(Warning: Do not read if you haven't...
(Warning: Do not read if you haven't watched the Shield finale and intend to do so.)
Easily the most shattering episode of this TV week came from a show that has delivered the goods for the last 11 hours of what has been arguably The Shield's best season yet.
I'm talking about the cliff-hanger finale of The Shield's split season (10 more episodes are scheduled to air early next year), which really seems to me more like a season finale. The producers have yet to declare the back half of this fifth season The Shield's series finale, but given the enormity of what transpired in this latest episode, my gut tells me that the best creative decision would be for them to wrap the show in these next 10 episodes and go out on a dramatic high.
The dramatic stakes have rarely been more intense as poor Lem (the excellent Kenneth Johnson) — the heart and conscience of Vic Mackey's corrupt Strike Team — twists in the wind, waiting for his buds to find a way to smuggle him out of the country, eluding the authorities who've made him the visible target in Kavanaugh's Internal Affairs sting.
Lem, a reluctant fugitive at best, keeps trying to cut a deal that would spare the rest of the Strike Team, who were getting suspicious that he had ratted them out to his lawyer.
Like a police version of a Mafia morality tale, Lem pays the ultimate price when he secretly meets up with the Strike Team's loosest cannon, Shane. He's the last person to whom Lem should have confessed, "No more running. There's a way for me to take the hit solo."
Shane, distraught and feeling as trapped as his friend, announces, "It's all about family, right?" as he drops a live grenade into Lem's car. It's a wrenching tragedy made more horrible by the fact that a burned and bloodied Lem doesn't even die instantly. "I'm so sorry, buddy," Shane cries in an anguish we all share.
And what about that final tableau, in which the entire precinct gathers around Lem's death car, from incompetent (and, typically, sobbing) rookie Tina to Claudette and Dutch and Kavanaugh, whose Internal Affairs machinations set the trap for Lem's demise. Staring aghast are Lem's clueless cohorts Vic and Ronnie, unaware that Shane is responsible.
When Kavanaugh taunts Mackey, "Are you happy now?" the fuse is lit for those two Emmy-worthy bulls, Forest Whitaker and Michael Chiklis, to wrestle in the dirt, finally coming to blows after a riveting season-long standoff. This dark hour was an electrifying finish to a top-tier season. The wait for new episodes will be excruciating, but also delicious.
This week also offered one of the absolute worst, most hateful half hours I've ever experienced on this beat. That would be Wednesday's premiere episode of Fox's Unanimous, a loathsome, ugly "game" in which nine people are sealed into a windowless bunker for an exercise in sensory deprivation and unfettered greed. The premise: All nine must choose one among them to receive the $1.5 million prize. The longer they bicker (and if they didn't, there wouldn't be a show), the more money ticks away. This doesn't even qualify as a guilty pleasure, like NBC's increasingly overexposed money-in-the-briefcase time-waster Deal or No Deal. That one's relatively harmless; this one is, no doubt about it, evil.
At the risk of driving viewers to it by giving it any more publicity, I'll stop this rant now. But consider it fair warning: I would respect no one who could find even a shred of entertainment value in bottom-feeding dung like this. But why should I be surprised? American Idol is a fluke for Fox's reality division, which has served up previous worst-ever shows like Greed, Joe Millionaire, My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiancé, Playing It Straight, Temptation Island, Love Cruise, The Swan and the list goes on. There's a special place in reality-TV hell for the people who come up with shows like this. Reality hell is Unanimous through and through.
