Prashant Gupta / FX
Spoilers for the series finale of The Shield coming up after the jump:
Oh, Jackson. Oh, poor Jackson. I know we’re supposed to be talking about what happened to Vic Mackey right now. We’ll get to it.
But first, Jackson. As The Shield wound down in its last few episodes, I found that the character whose welfare I mainly cared about was Jackson. It was obvious things weren’t going to end well for Shane, one way or another. He was too tangled in his web and too dumb and desperate to get out. I pitied him, but I wouldn’t mourn him. Mara made her own bed; Ronnie, in his way, too, as badly as he was screwed over. Vic would—well, whatever happened to Vic would happen to Vic, and in some way it would probably still be insufficient punishment.
But Jackson didn’t ask to be born into his family. He didn’t ask to have his future gambled on Shane’s hotheaded schemes. And The Shield, brilliant, unsparing show that it is, focused you on this fact, made you stare without looking away at how vulnerable Shane’s family was left—playing house in that abandoned mansion with danger outside every giant window. As Shane and family went on the run, it made me anxious, and angry. You are supposed to take care of your kid. This was the irony of Shane’s situation, and the perversion of all of Vic’s lessons. That’s what this was all supposed to be for, right? The families?
Jackson deserved to make it. He didn’t, because in The Shield people who deserve to make it don’t always. And that tableau—him laid out on the bed with the toy truck in his hand, pregnant Mara with her flowers—has stuck in my head ever since I screened the finale a few weeks ago, like no fictional image has since I read The Road two years ago.
Speaking of that conclusion: when did you realize that Shane was planning a murder-suicide? I have to confess I was totally blindsided, though if nothing else Shane’s giving the wad of cash and the suggestion to “have yourself some fun”—life advice from Shane Vendrell!—to the clerk should have been a tipoff. Which in retrospect makes Shane’s behavior in the rest of the episode—easing his family into the home he knew they couldn’t stay in, calling the family meeting, walking Mara to take a piss, talking to Mara about their daughter’s name without cracking—especially poignant, and Walton Goggins’ performance absolutely wrenching. Seeing him unpack his bodega bag, hold the truck in his hands, listen to Mara read to Jackson, steel himself and call, “Family meeting”—even more devastating on second viewing.
On top of that: when do you think Shane knew that he was going to take that step? On the surface, you’d think it was when he talked to Vic and saw he was out of options. (“Whatever happens to me and Mara, at least we’ll be together for it.”) But watching the finale a second time, I wonder if he didn’t realize, much earlier, that this was his ultimate plan B. You can see it in the determined concentration on his face when he talks to Mara about “Franny Abby.” You can hear it in his certainty when she asks him what will happen to Jackson “when they catch us,” and he says, “Nothing. Because they’re not.”
Or did the call with Vic, with Mackey taunting him about visiting his kids and poisoning them against him, push Shane to the decision? Either way, it’s telling that for “family man” Mackey Shane’s own family—”Jackson and this other kid”—is nothing more than a vehicle through which to get at his old partner. (And yet, after that supreme jerk move, Vic seems genuinely anguished to hear about Shane and his family’s deaths.)
As a cop, I’m sure Shane knows a thing or two about prisons and foster care. I could talk about his final act as a failure and cowardice, but Goggins and Ryan are too good to let him be only despicable and cowardly. And dramatically, this ending—horrible as it was to watch—was far better than a shootout with Vic. What we needed to see each man confront was not the other, but the repercussions of what they wrought on themselves and those around them. Trapped and unable to surrender, Shane was more controlled and lucid in his final moments than he ever was on the street.
We made each other into something worse than our individual selves. Shane’s last words bring us back to Vic. Did he deserve worse than he got? Was his punishment fitting? I don’t know. Shawn Ryan is not God. A show shouldn’t be judged on whether its end comports with justice in a moral universe. It should be judged on how the characters respond to whatever end fate serves up to them.
Mackey’s state, at the end, seems just right. He hasn’t died, he’s gone to paper-pushing Purgatory. No gunshot, no screams, just the hellish hum of fluorescent lights. He has to live and know that his family is somewhere that he can never see them. He is diminished, shackled, sullen.
And yet—and it wouldn’t be believable otherwise—he has not entirely given up. At the end of that chilling last scene, we see something that we’ve seen in Michael Chiklis when Mackey’s been backed into a hundred other corners. The eyes. Darting, fidgeting, snake-like. Red-rimmed now, but still looking for an out. Looking for the slightest fissure he can jam a stick into and wedge open. One lowlife he can beat information out of and get the address he needs. I’m not saying there is an out this time, but he would not be Vic if he didn’t believe it was there, if he stopped looking for it.
I’ll ask you, anyway, because fans will debate it anyway: did Vic get what he deserved? Even at the end, it’s never simple with Vic. He’s criminal and irredeemable, and we were forced to face it again with his immunity confession. And yet—why does he feel compelled to finish the Beltran bust when he already has his immunity? Is it on principle? Is it for the last chance to feel like a cop? Does he think he’ll gain some leverage toward a last family visit? A guy only looking out for himself would have let it become someone else’s problem. And yet, again—the pain on his face when Ronnie says he’s going to finish the job too doesn’t make Vic any less guilty.
So much else in this finale, but I’m just going to hit it quickly:
* You want injustice, forget about Vic. How about Claudette, whose reward after fighting the good fight for seven seasons is a terminal diagnosis? How about her tremendous, un-self-pitying dignity in deciding to show up for work every day, until she doesn’t? How about her balls of steel facing down Vic one last time: “This is my seat. That’s yours.” How about a supporting Emmy for C.C.H. Pounder?
* In retrospect, I’m surprised they haven’t used X’s Los Angeles on this show before. (They haven’t, have they?)
* Besides the resolution of the murder case, it was nice to see Dutch end on some kind of rapprochement with Steve. (Who—God love him—caps off his penny-ante legal triumph by checking out his lawyer’s ass.) Who’s up for a buddy-cop sequel?
* “The whole thing’s just so shitty.” Just as Ronnie got screwed over in the end—to the point of going to jail when Shane’s death would have freed him had Vic not talked—he was often short-shrifted as a character, fading in the background behind Vic, Shane (and even Lem). But right there, he captured the spirit of this last episode perfectly.
* Having sent off The Wire earlier this year, it was good to see Clark Johnson situating Corinne and the kids in witness protection.
* The one issue I had with the finale was the Andre Benjamin, New Paradigm party subplot. Not that it was bad; like Benjamin’s earlier appearances, it would have fit perfectly in an episode in the series’ regular run. In a finale, it seemed too portentious, prompting you to scan it for messages about the Bigger Picture of the relationship between the cops and the community. But it’s to The Shield’s credit that it didn’t deliver any soapbox missive: Benjamin’s preaching was half-indictment, half paranoid rant. But only half paranoid, as his murder showed. Like so much in the welter of The Shield, it was too inchoate to draw an easy lesson from. Finally his preaching said less in itself than his ability to connect with his audience—disrupting Aceveda’s town meeting at the church—said about the perhaps insurmountable trust between the community and authority.
* I saw this and the previous episode at one sitting, and in a way they played like one giant finale. Taken together, I still think The Shield’s conclusion was one of the best for any drama ever, I can’t decide though, if that episode or this was better—not that it really matters. Penultimate episodes are sometimes better than finales, which have to touch so many final bases. That said, this one touched them as well as anyone could expect.
* Even at the bitter end, even revealed as a complete heel, Mackey is still funny. “You want him to live, you’d better start sucking face.”
There’s more to say; maybe I’ll say it eventually or maybe you will. I’ll leave you with one question after this astonishing finale, besides whether Vic got what he deserved. Namely: What is the shield? Not the title or the show, but the concept. You could always read the title multiple ways. A shield can be a badge. It can be an excuse. It can be protection. What, after seven years, is the shield? Who holds it now? And who does it manage to protect?