Special Review: The Shield "Family Meeting"

Family Meeting
Original Airdate: November 23, 2008
Writer: Shawn Ryan
Director: Clark Johnson

Last month FX closed the book on its flagship program The Shield. For six years, seven seasons or 88 episodes, The Shield told an epic tragedy of a team of dirty cops fighting and committing crime in an area of LA overpopulated by gangs and drug dealers and how their extracurricular activities lead their downfall. While many series’ final episodes tend to be disappointing, if a viewer sticks around that long in some cases, The Shield was riveting to the very end.

The finale was a brutal realization of the tragedies that have been building since the first episode. Fans have wondered whether Vic would get killed, go to prison or eat a bullet in the final chapter for his crimes. Instead, Shawn Ryan plotted something cleverer. Mackey, having confessed all of his sins, got a full immunity deal from the feds. However, it turns out the job he agreed to serve for immunity is a metaphorical hell, a desk job where you label your lunches and have to deal with an army of Bill Lumberghs (Mackey would rather take his chances with the worst of LA’s gangs no doubt) and will never do field work in his tenure. Also, his wife agreed to turn state’s witness and is now under witness protection (finale director Clark Johnson cameos as the agent showing her and her kids the new digs), leaving all traces of his life destroyed.

This is brought home in that amazing final scene. In the dialogue free last five minutes, Mackey dwells in his office surrounded by fluorescent light (killed every night at 6 unless he calls up and tells them he’s working late) and pictures of his children and Lem, the Strike Team member who never betrayed or was betrayed by Mackey. His glory days of breaking down doors are over and the closest he’ll get to that again is seeing patrol cars from many stories up. He is free from prosecution, but he has lost everything that made him fight to stay free. Absolutely brilliant.

Speaking of brilliant, Walton Goggins, along with Chiklis and CCH Pounder, needs to be nominated for an Emmy for his work (should be a great race between him and the Michael Emerson/Terry O’Quinn dream team on Lost). He’s always been good, but ever since Lem’s murder at the end of season five he’s been a revelation. His story in these final episodes, on the run with his pregnant wife and child, has been increasingly heartbreaking. Their hiding took increasingly heavy tolls, between losing their cash and Mara killing a woman, thereby assuring her a place in jail and Jackson a spot in foster care if they get caught. The moment where Shane helps Mara use the toilet (she had broken her collar bone in a fight) while Jackson, oblivious to the tragedy unfolding, plays in the tub, was sad, but didn’t compare to when Shane learned his last piece of leverage, the confessional of all of the Strike Team’s dirty deeds, was negated by Vic’s deal. With nothing left, Shane’s story was on a collision course with horrifying tragedy.

Shane’s “family meeting” (where the episode title comes from) is chilling from the moment he says those fateful words. Killing his wife and son to keep them from facing the consequences for his actions and doing himself in before he can finish the suicide note was a shocking moment. It The Shield has never shied away from dark territory, but this was unbelievable, yet so true to the show’s world and those characters. When we saw Mara and Jackson lying peacefully across the hall from where Shane shot himself, there were no words necessary, mostly because my jaw was on the floor.

Shane’s death, while motivated by it, negates the importance of Vic’s immunity deal. However, it makes the tragedy all the more potent, especially with the arrest of Ronnie, the last Strike Team member standing. Ronnie, while a favorite among my friends who watched the show, was until Lem’s death the Zeppo of the Strike Team, acting more to serve the story than to develop his own character. This element makes him the perfect candidate to take the fall for everything the Strike Team did in those three years. Not to mention Ronnie’s arrest shows a true compromise in one of Vic’s chief tenants: loyalty to his team.

On other fronts, Claudette’s facing mortality as she's no longer getting treatment for her lupus, choosing to come to work every day “until [she doesn’t]”. Claudette has always stood as the conscience of the Barn, one of the few characters whose character was unquestionably good. With the Strike Team gone, there’s no need for that counter, although they don’t go the obvious route and kill her off in this episode.

In a final season filled with guest stars popping up for one more appearance, Outkast rapper Andre Benjamin returned as Robert Huggins, former store owner vigilante turned mayoral candidate running on the promise of a “new paradigm”. He is an open challenger to David Aceveda, although how much of a chance he stood is presumed small. His assassination at the end of the episode could be taken as a blow to the hope Farmington has towards some kind of peace, but Tina, who arrests him at one of his illegal rallies, shows her support as his heart stops.

As the Strike Team is expelled from the Barn and Claudette stands before mortality, there are the rookies filling in their place, with Danny and Julien serving as teachers. Several stories also don't get closure that's expected. Dutch's season long crusade to corner burgeoning serial killer Lloyd, brought back thanks to his “missing” mother, isn't resolved. Her body isn’t even found. That the viewer knows well that Lloyd killed her is enough in this case. Julien's latent homosexuality, which has been long dormant, is revisited as he sees a happy gay couple enter a restaurant: enjoying the life his beliefs won't allow him to, but it isn't given more screen time than that. While this open ended resolution might’ve been frustrating, it’s played well enough to leave us to our own conclusions as to their futures.

Some viewers are theorizing that Dutch, in a desperate attempt to nail Lloyd, killed Rita and framed him. There are also people who suspect Aceveda put the hit on Huggins. I doubt either scenario. It’s not unusual for Dutch to get engrossed in a case, but to kill someone is going too far. For the latter, I don’t see what Aceveda has to gain by killing Huggins. If this were real, Huggins would likely be a Ralph Nader-esque third party candidate with no real threat. Really Huggins was there to show what a shell of a politician Aceveda’s become.

Overall, this finale was a stellar cap for one of TV’s finest cop shows. The major stories get wrapped up, but enough is left open for a proper “life goes on” motif. Even though Vic will get by the three year tenure for his immunity and pursue some type of private security/vigilantism afterwards no doubt (him tucking the gun in shows he’s not completely castrated by his new job), that his life he protected is no longer there is a brilliant way to have a tragic ending without copping out at all. This is one of the best finales I’ve ever seen, period.

Overall Score: 10/10