The Shield

Dutch turned out to be a stalker on Sons of Anarchy and he was shot to death. The season finale of SOA is tonight if you need something to "balance out" the comedown of The Shield finale.

 

Just watched it this afternoon. I think every finale for a great series is disappointing in some way, simply because the series that has given us great entertainment is over. That being said, I'm glad they didn't take the easy way out and have a huge bloodbath.

Things go on.

And it feels right to think that most of those characters will go on. We just won't get to see them any more.

 

I thought it was fantastic. Vic gets a fate worse than death -- kept from his family, ostracized from everyone he knows, chained to a job that even he can't scam his way out of. The scene with Vic and Shane on the phone and the scene where Ronnie gets arrested were both staggering.

I'm glad they didn't tie everyone's story up with a little bow on it. Finales like that are for sitcoms. This is a show that's never been that obvious or black and white, and it would have been lame if they had spoonfed us neat and tidy endings.

Did anyone else think for a second that they were going to have everyone run off and leave the candle on the cake burning, and the barn was going to burn down?

 

I'd suggest people read the interview with Shawn Ryan on EW.com. There were a lot of interesting touches that people might not have picked up on, the main thing I didn't realize was that in his vision, the entire series spanned a period of just three years. Which explains the "1-year anniversary" thing of Paula Garces character.

 

Am I wrong or was Gardocki the only guy who scored with her?

He can take that wet dream to prison with him.

 

It wasn't Gardocki it was the new strike team leader during the Glenn Close season, Kevin Hiatt.

 

Finally got to see it this morning. Watched with my wife and sister-in-law (who are also fans; wife for the last 2 seasons, sister-in-law, like me from day 1). At the end we were all feeling let down, but after 10 minutes it hit me what a genius ending it was to have Vic lose everything that matters to him and have to go on in a job he hates.

Although there wasn't much shoot 'em up action in the finale, there were many great emotional punches. Shane's murder-suicide, Claudette's admission she's dying, Ronnie's realization that Vic betrayed him, the list can go on.

The series has been driven by its characters more than its action over its lifetime. It was a fitting finale as Vic has lost everything that's important to him - his family, his respect as an officer, his right to get things done on the street. He's chained to a desk job for three years or else he loses his immunity.

You knew after his phone conversation with Vic that Shane was going to go off the deep end, especially after snorting the coke, but you just didn't realize how far until you saw Mara and his son laying in bed, dead.

Ronnie getting screwed over was another step in closing the circle as each member of the strike team got a different form of punishment. Lem, the conscience of the crew, met his fate with a hand grenade; Shane, the dirty student who thought he had learned well from the master, could no longer live with himself and his choices; Ronnie the blind follower got hung out to dry; while ring-leader Vic loses everything that matters to him, is trapped in a dead-end job he hates, but yet is still free to try to make something happen (hence his grabbing his gun and confidently sticking it in the back of his pants).

I thought for sure that Dutch was being set up to get shot at the teen's house. Never once thought the kid would kill his mother and then try to frame Dutch. Very nice twist that I would have liked to have seen resolved, but Claudette's words of "give him enough time and he'll break" sort of indicate the direction that's going. As for the lawyer giving Dutch her card and telling him to call sometime, is just a sign that Dutch might finally be catching a break with the women.


Claudette saying she's dying was tragic, but now you know she might retire sooner than later as she knows that Ronnie's going to jail, that Shane is done, and that Vic's life will be a living hell.

The custody stuff with Danny is sort of resolved as Vic's deal with ICE sort of renders any parental rights he might have null & void, in addition to his own family leaving him.

Plus, like most series, The Shield followed the pattern of the penultimate episode being better than the finale itself.

That was a very interesting interview with Shawn Ryan on the EW website. Gave some nice insight into the series finale. I especially liked his comments about the Vic-Claudette showdown. You knew that was coming, but Vic said more with his expressions than he could with words.

 

How does Vic's deal with ICE render his parental rights null and void with Danny?

 

Spot on, Joe. Couldn't have said it better myself.

But I was surprised at how badly I felt for Shane. I never liked him---or Mara, for that matter---and from the very beginning. He was always a weasel with a chip on his shoulder and, as seen with Lem, had no loyalty whatsoever. And I always respected and liked Vic---unless you were a bad dude to begin with, he wasn't going to fuck with you. My rationalization was that we need some of those cops on the street, I suppose.

I thought the finale was terrific, but I was disappointed in the fact that my impression of Vic is forever tarnished---and because it's the last taste in my mouth, it'll never change. Vic may have lost everything, but he never seemed to acknowledge what he did...he still thought ICE would put him on the streets. Shane, on the other hand, recognized what he had done.

I had to wonder: Mara must have known what Shane had done to the drink, right? She had to know there was an overdosing of painkillers in there. But I was a little struck by how neat their bodies were---as we saw recently with the Jonestown documentaries, death by poisoning usually involves a lot of foaming, swelling and other disfigurements. They looked incredibly peaceful.

The actress who played Billings' attorney---the one that hits on Dutch---is actually the real-life wife of Jay Karnes, who plays Dutch.

Moreover, I was surprised that Shane did indeed commit suicide. In real life Walton Goggins's wife committed suicide in 2004 by jumping off a building. I had thought for a long awhile---since the season began---that Shane might kill himself, but I always doubted whether the writers would write such a plot for Shane, given how unbearably painful it must have been for Goggins to perform that. I know what you'll say---that's why he's an actor---but he had already completed two full seasons of The Shield when his wife died, so it's not as if he should have not auditioned and/or accepted the part.

I hope that they'll make Dutch Capt. of the Barn. It made my skin crawl when I realized that Aceveda, who was complicit in all of Mackey and the Strike Team's evil misdeeds, was the one who made out the best in the end. He got everything he wanted. How terribly slimy Aceveda actually was was perfectly captured during his interview with the TV reporter following the bust.

The scene in which Shane shoots himself while his former comrades rush into the house---only to find his dead body in the bathroom and Jackson and Mara laying in the bedroom---has haunted me since I first saw the episode Wednesday.

The Shield. It goes down as the greatest TV show to be on air in the last 10 years. Including The Sopranos, because we had to spend the first part of Season Six stuck in Tony's dreams as a dude named Kevin Finnerty. At their peaks, The Sopranos was superior to The Shield. But when they were at their lowest, The Shield was far better than when both shows were at their apex. Mad Men could turn out to ultimately be better, but it's only had 26 episodes thus far---we'll see in three to five years whether it maintained the same level of continued high quality as did The Shield.

I'll miss this series.

 

To get the immunity he had to confess to all his sins.
Those are on the record. He can't be charged with crimes for them (unless he goes back on his employment deal with ICE), but they can be used as character testimony in any custody hearing.
If he did try to get partial custody from Danny in court it would come out that his family is in protective custody afraid of him, that he killed a cop, that he was a dirty cop dealing drugs, that he robbed a money laundering ring, and all the other sins he committed as a cop. What judge in his/her right mind would grant partial custody to someone like that?

 

Also, Vic had hardly any lines over the last 15-20 minutes of the show. That's amazing.

 

The scene where Vic walked into the barn near the end and got the cold shoulder/death stare from everybody was chilling. Here is the building where Vic was the man, only to lose it all because of his sins. It was a well done scene.

"You are in my seat." Wonderful line.