The Shield (Season 7)

With so many shows ending horribly, The Shield is the one show that's pretty unanimously considered to have a fantastic ending.

I'll be frank, Season 7 got off to a bit of a slow start, as it had to continue a lot of the plot points kicked off in the previous season, which left Aceveda and Shane under the thumbs of two different types of mafias, Mexican and Armenian respectively. Vic spends much of this half of the season trying to pit the Mexican and Armenian mafias against each other, while also trying to negotiate for an ICE job he can move to once he loses his police badge. There's a lot going on here, and with all the complex table-setting, it's hard for me not to feel like things ended up getting a bit too complicated. There was so much going on that I found it hard to keep track of everyone, and that doesn't even go into the fairly hit-or-miss subplots. On one hand, Vic plotting to get revenge on Shane for killing Lem is great, as is Dutch assuming a kid is a serial killer (another great exploration of his unique detective style). On the other hand, Mara is still as obnoxious as always and Cassidy gets a whole subplot about her downward spiral into crime that I found entirely uncompelling. While the season slowly got better as in went along, with Vic's attempt to kill Shane and the shooting in Episode 4 being noticeable highlights, I still couldn't really help but wonder what all the fuss was about with this season.

But then the episode Parricide happened, and things completely spiraled out of control. Shane is caught trying to kill Vic and has to go on the run from the police, Corrine learns about Vic's crimes from Mara and starts trying to help the Barn take him in, and Vic himself ends up leaving the Barn. Season 7's first half may have been a slow burn, but it led to one hell of an explosion, as this second half was ridiculously tense, especially when it comes to Shane being on the run. Walton Goggins does a fantastic job of showing just how panicked and desperate Shane is throughout this whole stretch, and the rest of the cast also gives series' best performances. There's a serious emphasis on "Point Of No Return" moments, with pretty much every single episode changing the status quo so irreparably that there really isn't no other choice for the show outside of ending. And what an ending. Season 7's last two episodes make for one of the best ends to a TV show ever, simultaneously being satisfying, rewarding and earned, as well as unpredictable, depressing, and Shakespearean in its tragic nature. My reviews of The Shield were pretty mixed all things considered, but it was all worth it for this.

Season 7 had some of the best episodes of the show, especially in its final few episodes:

Parricide: I already raved about this episode earlier in my review, it's the powder keg that completely blew up this show's premise and served as a massive turning point for the season. One of my favorite moments of the whole series was Shane being outed as trying to kill Vic and Ronnie to the Barn only for the show to cut to Mara telling Corrine about Vic's crimes, as if that wasn't a big enough twist! The writers of The Shield just do not care, do they?

Possible Kill Screen: The last ten minutes of this episode are phenomenal. Vic Mackey getting into ICE, confessing to all of his crimes for full immunity on all of them, saving Corrine, implicating Ronnie, and managing to evade Claudette at the very last second made for such an outstanding ending, made even better by Chiklis's best performance in the whole show. Mackey's crimes being revealed should be satisfying, but I never felt worse upon this episode's end.

Family Meeting: Series finales are so damn hard to pull off, there's so much you need to nail with one. You have to give every character a satisfying resolution, you have to sum up the themes of the show, you have to wrap up the overall plot in a climactic manner, and you have to do all that without being too neat or predictable. Family Meeting does this all so confidently and flawlessly, this really may be up there with Not Fade Away as my favorite series finale of all time. Vic not getting arrested or killed, but rather a "fate worse than death" was just perfect and creative to boot. He ruined the lives of everyone around him, from Ronnie being arrested, to Shane committing suicide, to his family going into hiding, it's all his fault, and he has to live with it. And that's not mentioning even the side characters like Dutch, Claudette, Billings, and Aceveda getting screentime, as well as a few more cases to end the series off with what feels like a true summation of all of the things that made it great.

Season 7 of The Shield wasn't the best one of the series, between the slow first few episodes and Cassidy's subplot, this season did have its flaws. However, it did manage to bring the show to one of the greatest and most earned series finales of all time, ending with a nail-bitingly tense second half.

4/5 Stars

My ranking of The Shield's seasons is:

1. Season 5: Kavanaugh is a fantastic character and he single-handedly makes this the best season of The Shield. It also really helps that the frantic pacing and tight plotting makes for an especially tense season.
2. Season 7: While a bit slow-starting, the moment Shane goes on the run, Season 7 bursts into action and builds towards what is probably the greatest series finale of all time.
3. Season 2: Season 2 goes full dark, full serialization, and crafts a fantastic main storyline that builds to a very satisfying and climactic finale.
4. Season 4: The attempt at a soft reboot was clumsy and caught me off-guard at first, but as the season went on and began to explore its themes, it ended up being the most thought-provoking season.
   
5. Season 3: Season 3 is easily the darkest season of The Shield, but I think it went a bit too far at times. It's definitely ambitious, and I admire that, but man was this season way too hard to watch.
6. Season 1: Season 1 is basically a standard procedural show that isn't quite able to fully commit to its intended tone, at least not yet.
7. Season 6: While it does do a lot to resolve Season 5 and set-up Season 7, this season doesn't do much to stand on its own outside of just being a transition season, and is less than the sum of its parts. 

My ranking of The Shield's finales is: 

1. Family Meeting: One of the great series finales of all time. It balances genuine bittersweet farewells that leave everyone on the cast in a good place, with punishing the main character in the best and most earned way possible.
2. Postpartum: Even if it doesn't resolve everything, Postpartum is a dramatic, jam-packed, and heartwrenching finale that ends with easily the most crushing and tragic death of the series.
3. On Tilt: A true tragedy of an episode that leaves pretty much the entire cast in an awful place, a fantastic end to what is essentially The Shield's first half.
4. Dominoes Falling: All of the build-up towards that Money Train heist really paid off in a grand, bombastic, and twisty finale filled to the brim with shocking moments.
5. Ain't That A Shame: While a bit of a let-down, the action is bombastic, Rawling gets a great sendoff, and the hook for Season 5 is fantastic.
6. Circles: There wasn't really much Circles could do given how procedural the first season was, but it's still a bombastic and action-packed way to end off the season.
7. Spanish Practices: While it has a decent amount of exciting hooks for Season 7, it suffers a lot from Season 6's disjointed structure and doesn't really feel like a finale.

7 > 5 > 3 > 2 > 4 > 1 > 6

Favorite Episode: Family Reunion