Summary
Shooter continues apace in “Swing Vote”, as Team Swagger discover the nefarious political plans of Atlas.
A lot has happened since I last wrote about Shooter here. I trust if you’re reading this then you’ve kept up with the shenanigans, so I won’t waste your time reiterating them. There’s enough to discuss in this latest episode, “Swing Vote”, now that Atlas’s nefarious scheme has finally been revealed.
SPOILERS
If you were wondering, their plan is to control the Supreme Court by creating enough chaos with the God Box – still a stupid name, by the way – that they can bump off some rival Justices and replace them with Atlas stooges. With our current political climate, that doesn’t just seem like a feasible idea, but actually a pretty reasonable one.
I digress. “Swing Vote” opened with Nadine waltzing back into Swagger HQ as the team fretted about how they were going to rescue her, having been sprung four hours prior by a DOJ representative named Margo (Mallory Jansen) who slapped tomes of damning evidence on a table and said, basically, that if Team Swagger didn’t deal with Atlas, the DOJ would deal with Team Swagger. I imagine that’ll come back to bite her before long, but okay, it’ll do for now.
As always, the team was parcelled off and set out on their own little excursions. Swagger and Isaac nipped to a psychiatric facility where Katherine Mayfield (Dee Wallace), Earl’s old ops-runner in Vietnam, had been committed for some evidently made-up mental health issues. It’s always nice to see Bob Lee and Isaac have their big-bro-little-bro spats; the former wanted to know the ins and outs of his father’s entire personality, while the latter just wanted to get to the point and leave. Katherine eventually did enough cryptic tipping-off to set them on the right path, but she was also shot by an assassin who 3D-printed a cute plastic gun like John Malkovic in 1993’s In the Line of Fire. (John’s was ceramic, if I remember correctly.)
Nadine, meanwhile, went off with Carlita (Felisha Terrell) and Harris to snoop for more clues, which was only really made interesting by the continuing untrustworthiness of Carlita and the overlooked astuteness of Harris. “Swing Vote” had some slow spots, and his was one of them. Another was the development of the Julie and Sam (David Andrews) subplot, although that was at least given an emotional contour by the revelation that Sam is dying of a brain tumour. Oh, and Red Bama Junior got himself involved, in the process putting his hands on Julie. Oh, boy. He’s going to pay for that one.
It’s Red Bama Senior you’ve got to watch out for. Even though him pulling up on Team Swagger with a gang of henchman was a profoundly stupid decision, he at least seems moderately competent, and is easily the most viable villain in this third season. Besides, every episode needs a shootout, and the one in “Swing Vote” was fine, even if it was a little frustratingly under-lit.
Shooter will likely never be great, but it’s always good, and “Swing Vote” was the most energetic the show has been for a while, introducing new players and wrinkles in the narrative as we speed towards the season finale. With potential betrayals on the horizon and neither of the villains having kicked the bucket just yet, there’s plenty more shooting to be done.
