Tony Soprano escaped judgment with a blank screen, and now it’s Vic Mackey’s turn. The Shield's creator, Shawn Ryan, has kept mum on whether or not his devil will get his due, but he has promised (if not on a bible than at least on one of those huge telephone books Vic was constantly pummelling his suspects with) that his ugly baby will not to go out with a David Chase-style subtly artistic borefest. Like the previous seven seasons of The Shield, expect Tuesday’s finale to be as harried and grisly as its theme song’s anguished scream that announced every week that something seriously messed up was again happening in Farmington.
While he may or may not rest in peace after Tuesday’s expected bloodletting, with the end of The Shield’s run, America’s favorite corrupt cop Michael Chiklis’ Vic Mackey will hopefully finally get some sort of rest. “Al Capone with a badge” he may be, but you can’t fault him for his work ethic. The Shield’s pilot episode showed Vic and his down and extremely dirty strike team having a peaceful family barbecue out by the pool. Thirty minutes later he was executing one of his brood and there hasn’t been another moment of peace for the self-appointed benevolent dictator ever since.
Vic Mackey would have been working 60 hours a week had he done his job cleanly, but with all of his corruption, supporting his boatload of autistic and seemingly autistic kids (and that includes the armed buffoons on his strike team) Vic’s job has been a serious 24-7 proposition.
As Richard Nixon found out, it’s the cover-up that keeps you running, and Vic has spent seven seasons dangerously juggling more misdeeds than the world’s most talented chainsaw juggler. Shane needs an alibi, Lem needs to get out of the country, someone has to put feces in Dutch’s drawer, guns have to be planted, evidence needs to be destroyed, fellow cops need to be misled, someone has to be blackmailed, revolving captains have to be diverted from the ugly truth, gangs wars need to be started, and more and more money has to be raised to pay for endless expenses both legal and extralegal – Vic has been seriously busy.
When all of this began, Vic was arguably an effective, much-needed antidote to an urban wasteland under siege, but as time has gone by not even he would argue that he’s been more of a plus than a minus at this point. Face it, what Farmington really needs is a small non-radioactive nuclear bomb to go off so that future generations of settlers can start over.
.jpg?t=20120527181101)
Article comments