The Shield Finale

I only watched a couple seasons of The Shield and tonight's finale.

What a great finale! Perfection. Intense. Great episode.

CCH Pounder as Claudette is the heart of the show - she (and others like her) are the real Shield. She stayed strong and principled and steadfast. She didn't give up and she knew when to play her cards. I'm sorry the character will lose her struggle with cancer.

Why is she The Shield? - she protects all of us regular folks from people like Vic. Not just in the police force, but in life. We're all a Shield for the ourselves and we have to have integrity and honesty and courage to keep living in the world we want to live in.

Dutch was a good cop as well. I liked him. But, he sure seemed to get himself into scrapes a lot.

It was sad to see the end of Shane. He never could beat Vic. Sad. The scene when he took his wife to the bathroom - kind of amazing.

One of the central questions of the show has been whether Vic Mackey was a good guy forced to do bad things, or a bad guy who uses the law to hide his bad deeds.

The final moments tell me he was always a bad guy fooling himself into thinking he's a good guy. My recollection is that the ICE lady told him if he took his gun out of the building, he would be violating his immunity agreement and could be prosecuted. I think he decided he was willing to take the chance because he trusts his abilities on the streets, but he doesn't trust being able to get along in the office. He couldn't resist the allure of the streets and was willing to lose all his immunity so he could continue wheeling and dealing.
I wonder if it kind of means that his personality trait of needing to be in on the chase and the deception, etc is neither negative nor positive, but that he ends up using his personality trait for selfish motives so that makes him a bad guy.

Its not ACTIONS that define whether a person is good or bad, but their motives.
Maybe?
And yet, there are certainly ACTIONS that are bad irrespective of motives. Genocide? Murder?

I guess that's part of our struggle as humans. There may be times when doing a bad thing is done for the right reason, but we need to find new ways to achieve our positive goals. Otherwise, we're just as bad as the people who have negative goals.

Anyway - the show was great.

I didn't wastch The Shield for the first couple seasons because it must have been on at a time when something else was on. I started watching when Glenn Close came on. I feel like it might have been earlier, but I don't remember any storylines - they were too complicated and I didn't always know what the details of things were. It was after Aceveda was out as Captain - he was struggling with the rape after effects. And there was Antwone, and then the guy who was trying to get Vic Mackey - man that played out well too. And all the confidential informants and the Russians coming to town. Vic shooting Lem. Yeah - good stories. And it all started when Vic shot the fellow cop and the Team helped him cover it up.

In any event, it was thrilling and intense. When Shane shot Lem - crazy stuff. And then the next little bit of episodes that split Shane and Vic - seriously dramatic.

I didn't watch this season because 1) the previous batch of episodes got kind of twisty and turny and I was't entirely sure what Vic was up to, and 2) with the election and all other drama in real life, I couldn't handle more drama on television.

But, I'm glad I watched the finale. It was perfect for me.

Again, I really think Claudette was the heart of the show. She is the real Shield. That scene when she read Shane's note for Vic and then showed Ronnie that Vic had only gotten immunity for himself. Wow - that was seriously intense. I loved it!

Okay - enough gushing. Again, this was perfect for me because I understood everything that happened and I knew and remembered enough from the previous shows that it was still emotional.

Matt Roush of TV Guide talks about the show...
http://www.tvguide.com/Roush/Roush-Shield-Finale-1000246.aspx

and Maureen Ryan talks about it at the Chicago Tribune:
http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_tv/2008/11/shield-finale.html#more

Comments after reading the reviews...

I wasn't one of the people who wanted Vic to win or was charmed by him. I just thought I was on a ride and I was watching it all happen - what could possibly happen next? It was a great story.

I missed the next to last episode, but I think I'd like to watch Vic start listing off all his crimes. I might have missed an important scene when I missed that.

I guess it doesn't matter whether Vic left the cubicle job, or stayed with the cubicle job. He lost everything. It really was a good way to end things. He's screwed no matter what. But, his personality is such that I don't think he could buckle down for three years. He could have made the right choice any number of times during the 7 seasons and he never did. He doesn't believe in the boring, easy way. That's why I think - whether it matters or not - he didn't stay in the cubicle.