The Shield Finale

I've had a week to digest the finale of The Shield and to read some critics's take on it.  I agree with some, disagree with others.  I suppose a halmark of great televsion is that it is provocative.  I know some people can't watch The Shield, they find the characters distasteful.  I think that's what makes them so enticing (and it doesn't hurt that the acting is excellent...Michael Chiklis deserves something).   I couldn't stand Forest Whitaker's Kavanaugh, but he was an excellent character.  How many shows today make you really hate their characters?  

I've talked about the comparison between Vic Mackey and Tony Soprano.  I think that the title of Most Evil goes to Vic.  There's just no way Tony could ever top what Vic did to Ronnie.  But, having said that, Vic used Ronnie just like he's used everyone else.  The one good thing you could say about Vic is that when it came down to a choice between making imaginary charges against his wife go away and Ronnie's immunity, he chose his family.  Not really sure that makes it any better, Ronnie's going to jail for the rest of his life.  

A couple of things I took away from the finale of The Shield.  There's that whole scene where Vic finally rips the camera off the wall in the interrogation room.  No more of this subtle unplugging it every time he's going to beat a confession out of someone.  And when he's looking into it, is he looking at Claudette?  Or everyone out there interested in keeping Vic from his own devices?  I see that image of Vic staring out of the monitor and just think how much he must hate a witness he can't convince to change their story.

I also can't help but think that, at the end of The Shield, how it began.  It didn't start with Vic bursting onto the scene as the corrupt and brutal strike team leader.  No.  That's where his confession starts, with the death of Terry Krowley, but that can't be the start of his descent.  By the end of the series the writers have given Vic reasons for doing what he does: autistic kids, keeping clear of the impending Krowley investigations, settling up with the Armenians, etc, etc.  But those things weren't around at the beginning.  He's far to complicated to just be evil (not that we don't get a glimpse of that from time to time).

Then there's Vic's punishment: cubicle hell.  Fitting to a degree, but did we ever really get the feeling that Vic is in love with the streets?  He found bad guys, made them pay, literally sometimes.  But I think it's more his love for the art of the deal.  Vic was always at his finest brokering a way out of a situation he had jumped into in both feet.  Not with a gun (although sometimes it was helpful) but with threats and promises.  Of course, threats get you nowhere without backing them up, and certainly Vic had a body count.  But, for Vic, death was almost always a byproduct of a bad deal.  

At the very end, Vic takes his gun out of a strongbox, puts it in the back of his pants, and smirks that little I'm not finished smirk and walks out.  Of course he has a plan.  If we've learned any one thing from the last five years, Vic always had a plan.  But what could that plan be?