AzureOwl

Depends on which police department you're talking about. There's three involved: St. Cloud PD, Eden Valley PD and the County Sheriff's Office that will absorbe Eden Valley PD. If it's the St. Cloud PD, I would agree with you. But before Gloria showed up at the office, the sheriff's office wouldn't have been on his radar. It was. Both the library and the police work out of the same building. Well, more like the building is a library and they let the police use an office. All we were told on this episode is that she was given 18 months probation as a sentence. Does anyone have enough knowledge of Minnesota law enforcement to say if that sounds about right for a prostitution rap? She is indeed in the cell. She most likely realized that she was never going to get through the paperwork and just waited until nobody was looking to go into the holding area. Which of course would've been the same time Syringe Guy would've seen as his window to kill Nikki. I seriously doubt Emmit stopped at one drink during the dinner with the Widow Goldfarb. And he went straight for the hard stuff. I can't recall what he ordered but Sy and the Widow were drinking wine and his drink looked like it was mostly whisky. Also remember that Sy had to drive him home, meaning that he was presumably too smashed to drive his own car.

We shouldn't assume he was a fake cop. He could just as likely be a dirty cop. Unlike the theory that Dammick is in Varga's employ, this one makes a lot of sense. I would find more reasonable that Varga would preemptively get a dirty cop on his pocket in the city he is going to operating out off. The best part is that his analogy falls apart if you think about it too much. To make mashed potatoes you have to boil them first and then smash them.

Well, last night's episode settled this. She does have the authority to wear the uniform and conduct her investigation as she pleases... for another 8 days.

At least Bill had the justification of being an idiot. Dammik an the other hand really should know better and is being deliberately obtuse out of personal pride. Unlikely. The whole Eden Valley situation clearly blindsided him. Besides, Dammik is sheriff in an entirely different county than the one Varga is operating at. The only reason why anyone from Eden Valley got involved with the plot was because of Maurice's stupidity.

I think he cares more about her perceived insubordination than he does about the case. At this point he is probably just trying find any excuse rather than admit she was right.

That was certainly an unexpected twist, but one which in hindsight we should've seen coming. This season is only set 4 years after season 1, some character from it was bound to show up. Since Nikki hasn't had the chance to tell anyone what she saw in the crime scene photo the Sheriff left her (and her face made it clear she noticed something) my guess is that Mr. Wrench is going to be the spanner in Yuri's plans to kill Nikki. In other news, it's nice that we can finally put to rest the argument we had in the thread for last episode. Gloria continues to be Chief of the Eden Valley PD, with full authority to wear the uniform and to pursue her investigation into Ennis' death... for another 8 days as of this episode, meaning the takeover by the county takes effect on January 1st, 2011. Sheriff Dammik's authority over her is only of the do-as-I-say-now-or-I-will-fire-your-ass-as-soon-as-I'm-legally-able-to variety.

The clothing, the rapiers, the morions and plate armor on common soliders, the ruff Lord Capulet wears, the big lacy thingy the name of which I don't know that the Princess wears that's like what Queen Elizabeth wore... and that is just from the top of my head.

That's because most people haven't ever read it. All they know they absorbed from pop culture.

Warring families and teenagers in love, yes. But the fact that so many people use the term Romeo and Juliet as a byword for the GreatestLoveStoryEver© leads me to believe that Romeo and Juliet dying at the end of the play is a detail that for some reason pop culture refuses to assimilate. It's even gotten to the point of being a trope. A besotted character compares him or herself and the object of their affection to Romeo and Juliet and another character has to point out to them that the story ends with Romeo and Juliet killing themselves. Just a couple of weeks ago, Supergirl made a joke about that. Mon-El started to compare himself and Kara to Romeo and Juliet and she asked him if he gotten to the end of the play yet. He hadn't.

As good as anyone else that has been on the show at least. I saw her on Banshee. It was a great guilty pleasure and she did play a very convincing badass. The fight scene you mention was one of the highlights of an already over the top insane show. Judge for yourselves, but be advised it's quite graphic so it might be NSFW...

The show is already anachronistic. Everything we have seen on-screen so far clearly indicates that the setting of the show is the 16th century.

I believe you mean Aragon. Aragorn son of Arathorn belongs to an entirely different universe.

Ray may have demanded more money under the table to go along with Emmit's story that the money was for Ray.

I fully expect the other character form Shakespeare's plays set in Italy to start popping up the further the show gets from the play. They may even already have started sowing the seeds. Venice keeps getting mentioned by Escalus. I could see Shylock trying to regain his fortune by acting as agent for the Doge; or Lord Montague doing business with Antonio. And if it comes to war, Othello himself will lead Venice's armies. Iago may turn out to be the one who wrote "harlot" on Juliet's statue. The eponymous Two Gentlemen of Verona are bound to make an appearance, as is the cast of The Taming of the Shrew. If the show decided to take a turn to the supernatural, the Duke of Milan who worries Escalus might turn out to be Prospero himself. Otherwise a married Miranda might take up her father's mantle as a sorceress and meddle in Veronese affairs on behalf of her husband the King of Naples.

One detail I liked is the way they fleshed out the feud. By involving practically the entire population of Verona into it by way of webs of patronage and employment, they avoid the plot hole of why the Prince doesn't just put his foot down and destroy both families. And they also seem to provide a reasonable enough explanation as to how it started. A conflict between old money and upstart new money is easy enough for the audience to understand, and believable as an ongoing problem. Lady Capulet seems to be somewhat unhinged. She may be paranoid, thinking the Montagues will come to finish him off if they find out he is still alive.

But that's my point. I believe she does have the authority to wear that uniform.

But that's my point. She does wear the uniform. She does have the authority. For a little while longer anyway. Once the transition is complete and official, she will have to wear the county sheriff's deputy uniform, as will her clueless deputy. Compare and contrast to her behavior on LA, which was on her own dime. There she was a lot more reluctant to use her status as a police officer to pressure people. She didn't even pack the uniform. Not explicitly, but given how stupid he was, he probably tried to use is a an improvised gag.

The thing is, Dammik keeps giving her orders, and she keeps ignoring them. I think we will know for sure next episode, but everything about her behavior tells me that she's holding unto the technicality that she is still chief to defy him. As for the jurisdictional issue, it's telling that in every interview she's conducted in St. Cloud besides her original meeting with Ray, she has been with Lopez.

The sheriff doesn't have the authority to order Gloria to drop it. As she is so quick to point out, technically she is still the Chief until the transfer is complete. He also has no authority over Officer Lopez. They were in St. Cloud and she is an officer of the St. Cloud PD. If push comes to shove they can hide behind her still open investigation of the traffic collision on the diner parking lot. The thing is, at this point, the takeover of her police department by the sheriff's office hasn't taken effect, so Gloria is technically still the chief of Even Valley PD. The fact that she's choosing to ignore the man who will be her boss in a matter of days in a manner that he will undoubtedly interpret as a "Fuck You" is another issue entirely, but probably still legal. Then there's the fact that all of this took place in St. Cloud, with a St. Cloud PD officer present. Officer Lopez is conducting her own investigation into the Stussys, and Dammik doesn't have the authority to order her to drop it. It's not his jurisdiction. That would've been worse. As far as the IRS is concerned, those $10k would be income that Ray would have to declare. To say nothing of what Ray would've said if the IRS tracked him down to check. Varga & Co have no idea how smart Nikki is. Considering how incredibly misogynistic those three are, they probably think Ray was the brains behind everything and that using for a patsy will be easier than disposing of her body.

Well, that settles our debate about Nikki's injuries. They didn't do anything to her legs, they just beat her in the torso so badly she couldn't even walk. Front and back

Someone up-thread mentioned that t it was a nagyka, a short thick whip that the Tsar's cossacks used to beat the shit out of people. From what little we saw of her wounds, I would guess he whipped her around the kidneys. With a whip that thick, her clothing wouldn't have provided much protection. I remember that upon rewatch, I noticed that Nikki was able to put her weight on one of the knees so there probably isn't any damage to her spine. After the whipping they might have stomped on and broken one or both ankles, though.

That's fair. We really don't know the who initiated the trade. But I think we can all agree that in his will the Stussy's father left the stamps to Ray and the car to Emmit and then the brothers traded. Right? But the daughter and the son-in-law also saw the tape and had the exact same reaction. I also doubt that Stella paid any kind of attention to Ray or who he brought to the party as his +1. The idea that Ray would have the brains to come up with a scheme like that probably never crossed their minds. And they would have a point.

That's not how it went. Despite appearances Ray is the younger brother. From their conversation in the season premier... I interpret that conversation to mean that their father's will (the legal document bequeathing things that Ray mentions) left the corvette to Emmit and the stamp collection to Ray. Then the brothers decided to trade. And since nobody would be stupid enough to trade a few dozen stamps for a car unless they knew beforehand they were valuable, I'm inclined to believe Ray's version that the trade was Emmit's idea.

That is correct. But even so, it is likely that Ray is not without cause in assuming that Emmit knew the value of the stamps before proposing the trade. The fair thing to do would've been to sell both the corvette and the stamps and split the money evenly.

I don't think that's fair. Remember that Ray has no idea about the Varga situation, so he has no reason to suspect the kind of unholy trouble an IRS investigation would cause at that point. Ray doesn't know that his brother is involved in shady dealings. As far as Ray is concerned, taking $10K would just saddle his brother with the hassle being audited. Hell, he may have even done it on purpose. The fact that Ray thinks he only has to deal with Emmit and Sy would be funny if not for the danger they're unknowingly putting themselves in, as Nikki painfully found out. They way I understood it, their father left a whole sheet of those stamps, and Emmit sold all but one to start his business.