TCA: ‘The Shield’ begins its swan song
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Get ready for the final act of ‘The Shield,’ which begins on FX Sept. 2.
Clips of the FX signature series’ finale, shown to TV critics Tuesday at the Beverly Hilton, hint that the corrupt but committed Det. Vic Mackey, played by Michael Chiklis, will get his comeuppance. But what exactly will that be? Will he die? Go to jail? Or fade to black as he is eating onion rings?
‘This the greatest finale ... you will ever see! Anywhere!’ actress CCH Pounder belted enthusiastically during a press conference. ‘It blew my socks off.... This finale is what Vic Mackey deserves!’ (Pounder was nominated for an Emmy in 2005 for her portrayal of Det. Claudette Wyms.)
Fellow cast member David Marciano quickly disagreed with Pounder about Mackey’s fate, without elaborating: ‘I can’t concur with my costar. We do invest all this time and energy and you want it to culminate into something that you’ve gotten something out of it. With ‘The Sporanos,’ there were mixed reviews. There will be no mixed review!’
The man who has played Mackey and won an Emmy for it commented cautiously via satellite from the East Coast about whether Mackey’s tale gets a just ending: ‘That’s in the eye of the beholder.’
‘This is tricky because I don’t want to blow anything for people,’ Chiklis added. ‘I will concur with David that I think [creator Shawn Ryan] did a tremendous job in writing this finale. ‘The Shield,’ as a whole, it’s the longest movie ever made. I look at it as one long movie with a beginning, middle and an end.... The writers have been able to do something that I marvel at: When you watch them, they’re so surprising and stunning, but then you look back at it, and it makes perfect sense. What thrills me about the finale is that you will not see this coming. You will not know what we do, but you will go, ‘Holy cow, that makes sense.’’
Reluctant to make big pronouncements about the ending of the series that put FX on the must-see map, Ryan said it ‘feels very much like a graduation but it feels like a graduation where you did well in school.’
-- Maria Elena Fernandez