The show that built FX’s ever-growing reputation as a basic cable powerhouse returns, and I’m psyched.
“The Shield,� for the uninitiated, follows a police department in a particularly high-crime, corrupt area of Los Angeles. It’s an ensemble drama, but the central figure in Michael Chiklis’s Vic Mackey, the bullish leader of a special investigation squad called the Strike Team.
The show’s catch is the Mackey and his team are often as dirty as the criminals they chase (in the now-famous pilot, Mackey shot a team member when he figured out that the man was planted on the team to spy on him).
Such a twist makes the show hard to take at times, and Chiklis’s sweaty, macho posturing isn’t for all tastes. But I find his aggressive performance a perfect fit for the role, and the show in general. Like its main character, “The Shield� may be off-putting at times, but it’s never boring.
“The Shield� hit a high point last season with a season-long guest-starring stint by Glenn Close as the department’s tough but compassionate new captain, who turned out to be the authority figure who could get through to bureaucrat-hating Mackey.
Now she’s gone, leaving the Strike Team with virtually no allies in their department. In her place is another fine film actor, Forest Whitaker, as an internal affairs agent on Mackey’s trail. The whole set-up sounds ripe with dramatic possibilities, and I can’t wait.
I also can’t wait for the return of what is, in my view, one of the best characters on television. No, not Mackey, but the character who has served as his foil throughout most of the show’s run, Detective Holland “Dutch� Wagenbach.
Played by the excellent Jay Karnes in possibly the most underrated performance on television, Dutch is all that Mackey is not.
He’s an intellectual who fancies himself a master profiler, whereas Mackey uses his gun and intimidating physicality to get arrests. Dutch is insecure and craves approval, whereas Mackey doesn’t care whose toes he steps on.
Dutch merely bends the rules that Mackey shatters.
Yet the show never makes Dutch a coward or a nerd. Just as Mackey is more than a corrupt bully, Dutch also has layers and complexities that make him deeply relatable.
Last season was arguably Karnes’s best, featuring a plotline in which he briefly betrayed his partner, the highly principled Claudette Wyms (CCH Pounder, in yet another strong performance) so that he could have access to high profile cases. But he instantly felt bad about it, and set about repairing the damage he’d done to their friendship.
He also further damaged his already tense relationship with Mackey, by dating his nemesis’s ex-wife.
Yet, by the end of last season, Dutch emerged as somewhat heroic, turning down the captain’s position after Close’s character was forced out, because he knew that his superiors were merely looking for a Yes-man they could push around.
And he gets all the show’s best lines. My favorite was in season three when, while on the phone with a diplomat in Greece, Dutch snapped “If I sound superior to you, that’s only because I am American and you are Greek!�
Ok, so it doesn’t read funny. But Karnes’s dry delivery made it sing. Let’s hope this season gives him lots more rich material to dig into.
I have high expectations for season five of this fine show. The writing and acting on “The Shield� get better with each season, and last season was tough to beat. But creator Shawn Ryan and his team keeping topping themselves.
Let’s hope they do it again.