I am addicted to The Shield

[Kevin D]

http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/shield-trophy-rap-payback-208039

 

 

Kavanaugh’s confrontation with Corrine is one of The Shield’s most intense scenes in its most intense season to date. Kavanaugh hits her right away with Vic’s affair with Danny, and then moves on the attack. “I don’t want to see you shed one tear, because tears imply you didn’t know!” he says, telling Corrine that’s she’s always known Vic was corrupt, she let it go by, and now she can be charged as an accomplice. The scene gets broken in two pieces by all the other activity that The Shield encompasses; when we come back, the change in exterior light and Cathy Cahlin Ryan’s ragged performance reveal how much time has passed. (I’ll say it right here: fuck the haters. Ryan went up against Forest Whitaker’s best performance in this scene and she held her own. The way she’s trying not to say things in the second half of the scene is incredible.) Kavanaugh splits between judging, threatening, and sympathy, noting that Vic has left her alone--he has a lawyer and she doesn’t. Kavanaugh pushes and pushes, and finally gets her to reveal that Vic gave her “some cash” a while ago, and his eyes light up (another comic-book moment--there should be some $s in his eyes) and he gives her absolution--“now! Now you can cry!”--Whitaker’s voice is such a parody of sympathy here.

[Kevin D]

http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/shield-postpartum-208740

 

 

 

“Mara’s pregnant again.”

 

Part One: Everything Else

 

It begins right after the end of “Of Mice and Lem” with Kavanaugh in Corrine’s house. He’s unstable now, defeated, and more dangerous because of that (director Stephen Kay uses the low light of dawn to make Kavanaugh look even more confused and lost here), starting by asking for forgiveness (already an incredibly creepy move) and ending by pinning Corrine against the door and grabbing her below the waist. (The Shield doesn’t use the image of a big black man pressing against a small white woman gratuitously, but it doesn’t avoid it either.) Kavanaugh’s talking now about “taking the fight to him,” and that clearly will be outside the bounds of the law. Meanwhile, Lem misses his surrender into custody (good shot of the Strike Team exchanging looks behind Becca) and that brings Kavanaugh back, right into the clubhouse, promising the Team they’ll be under constant surveillance until Lem is caught. Kavanaugh’s gleeful here, but it’s nothing like the beginning of the season; he’s a full predator now.

 

Beginning here, this episode picks up so many characters and events of the preceding season (really, of the whole series) on its relentless way to the end. The weight of the last five seasons, in atmosphere but more importantly in specifics, drives all the characters forward. Events have such urgency here that the great filmmaking on display can be missed on the first four or so viewings: there’s a later image of Kavanaugh in conversation with Aceveda, at the bottom center of the frame, head turned to the side, that makes looks like a portrait of a dictator made by an enemy; there’s a cut from Lem, just off the phone with Becca, at frame left with negative space frame right, to the three other members of the Strike Team, with the composition exactly reversed; there’s a rack focus in the late Team conversation from Shane in the background to Ronnie in the foreground to Vic in the middle; there’s a late-episode shot of the three of them at the meeting spot, their faces lined up on a diagonal. The ambient sound, from the metal in the trailer park to Tina’s cries in the final scene, heightens every step of the drama. Most effectively of all, for most of the episode, the camera moves more than it ever has, especially in scenes with Lem, exactly right for a story where everyone’s come unmoored and everyone swings wildly between options and possibilities.

 

In the midst of all the climbing pressure and events, there’s a moment of grace with Danny and her newborn son, Lee, in the hospital. It’s a nice touch on the part of the Barn to just donate her the money, since Danny isn’t revealing Vic is the father. It’s an even nicer touch in that scene to withhold confirmation of that until the very end. Vic certainly acts like a dad all through it (the range of Chiklis’ performance in this episode is extraordinary, as is Catherine Dent’s calm in this scene), letting his face be dominated by wonder, but they don’t acknowledge it until they both say “when he’s old enough.” It’s a gentle, suspenseful scene, something that could have been on Lost, the life to be paid for with a death.

Emolia comes back, with another tip about Salvadorans and the grenades; it involves a Mexican importer, and the Team can use him to get Lem to Tijuana. (Again, we see this with just an exchange of looks.) Emolia wants to be paid up front for the information; Kavanaugh got rid of her and she wants to leave; she had sex with a contact for this information and then got gang raped. You can see with Vic’s expression that he’s trying so hard not to sympathize with her, that he makes himself not care when he says “if you had done things differently, none of us would have gotten torn up.” When she does take the money, it’s a great touch from Onahoua Rodriguez that there is absolutely no shame in the gesture. She’s a betrayer, but a professional one, and she expects to be treated as such. The information leads to the importer’s office (great shot of the office above the store) and to the raid by the Team on another cache of grenades. The raid, once again, shows The Shield’s skill with chaotic action sequences that spill out in multiple directions, something we’ve been seeing since the first season. It also gives Shane access to a grenade.

Kavanaugh keeps losing resources all through “Postpartum,” moving closer to his last play with Aceveda. In the conversations in the Captain’s office, Kavanaugh, Aceveda, Becca, and Claudette are all placed in distinct, spaced positions in the room; there are no groups of characters and no alliances here, everyone has their own agenda. In the second conversation, Aceveda comes in with a new deal for Lem: longer jail time but no requirement that he turn against the Team. In the first conversation, Kavanaugh pushes for Lem to give up the Strike Team; in the second,

 

Aceveda comes in with the deal--more jail time for Lem, but that’s all, he doesn’t have to give anyone up. Kavanaugh makes a last push with

 

Aceveda--scare Vic, get him to go to Lem, and get him for aiding and abetting. “It won’t be what they deserve. . .it’s time to put the mess that Mackey made behind us.” That’s what appeals to Aceveda, the chance to have the threat of Vic’s past lifted from him. He heads to the parking lot (“Lemansky’s talking”) and plays Vic better than he ever has. What makes it work is that he frames it entirely in his own interest (“and now all this bullshit can blow back on me.”) Vic’s face changes as slightly as it did in “Extraction,” just enough to let us know that what Aceveda said landed.

With Claudette jumped to the Captain’s office, we get the debut of The Shield’s great comedy duo: give it up for Dutch and Billings, ladies and gentlemen! Among other things, they have a perfect personality clash, with Dutch’s earnestness and arrogance continually running into Billings’ apathy (it’s so Billings that he won’t transfer because he doesn’t want to find a new route to work), and Billings’ ability to read Dutch. Jay Karnes and David Marciano are also both great voice-and-facial-expression actors; I love Billings “ohhhhhhhhhh shit” look when Dutch cracks the Mystery of the Vending Machines. Some (almost literally) Arrested Development-style dialogue there, too: “I think this is sort of a gray area.” “No. I think it’s pretty black and white,” which is not only a great exchange, but a neat thematic statement for “Postpartum” (see part two).

 

The Dutch/Billings case-of-the-episode takes them to a hooker and her pimp, Spank (and another scene of a woman attacking a man, Billings this time), leading to more sex in the interrogation room (calling all the way back to “Dragonchasers”) and a lecture from Spank on how to break a woman (“and then I take it away. That makes me God”; Ingmar Bergman and Karl Barth would have phrased it differently, but they would have recognized the idea). Half a lifetime ago, I’d have found what he says (and Yul Spencer’s performance) ridiculous, but by now I’ve seen Spank’s method work too many times (on men and women), and I’ve seen too much extreme behavior to think that. He’s one more example of The Shield’s heightened, theatrical approach to character, and Dutch listens to him almost as raptly as he listened to the Cuddler Rapist. A few scenes later, he tries the method out on Tina, praising her on one beat and then withdrawing the praise in the next. (I can’t have been the only one yelling “Goddammit, Dutch, NO!” in response.) Garces does a neat little bit of facial acting in response to Dutch’s pimpology (no charge); she’s not quite sure what to make of this or how to respond, and it’s not clear what her full response would be, because suddenly everyone’s running out of the Barn. . .

 

The last scene calls back an entire season, to the final scene of season four, and to so much of what happened since, the last link in the chain of consequences that began in the pilot. For the first time since “Ain’t That a Shame,” almost the entire cast gathers in one place, in the darkest possible reversal, all gathered in mourning and horror rather than celebration. All the plots of the season get finished here. Claudette truly becomes the captain, for the first time treating Dutch as her subordinate, not her friend or partner: “your transfer is denied. I need my best detective on this.” Tina, who before had to hide her feelings, breaks down. Michael Chiklis gives Vic a long, silent journey of looking at Lem and plays a fugue of emotion--pain, horror, confusion--across his face. It’s nothing we’ve ever seen before, and Dutch’s “Vic, Vic, you can’t touch anything” is nothing we’ve ever heard before, Dutch’s first moment of compassion towards him. The roving camera catches all the characters, foreground and background. Then Vic and Kavanaugh (“ARE YOU HAPPY NOW. DETECTIVE MACKEY.”) finally lose every mediation of their conflict, emotional, legal, moral, and just attack each other, two animals slamming and grappling and growling in the dirt like something out of Werner Herzog. Even Aceveda is here this time, and there’s a single shot of him that shows him recognizing his part in all of this, Starbuck realizing too late what Ahab was doing. The scene and the season ends with one of The Shield’s reaction shots without a cut: as Vic, Ronnie, and Shane walk off (Chiklis’ walks in a way we’ve never seen before, that’s how good he is) and Vic says “we’re gonna find who did this and we’re gonna kill him,” Shane falls one pace behind, and we end on him alone, realizing what that means.

 

Part Two: EXT -- ABANDONED BODY SHOP -- NIGHT

 

It began with the second episode. In “Our Gang,” minutes after Terry Crowley went into the hospital, Aceveda announced that he was pronounced dead, and Lem punched out a window in hurt. It continued all through the first and second seasons, as Lem continued to be the most reluctant member of the Strike Team (“can’t we just once do what we’re supposed to do, and then stop?”) with episodes that turned on whether or not he would be convinced. In season three, he developed an ulcer, a man who literally did not have the stomach for corruption, throwing up blood like guilt. In “Fire in the Hole,” he dumped almost the entire Money Train stash into a furnace, and everyone knew from that moment on the extent of Lem’s conscience. In the fourth season, as Lem slowly came back to the Team, Shane, who’d found a love and a marriage with Mara, began a family with her, raising Jackson, and it was clear by the middle of the season that there were no limits on what he’d do to protect them. At the beginning of season five, Kavanaugh tried to leverage Lem away from the team; in a single moment, Lem discovered that the man he’d always trusted had shot another cop dead. All through the fifth season, Lem fought to do right by his conscience and his body, still vomiting blood, and by his Team, finally, in “Of Mice and Lem,” accepting the prison term almost as solace. That idea got destroyed and became a death sentence, and he’s on the run for all of “Postpartum.”

 

Until this scene, Lem stays away from all the Team members. He has to flee from the trailer park, because of course he can’t ignore a crying child. (Watch for a wide-angle lens shot as he runs out the door--Kubrick used the same trick in The Shining to disorient us when people are moving.) All his conversations with Becca are on the same theme: the old deal is off the table, you need to turn yourself in, and give up the Team, and of course Lem won’t. (His last conversation with Becca has her in front of the Church of the Upper Room, a reference to where the Apostles gathered after the Ascension.) On the other end, all the scenes with Vic, Shane, and Ronnie show them not turning against Lem but growing more and more uncertain. They’re being helped by Aceveda’s disinformation, but the root of it is both what they’ve seen Lem do, and their understanding of human behavior. In their last scene together before this, so quiet in the weight room, their lines isolated by silences, no one is sure of anything; the possibility is there that Lem’s talking, and they might have to talk him back. Vic says “he’ll go along. He will” and those two extra words, and the hesitating cadence, betray his uncertainty. The repetition, and uncertainty, continues: “Lem trusts us. He trusts us. And I still trust Lem. I do.”

 

Vic’s trying to convince himself more than Shane or Ronnie. They’ll have to go meet him now, and then a final assist from fate, as happens so often in classical tragedy: Kavanaugh has only one assistant (“I’ll take Mackey, you take Gardocki”) and Shane goes untracked, and heads on his own to meet Lem.

 

The story converges, as it had to, to the most elemental form of drama: two men in an empty space. Again, this is a repeated strategy of The Shield, paring the setting down to little or nothing, removing, as in theater, all circumstance and detail except the necessary conflict; here the abandoned body shop, with its curved roof and wide expanse of a nearly empty surface, even looks like a theater’s stage. Kay uses two kinds of shots here: wide shots that emphasize the theatrical architecture and medium shots on the characters. The camera has slowed down here; there’s no more swinging between possibilities, we are coming close to the moment when there will be only one action. The pacing towards that moment never accelerates; it’s the longest and most unbearable scene yet. The Shield’s theatrical expertise in staging is crucial to this scene: Shane and Lem are often not facing each other, so we can see Goggins’ expressiveness, we can see what Shane’s going through but Lem cannot. There’s one moment in particular that’s devastating, Shane right in the middle of the frame, facing forward, facing us, and Lem moving from left to right behind him, the exact staging of a dramatic soliloquy.

 

With the end of The Sopranos back in online attention this week, we’ve been hearing the idea that fiction is about “recognizing and exploring the mysteries of everyday life” (Matt Zoller Seitz in his Slate article). Sometimes life isn’t at all mysterious, though. Sometimes life is a clear and unavoidable choice between two horrible alternatives. Sometimes it’s not about “embrace the mystery”; sometimes the clarity embraces you, looks in your eyes and says Choose now, and that’s what Shane comes to in this scene.

 

Using Michael Mann’s shorthand of expressing scenes and characters in a single verb, this scene is “Shane decides.” I don’t see a single moment when that happens; it feels more like he’s pushing the decision up a hill, initially struggling to accept, and when he reveals Mara’s pregnancy, he crosses the summit and starts heading downward towards the necessary action, pulled there by his love for Mara and Jackson and an unborn child. There is no mystery here. He says to Lem “they’re gonna make you talk, maybe not now, maybe a year from now” (something Ronnie said last episode). The idea comes clear in Shane’s mind: if Lem won’t run, Shane’s family will never be safe. And just like with Terry in the pilot, whatever Shane does must be done now, because Lem can be found or turn himself in at any moment; there’s a held shot on Lem that suggests Lem might not believe Shane, and might take off right then. We can see Shane hold to that idea and lock on to it as he works himself up to what he must do; as the scene progresses, Kay uses more closeups. All the while, Shane keeps trying to present friendliness toward Lem--I think it was Affrosponge88 who noted there’s an incredible moment of acting from Goggins when he says “yeah” to Lem and his front almost breaks. When Shane says “it’s all about family, right?” he’s just about ready to act, and Lem perfectly misunderstands. Earlier that day, Lem said to Becca “you’re asking me to turn against my family.” The irreducible conflict comes clear: Shane is Lem’s family, but Lem is not

Shane’s family.

 

Shane gets Lem to move his car and brings him food, and in one of The Shield’s off-angle shots, where we can see Shane’s eyes closed in pain or fear or just plain not wanting to look at Lem, drops something else in the car with him. (Listen closely and you can hear the sound of Shane pulling the pin.) One step, two, three steps away and the grenade goes off and Curtis Lemansky disappears in the blast.

He’s not dead. Of course, this calls to mind another show and another character who got blown the fuck up and improbably lived for several seconds afterward. Comparing the two shows what Aristotle meant by using “spectacle to create not a sense of the terrible but only of the monstrous.” What happens on the other show is the latter; we see a literally monstrous image, a triumph of CGI and practical effects, and it’s an image that has resonance with the character who was killed, his position in the show, and even the title of the episode. The key thing, though, is that we in the audience see it. The character moves forward and the camera goes right up to him. Only two other people in the show’s universe see it, neither of which are characters; both function as scenery. It’s a display entirely and only for the audience.

 

Here, though, we see Lem’s last seconds of life through Shane’s eyes. The camera approaches as Shane does, Lem’s face at first small and indistinct in the background; the camera focuses as Shane focuses, and we see the horror of Lem’s wrecked body because Shane sees it, with one brief insert of Shane’s face recoiling before the reveal. Lem stays alive long enough for one last act not towards us but towards Shane, a word, a question:

 

“. . .shane?”

 

Shane can no doubt hear the rest of that question: Shane, Shane, why have you forsaken me? Shane yells back the answer “LEM! LEM! I’M SORRY! BUT I HAD TO RIGHT?!” and he starts crying. If Lem’s eardrums are somehow intact, he can still hear him; hearing is the last sense to go. This moment is what the preceding five seasons have been about. This moment is the goal of tragedy, the grand catharsis of pity and terror. We know why Shane did this; more than that, we know why we would do it, we can understand every step that led to this moment: the moving-toward of pity. We can see, as Shane sees, Lem’s destroyed body and see his last breath as he goes still; we recoil as Shane does at the consequences: the moving-away of terror. The moment is terrible, not monstrous, because the destruction of Lem’s body creates the terror in

 

Shane, and it’s our empathy with this man who just killed someone he loved that is the hardest thing to take.

Underlying that goal, that moment, is the assumption of tragedy: our lives matter. They matter before they have political or social or even aesthetic significance. They matter before they explain something or make a point about something. The death of Lem matters because we matter. All these other things--what a story says about America, or about the war on drugs, or about mental disorders, or about the roles of men and women, or about cities--are interesting and they should be talked about. And all those things have a specific time, and that time will pass. The war on drugs will have its time and pass away. America, no matter how much I love and serve her, will have her time and pass away. Our social roles, our aesthetics for moving images, acting, and character, all our judgements of what makes beauty, police forces, the social structure we call cities--all these things have their time and all these things will pass away, and works that focus first on these things will become historical artifacts first, because that is what time does.

 

But as long as we have been human, we have loved each other; as long as we are human, we will love each other. So for long as we are human, to die at the hands of someone you love will be the worst death; to go on living after killing someone you love will be the worst life. As long as we have been human, we have told stories, and I believe we always will; it’s the telling of stories as much as our ability to love that makes us human. So as long as we are human, Shane killing Lem will be the moment the story turns, and from which it can never turn back. That is why The Shield will remain one of our greatest tragedies.

 

 

I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.

Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
 

 

The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.

 

--Dylan Thomas

 

--end of Act Two--

[Grinch]

Rewatching it with the missus. Only noticing now that as early as season 1/2 you see things happening that end up tearing the strike team apart.

 

Great show that managed to have slow character building alongside more fast storylines at the same time to avoid boredom.

[littletedwest]

Think you see it from the last scene of episode 1.

Vics confession scene is one of my favourite tv/ film scenes- "I've done worse"

[Kevin D]

One time. Doing time. For a long, long time.

 

[Kevin D]

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.

 

 

Agreed.

 

Vic arrives 35 seconds earlier absolutely delighted that they pulled of their perfect heist.

 

Then he's at the same stage as the rest of the strike time, namely wondering what happens after you leave the protection of the law?

 

So many other shows would have gone in a different direction but The Shield understood that stealing $3m of Mob money has enormous consequences and the rest of the show plays out from that and killing Terry in the pilot. 

 

Two incredible crimes that they get away with, but brings down the team, anyway.

[lifetime fan]

Agreed on the most addictive.

 

I have other series above it, but was going into work on about 90 minutes sleep when I first started watching it.

[Kevin D]

"How much memory has that thing got"?

Have you any idea what you've done to me?

 

... I've done worse.

[Fowlers God]

I'm starting this again Friday night. I need it back in my life. There's been a hole that is void since I stopped.

[Section_31]

Would love to be a corrupt cop, don't know if I could be arsed though. 

[Kevin D]

Would love to be a corrupt cop, don't know if I could be arsed though.

 

Aye, say what you will about Vic, but the one thing he is not is lazy.

[Kevin D]

Rawling:
[to Antwon] You wanna talk about indiscretions? Secrets from the dark? How about when you were a kid? Thirteen, fourteen, fat, not very popular. Burying your head under the covers to drown out the screams of your sister; your six year old baby sister who your Daddy raped, night after night and you couldn't do anything to stop him, could you? Too much of a coward to stand up to your old man; but not your Mama. She emptied two loads of buckshot into his gut. So. Daddy's dead, little sister's in the psych ward and your Mama,..is doing life in Chino all because you were too much of a coward to come out from under the covers. But, oh boy, are you making up for it now. Oh yeah, you're street tough, you're a gangster, full of cop-killing rage. But you're still too much of a coward to even save your own son.

[Kevin D]

 

http://www.the-solute.com/the-shield-scenic-route-2-ronnie-in-sixty-seconds/

 

 

THE SHIELD, Scenic Route #2: Ronnie in Sixty Seconds

POSTED BY GRANT NEBEL ("WALLFLOWER") ON AUGUST 24, 2017 IN FEATURES | 7 RESPONSES

SPOILERS THROUGH SEASON SIX’S “THE MATH OF THE WRATH”

 

At the end of this episode, we have a quiet, almost intimate moment with Vic and Ronnie in a car, where Vic gives an exposition dump. It’s a static scene, really only there to fill in the Hernan story. Then, so abruptly, as Ronnie says “the guy chose the life,” it turns into something very different: “Page one of Shane’s memoirs wasn’t exactly new information. It’s difficult to prove, fortunately for you.”

 

. . .and Ronnie smiles.

 

No one in all of The Shield, certainly no one on the Strike Team, smiles like he does at that moment. It’s not the cruel smile Vic gets when he has the advantage on someone (like at the end of “Kavanaugh”), it’s not the wild goofiness of Shane in “Two Days of Blood” or the simple joy of Lem in “Ain’t That a Shame.” It’s closer to the smile Aceveda gets whenever someone appeals to his political ambition, but it’s not that either; it’s the smile of a man who’s been recognized, not found out. It’s a smile that’s calm, that’s bemused without being at all superior, the smile of a man who’s wondering “did you really think I didn’t know?”, the smile of a man who, more than anything else, is at peace.

 

Because Ronnie Gardocki is at peace. Because he always knew Vic killed Terry, certainly since the reveal that Terry was working undercover, possibly since he heard that last late gunshot outside of Two-time’s apartment. He always knew, because he would have done it himself, and then he would go home and sleep like a baby. Listen to how Ronnie says “had to be done”; Shane has said the same thing, twice, once as an anguished cry in “Postpartum” and once as an assertion to Vic in “Chasing Ghosts.” Ronnie says it like a weather report–it’s the reality of the situation, nothing more or less.

 

Alone among the Strike Team, Ronnie accepts, and has always accepted; he’s not moved by guilt or self-righteousness, only by the pragmatic necessity of what needs to be done. His next line is so perfectly written and delivered: “I wish you would’ve been straight with me, instead of living a secret every day. . .I could have looked out for you better.” (Chiklis gives a great reaction shot–Vic’s thinking “why the hell didn’t I tell him? Why didn’t I deal with this guy instead of my best but least stable friend?”) Ronnie’s not saying “hey Vic, you can trust me on this,” he’s not saying “Vic, you’ll feel better if you talk it out with me. Let’s go have some General Foods International Coffee™ and share some things.” It’s not about feelings at all, and Ronnie’s not hurt or betrayed that Vic didn’t tell him; Ronnie’s stating a simple, pragmatic truth: they’re in a dangerous business and they’ll be a lot safer if they’re open with each other. It’s one more time when someone says to Vic “admit you’re evil,” and here it’s done by someone who admitted it a long time ago.

 

In this third act of our story, the act of recognition, what’s so interesting here is now we know there will be no act of recognition for Ronnie, because that’s already happened for him, sometime before the story began. He knew he was a dirty cop, and accepted that, and accepted what Lem, Shane, and even Vic didn’t: as a dirty cop, he would do some horrific shit, and there’s no way to make that right. So Ronnie doesn’t try; he would never balk at doing what has to be done the way Lem did, wouldn’t suffer guilt the way Shane would, or try and deny his evil the way Vic does. Two lines from James Ellroy (no surprise here) describes him perfectly: “Carlos used people and made sure they knew the rules. Carlos knew he would pay for his life with eternal damnation.” Ronnie’s concluding line in the scene “what I need to know is when we can finally leave this all in the past, where it belongs” is a scary warning, because now we can see Ronnie will do whatever is necessary to achieve that.

 

One of the most important things in making The Shield such effective drama is the diversity of its moral universe. Watching it against two other more critically praised shows, The Sopranos and The West Wing, makes clear the value of that diversity. For all the insight and elegance of these shows, they are morally simplistic. The morality of every major character in The Sopranos could be called “unenlightened self-interest”; on The West Wing, the dominant morality is selfless public service. However true these values are or aren’t, it quickly gets boring as fuck when just about everyone shares them. (Yes, I’ve been saying “told you so!” during the runs of Studio 60 and The Newsroom. Yes, I’m comfortable with that. I am enlightened.) The Shield has such a range of moralities in its characters, and the characters act plausibly according to their moralities: Vic’s self-righteousness, Shane’s guilt, Lem’s goodness, Kavanaugh’s fanaticism (and its limits), Dutch’s and Aceveda’s ambitions (which are not the same), Claudette’s lawfulness, Mara’s loyalty, Danny’s sense of the code of police. Now we have another one: Ronnie’s pragmatism, and the promise of more conflict–more drama–as this will run into the other moralities. (The complexity and interest of The Shield isn’t so much within the characters, it’s between the characters.)

 

There’s no attempt here, and there never will be any attempt, to explain why Ronnie is like this. In less than one minute, we learn what we need to know about Ronnie, and what we need to know in a drama is how he will act. That’s it. Anything else distracts from the action, and makes the drama less universal. You could imagine how other shows would give us a psychological (Breaking Bad, The Sopranos) or sociological (The Wire) background for how Ronnie acts, but every explanation you give makes Ronnie a less empathetic figure. It might make him more understandable, but that’s not the same thing. The goal of the drama is empathy; we need to know enough to make us feel why we would do what the characters would do. What we see on The Shield is an essential principle of drama, done more rigorously than any other show: no explanations, no justifications, only consequences.

 

About Snell’s performance: it’s about as misguided a criticism as you can make to say, as Brandon Nowalk did, “Jay Karnes and David Marciano act David Rees Snell into the background. . . . Karnes is letting you know Dutch’s reaction to every last thing that happens. It’s a full performance.” Of course that’s how Karnes acts; so much of what makes Dutch such a compelling character is that Karnes reveals things about Dutch that Dutch doesn’t know about himself. If Snell gave the kind of busy, expressive, voluble performance that Karnes does, this scene, and his character, would fail completely, because we’d be thinking “how did we not know about this before?” (Any time you reveal something in a story that already happened, you have to answer that question. It’s even more true for this kind of absolutely linear storytelling, where there’s no flashbacks or playing with time.) Snell plays Ronnie quietly, closed off, giving away so little, because that’s who Ronnie is. He’s someone who could keep this knowledge secret and no one, including the audience, would suspect anything (my reaction to this scene was one second of surprise, and then thinking “of course”), the one who always counsels the most pragmatic approach, the one who, as Kavanaugh said, leaves no traces or vulnerabilities. That’s what makes Ronnie a compelling character, and Snell gives exactly the right performance for that.

 

I’ve made many comparisons to The Shield and the work of Michael Mann, and Ronnie is, hands down, the most Mannly of all this show’s characters. (Snell’s tight, focused performance is very much what you see in a Mann film from actors who are not Al Pacino.) Unlike most of The Shield’s characters, Mann’s characters are highly self-aware, to the point of delivering soliloquies about themselves. (They’re close to Shakespearian characters that way.) Ronnie has the ferocious competency and practicality of Mann’s characters (tiny tiny tiny spoiler: he also wears a suit damn well), he has the most self-awareness of any character on the Team, and, most importantly, he lives that awareness. Unlike Vic and Shane, Ronnie took Jimmy McElwain’s advice: “have no attachments, allow nothing to be in your life that you cannot walk out on in thirty seconds flat if you spot the heat around the corner.”

 

SPOILERS FOR THE REST OF THE SERIES

 

That’s why Ronnie’s fate hurts so damn much. The Shield is about consequence in a way that’s even deeper and more powerful than a morality of good and bad. It’s not that good people are rewarded and bad people are punished, it’s that people earn what happens to them because of what they do. And from this moment forward, Ronnie feels like the guy who’s going to survive, not because it’s right, but because that’s what should happen. Once Vic decides to kill Shane in “Animal Control,” Ronnie is the one who intends to see it through. (Vic’s appeal to call it off by saying “I’m not Shane!” has no effect at all on Ronnie.) After Shane goes on the run, Ronnie wants to start running right then and there. Ronnie’s final fate isn’t a tragedy–as I’ve argued, he’s not brought down by a flaw but by the simple mistake of trusting Vic for twelve more hours than he should have. It may be the most painful fate, though, because he should have made it. It feels like a great violation, like not just morality but causality has been betrayed.

 

Until then, Ronnie will be a major player, and Snell’s ability to give away nothing keeps everyone guessing. A lot of viewers, myself included, wondered if his season-seven line about Vic (“he taught me everything I know”) meant that he would betray Vic as a means of getting away. Another great, necessary Ronnie moment comes at the end of “Parricide” when Corrine confronts Ronnie and Vic: “do either of you feel the slightest guilt over what you’ve done?” Vic’s response (“I don’t think about it”) is so very Vic, and Ronnie’s silent response is very Ronnie. He’s thinking “no, but I shouldn’t bring that up right now.”

[lifetime fan]

Just signed up for a months free trial of amazon prime.

 

I intend to watch it all again in 30 days!

[Fowlers God]

Just signed up for a months free trial of amazon prime.

 

I intend to watch it all again in 30 days!

As soon as I move the first thing I’m doing is watching this again. Only seen it once and it’s the best thing I’ve ever seen.

 

I think I remember you Col saying how jealous you were of me watching it for the first time round. That’s how I feel about it now when I talk to others about it.

[Numero Veinticinco]

I’ve watched it twice through. I probably won’t bother again. I don’t feel like it’s an elite show like a few do on here. I did recently acquire it in 1080p though, so who knows.

[Baresi]

It's still the greatest. 

[Section_31]

So is Brian (Connie the prostitute's kid) Vic's son or what?

[lifetime fan]

No. 

[Section_31]

3 minutes ago, lifetime fan said:

No. 

The 80s called, it wants its drug ads back.

[lifetime fan]

Just don’t see it, even in the early series when she was remotely attractive and offered him it on a plate for free her turned her down. 

 

 

[johnsusername]

Just started series 7. It's such a stressful show to watch. My blood pressure rises as each plate Vic is spinning rotates faster and faster.

 

 

[lifetime fan]

On 20/12/2020 at 17:28, johnsusername said:

Just started series 7. It's such a stressful show to watch. My blood pressure rises as each plate Vic is spinning rotates faster and faster.

 

 

Enjoy mate. It’s just about to get better and better. 

[johnsusername]

8 hours ago, lifetime fan said:

Enjoy mate. It’s just about to get better and better. 

Ha, not my first time mate. Watched it when it was originally on. First time I've rewatched it though. 

 

My favourite show after The Sopranos.

 

[lifetime fan]

1 minute ago, johnsusername said:

Ha, not my first time mate. Watched it when it was originally on. First time I've rewatched it though. 

 

My favourite show after The Sopranos.

 

I’d have The Wire, The West Wing and Sopranos above it. 
 

But it’s easily the most addictive tv I’ve ever watched. I was going to work on 90 minutes sleep the first time I watched it.