Sonny and Rico must guard a mobster before his court testimony.
We've made it to the S1 finale (although I will reiterate that this should've been the second to last episode and Evan should've been the finale)
I like this episode; I like Dennis Farina; I like Sonny's difficulty with how much he likes Dennis Farina; I like that this episode forces Sonny to think about the humanity of the people he's working "against"
Much like how I'm not a huge fan of the Other Val Episodes after S1, I do not particularly think there ought to have been a sequel episode to Lombard... but Michael Mann loves Dennis Farina a lot, so like, what're you gonna do
Lombard opens with Al Lombard talking with his son Sal Lombard; I could not be more tickled by the fact that for some reason Lombard Sr. is clearly an American-Italian from Chicago and Lombard Jr. appears to be a Hispanic New Yorker. Where did your son pick up his accent, Dennis
Tubbs arrests one of Lombard's goons; I swear the goon is one of the Boat Bears from Made for Each Other
When Lombard gets supinaed (the inciting incident of the episode), Sonny watches him (long before the camera focuses on Sonny) with what reads as intense, almost awed boyishness, like a kid watching their favorite athlete to copy their moves. It's weird, because at this point Sonny believes Lombard ordered the hit on Barbara Crawford (Sonny's old flame from One Eyed Jack) and verbally expounds upon how much he hates him. Nonetheless, from the beginning you get this odd sense that as much as Sonny hates him, he's also deeply fascinated by him
John Santucci returns, playing a different character than Corrupt CIA Agent Dale Menton. He's Lombard's duplicitous assistant here, also making this episode a pre-reunion for Crime Story
Castillo explains to Sonny and Rico that Lombard will end up getting killed if he testifies; Sonny says he hopes that's exactly what happens. He does not sound convincing-- you get the sense that he thinks that's how he ought to feel, but can't quite manage to internalize those feelings having now witnessed even a modicum of humanization of Lombard
I am completely obsessed with the decor in the malt shop Santucci meets his contact in. Why is there a giant cement cake in the middle of the dining room. Why doesn't EVERY restaurant have one.
Switek is apparently eating hot dogs to... lower his cholesterol?
In Lombard's hospital room, Tubbs sniffs a single rose while Crockett berates Lombard; he appears to steal it on the way out
On a related note, Lombard is constantly framed by flowers
While doing surveillance, Sonny suggests Lombard is on the way to the movies and Rico, in what I can only describe as The World's Worst Australian accent, says, "Crockett, never bring more than one suit case to the theater." Sonny responds "Oh really?" in the same accent, because they are a) in love and b) the dumbest idiots on earth
Thus follows a gorgeously moody low-speed chase (so low speed they politely go through a toll booth) set to U2's Wire. The lyrics speak to guilt and innocence and cold fire in a cold man's eyes, seemingly focused on Lombard's criminality. The full song, however, is about suicide by drug overdose. It's a desperate track, ending on the ambiguous lines:
I give you hope
Here's the rope
Here's the rope
Now swing away
Are Sonny and Rico providing Lombard with a little bit of hope, or are they simply setting him up to die? Are the writers equating a life of crime with the self-destructive seduction and allure of an addiction to hard drugs? Are we supposed to hear the pain and need throughout the song as Lombard's, or Sonny's? Or both?
Lombard realizes that Charlie (Santucci) set him up; Sonny (in defense of himself and Lombard) shoots Charlie during the fallout. He apologies, saying he was "just doing his job." Much like the rest of his defensiveness surrounding Lombard, this feels very misaimed-- he was quite literally doing his job.
Lombard, at the safehouse, joking: Well, it's not the Grand bay. / Sonny, still pissed about everything forever: WOULD YOU PREFER THE YMCA
Rico gets sent out for pasta ingredients and Sonny sulks; immediately after dinner Sonny seems to have forgotten he's supposed to hate Lombard. The post-dinner scene reminds me immensely of the scar-comparison/U.S.S Indianapolis scene from Jaws-- three men around a table, making revealing small talk in the still danger of the night, two of whom are positioned as uncomfortable parallels (Sonny/Lombard and Hooper/Quint) and a third something of an outsider (Rico and Brody). Sonny has at this point warmed up to Lombard even though he knows he should hate him, the same way Hooper warms up to Quint even though Quint has been a menace to him up to this point. Sonny and Lombard talk fatherhood, and you get the distinct sense that the issues of being a Vice cop with a child and the issues of being a criminal mogul with a child are more or less the same.
Rico appears not to gamble, which is interesting to me-- we only even get implication and subtext on the topic, but he's really not much into vices. He doesn't smoke, is a vegetarian, doesn't seem to gamble, and drinks progressively less as the series goes on. He's never positioned as particularly moral for this, nor as a stick in the mud. He's just slightly outside the world so many of the other characters are a bit too deep in-- vice doesn't stick to him like it does to others.
Near the end of the episode, Lombard states the theme of the show out loud to Sonny-- you and I aren't that different. Sonny responds with: "Wroooong. I don't murder people."
Which uh
You are a TV cop, Sonny, you actually do do that
And uh, later in the series you. Uh. Well.
We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, I guess.
I think what works really well about this episode is that tension. This is the 3rd "Sonny is faced with a parallel that hints at a likely tragic future for him" episode, but unlike with Arthur Lawson and Evan, Lombard doesn't appear to be torn apart by the gulf between his job and his convictions. While the implication is that Lombard may die after the episode ends, Sonny doesn't know that-- his final moment with Lombard ends with a smile and a joke. Sonny sees his own convictions-- loyalty, love of family, living by one's own terns-- mirrored in Lombard, a career criminal, and it doesn't destroy him. He's very much like Sonny in many ways, but he's able to live with his own cognitive dissonance in a way Sonny, Artie, and Evan cannot, perhaps because he is simply able to admit that what he is doing is wrong. Sonny isn't there yet-- he has to be able to believe that what he's doing as a cop is right partially because he doesn't believe he's capable of doing good in any other way, but partially because it's painful. There's a penance aspect to Sonny's career in vice, and from his perspective, Lombard doesn't have to pay it. And despite all this, Sonny likes him-- Lombard shows him another possible vision of the future-- and he just doesn't know how to feel about it. It's still not quite as powerful a season ending as Evan, but Farina and Johnson sell it.
