Until the closing scene, I thought Jo's ex-husband was the smarmiest character of the episode, but Mac just couldn't resist the need to whip out his infuriatingly-patronizing binary morality.
Mac's right. The police do need people like Bobby to make those sacrifices in order to see justice done. They need good officers like Flack to convince frightened but decent people to make choices that are counter to their best interests. Sometimes, despite all the forensic miracles in the world, you need an eyewitness who is willing to stand in open court and point out the criminals. So, this is not a case of Mac being wrong. It's a case of him being willfully blind and obnoxiously smug.
As a Marine and a police officer who has made tremendous sacrifices, he should understand the weight of the sacrifices the department often asks innocent people--who never took an oath to serve the department, mind--to make at great personal cost, and yet, he seems to understand it only on the most clinical level. He recognizes that the department asked Bobby to surrender life as he knew it, and he also realizes that it carries a great cost to Bobby, but he recognizes this on only the most detached intellectual level; he does not seem to know or care what that truly means at gut-level, nor does he exhibit much sympathy for Ainsley or Bobby's son, who had the decision to sacrifice taken from them by Bobby's cowardice in refusing to say goodbye, and who suffered no less intensely for that lack of choice. For Mac, all that matters is achievement of the desired end, and the hurt inflicted upon innocent others to attain justice and his satisfaction is regrettable but incidental.
To be fair to Mac, Flack doesn't seem to grasp the magnitude of the sacrifices he asks of witnesses, either, until Ainsley vents her spleen and her anguish onto his abashed head and he sees Bobby's son, a son Bobby has never seen because Flack pressured him into doing the right thing, but at least he grasps it. He understands that he and his colleagues are often in the sordid business of manipulating people's consciences to get the conviction and closure for someone else, that sometimes, it's dirty and underhanded and painful and unfair, that perhaps they ask too much in return for precious little. Mac has no inkling of this because since justice is all he cares for, he believes it should be all that matters to anyone else. He's blinkered by his own formidable self-righteousness, and it's maddening.
I think Flack took one look at that little boy and understood the quantum enormity of what he had asked of Bobby, of what Bobby's decision to do the right thing had cost him. Unlike Flack, who got pats on the back and the satisfaction of bringing down the Foley brothers, Bobby was rewarded for his bravery with the erasure of his existence, relocation, and no chance to see his child or his girlfriend again. Not only that, but Flack's "asking"(as he noted to Mac, they don't really ask so much as cudgel them into compliance)assured that a child would grow up without his father. All because he had the misfortune to witness a murder. He recognized then and there not just the damage to Bobby, but the staggering collateral damage as well.
Mac never recognizes or acknowledges this damage, and so, wrapped snugly in his binary worldview and fixed morality, he spouts platitudes about justice and free will and blathers witlessly on, deaf to the depth of Flack's internal struggle. Justice served is good enough for him, after all, and so it must be sufficient for Flack as well.
God, but Mac is an insufferable, self-absorbed cockwaffle, and writing this has inspired the urge to punch him in the face.
Flack, however, is more human and decent than he could ever hope to be, and I want to hug him until the sadness disappears.
Dear Clown Registry Guy,
You were such a sublime asshole. I hated you so much that I think I love you. You were so awesome that you took away the bilious nausea inspired by that flat, pointless, placatory DL scene with EDNA. Perhaps you could offer them charisma lessons?
Guera
A decent episode brought down a hair by Mac's proselytizing.
B-
