Here's my dilemma with "The Shield."
I liked Lem. He was a decent guy. Morally negotiable on many levels, but decent.
I DON'T like Shane. I think he's a dumbsh[/black]it, always have and always will.
Therefore, I'm sorta doubly unhappy about Shane killing Lem.
The whole season was brilliant. I've always loved Forrest Whitaker, and watching him and Vic face off was just watching two TITANS of spectacularly charismatic acting square off. I loved every minute of it. But the ending...oy!
But the biggest problem is, I don't see how the show can last more than one more season now, two at most. The core of the Strike Team has always been Vic and Shane, and by the end of the next season, Shane is either going to be dead, or he's going to be exiled. If it were Ronnie who had killed Lem, I'd be measuring him for a body bag, because he's just too much of a non-entity to preserve for very long. Shane, on the other hand, just might be enough for Vic to forget his parting shot in the finale, but not much. Either way, the Strike Team is over, finito. No way it's going to carry on with just Vic and Ronnie. And without the Strike Team, there is no show.
It's not that the other actors aren't brilliant enough to carry on the show by themselves (God knows how much I adore CCH Pounder, and my husband and I are prone to occasionally parrot her classic line to Aceveda, "This is BULLLLsh[black]it!") but the show has just always been structured around the Strike Team, and unless they decide to completely create a new paradigm for the show (much like BSG did) then "The Shield" is just not going to go on for more than another season, two tops.
But that's okay, 6-7 is a good lifespan for shows, I have decided. Anything longer and it just gets too tired.
As for BSG--how inspired and ballsy was that? They really did just COMPLETELY recreate the core premise of the show, which it just HUGE, because shows are so very prone to just stick with the paradigm that works. But in this case, that would have meant season after season of the fleet running from the Cylons, and it just would have gotten boring and predictable.
Now I begin the LOOONG-*** wait until "Nip/Tuck" starts and BSG 3.0 hits the air. "West Wing" is wrapping up, and the fate of "Veronica Mars" is uncertain, considering it's not been doing great in the ratings to begin with, and now with The WB and UPN merging, who knows which shows will be staying and which will be going. I'll give "Thief" a shot, if for no other reason than my husband adores Andre Braugher and will insist on watching it, but it's really going to have to blow me away for me to stick with it.
Edited, Tue Mar 28 05:48:05 2006 by Ambrya