Post by -|E|- on Jan 9, 2006 18:46:39 GMT -5
Confrontation time
Sunday, January 8, 2006
By VIRGINIA ROHAN
Bergen.com
Det. Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) gives firemen a hand in the season premiere.
It's the beginning of the end for Det. Vic Mackey.
The fifth-season opener of "The Shield" (10 p.m. Tuesday, FX) not only kicks off what's likely to be the show's final episodes, but brings things full circle for one of TV's all-time darkest, most fascinating and complicated anti-heroes.
Like Tony Soprano, Vic's a guy you root for despite the very bad things he's done. Unlike mobster Tony, though, Vic's supposed to be a good guy.
This season harks back to what Michael Chiklis calls Vic's "original sin": the shocker from the pilot, when he shot and killed fellow detective Terry Crawley (Reed Diamond) during a drug raid, after discovering he was working to bring down Vic's freewheeling Strike Team. One of the dead bad guys was blamed. Only two men are certain of the truth: Vic and best buddy Shane Vendrell (Walton Goggins).
"Part of Vic is a great guy, and then, some things he's done are unforgivable," says "Shield" creator Shawn Ryan.
In the season opener, an Internal Affairs investigator, Lt. Jon Kavanaugh (Forest Whitaker), arrives, determined to confirm his suspicions, with the help of police captain turned councilman David Aceveda (Benito Martinez).
"I didn't ever want to ignore those things that we set up in the first season," Ryan said last week, in a teleconference with Chiklis, Whitaker and FX Networks President John Landgraf. "I think that the payment of certain sins can be delayed, but they can't be completely avoided."
FX has ordered 21 episodes, which will air in two batches – 11 now, and another 10 early next year. During a two-month hiatus, Ryan and company will write the latter, which will likely conclude the series.
Ryan and Landgraf hope this season will focus new attention on "The Shield" and its Emmy-winning star. "He won everything you could win the first season, and since then, in our opinion, has been underrated," Ryan says.
Chiklis is so strong, Ryan says, not many actors can stand up to his Vic. Last season, Glenn Close did, and now, so does Whitaker. "You [can't] help but root for this guy, even though he's trying to destroy the hero of our show," Ryan says.
Kavanaugh, who gauges people's ability to withstand pressure by how they react to his offer of chewing gum, is as cagy and conniving as he is charming.
"I don't really think of myself as a bad guy," says Whitaker about his character. "Vic Mackey is a danger to others and to what I stand for."
The two play a cat-and-mouse game, and Ryan ups the tension by holding off their first meeting until near the end of the third episode.
"It's one of the most passive-aggressive scenes that I've ever seen in my entire life. There is so much said with very little dialogue," says Chiklis, whose character is also being pressured to take an early retirement.
Vic's predicament makes the series "better than ever" in its fifth season, Landgraf says. "Shawn has created a true Shakespearean tragedy writ over an extended number of seasons. If you look at Shakespeare's anti-heroes, they're never more appealing than in the final throes of their journey."
Chiklis is fascinated by the "hope for redemption," as well as Vic's awakening of conscience.
"This man has a remarkable ability to compartmentalize. That's the reason why he's able to move forward. Now is when he's haunted. All these wounds, as the bard put it, have been opened to bleed afresh. ... This is a different thing than he's ever faced."
In the few years since Tony Soprano, and then Vic, came on the scene, we've definitely seen more heroic but flawed network protagonists (like Horatio Caine of "CSI: Miami," to name just one). But it's iffy we'll ever see anyone with sins as serious as Vic's on mainstream TV.
"I don't think a mass audience goes for this kind of television," Ryan says.
(I have to confess that as great as "The Shield" is, it's so dark I don't always gravitate toward watching it.)
Ever unconventional, "The Shield" won't necessarily end happily for its main character. "I spend a lot of time thinking about what direction I want to go, and how it would affect going back and watching it all over from the beginning," Ryan says.
Not knowing is "excruciating" for Chiklis as well as Vic.
"Right now, I'm very on edge about the whole situation, because I don't know myself what the future of it is," Chiklis says. "It's life imitating art in a way."
E-mail: rohan@northjersey.com