Editing Heffernan

The Best of the Bad Cops Keeps Walking a Hard Line (NYTimes)
By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
Published: June 6, 2007

[In lieu of writing my own big essay on the Shield's finale, I'm going at it through Heffernan's uneven piece...]

...In its six seasons, "The Shield" has won Emmys and Golden Globes but never squandered the stakes or the suspense of that first episode. At the same time, FX, the channel that once seemed beneath an audition from a jovial ABC star, is now home to a variety of film actors, including Denis Leary ("Rescue Me") and Minnie Driver ("The Riches") -- to say nothing of Mr. Chiklis himself, who effortlessly controls his basic-cable dominion as Mackey. He seems positively jubilant with doughnuts and street-cop work.

In his appearances at awards ceremonies -- he won an Emmy for best actor in the first year of the series -- Mr. Chiklis is amused and amazed that circumstances have conspired to let a performer like him, who once appeared headed for clowning or minor roles, help redefine television acting.

We all like to pour hot grease on our favorite shows, but that line needs unpacking: how is Chicklis "better" or more "defining" than Minnie Driver, say? You could argue that his weaknesses actually help make Mackey more sympathetic, and that HURTS the show sometimes. I admire Chicklis greatly, and would not have expected this performance out of him, but sometimes I catch him acting... Just because a show is great doesn't mean its flaws don't count.

Season 6 of "The Shield," the penultimate one, ended last night. It wasn't a knock-the-wind-out-of-you finale, but "The Shield" knows itself -- its strengths, its limits -- and, beginning with Mackey's shooting of the traitorous cop in the pilot, it has a way with unresolved resolutions.

By the time last night's episode wrapped, the heart of "The Shield" was still pumping steadily and hard, though this viewer's stunned and pleasurable sense of being thrown down, which had begun with the murder of Mackey's buddy Curtis Lemansky (Kenny Johnson) in Season 5, had let up. I was on my feet again, and I had mixed feelings about that.

Why? This episode was 90 minutes, and each commercial break brought a wrenching plot twist. Lem's death was gruesome, but the story has spun out from there, especially by turning Shane into a shadow Mackey, the apprentice-turned-competitor, like a virus set loose on Farmington even as he tries to protect Mackey's family. More description of plot intrigue, less vague generalizations about your own "responses."

When Mackey freaked out trying to find Lem's killer -- torturing to death the wrong guy, hiding while his own name was cleared, imprisoning the guy who framed him, pointing the finger idiotically at a fat cat in jail -- his frenzy turned feral, porcine. With his pink dome and deep-set eyes Mr. Chiklis is a weird, wonderful-looking creature. I like watching him run wild much more than squabble with bureaucracies. But I also know he had to confront Shane Vendrell (Walton Goggins), the friend who killed Lem, in an astoundingly good episode last month, "Chasing Ghosts."

This was an astounding episode: again, unpack, tell us why. The teetering loyalties that got aired there forced the viewer to pick sides: did you believe Shane when he called Vic a hypocrite? Why or why not? Who behaved more in the interest of the strike team?

The various gangs of Los Angeles have distinct ethnicities on "The Shield": Ecuadorean, Armenian, Mexican and so on. But the cops are black and white, known by nicknames like Vic, Lem, Ronnie, Shane and Dutch that don't especially load the ethnic dice. Neither do the leads here have families -- unlike on that other tough-guy show with a finale coming up. Their dads are blanks. And Los Angeles is not filled with their brothers and uncles and cousins, men they're ready to die for.

Here you simply MUST mention Franka Potente (left), who plays Diro Kesakhian, the Armenian crime boss's daughter, who starts dancing with Shane. Also, there is very little TV writing that assumes this much viewer retention. Shane's wife Maura, played by Michele Hicks (right), had only two episodes this season: first to goad Shane's murder confession, and then to goad Vic's wife. But these scenes played off of everything we knew about her and made her seem like a constant presence in Shane's manouvres. Acting! Writing!

HEFFERNAN: Sure, they have children, and wives to cheat on, but mostly their ties are to other cops. Their loyalty to colleagues is grounded in blackmail: their partners know exactly how they make so many arrests, how few warrants they get, how on the take they are and where all the many, many bodies are buried.

Mr. Ryan says he came up with the idea for "The Shield" when he noticed front-page news about the drop in violent crime in Los Angeles, with news about police brutality and corruption buried in the back pages. He wanted to combine those parts of the newspaper in one man. He was also scheduled to deliver a comedy, and he managed to work lightness into his series -- a back-room "that's not what your wife said" style of hazing -- that keeps the series from becoming too dark and manages (when necessary) to express its utter bleakness. It's an impressive trick.

But everyone involved in the series has also become serious about the theme of protection -- of "shielding." If every episode seems to tighten the noose around Mackey, every episode also hands him a victory. He collars criminals of every description, as other officers look so decisively the other way that they by now are guilty of collusion.

Still, fans of the series, which is often -- make that always -- praised for its "moral ambiguity," root for Mackey. One Web commenter on the first season put it simply: "The thing is, Vic hates criminals and he does care about innocent people and crime victims. I feel like he would protect me. In fact, he and Shane, Lem, and Ronnie can protect me any day!!"

If Mackey is clearing the streets, he is also making criminals of the police, including himself. He creates witnesses, aiders and abettors, blackmailers, liars, kidnappers, addicts, prostitutes, bribers, torturers and corpses. And then, having done all that, he insists that he is the only shield from the danger he himself has created. And the scary thing about "The Shield" -- the terrifying thing -- is that you believe him.

OK, it's an impressive trick, all that impressive bleaness. DIckensian, even. But this still skirts the show's major theme: machismo, and whether cops necessarily get sucked down to the perps' level simply because the system prevents them from doing their job otherwise. The macho code is so well-observed here, from the jockeying for Tina through Aceveda's shame, which leads to him teaming back up with Mackey to turn his political career around. These men need each other in ways they can't remotely express, even as they're profoundly shocked that their manly schemes fall apart around them. Dutch can't stand getting caught crying after the meeting with Miracle Joe's nephew, even though his vulnerability wins him a tender kiss. "Give me a serial killer and I'm fine..." he says.