Season 6 of The Shield doesn't feel like a season of television. It feels like a transition between seasons, with its first half tying loose ends from Season 5 and its second half setting up Season 7, and nothing to help it to stand on its own as a season.
Season 6 starts directly after Season 5 ended, with Lem dead and tensions between Vic and Kavanaugh more strained than ever. While the Strike Team not being under investigation means the stakes don't feel as high anymore, Kavanaugh is still as fantastic of an antagonist as ever, as he immediately jumps at trying to frame Vic for Lem's death. However, this doesn't last long, as Kavanaugh admits to his crimes and leaves the show after the second episode of the season. This isn't immediately a problem, as Shane keeping Lem's death a secret from the Strike Team and Vic trying to figure out who did it still manages to be as tense as Season 5 was. The conflict between these two is great and it leads to some of the best-acted scenes in the show not involving Kavanaugh. However, you soon start to realize that this season doesn't really have much of a driving force outside of the Vic-Shane conflict, and it leads to a season that just doesn't feel cohesive in the slightest. Kavanaugh leaves in Episode 2, the presumed antagonist Guardo Lima is killed the episode after, Vic learns Shane killed Lem in Episode 6, and the rest of the season is just spinning its wheels. The pacing here is just so bad, there's no focus at all.
These wheel-spinning issues start to become even more noticeable with some of the season's really awful subplots, the worst of which being Hiatt's new Strike Team. A few episodes into the season, Claudette hires a new guy to take over the Strike Team from Vic when he retires, a decent idea until you meet the guy. Kevin Hiatt is such a dull, generic character. He has no chemistry with the rest of the class, no defining traits, he's here until he gets mercifully written out in the finale. Julian joining the Strike Team also could have been interesting since he has been pretty violent at times, but he gets nothing to do this season, making me wonder why they even bothered adding him to the team. I'm also not a fan of Dutch and Billings being a cop duo. Obviously Dutch had to be split up from Claudette once she became captain, but those two had such a fantastic sense of chemistry that's hard to top. It feels like the writers wanted to sell to you that Dutch and Billings have this bicker-y odd couple chemistry, but it feels really forced in comparison. Not to mention, it sucks to see my favorite character (Dutch) pretty much relegated to comic relief for much of this season. The only decent subplot was Aceveda's new backers, but even that wasn't worth basing the season's cliffhanger on.
Still, this season did have its good episodes, they just so happened to be good because they were resolving plot threads from last year:
Baptism By Fire: I feel like this was originally meant to be Season 5's finale, as it's pretty much entirely about Kavanaugh's fall. Personally, I think Postpartum worked a lot better as a finale, but that doesn't make Baptism By Fire any less of a fantastic episode. The final few minutes especially were fantastic, between Kavanaugh admitting to his crimes and his final confrontation with Vic. I'm gonna miss the guy, but at least Whitaker went out with one last outstanding performance.
Chasing Ghosts: Similarly to Baptism By Fire, this was a decent episode made great by a fantastic final few minutes. That eight-minute long confrontation between Vic and Shane that ends off the episode is easily one of the best scenes in the series. It's tense, emotional, heartwrenching, and Michael Chiklis and Walton Goggins give their best performances in the show yet.
Overall, Season 6 has its good moments and episodes when focused around the Lem stuff, but everything else is either lacking in meaningful plot progression or just flat-out bad. It's easily the weakest season of The Shield to date.
2/5 Stars
No comments:
Post a Comment