Word: shielding
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...last episodes of the Shield, whose series finale airs Nov. 25, corrupt former L.A. cop Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) takes a meeting with a drug boss. Mackey has brought him a big dope deal with another gang--secretly setting him up in order to secure for himself an immunity deal with the feds for a list of crimes that starts with murder and continues the length of your arm. The kingpin offers him a drink to take off the "edge." Mackey refuses. "The edge is where we live," he says. "People try to convince themselves otherwise. It's just...
...seven intense seasons, The Shield (FX, Tuesdays, 10 p.m. E.T.) has not just lived on that edge. It's sprinted along it, panting and veins bulging. In the pilot, Mackey--who with his antigang unit, the Strike Team, has been skimming seized drug money--learns that one of his crew is an undercover fed. Mackey puts a bullet in his head...
...When The Shield debuted in spring 2002, it was hard not to see it as a 9/11 parable. Mackey was Dick Cheney with stronger pecs, going to the dark side to do what couldn't get done the pretty way. The Shield asked--as did 24, in a more gung-ho fashion--how much brutality we are willing to accept for our safety...
...Shield winds down, the social trade-offs have yielded the spotlight to the personal ones. From the start, Mackey rationalized his thieving in the name of his kids. The idea--the same big lie that justifies a million little compromises in ordinary lives--was that he could insulate his kin from the consequences of his actions, taking the moral bullet for them...
...Shield's endgame dispels that myth. Mackey's corruption has poisoned every relationship he's had. As police investigators close in on the Strike Team's scams, his former disciple Shane (Walton Goggins) has turned on him, trying to kill him, then going on the lam with his pregnant wife and sick son (concern for whose welfare does not keep Mackey from trying to have Shane and his wife whacked). Another Strike Team member is dead, murdered by Shane for fear he might squeal. And Mackey is almost completely estranged from his kids, who along with his ex-wife--whom...