TV on DVD: The Shield (Season Seven, Disc Four)

Episodes covered:  Possible Kill Screen, Family Meeting

“Possible Kill Screen,” the penultimate episode of The Shield, climaxes with what is undoubtedly the finest scene of the entire series.  Vic has managed to work out his deal with ICE, offering to work as a well-connected undercover agent in exchange for immunity on anything he confesses to.  After taking a deep breath and pausing for what seems like an eternity (though it really only takes up about 45 seconds of screen time), Vic launches into a thorough and detailed account of his and the Strike Team’s many wrongdoings, from the Terry Crowley murder to the Armenian Train robbery to the murder of Lem.  Vic has once again masterfully slithered out of a seemingly inescapable hole, but in doing so he has finally been forced to drop any pretense of being a good cop, or even a decent human being. 

I haven’t given a lot of attention to Michael Chiklis’ performance in these posts, mostly because it is already so celebrated and has unjustly overshadowed the outstanding efforts of CCH Pounder, Jay Karnes, Walton Goggins, Michael Jace, and others.  But this confession scene is a true tour de force for Chiklis, and simply one of the finest acting moments I’ve ever seen anywhere.  The sequence works largely because it finds seven seasons of deceptions finally coming to light, and because its relatively slow pace and quiet tone stands in such sharp contrast to the show’s default jittery pulpiness.  But it takes an actor of Chiklis’ caliber to really sell the full weight of Vic’s actions, as he goes on a complicated emotional journey from devastated shame and guilt to resigned defeat to nostalgic borderline-joy, and finally back to a shield of cocky defiance.  The scene is brilliant because it completely unmasks Vic, showing all of the ugliness behind his “ends justify the means” brand of law enforcement, and then puts the mask back on, giving insight into just how skillful this villain is at compartmentalizing his many flaws and presenting a heroic façade.

By the end of his immunity-granting confession, Vic seems to have convinced himself that he’s once again gotten away scot-free, perhaps only alienating Olivia (the ICE agent played by Laurie Holden, who is suitably shocked as she is recording Vic’s confession).  But, even more so than usual, Vic’s actions have a profound effect on many of the show’s other major characters, and series finale “Family Meeting” is largely dedicated to the repercussions that Vic’s confession causes for himself and others.  Let’s look at where each of the major character ends up, one at a time.

Ronnie Gardocki:  Vic’s agreement with ICE doesn’t extend to Ronnie, who is obviously completely thrown under the bus by his mentor’s confession.  Ronnie is arrested by Dutch in the Barn, and Claudette smartly arranges events so that Vic is forced to watch his last remaining friend get hauled away, aware that he has been betrayed.  Ronnie’s belated character development in the last several seasons didn’t make up for his complete blankness in the first half of the series, and after seven seasons I’m still not sure whether David Rees Snell is even a particularly good actor (“tight-lipped stoic guy” seems like kind of an easy role, honestly).  But Ronnie’s final scene brings his muted character arc to a surprisingly strong conclusion, and the moment where he briefly confronts Vic about his betrayal is one of the finale’s high points. 

Shane Vendrell:  While Ronnie’s fate isn’t exactly happy – at best he will serve life in prison, and at worst he will probably be killed by Antwan Mitchell or one of his associates – he gets off easy compared to his former Strike Team comrade Shane.  Exhausted and no longer able to drag his injured, pregnant wife and their sick child along on his escape attempt, Shane decides to finally turn himself in.  But when Shane warns Vic about his plans, his mentor and former friend tauntingly informs him that it’s too late, as Vic is already immune from any charges that Shane’s confession could result in.  Disgusted by the prospect of a free Vic visiting his family while he’s in prison, Shane allows the police to find him at home, and then shoots himself in the head before they can arrest him.  What the officers find in the next room is more disturbing.  Shane’s wife and child lie in the bedroom, dead of apparent drug overdoses.  The image of Shane’s family, together in the worst possible sense, with his wife clutching yellow roses and a fire truck tucked under his son’s arm, is the most tragic moment of the finale, and it is all the more disquieting for being strangely beautiful.

Claudette Wyms:  Dying of Lupus and legally unable to stop her arch-rival Vic, the morally righteous Captain of the Barn nonetheless winds up achieving a level of satisfactorily heroic justice at the end of the series.  Claudette gets Vic in the interrogation room of the Barn, pointedly insisting that he sit on the criminal side of the table, and reads him Shane’s suicide note while showing him photos of his former partner’s dead family.  Afterwards, she forces Vic to watch his one surviving Strike Team partner Ronnie get hauled off to jail by her former partner Dutch.

Holland “Dutch” Wagenbach:  In addition to putting handcuffs on Ronnie – a highly satisfying moment of one of the Barn’s good cops finally getting a win over one of its most corrupt ones – Dutch is able to definitively mend his sometimes strained relationship with his former partner Claudette, who helps him goad a confession out of the junior serial killer that he’s been hunting for most of the season.  This isn’t a straight-up victory – the child’s mother is missing, most likely killed by her son’s hand (a situation possibly exacerbated by Dutch’s personal interest in the case) – but at least Dutch appears to have prevented a potential killer from claiming more than two victims.  And with Dutch being able to arrest a disgraced Strike Team member in full view of the rest of the Barn, he will undoubtedly be less of an outcast in the future, restoring a sort of moral force to The Shield’s universe.

David Aceveda:  The writers never quite figured out what to do with Aceveda after he left the Barn to join the City Council.  Still, the finale gave the mayoral hopeful an interesting one-off side story that brought his character’s smug moral rot into focus.  Aceveda is opposed in the mayoral race by a charismatic independent candidate who fans may remember as the comic book store owner from the season three finale (Andre 3000).  While Aceveda’s proposed solution to Farmington’s gang violence epidemic is to put more cops on the street, the independent candidate’s street level approach involves hands-on activities such as picketing outside of a crack dealer’s house.  That personal commitment to change causes the independent candidate to get shot and die for his cause, while Aceveda comfortably makes empty promises to TV reporters (and later gets told off by Claudette in another of the finale’s many satisfying moments).

Julien Lowe:  Julien was one of the show’s most intriguing supporting characters in The Shield’s early seasons.  The writers were wise to eventually move away from his struggles to reconcile his religious beliefs with his closeted homosexuality, as that storyline started to seem a bit repetitive somewhere around season three, but they never really came up with anything compelling to replace it.  While the material that Michael Jace was given in the last several seasons rarely lived up to the quality of his performance, the way that the writers used Julien sometimes provided interesting commentary on the other characters.  Many times throughout the last season while the Strike Team members were busy trying to cover their asses, Julien could be seen in the background quietly but very competently doing his job.  Julien’s only notable moment in the finale finds him silently observing a happy gay couple as he drives by in a cop car, a small grace note that suggests that his internal struggle will continue to have a profound effect on his life.

Danielle “Danny” Sofer:  Like her former partner Julien, Danny tended to get lost in the shuffle as the writers introduced more and more auxiliary characters into their increasingly convoluted storylines.  She is more or less quietly back to work in the finale after Vic alienated her earlier in the season by refusing to grant her sole custody of their bastard child.  It’s a shame that the writers couldn’t find more for Catherine Dent to do after season two, since her performance was always strong and her character’s mix of vulnerability and reflexive conservatism was often compelling.

Corinne Mackey:  Cathy Cahlin Ryan, who played the estranged wife of Vic Mackey (and is married to Shield creator Shawn Ryan in real life), was one of The Shield’s unsung heroes.  Family drama side stories on crime shows are often less compelling than the major cops and robbers plots, but Corinne’s relationship with Vic was consistently interesting, and used sparingly enough that it never became tedious.  Corinne’s story was one of the most unique looks at spousal abuse that I’ve seen anywhere – mainly because the abuse was never physical (that seems like the one line that Vic would never cross), and almost entirely unintentional on the part of the abuser.  In a remarkably unglamorous performance, Ryan allowed Corinne to become increasingly unhinged as the series went on, making her eventual decision to help Dutch and Claudette bring Vic down wholly understandable.  It isn’t clear whether she’s happy where she ends up – in Witness Protection in Rockford – but knowing that she will most likely never see Vic again is as close to a happy ending as her character could realistically get.

Vic Mackey:  As a result of his confession, Vic gets his immunity and his job with ICE.  But he also loses all of the things that made him feel good about himself.  The Strike Team is destroyed, through actions that Vic now has to acknowledge are almost entirely his fault.  Other cops hate him.  He’ll never see his family again.  And his ass-kicking undercover ICE job turns in to a strict and confining desk job that requires him to type ten-page, single-spaced reports every day for the next three years.  Vic may have escaped from prison with his life intact, but there is a great deal of poetic justice in the show taking everything away from him in the process.  In the final scene, Vic is working a late night at his desk job as he sees cop cars speed by outside.  Seemingly on the verge of tears, he grabs his gun, adopts his signature scowl, and ambiguously heads out into the night.

The Shield is a terrific and groundbreaking television series, but I wouldn’t put it in the same league as The Wire, The Sopranos, Deadwood, Mad Men, or Breaking Bad.  The plotting was often unnecessarily convoluted and messy (it isn’t hard to imagine a more tightly structured series that completely excised the Armenian Money Train plot, for example) and long stretches of the show (most notably all of season three) were frustrating in a way that the aforementioned shows rarely were.  Although The Shield was a frequently nuanced study of corruption, it didn’t pursue its themes as rigorously or as consistently as The Wire or The Sopranos.  Breaking Bad has certainly surpassed The Shield in terms of stakes-raising plotting.   And though The Shield has an impressively stylized aesthetic, it was tonally a lot more one-note than Deadwood or Mad Men.

Still, I can’t think of another long-running series that closes with as strong a one-two punch as “Possible Kill Screen” and “Family Meeting.”  Every question that a fan could want resolved received a satisfying answer, and the corrupt main character was held fully morally responsible for all of his actions despite escaping legal punishment on a legal technicality.  And many of the show’s ace performers – particularly Michael Chiklis, Walton Goggins, CCH Pounder, and Cathy Cahlin Ryan – were given career-best material that they each completely nailed.  The Shield is an imperfect, uneven series, but it is worth sitting through the occasional frustrating sections to get to the tremendously gripping and powerful conclusion.

Quick Thoughts:

-   Laurie Holden’s character Olivia never became much more than a plot point, but at least she was a pivotal plot point, unlike Laura Harring’s season five lawyer, who served a purpose but never seemed like an essential part of that season.  The most underused season-long guest star was Michael Pena as Shane’s Vice Squad partner in season four, who was given so little to do that he didn’t even register as a plot point.

-  The best of the show’s returning guest stars would be either Anthony Anderson as Antwan Mitchell (throughout season four and a couple of times in season five and season six) or Forest Whitaker as Jon Kavanaugh (all of season five and the first two episodes of season six).  Even though neither character appeared in the final season, they definitely had a major impact on the overall story arc of the series.  Glenn Close’s season four role as Barn Captain Monica Rawlings was equally interesting and well-performed, but her story arc had little bearing on the show’s major plotlines.

-  The fact that ICE didn’t check in with Claudette before signing off on his immunity deal is a pretty major plot contrivance.  But unlike some of the show’s other leaps of logic, it was totally worth it for the outstanding confession scene and the resulting fallout.

-  The award for most extraneous storyline goes to Vic’s season three affair with the dog handler, a completely pointless subplot that neither started in an interesting place or went anywhere whatsoever.

-  Although Kenneth Johnson gave a nice, soulful performance as Curtis “Lem” Lemansky, and that character’s death at the hands of Shane was one of the series’ most wrenching moments, I can’t honestly say that the absence of his character from the last two seasons changed the show’s dynamic all that dramatically.  It’s true that Lem’s death was a major turning point for The Shield, to the point it basically fueled the last two seasons worth of plot, but the character was never fully developed enough for the show to seem fundamentally different without him.

-  What about the few Barn members introduced after the pilot?  Steve Billings, who first appeared as a background character in season four, gradually developed into The Shield’s one reliable source of comic relief, giving the show a much-needed wrinkle in its tone.  The writers and David Marciano gradually turned Billings into a full-fledged character capable of delivering the occasional dramatic moment as well.  Billings never played a major role in any of the series’ important storylines, but he was one of the few successful late additions to the show.  Tina Hanlon, first seen as a trainee in season five, seemed like an interesting new face at first, as her rookie insecurities and traditionally feminine appearance and attitude introduced a new element in the show’s dynamic.  But the writers never found a way to incorporate Tina into any of the show’s important storylines, and the character didn’t really take off despite the best efforts of Paula Garces.

-  Season seven was probably my favorite overall, despite a surprisingly slow first half.  Five would be the other contender.  Season four was essentially a side story that fleshed out some of the show’s themes without really advancing its master plot, but it was nonetheless one of the more consistently gripping stretches of the show.  It seems almost undeniable that season three is when The Shield was at its most frustrating, although it should be said that The Shield at its worst is still better than 99% of what television has produced.

TV on DVD: The Shield (Season Seven, Discs One, Two & Three)

Episodes covered:  Coefficient of Drag, Snitch, Money Shot, Genocide, Game Face, Animal Control, Bitches Brew, Parricide, Moving Day, Party Line, Petty Cash

“Coefficient of Drag” gets the seventh and final season of The Shield off to an appropriately breathless and intense start.  In the opening five minutes, Shane comes home to find that his wife and child have been bound and gagged by Vic and Ronnie in retaliation for Shane’s quasi-kidnapping of Vic’s family at the end of season six.  Shane only convinces Vic to spare his family by convincing him that the Armenian gang that Shane’s been working with (and against) is ultimately the bigger threat to Vic’s livelihood.  While no blood is ultimately shed in this scene, it’s abundantly clear that the split in the Strike Team is permanent and irreparable.  It’s also clear that Vic and Shane’s multitude of double-dealings aren’t going to be as successful as they were back when everybody on the Strike Team was on the same page. The complicated fallout from Shane’s warning of Armenian vengeance leads an increasingly scary Ronnie to calmly dispatch of a hitman immediately after receiving important information from him; Shane, who needs the hitman alive to maintain his Armenian connection, is forced to mutilate the body so that his death looks like the work of a rival gang that removes the feet from their victims.  The sickening thud of Shane’s ax against the hitman’s ankles is a classically grungy Shield moment, and the fact that it takes several whacks before he’s able to cut through the bone reinforces the reality that the problems that these men have made for themselves are not going to be easy to get out of, and that the “solutions” to those problems are only going to create further violent headaches for the Strike Team.

After that incredible season opener, The Shield surprisingly settles into a series of several episodes that do very little to advance the master plot and that largely repeat overly familiar character beats.  Once again, Danny is put in danger by Tina’s inexperience, as the rookie fails to clear a room that the new mother is entering.  Dutch is concerned about the increasing signs of physical and mental fatigue that Claudette is showing as a result of her ongoing Lupus crisis.  Julien feels morally conflicted about the Strike Team’s peculiar brand of justice.  Aceveda’s political ambitions (he is beginning a campaign for mayor) get him in to bed with some dangerous people.  There are some nice moments amid all of this aimless busyness, such as Claudette’s riveting tongue-lashing of a young gang member who loves to say “nigger.”  And certain ongoing storylines that aren’t directly related to the Strike Team’s fate have been entertaining.  Dutch’s personal interest in a boy who shows early signs of serial killer behavior is his most intriguing extended case since the serial rapist/murderer from season one, and the fact that Dutch is willing to cross the line into “dating” the boy’s single mother while grilling her for information about her son gives some interesting shades to the Barn’s most honest detective.  Meanwhile, detective Billings’ attempts to sue the department for an extremely minor injury suffered toward the end of season six continue to amuse, as do his constant attempts to do as little work as possible while still earning a day’s pay. 

Still, too much of the early half of this season is taken up with uninvolving standalone cases, gratuitous appearances from unmemorable recurring or one-off characters from earlier in the show’s run, and unnecessarily convoluted gang rivalries that don’t seem to be headed toward any sort of payoff.  “Genocide,” the season’s most frustrating episode, revolves almost entirely around the barely coherent minutiae of Farmington’s warring gangs, which would be less of a problem if any of the show’s gangs registered as anything more than plot points.  Honestly, if I were rewatching The Shield, I would have no trouble skipping straight from “Coefficient of Drag” to “Animal Control” (in other words, from the first to the sixth episodes of the season), and I don’t think that a first-time viewer would have much of a problem doing the same.  A lot of stuff happens in the early episodes of season seven, but very little of it is of any real consequence.

That said, the run of episodes beginning with “Animal Control” and extending through all of disc three find The Shield at its absolute best, with each elaborate double-cross and violent plot-twist leading to the nail-biting tension that the show has often been masterful at producing, and bringing with them the promise of real consequences that the show has spent too much time avoiding.  The intense focus of these six episodes – which revolve almost entirely around an on-the-run Shane being chased down by Vic and Ronnie (who want to kill him) and the rest of the Barn (who want to arrest him), all while Claudette, Dutch, and Julien hatch a plan to arrest Vic – has made for the most satisfying group of episodes that this show has produced to date.  I can’t think of another series that has come into its home stretch with a run of episodes that are almost unquestionably its best, and I can’t wait to see how the final two episodes wrap everything up.

Quick Thoughts:

-  What happened to Franka Potente’s character from season six?  I honestly don’t remember, although I seem to recall her still being alive.  Considering that the Armenian storyline seems to be completely resolved by the end of “Animal Control,” I’m not expecting her to come back, but her absence is a reminder of how many unnecessary storylines and characters have been introduced over the course of this series in the interest of keeping it going for seven seasons.

-  Laurie Holden is this season’s big guest star.  Her character plays a fairly pivotal role in the season’s running storyline – she’s an ICE agent who Vic is hoping will help him get a job as an undercover officer within that agency (a job that he desperately needs, now that he’s turned in his badge and lost his pension)  - but she still seems more like a plot device (a la Laura Harring’s lawyer from season five) rather than the full-fledged characters that Glenn Close, Anthony Anderson, and Forest Whittaker have played in past seasons.

- Here is how Steve Hyden of the AV Club predicted things would end up for Vic at the conclusion of the series (in his 2008 review of “Coefficient of Drag”) – “Vic (finally goes to) trial for the murder of Terry Crowley and gets off on the kind of legal technicality he normally despises, depriving him of the justice he deserves and exposing him as a killer and liar to his fellow boys in blue.”  That seems like a pretty ideal conclusion for the show, but given the final two episodes’ reputation for “sticking the landing” and the writers’ penchant for swerving in unexpected directions, I won’t be surprised if The Shield ends up in a very different but equally satisfying place.

TV on DVD: The Shield (Season Six)

Episodes covered:  On the Jones, Baptism by Fire, Back to One, The New Guy, Haunts, Chasing Ghosts, Exiled, The Math of the Wrath, Recoil, Spanish Practices

As The Shield has progressed, its storytelling has become tighter and more intensely focused, with each episode illuminating the themes of its respective season while advancing the series’ overall study of the nature of corruption.  But because Vic and his Strike Team have been hurtling toward doom since literally the end of the pilot episode, with the crimes continuously piling up from there – and drawing increasing suspicion from both honest law officials and violent gang members – it has become more and more difficult to accept that the Strike Team could’ve stayed (relatively) intact for as long as they have.  The plotting and the pacing of The Shield both suggest a show with a logical timespan of four or five seasons.  Yet here we are in season six.

By this point in the series, the convolutions required to keep the three surviving Strike Team members out of jail (or even alive) are so knotted that it would be almost impossible to give a brief synopsis of the season’s plot.  Of course it is essential that the show focus on the fallout of Shane’s murder of Lem and the continuing IAD investigation of the Strike Team, and Claudette’s attempt to replace Vic with a new Strike Team leader named Hiatt (Alex O’Laughlin) is a logical development that adds extra pressure to an already-compelling storyline.  But in order to keep the show’s master plots from reaching their logical conclusions, the writers have also reintroduced story elements involving Salvadoran gangs, former Chief Gilroy’s widow, the rape of Aceveda, and Dutch’s frustrated longings for various female co-workers, while introducing a shady businessman with probable gang ties, an undercover FBI agent deeply embedded in one of the show’s many criminal organizations, yet another serial rapist, and the ruthless heiress to the Armenian gang that the Strike Team robbed several seasons ago (played by Franka Potente, of all people). 

Presumably this dense plotting is supposed to make the show seem less predictable and more exciting, and none of these storylines are exactly a waste of time (though I am tired of watching Dutch hunt down rapists at this point).  But with only ten episodes this season, none of the stories have the proper room to breathe, let alone come to any sort of conclusion.  And so “Spanish Practices” ends with all of the aforementioned plot points dangling, and with seemingly too much going on for the show to be able to do justice to the Dutch and Claudette vs. the Strike Team finale that has always seemed like the series’ natural endgame.  I know that The Shield has a reputation for “sticking the landing,” and that its seventh season is generally considered to be its best, but the journey there has been frustratingly uneven and unnecessarily convoluted.  

The sixth season is the show’s most frustrating since season three, largely because the writers don’t seem to have been confident enough in the ongoing master plots’ ability to hold the audience’s interest.  But those scenes that actually pushed the character arcs forward rather than simply adding incident were by far the most compelling moments of the season.  Shane’s desperation following his actions from the end of season five has allowed Walton Goggins to do his most intense work on the show to date, with his confessions of guilt to his wife (in “Haunts”) and to Vic (at the end of “Chasing Ghosts”) being particularly wrenching moments.  Vic’s feud with Kavanaugh ends somewhat anticlimactically in “Baptism by Fire” – and I suspect that the storyline was rushed to accommodate Forest Whitaker’s schedule or the show’s budget rather than the demands of the plot – but seeing the IAD investigator put himself behind bars before he bent the rules too far in pursuit of Vic offered a nice contrast in that character’s honesty to that of the Strike Team leader.  The thorny relationship between Vic and Hiatt also plays out interestingly, though it’s a little disappointing that the show makes it clear by the end of the season that the latter is an easily corruptible pretty boy who is no real threat to replace Vic. 

I hope that somebody – whether it’s Claudette or Dutch or Shane or Ronnie or new Strike Team member Julien – steps up to present a credible and stable threat to Vic’s well-being in season seven.  At this point, the show is really missing the righteous moral force of Kavanaugh, and it’s disappointing that the writers haven’t replaced him with someone who seems similarly capable of (or on the right path to) take Vic down.  Here’s hoping that the writers have a clear plan for cutting through the many seemingly unnecessary plot threads to bring the main arc of the show to a satisfying end point.

Quick Thoughts:

 -   Steve Billings (David Marciano) has become the show’s first reliable source of comic relief.  His rapport with new partner Dutch is excellent, as he seems in some sense like the sleazy dark side of his partner (as Shane is to Vic), yet he is also fully realized enough to occasionally register as a devoted family man.  His slow evolution from bumbling background character in season four to inept Captain in season five to Dutch foil in season six has been very well handled.

-  Though it’s obviously an important plot point, I’m not sure that the death of Lem has affected the show’s dynamic all that much.  Shane has certainly become more unstable, but was always obviously capable of coming unhinged, and Lem’s relationships with the show’s other characters weren’t clearly defined enough for us to really feel the weight of his loss.

-  It doesn’t put a big enough exclamation point (or question mark) on any of the season’s storylines to really feel like an appropriate ending for a finale, but the scene where Vic leaps into the moving car of a lawyer who has piles of paperwork evidence against him is one of the show’s best action scenes to date.

TV on DVD: The Shield (Season Five, Disc Three)

Episodes covered:  Smoked, Of Mice and Lem, Post Partum

The trick to writing The Shield is to keep painting Vic and his Strike Team into an increasingly tighter corner while still leaving them with believable ways to exist in that corner.  Since the Strike Team are the main characters of a show that was apparently always designed to go on indefinitely (or at least for more than a handful of seasons), they can’t simply be brought to justice (or killed), but having Vic maneuver his way out of too many impossible situations would strain credibility.  For the show’s plotting to be truly effective, the writers have to turn every one of Vic’s temporary solutions into a new problem that further tests the Team’s loyalty to each other, while also pushing the limits of their corruption. 

Shawn Ryan and his writing staff haven’t always been great at keeping the pressure on their lead characters.  The Terry Crowley murder was barely mentioned in seasons two through four, with two of those seasons being devoted to the Armenian Money Train plot and the fourth season deepening the show’s themes without making any major progress in the series’ master plot.  This stalling didn’t prevent the writers from producing a lot of entertaining television (season four was pretty great), and it’s entirely possible that some plot elements that seem inconsequential now will have a major impact on the series’ final episodes; after all, the Money Train plot that seemed to be completely wrapped up at the end of season three has become a potentially important part of Kavanaugh’s investigation.  The show has come up with some fairly logical reasons for avoiding steady progression of the plot, from creating a number of compelling side plots for the Barn’s other detectives to occasionally reminding viewers that the events of the first five seasons have taken place over only about two years.

Still, no matter how clever the writers have been about dragging their story out without losing the audience’s attention, there has always been a background feeling that they are also actively holding the plot momentum back in order to allow the show to continue for as long as it was a success for FX.  So a big part of what has made season five the best season of The Shield to date is that it has finally brought some real consequences for the Strike Team’s past actions.  Kavanaugh’s investigation has been plotted brilliantly – and is surprisingly still ongoing by the end of “Post Partum” (though apparently he’ll have less administrative support going forward)  - and his largely successful pressuring of Lem has confirmed that he is the greatest threat to the Strike Team’s operations thus far.  Past seasons would have likely ended with Vic finding a way to definitively discredit his Kavanaugh (as he attempts to by sleeping with the investigator’s estranged wife, thereby making the investigation look like part of a petty personal grudge) while slightly alienating the other Strike Team members with his actions.  Season five ends with Vic still under investigation by Kavanaugh as the no-bullshit Claudette assumes the Captain’s chair (apparently for real this time), and with Shane panicking under the pressure of potential arrest and murdering Lem.

While the writers have left room for the plot to move forward (there are still two seasons to go), they won’t be telling the exact same story that we’ve been watching for the past five seasons.  Vic will surely find out sooner rather than later who is responsible for Lem’s murder, which will obviously fracture the Team even more than it already has been, and we seem to moving toward the Claudette and Dutch (plus Kavanaugh) versus Vic endgame that I’ve been waiting for since season three.  Vic has proven himself to be extremely crafty in the past, but it seems unlikely that he’ll be having too many more definitive successes as The Shield gears up for its final episodes.  Watching the man who used to get away with everything gradually lose his grip promises a very satisfying ending to this uneven yet increasingly gripping series.

Quick Thoughts:

-  While the confirmation that Vic is in fact the father of Danny’s child (who is born in “Post Partum”) is an underwhelming resolution to that subplot, the scene where Vic quietly agrees that the child doesn’t need to know its father’s identity is a great acting moment for Michael Chiklis.

-  The street brawl between Vic and Kavanaugh was a smart way to bring their season-long conflict to a head while still leaving room for that plot to develop.  I can’t imagine anyone complaining about Forest Whitaker remaining part of the show, as his performance has been riveting and his unpredictable character has been fascinating.

-  The non-Kavanaugh new characters had more of a mixed season.  Tina’s unprepared rookie storyline has provided a lot of interesting moments, but she has been so far removed from the master plot that it’s hard to tell at this point how relevant she’ll wind up being to the show overall.  Her promotion to detective (thanks entirely to some bureaucratic stupidity outlined in “Smoked”) should put her even more at odds with the rest of the Barn.  Meanwhile, I still never caught the name of the Strike Team’s lawyer, who never became more than a plot device despite the best efforts of Laura Harring.  At least she played an integral role in the season finale, which is more than can be said for Michael Pena’s character from season four.

-  I could’ve done without the mousetraps-in-glory holes subplot that played out over the last several episodes, but Julien’s scene interrogating the homophobic Christian perpetrator was very intense, and the first major reminder since season three of the officer’s personal struggles.

-  A grenade hardly seems like the most dramatically logical murder weapon, but the scene where Shane tears up while preparing to drop the explosive into Lem’s car is very effective.  Though the conception and development of Shane’s character has been somewhat problematic, Walton Goggins has always given one of the show’s best performances, and this may have been his best moment to date – though I expect many even better ones to come, considering how prominent his character is going to have to be in season six.  Lem had been given even less depth than Shane in the first few seasons, but Kenneth Johnson always managed to deliver in the rare times when he was given big moments, and he was very compelling as a major part of his fifth and final season.

The Shield: Season Five (Discs One & Two)

Episodes covered:  Extraction, The Enemy of Good, Jailbait, Tapa Boca, Trophy, Rap Payback, Man Inside, Kavanaugh

Forest Whitaker is blessed with a magnetic screen presence, a completely distinctive blend of imposing physicality and wounded sensitivity.  But the prolific actor’s abilities have rarely been put to use in projects that seem worthy of his talents.  Even his own directorial efforts – which include such completely forgettable titles as First Daughter and Hope Floats – betray either a poor judgment in finding worthwhile scripts or a curious lack of opportunities for a talent of Whitaker’s caliber.  Perhaps the only movie roles that have put Whitaker to full use are his lead parts in Ghost Dog:  the Way of the Samurai and his Oscar-nominated turn as Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland. 

After the first two-thirds of the fifth season of The Shield, we can add Lt. Jon Kavanaugh to the list of Whitaker’s best roles.  Kavanaugh works for Internal Affairs, and he’s looking into the Strike Team and the various allegations of corruption against them.  Though Kavanaugh initially gains leverage by threatening Lem with jail time for a brick of heroin he confiscated but didn’t report in season four, his real interest is in Vic’s role in the murder of Terry Crowley, which stretches back all the way to the pilot episode.  Whitaker makes Kavanaugh seem like the first legit threat to the Strike Team’s future, with his crazy eyes and his sudden shifts from almost-whispered pleasantries to focused rage making him a highly unpredictable match for Vic and his cronies.  The “investigator obsessed to the point of madness” character has been done many times before, but rarely with this much conviction.  And since we know just how guilty Vic is – and how many loose threads the Strike Team has left behind in previous seasons – Kavanaugh seems not only like a worthy opponent for the series’ protagonist, but like the closest thing to a hero that The Shield currently has.

The writers have done an excellent job integrating Kavanaugh into the series’ major storylines and steadily progressing his investigation while also slowly doling out backstory about Kavanaugh’s history.  After storming onto the scene by turning Lem into an unwilling informant in “Extraction,” Kavanaugh shows his hand by personally appearing to prevent Vic from harming a C.I. at the conclusion of “Tapa Boca.”  Kavanaugh responds to the unsuccessful wiretapping of Lem by bugging the Strike Team’s office in ”Trophy,” but when he attempts to bust up Vic’s under the table deal with the Russian mafia, the Internal Affairs Lt. finds that he is in fact disrupting an undercover operation meant to bring the mafia down.  (For this twist alone – which is as much a surprise to the audience as it is to Kavanaugh – “Trophy” may be the most cunningly plotted episode of The Shield to date).  Flustered yet undeterred, Kavanaugh sets up an office in the Barn, posting crime scene photos of Terry Crowley’s murdered body in full view of the detectives, taking the door off of the Strike Team’s office, and interrogating anyone and everyone with a connection to the Team’s operations.

Those interrogations provide some of the most intense moments to date on this always full-throttle series, with Whitaker’s livewire performance and the tightening screws of the ongoing storylines propelling several cast members to new heights.  Cathy Cahlin Ryan has always been good as Vic’s estranged wife Corrine, but she hasn’t previously had an opportunity to come unglued in the way that she does in Kavanaugh’s office, where she is confronted with insinuations about Vic’s crimes and infidelities.  It seems fully credible that she would tell Kavanaugh about the $65,000 that Vic gave her, and even the staunchest supporter of Vic would have to feel sympathy for her in that moment.  Shane and Lem both seem on the verge of cracking under Kavanaugh’s gaze, with the former being more likely to accidentally reveal something through sheer incompetence and the latter clearly feeling the moral weight of his past actions.  Even Ronnie has had something to do in this season, with Kavanaugh cleverly planting the idea in the detective’s mind that he is the only member of the Strike Team who has been careful enough to cover his tracks, and that the other guys are going to bring him down.

Kavanaugh doesn’t seem quite as competent on the field as he does in the interrogation room.  When he tags along with the Strike Team on an undercover investigation in “Kavanaugh,” the Internal Investigator nearly blows the cover of a C.I. and winds up having his life saved by the Strike Team.  It doesn’t help that Kavanaugh is simultaneously trying to deal with that case and the return of his estranged wife (played by Gina Torres), a mentally unstable woman who files a false criminal report saying that she was raped as a way to get back in touch with her husband.  The scene where Kavanaugh has to tell his wife that he’s going to have to charge her with a false report and put her back in a mental facility is one of the most brutally intimate moments on the show to date – which makes it all the more devastating when Kavanaugh discovers that Vic has been watching the whole thing unfold from one of the Barn’s many security monitors.  It’s almost understandable when Kavanaugh, overcome with emotion and frustration, abruptly decides to place Lem under arrest, staking all of his hopes on the man who is now his most reliable informant – Antwan Mitchell, who is willing to give up everything he knows about the Strike Team if Kavanaugh can promise to put the Team in the same jail facility as him.

Something bad is going to happen.

Quick Thoughts:

- Dutch and Claudette’s big case for the season involves yet another rapist-murderer.  While the subplot isn’t all that interesting in and of itself, it does provide for some interesting moments between Wagenbach and Wyms, with the latter struggling to hide her ailing health from her long-time partner.  At the end of “Man Inside,” Wyms collapses down the Barn’s winding staircase, apparently from exhaustion.  It will be interesting to see where this is all going.

- Other new characters this season:  Tina Hanlon (Paula Garces), a rookie detective who often finds herself on the wrong side of her training officer, Julien.  She is also clearly an object of lust for the never-smooth Dutch.  Vic has also hired a lawyer for the Strike Team played by Laura Harring; I’ve failed to catch the character’s name thus far, as she mostly seems like a plot device at this point.

- Danny is pregnant, and her refusal to disclose the father of the baby has led the other members of the Barn to open a bet on the identity of the daddy.  While most people are betting on Vic, my money’s on the increasingly troubled Lem; since he seems likely to end the season in jail (or worse), the dramatic irony seems too good to pass up.

TV on DVD: The Shield (Season Four, Discs Two, Three & Four)

Episodes covered:  Tar Baby, Insurgents, Hurt, Cut Throat, String Theory, Back in the Hole, A Thousand Deaths, Judas Priest, Ain’t That a Shame

It is a mark of The Shield’s unpredictable plotting that season four’s major storyline’s reach their dramatic climax not in the season finale (“Ain’t That a Shame”), but in the extended-length tenth episode “Back in the Hole.”  At times, the series’ messy, cases-piling-on-top-of-each-other style of storytelling can be frustrating, as certain plot elements seem to get short thrift or disappear altogether in favor of unnecessarily repetitive character arcs or insignificant standalone cases.  But the busy layering of plots also gives the series a lifelike pacing that contrasts nicely with its amped-up action movie tone, and allows the storylines to organically reach the dramatic high points that make “Back in the Hole” The Shield’s best episode to this point.

The payoff was particularly strong for season four’s two most prominent new characters, Monica Rawling and Antwan Mitchell.  It is a testament to Glenn Close and Anthony Anderson’s fully lived-in performances that these new faces were able to suggest enough personal history to make their ferociously intense interrogation sequence in “Back in the Hole” feel like the culmination of four seasons of character-building rather than ten episodes of plotting.  The writers spent the middle part of the season turning Antwan into a disappointingly typical villain (particularly in the final scene of “Tar Baby,” where his moustache-twirling murder of a young girl informant didn’t jibe with the much more ambiguous community leader we’d been introduced to at the beginning of the season), but the full complexity of the character immediately clicks into place during his interrogation.  As Rawling picks away at Antwan’s psychological defenses, reminding him of his years as a powerless abused child, tears well up in the gang leader’s eyes, and suddenly this charismatic cypher feels like a real, complicated human being.

Though Rawling’s grilling of Antwan is ruthless, it is clear that her desire to put him behind bars is based on a sincere and passionate desire for justice.  It is impressive that Close and the writers never turned Rawling into a villain, even though she was essentially the Dick Cheney figure in this season’s blunt Iraq war metaphor.  Her zero-tolerance, morally inflexible tactics represent a different type of corruption than the ass-covering, bending-the-rules modus operandi of the rest of The Shield’s ethically ambiguous characters, and the show was able to get a lot of mileage out of the collision of her well-meaning brand of injustice and the other characters’ more self-serving forms of moral turpitude. 

While season four’s new major characters provided a riveting counterpoint to the established players, the development of many of the show’s longer running storylines had a mixed success rate.  It was interesting to see the Strike Team working separately and at odds at the beginning of the season, especially during the stretch where Shane was essentially functioning as the dark mirror version of Vic (just as ethically compromised but with less competence).  But the writers quickly dropped the storyline about Antwan blackmailing Shane into killing Vic in favor of the more familiar and less tense storyline of the Strike Team coming together to get Shane out of his mess.  The fact that the old team wound up working together for most of the season despite technically being assigned to different precincts undercut the power of their tenuous reconciliation at the end of the season, and also made the introduction of Shane’s vice squad partner Army seem borderline pointless.  Here’s hoping that if Army  returns in season five, the writers find something for Michael Pena to do, because he was largely wasted as Shane’s lackey.

The Strike Team has always been The Shield’s most problematic partnership, and over the years they’ve largely proven less interesting than the Barn’s other teams.  Dutch and Claudette’s season-long investigation of a series of convenience store crimes wasn’t terribly compelling in and of itself, but it did provide a stable framework for exploiting the tension that had been growing in their partnership since late in season three.  The payoff in “Ain’t That a Shame,” which found Dutch turning down a promotion in favor of sticking by Claudette, even though her morally uncompromising ways make the partners the outcasts of the Barn, was truly the culmination of four years of smart character-building.

Danny and Julian were very much in the background of season four, and mostly functioned as representatives of opposing viewpoints about Rawling’s property seizure policies.  It was perfectly in character for Danny, who has always shown a reactionary streak, to support Rawling’s no-nonsense style.  Julian’s turn from naïve support to principled opposition of the property seizures was equally organic, and the definitive turning point – the police raid on an in-session church that was harboring drug paraphernalia in “Insurgents” – was one of the season’s most gripping moments.  Fortunately, Danny and Julian share a certain respectful bond that transcends politics, as seen in the quietly moving moment when Julian is the only cop who shows up to tend to a recovering-from-a-shooting Danny in “Ain’t That a Shame.”  While it might have been nice to see more of Michael Jace this season, it was something of a relief to see the writers lay off of his ongoing struggle with his sexuality, which had become tiresome and one-note in season three.

Another somewhat tedious element of the previous season of The Shield was the Aceveda rape storyline, which the writers ingeniously wound up justifying by making it an integral part of the political complications that ultimately undercut Rawling’s investigation of Antwan by allowing the One-Niners leader to make a deal with the DEA.  I’m not sure that the show needed so many scenes of Aceveda enacting rape fantasies with a high-class hooker – the scenes felt equally like excuses to give Benito Martinez something to do and desperate grabs for controversy – but the payoff in “Back in the Hole,” which found Aceveda basically reenacting a version of his rape where he was the one in charge, was powerfully executed.  Better yet, the councilman’s decision to move on from his humiliation at all costs led to some interesting plot complications in the final three episodes of the season, where Aceveda basically hired Antwan to kill his rapist in exchange for a deal with the DEA. 

The political complications that ensued – with Rawling and Vic racing to capture a Salvadoran drug dealer before Antwan could testify against him – featured the series’ most intricate and exciting plotting since its two part season one finale.  But really the fourth season took the sophisticated action movie feel of those two hours and maintained it for an entire season, making this the most consistently satisfying season so far.  There is still the sense that the writers are consciously avoiding pushing the series’ overarching storylines too far ahead – I’m not sure that Terry Crowley has even been mentioned since season two, and the Armenian Money Train thing seems to have definitively ended in season three – but by focusing explicitly on the ways that the Barn’s policies fail the community of Farmington, season four got to the heart of the show’s themes in a way that previous season’s only did sporadically.  And with Rawling’s Internal Affairs guy digging up some definitive dirt on the Strike Team at the end of “Ain’t That a Shame,” it’s only a matter of time before Vic starts to real feel the results of his past actions.

Quick Thoughts:

-  The storyline involving Dutch dating Vic’s ex-wife seemed promising when it started, but did not pay off.

-  I also wish that the Barn’s overly forceful raid of the church would’ve led to greater consequences.  We saw that the media had picked up a damning freeze frame of a smiling Vic tackling a churchgoing One-Niner, but the outrage surrounding this incident was never really explored and mostly felt like an abstraction.

-  While there were some plot elements that didn’t fully pay off, it was nice to at least see the show drastically downplaying the standalone cases this season, with most of the police work relating in some way to the asset-forfeiture storyline.

-  I recommend checking out the documentary on disc four.  It provides a lot of interesting insights into Glenn Close's working methods, and details the surprisingly complicated evolution of a memorably profane line of dialogue in "Back in the Hole."

TV on DVD: The Shield (Season Four, Disc One)

Episodes covered:  The Cure, Grave, Bang, Doghouse

I’m not very familiar with Glenn Close.  I’ve seen fewer than ten of the sixty-four projects she’s credited with appearing in on IMDB, and out of those, the only one of her roles that I remember fairly clearly is her crazed stalker in the terrible thriller Fatal Attraction.  And I haven’t seen a single episode of Damages, the FX (and now DirecTV) series that was so heavily built around its star that its working title was Glenn Close TV Project.

But I no longer feel like I need to have seen The Big Chill or Reversal of Fortune to understand why Close is such a highly respected actress.  Close’s work on the fourth season of The Shield is strong enough to justify any praise that she’s received in her career – a claim I feel comfortable making even after only seeing the first third of the season.  The veteran actress plays Monica Rawling, the new Captain of the Barn (Aceveda has finally moved on to the City Council position that it seemed like he would’ve already been in at the start of season three).  Though Monica is a character who’s never been mentioned in previous seasons of the show, and who (apparently) won’t be around after this season is over, she feels like a fully realized and fleshed out character the second she steps on screen in “The Cure.”  Rawling radiates the decisiveness and toughness that a person in her position needs to have in order to be in charge of institutional bullies like Vic.  Her years as a Farmington beat cop would be evident even if they weren’t spelled out by the dialogue, and her desire to make her district a safer place seems both sincere and well-informed, even if her zero-tolerance methods for reducing crime are highly dubious.  Basically, Monica feels like a real person instead of a character that this season needs to drive its storyline, and Close’s grounded portrayal is largely responsible.

Of course, the writing staff deserves some of the credit for making Rawling such a fascinating presence, and for integrating her into all of the other characters’ lives in a way that the many new characters introduced in the previous season weren’t.  Her relationship with Aceveda is unsurprisingly somewhat hostile, as she quickly establishes herself as a very different type of leader that isn’t afraid to do things that make the department look bad as long as the ends justify the means.  Rawling’s no nonsense attitude and her policy of putting as many bodies as she can spare on major cases endears her to Danni, who has been trying to get off of basic foot patrol since season one.  The new Captain’s policy of giving everyone something useful to do doesn’t extend to Dutch and Claudette, as the latter’s righteous quest to expose wrongful arrests has continued to alienate her and her partner from the rest of the police department – and the District Attorney’s office, who refuse to cooperate with any case where Claudette is the primary investigator.  Rawling seems to recognize that Dutch and Claudette are skilled detectives, but is refusing to take them off the sidelines until the latter apologizes to the D.A. – something that is obviously a major source of frustration for the ever-ambitious Dutch, who has gotten off on the wrong foot with the new Captain on a personal and professional level. 

Of course, Rawling’s most prominent tentative relationship on the show is with Vic.  After the events of last season, Vic’s Strike Team has been disbanded, with Shane heading off to a different precinct’s vice squad, Lem working for a juvenile detention center, and Vic and Ronnie doing menial surveillance work at the Barn.  Encouraged by Vic’s impressive arrest rate, Rawling puts the corrupt cop in charge of a new anti-gang task force.  Though she cautions Vic against using methods that will draw the suspicion of Internal Affairs, Rawling seems disturbingly undaunted by Vic’s “anything to get the job done” approach, and it will be interesting to see which lines she’s willing to cross as the season goes on.  Some of her methods may actually be more damaging than Vic’s, as suggested by her controversial “asset forfeiture” policy, in which she and the officers in her command take away any property purchased by drug money – even if it means throwing innocent children out in the street, as happens when she and Vic seize a home bought for a crack dealer’s mother and young siblings in the episode “Bang.”

That sense of the toll that rough and/or corrupt law enforcement takes on the underprivileged people that the law is supposed to protect is something that was largely missing from the first three seasons of The Shield, but it seems like it will be a major concern of the show’s fourth year.  Since the events of the show have always been depicted from the point of view of the police, even the most prominent criminal characters from the show’s past have tended to seem like thematic abstractions at best, and unambiguous villains at worst.  The Shield has featured frequent scenes of police brutality at its worst, but because the criminals have been so poorly defined in comparison to the law enforcement characters, the show has sometimes undercut its own points by making the guys on the wrong side of the law seem like nameless, faceless thugs.  The writers seem to have recognized that this was a problem, as they’ve structured most of this season’s early plotlines around the various ways that the Barn has failed Farmington, whether they are literally beating the puke out of a gang member in “Grave” or giving serious jail time to a man with a few pot plants in “Doghouse.”

These failures of justice open the door for truly savvy criminals like Antwan Mitchell (Anthony Anderson, in a riveting performance that far outpaces any of his other work I’ve seen), the ex-con leader of the One-Niners, who is able to gain the support of his community in a way that the police won’t ever be able to.  Since returning from a decade-plus prison stint, Antwan has rebranded himself as a compassionate community leader, more interested in providing support for his fellow citizens than in making a profit off of their misery.  Antwan is hands down the most intriguing criminal character seen on The Shield to this point, because it’s genuinely difficult to parse how seriously he takes his black pride rhetoric and how much he’s simply using it as a smokescreen for his drug dealing operation.

Antwan can’t be too noble a person, because he’s got an under the table deal going on with Shane.  It isn’t exactly clear what the terms of Antwan and Shane’s deal are, but we’ve already seen Shane cover up a murder committed by Antwan’s crew (in “The Cure”) and we’ve seen both men give each other compromising information about their respective organizations.  Shane collaborating with Farmington’s most prominent gang leader while Vic is running an anti-gang task force is clearly going to be a great source of drama going forward, especially since neither Vic nor Shane can really afford to turn the other in, given all of the dirt they have on one another, from the Terry Crowley murder to the Armenian Money Heist.  The Shield seemed to be losing some steam in season three, but season four is shaping up to be its most intense and dynamic collection of episodes to date.

Quick Thoughts:

-  Nice cameo by Katey Sagal as Gilroy’s widow in “Grave.”  Few actresses are better at instantly projecting the scars of their characters’ hard lives, and Sagal does it here in just two scenes.  Sagal is the wife of that episode’s writer, Kurt Sutter, and she currently stars in her husband’s terrific (if uneven) series Sons of Anarchy.

- Shane’s new partner Armando “Army” Renta (Michael Pena) hasn’t played a big role so far, but it will be interesting to see how far he’s willing to follow Shane down his flamboyantly corrupt path.

-  Julien is the only one of the major characters without a clear, compelling storyline so far this year.  I hope that the writers find something for him to do, as Michael Jace still provides one of the show’s most intriguing screen presences.

- I didn’t really get around to addressing the continuing fallout from Aceveda’s third season rape, but his newfound passion for extremely rough sex has provided some reminders that The Shield’s extreme content can still provide some genuinely shocking moments even after forty-odd episodes.  How long before his predilections put his political career at risk?

TV on DVD: The Shield (Season Three, Disc Four)

Episodes covered:  Fire in the Hole, All In, On Tilt

At 15 episodes, the third season of The Shield was only two hours longer than its first two.  And yet, it seemed really, really long.

That isn’t to say that season three was bad, per se.  Compared to recent “off” seasons of other shows of comparable quality, it was actually pretty solid.  Season three of The Shield was overstuffed with plotlines, but it was never as confusing as season three of Sons of Anarchy or as sloppy as season four of Big Love.  It was always clear what was going on, there weren’t any outright dud episodes (though “Bottom Bitch,” from the first disc, came close), and there were a lot of exciting moments in any given hour.  The season wrapped up in satisfyingly dramatic fashion, even if didn’t end with the insanely amped-up intensity of season one, and didn’t promise as much for the future as the end of year two.

But even if the end of “On Tilt” had set up a bunch of promising developments for the future, I don’t know that I’d trust Shawn Ryan and his writers to follow through on them.  The ending of season two involved so much set-up and foreshadowing that it seemed like the third season could practically write itself, which wasn’t a problem since the hinted-at storylines seemed like they would make this the most exciting group of episodes to date.  A righteously motivated Claudette was poised to become Captain of the Barn, and she would most likely have been joined in her anti-Vic crusade by master detective Dutch, perhaps the only Barn member smart enough to dig up all of the dirt on Vic and his Team.  Aceveda would take his city council seat, and would re-open the investigation into the murder of Terry Crowley from a position of higher power.  Tavon would eventually get wind of the rest of the Strike Team’s involvement in the Armenian Money Train heist, and would be placed in the dangerous situation of investigating Vic’s Team from the inside.  The increased pressure from these various elements, plus the inevitable involvement from the Armenian mafia, would push the Strike Team’s fierce loyalty to one another to a breaking point.  Vic would inevitably find a way to get out of this mess, but he’d do it in a way that would just drive himself and his Team further and further into their web of lies.

That vague synopsis of a hypothetical season three sounds like the best, most dramatic season of The Shield to this point, as well as the logical development after the end of season two.  Strangely, the writers took things in a different, more convoluted direction that was somehow less predictable (in the sense that the show’s storylines developed in a counter-intuitive fashion) yet more safe (in the sense that the show backed off of promised character changes, such as Aceveda and Claudette’s promotions, in favor of maintaining the dynamic of the first two seasons).  The show added so many subplots and recurring characters this season that few of them stood out from the fray, and none of them had the chance to fully blossom.  It’s impressive that the writers managed to juggle storylines about the Money Train fallout, the gang war between the One-Niners and the Byz Latz, Vic’s affair with a crime scene analyst (whose name I still haven’t caught), Shane’s hasty marriage to an emotionally unstable woman, and the Strike Team’s rivalry with the undercover Decoy Squad, among many other plotlines, without significantly sacrificing the show’s clarity or action movie pacing.  But the majority of this season’s storylines could’ve played out more organically and satisfactorily if they weren’t constantly competing for attention.  Even the one promised storyline that season three did manage to follow through on, the gradual disintegration of trust between the members of the Strike Team, was largely drowned out by all of the other stuff going on.  Michael Chiklis, Walton Goggins, and Kenneth Johnson did their best to sell the scenes of the Team yelling at each other at the end of “All In” and “On Tilt,” but those moments would’ve been so much more powerful if they’d come at the end of a focused, streamlined season.

Quick Thoughts:

-  I have the impression that season three is the lowpoint of The Shield.  I know that season four’s arc with Glenn Close is very highly respected, that season five’s with Forrest Whitaker is apparently even better, and that season seven provides what is almost universally considered to be the textbook example of how to stick the landing of a long-running series.  At this point, I wouldn’t consider The Shield to be in the same league as The Wire, Deadwood, and The Sopranos (or Mad Men and Breaking Bad), but the fact that the show is often spoken of in similarly high regard makes me excited for future seasons even if I found this one frustrating.

- Strange to see an extended Andre 3000 cameo in “On Tilt.”  Ghetto comic-book store owner is a logical role for him, and he did a good job with the part, but it was still a little awkward to see such a big star in such a small role.

- How long before Shane’s wife gets killed off?

- Another waste of a potentially interesting character in Armenian hitman Margos Dezerian.  Having not appeared since season one’s “Blowback,” Margos returned for a few brief scenes in “All In” and “On Tilt” before being shot to death by Vic in a scene that would’ve had a lot more impact if he’d been more of a constant threat throughout the season.  But then “wasted potential” could practically be the tagline for season three of The Shield.

TV on DVD: The Shield (Season Three, Disc Three)

Episodes covered:  Slipknot, What Power Is…, Strays, Riceburner

Though The Shield is often thought of as a show that revolves around its main character, Vic Mackey, the truth is that it has such a strong group of regular characters (and such a fine ensemble cast) that it could afford to sideline its protagonist for several episodes at a time if it had any reason to.  Dutch and Claudette could practically have their own show (Wagenbach and Wyms even sounds like it could be the name of a buddy cop procedural), as could Julien and Danny.  A show focusing entirely on Aceveda as a politician trying to square his ethics and beliefs with the practical necessities of his city council job could be pretty good too, though it still isn’t clear when he’s actually going to assume that position.  Even the most problematic and least well-developed main characters, the other members of Vic’s Strike Team, have spent enough time together onscreen that I can more or less accept their loyalty to each other as part of the show’s premise; the writers still haven’t given a clear indication of where that loyalty comes from, but the interplay between Shane, Lem, and Vic is strong enough to make the characters seem like people who could plausibly be friends (Ronnie remains the Zeppo of the group).  While just about any of these characters could have their own quality TV show, many of the best moments on The Shield come from the tense interactions between the different factions that exist within the Barn.  The character relationships are so strong, and seemed to be headed in such interesting directions at the end of season two, that the show could’ve practically had an excellent third season without introducing any new recurring characters.

And yet season three has been loaded down with a larger supporting cast than The Shield has ever had.  This wouldn’t be a problem if the show were better at sustaining recurring characters than it is.  But outside of Chief Gilroy (who seems to be gone from the show completely after his season two escape to Mexico), The Shield hasn’t managed to create any recurring characters as compelling as its regulars.  The show’s casting director has consistently done a great job finding distinctive actors that bring even the most minor, one-off characters to vivid life, and many of the non-regular characters seem promising and interesting when they are introduced.  But too often Shawn Ryan and his writing staff fail to develop these characters to the point where they seem like much more than cannon fodder for The Shield’s various plotlines.  In many instances, the supporting characters’ role in the story ends so abruptly that the characters don’t have room to function independently from their plot function, which can at times make the show’s generally impressive storytelling seem overly mechanical. 

Tavon is perhaps the clearest example of this failing.  Toward the end of season two, it seemed like the show was going to use the Strike Team’s newest recruit to simultaneously flesh out the inner workings of the Team and up the tension in the Armenian Money Train storyline (as he inevitably would’ve found out about the heist, and probably would’ve aided Claudette’s investigation into Vic’s illegal activities).  Tavon was also charismatic and mysterious enough that it seemed like it would’ve been interesting to gradually learn more about him, independent of his role in the plot.  His interactions with the veteran Strike Team members were compelling, and the potential for entertaining conflicts or tenuous partnerships with the other detectives was high.  And then the show put him into a coma in the fourth episode of season three, which he still hasn’t recovered from.  Granted, the fallout from Tavon’s injury has played an important role in the season’s most engaging thread (the gradually corroding friendship of the Strike Team), but if Tavon never wakes up – which seems increasingly like a possibility, given that he doesn’t even appear in any of the four episodes on this disc – it will be the latest example of The Shield wasting a potentially great character.

The recurring characters introduced in season three haven’t fared much better, largely because the unnecessarily convoluted plotting of the season hasn’t left enough room for the many new characters to have time to reach their full potential.  The Decoy Squad could’ve been interesting foils for the Strike Team, but their storyline was unceremoniously concluded in “Slipknot,” as Vic once again found a way to play his enemies against each other for his personal gain.  The on-again, off-again storyline involving Vic’s affair with a crime scene analyst remains a non-starter, to the point that I don’t even know that character’s name (and was unable to find it anywhere online).  Shane’s emotionally unstable wife – they got married in the episode “Strays” – continues to seem more like a plot point than a human being.  And the criminal characters have largely been faceless thugs.  The gang warfare between the One-Niners and the Byz Latz has been stewing in the background of practically every episode so far this season, and is even the focal point of “Slipknot,” and yet all we really know about either gang is that one is African American, the other is Latino, and they hate each other.  The Shield has never given its criminals the layers and ambiguity of its cops, but in the past some of its criminals were at least charismatic (like Armadillo in season two) or had potentially fascinating relationships with Vic (like Tio in the first two seasons).  So far that hasn’t been the case in season three, where there have been so many new recurring characters that they’ve more or less cancelled each other out.

Quick Thoughts:

-  Two of the season’s more questionable running storylines came to strong conclusions on this disc.  In “What Power Is…,” Aceveda finally caught up with the man that raped him, but instead of serving straight-up vigilante justice (which it seemed like the show was setting him up to do, especially after he killed two of the man’s gang partners while they were attempting to rob a store), he arrests him and gives him a long, well-written speech about why he isn’t going to kill him even though he could.  Nice to see a character on this show getting somewhat non-violent retribution for a change.

-  The other storyline that concluded was Dutch and Claudette’s investigation of the “cuddler rapist,” who was caught during “What Power Is…” and then interrogated at length in “Strays.”  Dutch is stunned to learn that the rapist doesn’t match up with the profile that he’d created for him, causing the detective to question his methods, and leading to Jay Karnes’ best acting moments since season one.

-  That said, I probably could’ve done without the scene at the end of “Strays” that finds Dutch strangling a cat to death to try to get an understanding of why a man would be compelled to kill.  I get what the writers were going for, but the moment seemed too over-the-top in what was otherwise a relatively restrained and cerebral episode of the show.

-  Some interesting directing credits on this disc.  Michael Chiklis helmed “Slipknot,” which didn’t stray from the show’s usual cinema verite action movie aesthetic, but was a particularly high energy episode nonetheless.  David Mamet, who would go on to work with Shield creator Shawn Ryan on the CBS show The Unit, directs “Strays,” which has some effective use of off-center framing during Dutch’s interrogation of the rapist.

TV on DVD: The Shield (Season Three, Disc Two)

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TV on DVD: The Shield (Season Three, Disc One)

Episodes covered:  Playing Tight, Blood and Water, Bottom Bitch, Streaks and Tips

After two seasons of breathless, intense action, The Shield has become a little boring.

Which isn't to say that any of the early episodes of season three are bad, per se.  The things that worked for the show in the past are all still here – the shaky-cam, cinema verite style that puts the viewer right in the middle of the action; the skillful ensemble acting; the dynamic interplay between police officers with different motivations and different detecting styles.  And if The Shield is ever going to produce a "bad" episode it hasn't done so up to this point.

But the problem is that nothing has really changed since the end of season two.  There are hints that Vic and the Strike Team are going to start feeling some payback for their Armenian Money Train heist, but that storyline seems to have mostly been put on the backburner for the time being.  Tavon, the intriguing new member of the Strike Team – and a potentially interesting foe to Vic if he were ever to get wind of the rest of the Team's extracurricular activities – is (apparently) dead by the end of "Streaks and Tips," when he gets into a car accident.  Aceveda has decided to stick around and continue heading up the Barn until his city council job seat takes effect, leaving he and Claudette in the same stalemate that the end of last season seemed to bring to a head.  Claudette and Dutch are still basically acting as partners.  Danny, fired at the end of season two, is already back in uniform by "Bottom Bitch," and she even has brief appearances in season three's first two episodes, basically negating a major plot development from last year's finale.  And in "Streaks and Tips," Danny and Julien are once again assigned to be partners.  In other words, we're pretty much back at square one.

The Shield works best when the characters are getting in way over their heads, escaping from entanglements in such a way that they create even more problems for themselves and others.  Shawn Ryan & co.'s reluctance to meaningfully change up the series' dynamic does a dramatic disservice to the show and to its fans.  The promise that a righteous, anti-Strike Team Claudette would be running the Barn in season three was exciting, suggesting that the noose would tighten around Vic's neck to a previously unseen degree, bringing The Shield to ever more intense peaks.  But so far the writers seem afraid to take the risks necessary to keep The Shield as edgy and exciting as it has been in the past.

Quick Thoughts:

- Not too much to say about Shane's new girlfriend yet, since it isn't clear where her storyline is going yet.  I can't say I'm too excited about the hints that she might be crazy, though, since crazy girlfriend plots are usually not terribly interesting.

- The battle between the Strike Team and the Decoy Squad could potentially become interesting, but so far the latter group seem like they'll simply be cannon fodder for whatever this season's major storyline turns out to be.

- The beating that Julien received at the end of the second season seems to have unleashed a violent streak in him.  In "Playing Tight," Julien breaks the arm of one of the former officers involved in the beating, and in "Bottom Bitch" he gets unnecessarily rough with a man he's arresting.  Plus, Danny and another officer respond to a domestic disturbance at Julien's house in "Streaks and Tips."  Although Julien is mostly in the background in these first several episodes, and it isn't clear where his storyline is heading this season, he remains arguably the show's most compelling character.