I am addicted to The Shield

[Fowlers God]

Just before Craig blows the building up in the opening scene he is one of the blokes in the room making deal

[J-V]

I really need to watch this again.  Such a quality show.

[johnsusername]

Ah, didn't see that. Of course, Vic would have beat the sh*t out of Bond. With a telephone directory.

[littletedwest]

Lot harder to find the shield videos on YouTube than the wire or the sopranos

Loved the scene where vic burns armadillos face on a cooker

[Kevin D]

[littletedwest]

https://youtu.be/iUMedltaieg

[Kevin D]

[Kevin D]

Acevada's wife saying "you sucked?" after he was raped is one of the worst things I have ever heard.

[Kevin D]

Fucking love when the Strike team are after somebody, to eliminate them, and the rest of the barn after them doing their jobs, at the same time.

[Kevin D]

"What power is.." in season 3 is a great episode of TV.

[Kevin D]

Vic being distracted and making a very quick mistake in mentioning the bar "Smog jumpers" that he should not know, Dutch knowing that as well.

 

That's why it a great, great show. Just like, that the smallest mistake.

[Kevin D]

Just watched "Kavanaugh" in season 5.

 

 

You are UNDER ARREST for INTEND to DISTRIBUTE.

 

Whitaker is sensational; it is his masterpiece.

[Section_31]

Just watched "Kavanaugh" in season 5.

 

 

You are UNDER ARREST for INTEND to DISTRIBUTE.

 

Whitaker is sensational; it is his masterpiece.

That's awesome that scene, 'you take his badge, and you take his gun!'

[johnsusername]

I remember feeling sorry for Kavanagh at the end. 

 

Didn't he play that character a couple of times in American Dad??

[Section_31]

I remember feeling sorry for Kavanagh at the end. 

 

Didn't he play that character a couple of times in American Dad??

 

The way they gave him his cumupance was ridiculous though.

 

'Hey look what I found in Mackey's bin, it's a map with the location of a the murder scene with a ring of pen around it. And over here on the fridge there's a piece of paper with a hitman's number on it and 500 bucks'.

[rubble-rouser]

Started watching this on Netflix 2 years ago, then they pulled it. Where is it available now?

[Fowlers God]

I'm getting to the stage where I Miss this in my life. Is it ok to watch it again? Does it have the same impact on your life like it does the first time?

 

It's the best show I've ever seen. Hands down pisses over everything I've seen

[the chimp]

I'm getting to the stage where I Miss this in my life. Is it ok to watch it again? Does it have the same impact on your life like it does the first time?

 

It's the best show I've ever seen. Hands down pisses over everything I've seen

 

Deffo. It's my favourite ever series - the most addictive/watchable certainly. There aren't just a plethora of memorable scenes but episodes. This is the most memorable though in a Shakespearean/bucket way.

 

[Ted]

One of the best ever. I've never seen a show with such relentless pacing.

 

I was worn out by the end.

[Section_31]

35 seconds in, genius.

 

'he wants to know what your mamma's been putting in the corn muffins!'

 

[lifetime fan]

"How much memory has that thing got"?

[Kevin D]

[Kevin D]

The way they gave him his cumupance was ridiculous though.

 

'Hey look what I found in Mackey's bin, it's a map with the location of a the murder scene with a ring of pen around it. And over here on the fridge there's a piece of paper with a hitman's number on it and 500 bucks'.

I thought it was fine, myself.

 

However the plan was to have Kavannaugh for the whole of season 6, but Whittaker got the offer for Last King of Scotland and so they had to compress the story line.

 

He is also boss in that movie, which I reckon is worth mentioning.

[Kevin D]

http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/shield-man-inside-kavanaugh-208301

 

 

A lot of critics and writers have called this The Shield’s best season so far, if not its best overall. That’s true, but what’s often missed in that description is why it’s the best. It’s not like Team Shawn Ryan said “gosh, things have been pretty decent around here, but let’s do a great season now”; it’s that they got to a point in the overall story where the chaos and acceleration of season five could plausibly happen, and in fact had to happen. (On the rewatch, it’s clear that every season is exactly what it needs to be.) There are so many events from previous seasons that have kept going, not just the two major plot landmarks of Terry’s death and the Armenian Money Train, but smaller details along the way: Jackson (Mara and Shane’s child), the return of Antwon Mitchell, the two autistic children of Vic and Corrine, Aceveda’s rape by Juan and having Antwon kill him. Even the detail in “Kavanaugh” of Guardo arming the Salvadorans with grenades comes from Rawling and the Team’s takedown of Bonilla at the end of last season. After 54 episodes of preparation, we’ve arrived at the point where Kavanaugh starts investigating and all of these details from the past can (again) plausibly go off, one after the other, and it’s only accelerating as the season moves on, a nonstop yet exactly-timed shitstorm of ownage and emotional detonations, like some hybrid of The Raid and Magnolia.

 

 

Everyone gets pulled in. Everyone gets desperate or close to it. There’s less and less time to think, only time to act according to your character. Kavanaugh raises the pressure on everyone, including Aceveda in “Man Inside.” Kavanaugh starts suggesting that Aceveda leaked the information that Terry was undercover, and worse for Aceveda, warns him that he’ll start investigating the death of Juan. Kavanaugh continues his campaign of letting people know that he knows, and pressuring them with it, and Aceveda is the perfect target for that. Everything is happening at once, Aceveda goes from discussing reward money with Vic and Reyes (the officer from Olympic heading up a new task force, played by the great character actor Paul Ben-Victor), to seeing Kavanaugh, to seeing Lem, all done with the swinging camera. He goes straight to Lem, and he’s desperate, almost charging into the observation room after him and offering to “broker a deal. . .one year! One year for all the shit you guys have done!” Kavanaugh’s drive has infected Aceveda, but Vic’s self-righteousness has infected the Team, because now it’s Shane who’s saying “this is about keeping our badges.” It’s another chance to admit you’re evil, and it goes by.

 

 

“Kavanaugh” and Kavanaugh are all about being caught between loyalties and identities. Shield style communicates this so well, with the camera shifting focus or panning between all the people Kavanaugh attends to over the course of the day. Kavanaugh is a crusader after a dirty cop, but he’s also a cop himself, and the latter identity forces him to team up with Vic and Emolia to pursue a cache of grenades. He also has to continually make sure Emolia is never alone with Vic, and almost pulls it off until Emolia and Vic get isolated after Lem tosses the grenade. (The sound editing there is perfect--we can hear the urgency but not the words in their voices.) Kavanaugh’s biggest source of identity confusion, though, is between being a cop, being a husband, and being an ex-husband.

 

 

Gina Torres gives another one of The Shield’s great guest performances as Sadie. One of the remarkable aspects of her work here is that she tamps down her incredible physical presence; she makes herself somehow look smaller and less imposing. She also can slide between extreme moods the way disturbed people do without ever making it seem like different personalities. (When she says at the hospital “don’t keep asking, because at some point I’m gonna say yes,” we believe it, and when she’s begging him at the end, we believe it, and we believe it’s her both times.) Dutch finds out she has a history of mental illness, and it turns out that the rape she reported at the beginning didn’t happen, and she injured herself to get Kavanaugh’s attention.

 

 

All the aspects of John Kavanaugh come together in the interrogation room, as Sadie admits what she did and breaks down. All season, as many commenters (medrawt in particular) have noted, Kavanaugh has been getting right into everyone’s personal space and into their lives, and now it’s his turn as Sadie and the camera do the same thing, getting into that space where The Shield lives, where we’re too close to the characters and at an angle that no one you’re not having sex with should ever be. (Only The Passion of Joan of Arc comes close to what this show does.) It’s an utterly horrible scene, the kind where you desperately want to look away but The Shield gives you no other place to look. Both Torres and Whitaker play this scene fully, with their bodies (at one point, they seem to be a second and a half from fucking on the table) and faces, even with their breath. Earlier, when he believed she fought off a rapist, Kavanaugh was her husband, asking her to come home, but now he pulls back to the identity of the ex and the cop, telling her she’ll be charged with filing a false police report. “I’m an Internal Affairs lieutenant, that’s who I am.” (It’s heartless, and if you’ve ever dealt with someone mentally sick, you know it’s necessary.) And all the time, Vic and Lem are watching this (Ronnie clued them into the fact that Kavanaugh still wears the ring last episode)--“at least we found his weak spot.”

 

If I spend a lot of time in these posts recounting plot, that’s because The Shield does plot so well, and plot is the primary component of tragedy; you’d think by now I’d have learned that when you think things can’t get any crazier, they get twice as crazy. Last season, the gun pointed at Lem got loaded, and Kavanaugh chambered and cocked it in “Extraction.” Now he pulls the trigger. (I saw the end of “Trophy” coming, but this one completely surprised me.)

 

All day, he’s been bouncing between Sadie and the Barn, and keeping the two distinct in his mind, but in the interrogation room, he forgets where he is until Sadie’s “everyone sees what I am. Everyone sees me” snaps him back to awareness. He charges out (I love Vic’s “yep, saw you with the crazy, and damn right I’ll use that” smile) and arrests Lem, commandeering everyone in the Barn he can to do it. (The Barn goes as quiet as it did when Antwon got marched in.) Whitaker’s skinniness, his mismatched eyes, and most of all his contained-hysterical voice make him seem truly demonic. On any other show, this is the season finale, the sort of thing NBC would advertise with a DON’T MISS THE SHOCKING LAST MINUTES! commercial. Here, that’s not even close to the end. Here we have one more scene, as Kavanaugh visits Antwon again, ready to give him what he wants, and we still have three episodes to go.

[Kevin D]