TV is the New Reading

‘The Shield’ sixth season premiere an adrenaline rush

It’s hard to quantify just how incredibly blown away I was by Tuesday night’s sixth-season premiere of “The Shield” – either the fact of the new season itself or the fact that it seems like show creator Shawn Ryan is reportedly getting two more seasons to wrap everything up.

The fifth-season finale found the edgy, Machiavellian, testosterone-soaked sex and violence-ridden lives of the LAPD’s Farmington Division’s Strike Team – led by Michael Chiklis as Det. Vic Mackey – rocked by the death of one of the team members.

Not to give too much away, but Forest Whitaker as the increasingly angry internal affairs investigator Lt. Jon Kavanaugh recovers fast enough to suspect someone in the Strike Team of foul play – a suspicion that deeply offends Mackey and most of his fellow officers.

Quality writing

The return of Oscar-winner Whitaker to this basic-cable storyline underscores the exceptionally capable writing and storytelling of this project.

In five seasons, the outrageous antics of the Strike Team have been offset by results. The cops are solidly committed to making their corner of the world a better place to live in, but they’re outraged by the public’s unwillingness to actually pay them and the lack of city government support. So they find ways to make corruption work that largely seems acceptable – or at least relatively easy to rationalize.

This approach has put them on a slippery slope, and it’s been incredible to watch them negotiating it for five seasons.

Over the years, they’ve faced down repeated internal affairs investigations into some of the “rationalizations” they’ve had to make, including repurposed drugs, missing payouts and oh yeah – the cold-blooded execution of an Internal Affairs mole in their Strike Team operation.

And between eruptions of rationalized thuggery, they’ve protected the oppressed and been mostly good, mostly respectable and certainly effective cops.

New season

One potentially exciting change heading into this season was the elevation of Det. Claudette Wyms to chief. Wyms, played by CCH Pounder, is an ethically stable leader for “the Barn” – the affectionate name for the station. She’s an outstanding cop who just happens to have all sorts of firsthand insight into how Vic conducts his investigations.

So, as the wheels of justice continue to grind concerning the largely discredited Kavanaugh’s ongoing efforts to get anyone to listen to him about Vic being incredibly naughty, Wyms might just hear more and more that seems to make a weird sort of sense.

After all, Vic’s deftly capable smoke-and-mirrors misdirection was largely the reason behind Kavanaugh’s fall from grace in the first place.

And there’s never been any reason to like her predecessor, interim chief Steve Billings, who is a bungling fool. Except for the fact that he is such a bungling fool. He spent a year at the helm and in that time exposed the Barn to some fairly significant harassment proceedings, as well as an ankle-deep flood of sewage. And along with his preening lack of self-awareness, he makes it all but impossible to ignore the fact that he is completely ineffective both as a cop and as a administrator.

If ever there was a character with spinoff potential ...

... well, he is “only 53 months away from retirement.” Oy.

But more than the often quirky, often itchy but never, ever boring characters, it’s just so good to have them back. Season Five closed last March. Season Six opened this week. A full year is far too long to wait for this show’s return, but it was so worth it.

Features Editor Terry J. Aman compiles the Best Bets for The Minot Daily News.

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