfortunately his choice of Two Man as the shooter for Ronnie was not the best one. Two Man botches the job, and Ronnie phones Vic before he enters his own home - where Shane was waiting for him - so neither of the two men get killed. This pretty much triggers the avalanche for the rest of the episode, cause and effect runs away and we just get a simply amazing episode.

Shane scrambles with Julien in an attempt to find Two Man and put him down before he gets caught and Shane's actions come out. They search his hang outs and come up with nothing before Two Man is caught by a rookie on the street. This is bad news for Shane and by extension bad news for Vic and Ronnie, their beef has been kept private between the three of them until now, if Two Man breaks the wrong way then it'll all start to bubble up - and it stinks. But right at this moment Vic and Ronnie aren't entirely convinced Shane is behind the hit, it could just be retaliation over Ronnie's beating of Two Man last week.

Shane and Vic's attempts to get put in the interview room fail. Dutch and Billings are given the job, this forces Shane to make a desperate play, entering the interview room, disabling the camera and asking Two Man where the gun is so he can hide it. Two Man eventually agrees to trust him, but not before Claudette notices that Shane is in there - he gives her a lousy excuse and leaves. Recovering the gun from it's hiding place and ensuring that Two Man will be able to walk.

But, Dutch, Billings, Claudette and Vic all have other ideas and decide to lie to Two Man; telling him they found the gun. Two Man is hard and reasonably smart, he doesn't crack on this one. So Vic suggests that they crack him by telling him that they have witnesses - after a moment this proves to be enough and on camera Two Man begins to confess, while Shane makes himself scarce. Once again The Shield bucks conventions by having things fall apart a lot earlier than expected, Shane confessed early in season six and now he's on the run early in season seven. I adore the way the writers mix things up like this, giving us massive moments before the final episode.

Mara meets up with Corrine at her house and tells her everything, delivering the ultimate that if Vic and Ronnie don't help provide them with information on the manhunt Shane will confess to everything. She tells Corrine that Vic shot Terry and robbed the Armenian money train before leaving. Corrine goes to talk to Vic at the station and tells him that she will help him, but it'll cost him his family. She'll back him up this one last time but he'll never see them again, Vic's lost his family as a result of his actions.

Shortly after that Vic packs in his badge as it's the only way he can go after Shane, he knows that eventually Shane will get caught and confess to everything. When that happens it's all over for him and Ronnie, Ronnie will spend the rest of his life in prison and Vic will be executed. So it seems that the plan is to make Shane disappear for good. Of course if he kills Shane he'll be the number one suspect in all of this and he'll also have to kill Mara (who is pregnant) and maybe even Shane's boy. He's in an unthinkable situation now and that's assuming that Shane hasn't kept a copy of everything his 'everything we did' file - something he told Mara he did do.

Now there was other stuff happening with ICE, Olivia, the blackmail box, Pezula, a guest appearance by Silas Weir Mitchellas a priest and Acevada. But it was pretty much nothing behind the twin thunder shocks of Two Man's confession forcing Shane to run and Vic throwing in his badge to go after him. Which in some ways is a shame, Silas was very good in his role but it's hard to take the side stories seriously when everything is crashing around them.

Also, anyone else notice that no-one seemed to notice that Danny has left at this point, admittedly events were crashing about while this happened, someone shooting at a cop tends to get the entire department focused externally and rushing about. But is that it for Danny? Surely she gets something more than just packing boxes in her house as a final scene...

Regardless, Parricide was a breathtaking piece of entertainment that still has me pumped and excited with the way it suddenly twisted near the end of the episode. Things are almost unthinkable now, it doesn't look like this is going to end well for anyone...