Tuned In
Uncategorized

Shield Watch: Come Back, Shane

By James Poniewozik | @poniewozik | November 6, 2008 | +

 

Prashant Gupta / FX
Prashant Gupta / FX

To borrow the terminology of its sitcom The Office, NBC announced today that it is merging the Scranton and Stamford branches. In a massive cost-cutting and head-chopping initiative, the beleaguered NBC Universal, weighed down by a languishing primetime schedule, will restructure in an effort to save as much as $750 million. About 700 people will lose their jobs. Expensive prime-time fiction programming will be cut in favor of cheaper reality and game shows. The news division will be cut deeply, with offices at NBC News, CNBC and MSNBC combined to lower headcount. And MSNBC will begin airing a 24-hour live feed of tropical fish in an aquarium.

(OK, I made that last one up, but there has been speculation that the channel will be slashed and revamped, perhaps with a focus on documentaries, with news shows like Keith Olbermann's and Chris Matthews' moving to CNBC. Plus, it would get better ratings than MSNBC's news is getting.)

What does this mean for your nightly TV viewing? (Assuming you watch much NBC, which, let's face it, statistically speaking you probably don't.) It means get used to Howie Mandel. NBC Universal TV president and CEO Jeff Zucker said that NBC will no longer be airing expensive dramas in the 8 p.m. E.T. hour. Given that it scarcely does to begin with, this is kind of a fancy-pants way of saying, "We're canceling Friday Night Lights." (They haven't yet, but with the show pulling under 7 million viewers, I wouldn't get attached to it.) But the way Zucker said it is significant. "This is going to be a slow evolution," he told the Wall Street Journal, "but there's a reason that two of the five broadcast networks [Fox and the CW] program two hours a night instead of three." 

He may have a point: in the age of TiVo and cable, viewers have so many media options that old-fashioned TV networks may be putting on too much new stuff for it to break through. That said, I'd rather they kept something other than Mandel leering over suitcases of money. But other than football and modest success Heroes, NBC has had one bomb after another this fall--Studio 60, Kidnapped and Lights--and as a subsidiary of GE, the network is in the suitcases-of-money business.

In the WSJ article, the coming cuts were described as a move by "heir apparent" Zucker to bolster his chances of ultimately becoming head of NBC Universal. The irony: during the years that Zucker was actually the programming head of NBC TV, he demonstrated little taste or commercial success, coasting on the network's established hits, creating few new ones and setting the network up to slump after hits like Friends and Frasier went off the air. But hey, if you can't succeed by developing TV shows, then succeed by killing them!

To be fair, while Zucker never showed much aptitude for progamming primetime TV, he has always seemed to have a sharp sense of where TV is heading as a business. All of these changes have been dressed up in the language of an "NBC 2.0" makeover, which Zucker says is about developing its online content and reconceiving the way the network's content is sold and distributed for the 21st century. Which in turn is a fancy-pants way of saying that nobody knows how to make money anymore in the YouTube/iTunes/DVD/DVR era.

But at least NBC is trying to figure it out, which is the sort of thing you're forced to do when you're fourth place in the ratings. I don't know if Zucker has glimpsed the future of TV, but if he has, the small screen may be in the process of getting even smaller.

Not really a Shield Watch per se, but I’ve been writing about the Shield finale for the print TIME, and it got me thinking. Writing about The Shield, I tend to focus on Vic, but I should probably pay more attention to Shane. Not just because the cat-and-mouse between him and Vic is so central to the endgame, but because he is so much a person of Vic’s creation. 

In fact, in a show that—as I’d been writing about—is so much about children and the transgressions that parents justify in their names, Shane is really Vic’s son. So much of what has gone wrong the past few seasons has been because Vic trained him, raised him and taught him wrong. To return to the Sopranos comparison, he’s a little like A.J. if he had decided to follow in Tony’s footsteps, and turned out unsuited for it. 

Vic wants Shane to be his protege; Shane wants to be like Vic. But he can’t measure up, partly because of Vic’s training and partly because of his own limitations. For Vic’s part, while Mackey likes to think he has a moral code, the failings of his morality become clear when Shane tries to imitate it. He takes the Mackey way and makes it a notch more selfish, more hateful, more reckless.

And more stupid: as much as he wants to be the next Mackey—first as Vic’s partner, then as his nemesis—he just doesn’t have the goods. He panics, he acts on emotion, he gets outsmarted, he leaves himself and his family vulnerable. Even now, as he and Mara threaten to get the upper hand on Vic through Corinne, he’s unsteady. Mackey’s life on the edge requires tremendous discipline; Vic hasn’t taught that to Shane, and I’m not sure Shane would be capable of learning.

Even before Shane and Vic fell out, even before Shane killed Lem, the heartbreak of their relationship was that Vic tried to make Shane in his image, but ended up with a malformed, inadequate parody of himself, a warped reflection—Mackey remade as farce, a little too dumb, a little too rudderless. Even with a pregnant wife and a kid, there’s still something adolescent and unformed about Shane (which Walton Goggins captures brilliantly): he’s tried to live Vic’s supposed credos (family, loyalty, duty), but he’s lived them out childishly, desperately, and disastrously. 

If The Shield is a show about a father ruining his family in the name of saving it, Shane might be Mackey’s biggest fatherly failing of all.

Related Topics: Uncategorized

  • Latest on Entertainment

    Matt Stroshane / Disney Parks / Getty Images
    Looking Around June 1, 2012

    Disney's Fantastic Voyage

    The kids are the go-to demographic on the Fantasy, the newest vessel in Disney’s fleet of floating theme parks

    From our Partners

    14 Revelations From A New Tell-All Book On Christian BaleHuffington Post

    Bambi; Photo: Ruth Corney
    Arts June 1, 2012

    Grafitti Artist Bambi Paints Jubilee Tribute to the Queen

    TIME meets the female Banksy bringing royalty to London’s streets

  • hailtodavictors

    Great little post James. More importantly, when is your article for the dead tree edition of TIME being published?

  • jponiewozik

    @hail: Week from tomorrow, unless plans change. Just over a week in advance of the finale. Go blue!

  • Kemper

    Great points, JP. One of my fave lines of the show ever was Shane’s comment to his wife that Ronnie and Vic tried to kill him, and the worst part was that they thought he was too stupid to realize it. The insult seemed to bother him more than the murder attempt. And as usual, when he tried to act on it (kill Vic & Ronnie), he botched the job and made the situation worse.

    Goggins has done a great job with this role for years now. (His agonized screaming apology to Lem after dropping the grenade was almost too painful to watch.) Also, how about some props for David Rees Snell as Ronnie? His confrontation with Vic last week about running while they had the chance was one of my favorite parts of a great episode. I think Ronnie’s going to be the wild card that has a huge impact on however the show ends.

  • guillo28

    Good points, but I respectfully disagree, JP. The first thing that must be noted is that both Vic and Shane are bigots, more so than Ronnie or Lem have ever been. They are closeted Klansmen whose code of conduct is driven by both xenophobia and prejudice and see themselves as protectors of their families and values at the frontlines of where the race wars are battled day by day. Notice specifically at their rejection of Julian ( both because of his race AND sexual orientation ) and how they behave with any racial group that isn’t theirs. And as any klansman, no other afront is worse than betraying one of their own. I think that’s the driving force for the hate between them, Vic for Shane killing one of their own and Shane for Vic’s hypocrisy for not understanding why he had to do it. I agree though that as much credit as Mr. Chiklis gets for his brilliant performance of Mackey,it is Mr. Goggins amazing work who has elevated this season as the Shield’s best ever.

  • shroudshadow

    Actually, Guillo, I disagree in the assessment of Vic as a racist, espcially in using his treatment of Julien as an example.

    The Strike Team (including Shane, who’s own racist make-up is not being argued) has been shown as strictly GUARDED around Julien, which is reasonable considering what they have to guard. But that`s not due to race. After all, Hiatt never made it into the inner circle, either.

    Vic only made use of Julien’s own discomfort with his homosexuality to blackmail him into silence in the first season – he never actually made any remarks himself, and didn’t join in on harassing Julien when he was outed. In fact, he encouraged Julien to stand up to the hazing. Vic applauded Julien going off the grid with him to defend Julien’s old partner, Tommy. Vic has made lots of disparaging comments towards Claudette, but not racial ones. He showed some initial overtures of grooming Tavon, another of Shane`s resentments. He`s happily flirted with Trish from the Decoy Squad. His affection for his original partner and mentor, Joe, is without question.

    Maybe you`re right and Vic is a closeted bigot. But the show doesn`t support that. I would guess Vic`s impression on race is the same as Captain Rawlings: “That’s who’s (the criminals) here – blacks and hispanics.”

  • guillo28

    Thanks shroudshadow for the good points.
    I’m looking forward to tonight’s episode. I think that the beauty of the show is how it holds a society-tinged mirror and we see our own imperfections or fears in the reflection.

blog comments powered by Disqus