FTA-TV The Shield

[Red Black and Blue]

Possible Kill Screen - Sensational episode, Oh my god still riding the roller coaster. Spoiler: never thought in a million years Vic would rat out Ronnie such a shock.

Greatest Shield quote ever: "I've done worse"

 

[likka]

Good setup episode for the finale, in which Vic's immunity will hinge on the successful take down of the Mexican drug cartel and not giving up Ronnie.

Does Vic fall on his sword to help Ronnie run?

Does Shane and Vic have a final showdown and take each other out?

Does Ronnie get wind of Vic throwing him under the bus and decide to blow away both Shane and Vic before running south?

Greatest Shield quote ever: "I've done worse"

The delivery made the line good.

I liked Vic's cold demeanor during his immunity confession, it was almost like all the bullshit justification floating around in his head vanished once he started talking.

 

[ManWithNoName]

Never thought I'd say this, but I can see Ronnie taking out Vic once he finds out.

 

[TheVBomber]

VIC IS A BLOODY RAT. Hope shane kills him.

 

[Juliette]

Or are the writers only making you think he is a rat?

 

[Captain Sensible]

Never thought I'd say this, but I can see Ronnie taking out Vic once he finds out.

Vic has got a plan.

 

[mr_cellotape]

Vic's immunity deal = most contrived, ridiculous plot point on a show already full of them. We're supposed to believe Agent Murray and her bosses are stupid enough to sign off on this? Unless they're doing it knowing that Vic can't live up to the terms of the deal, it's absolutely absurd.

 

[likka]

Vic's immunity deal is no more implausible than many of the ridiculously other over the top plot threads throughout the past 7 seasons... why would they change now?

Applying logical thought to the possible outcomes probably won't help... FWIW I think Vic is playing ICE and has a plan of escape that will unfold during the finale.

Guess we'll know tonight sometime...

 

[Red Black and Blue]

75 min finale can't wait

 

[ManWithNoName]

For the last time ever...

Wednesday night is Shield night.

 

[Mr Sensitive]

like any finale of a show i love, i'm super excited to see how it ends but i'm also sad to see it go forever. It felt the same when I watched the Sopranos, Buffy et al... this one's gonna sting, but I think the worst for me will be when Battlestar Galactica wraps next year... Oh well... Bring on the death and destruction!!

 

[Captain Sensible]

Hurry up already!


This is painful waiting...

 

[ManWithNoName]

Hurry up already!


This is painful waiting...

Try being in my position. I'm capped until midnight.

 

[likka]

Its up...

 

[Leafie]

I just finished watching it? anyone else finished?

Don't want to say anything until someone else does.

 

[TheVBomber]

Spoiler highlight to reveal Cant believe shane killing his whole family.

 

[flight23]

get the feeling im gonna be the envy of a few of you guys, but ive just watched the first three episodes, never seen it before, always knew i would, just needed to clear the backlog of a few other shows, looks like a pretty dam good show


ManWithNoName i saw you talking it up in another thread and figured i'd back your judgement in

cheers boys

 

[Red Black and Blue]

Fitting ending, thought it would be more blood thirsty but really fit into this season well. After 6 seasons of bravado and masochism the final season exposed the frailty and humanity of Vic and Shane.

 

[likka]

Fitting ending, slightly open ended. Vic got his freedom but all he'd done cost him everyone and everything he'd ever cared about.

I guess the gesture with the gun at the end was meant to cast some doubt on whether he would run, stick out his new desk job with ICE, or eat a bullet. Either way by the end I couldn't really care less what happened to him, so if the writers goal was empathy for Vic it failed big time.

Gotta admit that I didn't see the whole Chris Benoit angle playing out with Shane... only thing missing was Shane killing his child with the crippler crossface.

Biggest loser out of the whole end game was Ronnie, who would soon be incarcerated in an Antoine Mitchell controlled establishment for the rest of his life (however long or short that may be).

 

[ManWithNoName]

Great ending. Must say my favourite part of the entire series would have to be Ronnies transformation from pr0n-star-moustache-wearing extra into a fully fleged and developed character who would've quickly become the favourite character of many people.

 

[likka]

Must say my favourite part of the entire series would have to be Ronnies transformation from pr0n-star-moustache-wearing extra into a fully fleged and developed character who would've quickly become the favourite character of many people.

How was Ronnie fully developed? Except for his role in Vic's schemes we knew absolutely nothing about him. He was in a lot of scenes but compared to other characters he barely spoke.

I knew much more about Billings than I did about Ronnie.

 

[ManWithNoName]

How was Ronnie fully developed? Except for his role in Vic's schemes we knew absolutely nothing about him. He was in a lot of scenes but compared to other characters he barely spoke.

I knew much more about Billings than I did about Ronnie.

Well fully developed may have been an overstatement. Doesn't change the fact that Ronnie's immensly cool

 

[Mr Sensitive]

Great ending...

Since the end of Season 5, I've obsessed about how this would all come to an end. I admit that I thought Vic would ultimately do in Shane, but I never really thought Vic would end up dead or behind bars.

He was always too bloody smart to get caught and I always pictured him walking away free, but at the cost of everything and everyone he holds dear. I'm glad the writers chose to go down this route; it makes for a much more tragic and bittersweet ending. He escapes one last time, but he's completely isolated and alone with nothing left for him. Very poetic.

Felt very sorry for ronnie, but you knew he, like everyone else, was going to end up in the shitter so Vic could stay clear.

Thought it was interesting how out of all the characters, only Vic and Aceveda came out intact; the two guys who both try to present themselves as righteous cops but at the end of the day are both willing to make shady deals if it means getting what they want.

Loved the bit at the end where Vic looks at the photograph of Lem. That whole last scene was awesome. Vic seemed on the cusp of breaking down and giving up, but as he reached for the gun, he had that look on his face that says he's going to try and dig himself out, which makes sense for his character.

Great end to a great show.

 

[Red Black and Blue]

Spoilers ahead







Interview with Shawn Ryan about the ending

I understand Shane committing suicide, but did he have to take wife Mara and son Jackson with him?
SHAWN RYAN: To us, it made sense. I mean, it wasn't fun to write. But in terms of the overall arc of the show, it felt like the place it should go.

Where was Vic racing off to at the end?
We've always viewed Vic as a shark. He's someone who, in order to survive, has to move forward. Is he going to search for his kids? Is he going to pursue his own sort of police work on his own time? Is he going to do something postal? I don't know. But I do think the shark swims forward.

Did you want us to think Dutch might have killed Rita (Frances Fisher)? There was that whole cat-strangling after all…
I never felt like Dutch was that far off on the deep end. But we joked about how, in the finale, Dutch would come home and unlock some padlock on a door leading to a basement and there would be a bunch of kids chained to the wall.

Andre Benjamin played a comic book store owner in a 2004 episode, and then turned up again last night as a "candidate" for mayor. Same character?
Yes. In that 2004 episode, he was someone who was upset that prostitutes and drug dealers were occupying the streets that his store was on. He was being very proactive to get them off the street. So our idea was that in the intervening time, he's actually formalized that kind of agenda and turned it into a fringe mayoral candidacy.

What was your thinking behind including him in the finale?
It allowed us to look at a couple of different opinions of the overarching relationship between police and a city. Obviously, Andre's character had a very radical, although in some ways commonsensical, ideology about the relationship between police and, as he would call it, the prison state. The Shield has always been a mixture between open-ended storylines and closed-ended storylines. And, so that story just allowed us to tell a closed-ended story that tied into Aceveda's run for mayor AND Julian and Tina.

Speaking of Julian, why didn't he eventually come out of the closet?
The place that we had gotten him to by the end of the second season, which was that he went through aversion therapy and was embracing his religion and marrying a woman…I had done a lot of research and reading about people who had taken this path, and a lot of times -- most of that time -- these people stay on that path for a number of years. And so in the timeline of our story -- the entire run of The Shield takes place in about three years -- it didn't seem to me that he would reach crisis point. And I didn't want to force a story that didn't feel organic. We did put a nod to it in the finale with the moment where he sees a happy gay couple. I definitely wanted an acknowledgment that that story has not ended for him.

Do you have a favorite moment from the finale?
I really like the final confrontation scene between Claudette and Vic, where she lays those photos out in front of him. I always knew in the back of my mind that I wanted a Claudette-Vic confrontation [in the finale]. I guess what I could not have anticipated when we got there was that Vic doesn't even really say a word in that scene. I always sort of envisioned the two going at each other, but the way this story broke, it was just Claudette talking. The things Michael Chiklis said without saying anything… it was a real acting triumph.

You weren't on the set the week the episode was shot last spring due to the writers strike. Is there anything you would have asked the director to do differently had you been there?
The scene with Shane and Mara, where Mara's in the bed and is having a lot of pain and he's going to help her to the bathroom…It came off a little lighter and more comedic, and I wanted it to be a little more tragic. I ultimately was able to get the effect I wanted, but it just required a little more work in the editing room. What you saw reflects how I wanted it to be. But it's a little bit choppier than I would necessarily would have liked.

Will there be a Shield movie?
Hollywood is obviously a place that revisits ideas or shows, and maybe that will happen with The Shield. Maybe not. But I'd only do it under circumstances in which the quality could remain the same."

 

[ManWithNoName]

They can't really do a Shield movie. All the characters stories are over. Dutch'll go on investigating, Ronnie's in jail, Claudette'll be dead very soon and Vic will be doing his office job with ICE. The only movie you could do really would be Vic as a vigilante coming into conflict with Mayor Acevdea, but it'd be immensely shit.