Vic Mackey is the protagonist of The Shield, of course he is! He's the main character of every single season... except for this one. Season 5 isn't about Vic, it's about Jon Kavanaugh, and what a fascinating figure he is.
After last season ended with Internal Affairs launching an investigation into the Strike Team, Season 5 starts with the debut of the IAD officer who kicks off that investigation, Jon Kavanaugh, played by Forest Whitaker. With only 11 episodes this time, Season 5 focuses pretty much entirely on Kavanaugh's investigation, and what results is an incredibly tense, taut, and gripping season as the Strike Team slowly has every single one of their past crimes come back to bite them. Right from the first episode, Kavanaugh kidnaps Lem and forces him to wear a wire, and things just get worse for the team from there, just as I like it. But the highlight of this storyline is easily Kavanaugh himself. He's such a fascinating character, starting as an awkward yet confident detective and slowly devolving into the human equivalent from Eggman from those fandubs. As Vic continues to evade him and piss him off, Kavanaugh takes the investigation a lot more personally and slowly spirals out of control, delving into the same sort of corruption as the guy he's pursuing. Forest Whitaker's performance illustrates that perfectly, giving the role just enough hamminess to make Kavanaugh terrifying. I liked Antwon but this is hands down the greatest antagonist in the series.
Okay, now that I'm done raving about Kavanaugh, Season 5 did still have a lot of other fantastic elements to it. While it does remain mostly focused on a single storyline, even the subplots all managed to be pretty solid, particularly Claudette keeping the fact that she has lupus a secret from Dutch, which gives her some of her best material to date. Danny's pregnancy was also decent, though it didn't get too much of a focus. And I enjoyed the subplot of the new recruit mostly because it was interesting to see someone with a more idealistic and slightly spoiled point of view be repeatedly confronted with the fact that the LAPD sucks. But the best non-Kavanaugh aspect of Season 5 is the dynamic between the Strike Team as they're being investigated. It gives me Season 3 vibes as the team getting pressured on their past crimes ends up causing a lot of tension between them all, leading to yet another finale where they lead to each others' downfall. It's so painful to watch Vic and the team repeatedly talk about how they're family and will never betray each other when that's exactly what ends up happening in the finale.
While this season didn't contain a single bad episode, it did have some noticeable highlights especially as the tension ratched up in the second half:
Enemy Of Good: While Kavanaugh's introduction in the premiere was great on its own, Enemy Of Good immediately ups the stakes by giving Lem, the most conscientious member of the Strike Team an incredibly difficult choice. Seeing him grapple with having to wear a wire was tough since my experience with The Sopranos made me believe his days were numbered right there and then, but I didn't expect him managing to discretely tell Vic about it by the end of his very episode. A great showcase of how well-paced this season was, nothing felt dragged out.
A Man Inside: Claudette and Dutch were always some of my favorite characters in The Shield. Even with Dutch's flaws, it felt like they were the few members of the cast that you could genuinely root for. A Man Inside is yet another interrogation episode, this time being about Claudette working through her illness to solve a case. It's a triumphant episode for the character... until she falls off the stairs in a painfully unfair cliffhanger.
Kavanaugh: This was easily one of the biggest episodes of the season and a huge turning point for Kavanaugh's character. Not only do we learn a lot more about his relationship with his wife, but said wife ends up causing him to absolutely snap, imprisoning Lem, screaming at the entire Barn, and giving up on his morals to take Antwon's deal.
Of Mice And Lem: "I've come to make an announcement! Vic Mackey is a-". Sorry, had to make the joke. Of Mice And Lem is another strong penultimate episode where things continue to spiral out of control in the fight between Kavanaugh and the Strike Team. And while Mackey's talks with Antwon, Lem's whole dilemma, and Julien taking it out on a homophobe is all great, the highlight is easily Kavanaugh's amazing and unhinged pissing speech. Seriously, this guy is Eggman, I swear.
Postpartum: It's kind of crazy that this wasn't originally supposed to be the Season 5 finale, the season was actually cut short a few episodes early. It definitely doesn't fell that way, however, even if the conflict against Kavanaugh wasn't fully resolved, stuff like Claudette becoming captain, Danny giving birth, Becca cutting ties with the Strike Team, and of course, Lem's heartbreaking death made for easily the best season finale (and episode) of the show to date.
Overall, as someone who hasn't been as enamored with The Shield as I would have hoped so far, Season 5 feels like it's on a completely other level of quality compared to every other season before it. Jon Cavanaugh is such a fascinating and interesting character played to perfection by Forest Whitaker, and he was the exact antagonist this show needed to really put the pressure on the Strike Team. Season 5 was tight, brilliantly paced, and intense from start to finish, an absolute triumph.
5/5 Stars
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