Customer Reviews

The Shield: Season Six

5 star:		(51)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The sixth season of FX's The Shield can be considered the penultimate season of the gritty crime drama. Beginning with the aftermath of Lem's (Kenny Johnson) death, Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) swears vengeance, unbeknownst to him that his partner Shane (Walton Goggins) is responsible. In the meantime, Vic faces a forced retirement, more so when younger, possibly brasher detective Kevin Hiatt (Moonlight's Alex O'Loughlin) is brought onto the Strike Team as Vic's successor. With Kavanaugh (Forest Whitaker) still lurking in the shadows and still trying to bring Vic down once and for all, things reach a boiling point as Vic comes closer and closer to learning the truth, and the reprecussions that come and are going to come in the upcoming final season. Other plot developments of this season include Claudette (CCH Pounder) adjusting to an illness, Dutch (Jay Karnes) in developments that you won't see coming, Aceveda (Benito Martinez) once again forming an uneasy alliance with Vic, and Shane offering his services to the daughter of an Armenian mob boss (Franka Potente) which he comes to regret. While the sixth season of The Shield offers nothing that hasn't been done on the show before, it is still an ever-compelling television experience that you can't get on network TV. The main cast is still good, and while Forest Whitaker doesn't stick around nearly as long as he did on the previous season, both he and Franka Potente provide for wonderful guest stars. All in all, when watching this season of The Shield, one can tell that the end is indeed near, and what develops next may very well prove that this series will go out with quite a bang.

For all its hard-edges and testosterone-fuelled machismo, The Shield never fails to paint its principal characters as touchingly human, even if the moments are few and far between that we get to glimpse these more tender parts, and this is one of the elements of its success at being the most emotionally cathartic, intense, adrenaline-rush on the telly.

The Shield, in my albeit humble opinion, is the single best product ever recorded to celluloid with the intention of playing it back for entertainment purposes: bar nothing. It's the best thing that's ever graced my TV screen, and makes other top-drawer productions look pedestrian and even lame by comparison.

Season six is full-throttle, pedal to the metal in the style we've become accustomed to, but due to events leading up to the start of the season, the protagonists seem to be in the full throes of a ravaging tornado this season, even more than others.

Walt Goggins serves up the convincing intensity of a man who, already mentally questionable at the best of times, is fully unravelling and on a collision course with his own life and the lives of all the others around him as he becomes hopelessly suicidal and insanely reckless on a lone-ranger syle rampage that King Kong would be proud of.

Mackey is on top of his game, keeping a hundred balls in the air at once, making the tough decisions as always, but somehow, this season, you can sense that he is only human and there are things out there that are capable of crushing his game-plan, which has always been a success up to this point and is one of the most admirable things about the man.

The new guy steps up to the vacant spot on the Strike Team with the intention of replacing Mackey as the team leader, and the storyline revolving around his time at the Barn is a worthy one.

The early episode "Baptism by Fire", where Mackey goes "off the grid" to kidnap a Byz Lat gang-boss from his East LA ghetto stronghold, is one of the most insanely edgey and pumped-up things I have ever seen. Only The Shield can crank the intensity up to these levels, leaving all other movies and TV serials in the dust. The tension this programme can create is just unbelievable, it almost gets to the point where you need a hit of The Shield, you're no longer just watching it.

All in all, season six is superb. It juggles all the relevant parts and people in just the right way, and keeps on turning up the volume, even from points where you don't think it can anymore. It's insane. Season seven I have no doubt will be even crazier. I can't speak highly enough of this TV series, the quality of its creative and technical production and anyone and everyone who is and was involved in making it. There's never been anything else like it, it's a total trail-blazer that keeps getting better as each season goes past. Full marks 100% if 5 stars isn't good enough for ya.

In Season 6, this fantastic show does a great job setting the viewers up for what will surely be a truly shocking end to a truly great gritty cop drama.

First, the plotlines. Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) is going to be forcibly retired. But before he goes, he is determined to find out who killed fellow Strike Team Member, Lem (Kenneth Johnson). Menawhile Shane (Walton Goggins) is falling into a downward spirl, from which he may never climb out. His guilt over his actions, plus trying to keep his family safe and Vic in the dark, has him acting irrational (joining up with Franka Potente and the Armenian mob) and even suicidal (watch the scene when he locks himself in a room with an armed hostage taker). Meanwhile, Claudette (CCH Pounder) finds herself under fire from her superiors. And when the "big crime of the season" happens (the San Marcos murders, a slughter of 12 Hispanic people in a hotel), the case takes all sorts of twists and turns. Once again, Aceveda and Vic need to form an uneasy alliance to save Mackey's job, solve the murders, and save Aceveda's future political career.

But the best part of this season is the character changes that happen with a lot of the key players. Lt. Kavanugh (a brilliant Forest Whittaker) becomes everything that he spent his career fighting. Vic becomes an out of control man, hell bent on only one thing, revenge. Claudette uses Vic-like tactics to not only salvage her job, but to put an end to Vic's reign at the barn, bringing in Hiatt (Alex O'Laughlin) to replace him. And make sure you catch the scene with Dutch and Danny in the finale. Season 6 is a polarizing change for the characters. And for the most part, the changes are amazing to witness.

The only problem, as another reviewer put it, is that the stroies seem to slow down some towards the later part of the season, mainly because of the uncertainty that there would be a season 7. I'm glad they decided to give it one last hurrah.

Vic Mackey is probably the greatest anti-hero created for television. I can only imagine how this will all end for him. Be sure to check FX networks website for interviews with the cast. Some good stuff there.

Just like this DVD set.

I have to agree somewhat with a previous reviewer in that it seems the writers found out about halfway through writing S6 that there was going to be an S7, because while the first five or six episodes really start to ratchet things up, the back half sort of continually slows down, to the point where the season-ender really seems to "kill you with quiet," to paraphrase another review I'd read.

Additionally, a lot of people may feel that the "big crime" plotline involving a dozen or so hacked-up bodies, an undercover agent and several shady Hispanic figures, was a little too complicated to follow. I didn't think so, but I can see where that might come from.

That said, where that story eventually goes sets up a FANTASTIC plotline for the final season. However, I did find myself waiting for a lot of reckoning between different characters that never came, which reinforces my belief that maybe things were on track for S6 to cap the series, then S7 got a green light, and all of a sudden the writers had to buy a little time.

Regardless, with the notable exception of 'The Wire,' 'The Shield' is still the best, most engaging cop show on TV.

I discovered Alex O'Loughlin on Moonlight and have since collected all of his work on DVD - TV and movies. He is outstanding as Det. Kevin Hiatt, and outshines the rest of the cast. His portrayal of Kevin is exciting, his american accent is impeccable, as are all of his accents (as most know, Alex is Australian and has a very strong accent in his "real" life), and he is oh, so sexy. You just don't get much sexier than his infamous "chair scene" on this DVD.
He left The Shield for Moonlight in 2007, and now we have those 16 wonderful episodes on DVD. Do yourself a favor and buy this DVD and the rest of Alex's work on DVD. I am looking forward to his new work coming out in 2009, including a guest starring role on Criminal Minds on 4/29/09, and he is now filming a pilot for a series in which he portrays an organ transplant doctor, "Three Rivers". It should be picked up as a series for the 2009 fall season. His movie "WhiteOut" premieres on 9/25/09. Bottom line - buy this DVD and anything you can find with Alex O'Loughlin - you will be so glad that you did!

For those who cant wait season six is available on amazon.co.uk. a multi zone dvd will play them. It is also on sale at half price.

I am a die hard Alex O'Loughin fan!!!!! I got The Shield: Season Six mainly for him, but him being on The Shield was an added bonus.

I did watch The Shield on FX. It was good. The story keeps moving. What I really like about the sixth season is when they brought in Alex O'Loughlin. I love his acting. Even though The Shield is good it just seems better with Alex in it. It is to bad he was not in the seventh season.

I did not see the whole series, a bit too violent and dark for me; but I enjoyed this season immensely because of the presence of Alex O'loughling, playing his first TV cop, in most of the episodes. It is obviously an intelligent series, and the stories are complex and quite interesting, even though they show the dark side of corrupt cops quite crudely. This season continues story arcs from before, but it is perfectly possible to understand them throughout these episodes. The character of Kevin Hiatt stands out as quite different from the other seasoned cops in it. He's able but quite naive, and definitely beautiful.

I have always marvelled at the writing staff on THE SHIELD.

If you've watched it from Season One til now, you've had to be amazed at the explosive twists and turns of the ongoing plots swirling around Vic Mackey and his Strike Team. Somehow the writers have never written themselves into a corner--and I was certain they had in the early seasons!

When this show began, I was in no mood for another cop show. The friend who pushed the Season One DVDs on me assured me that this show as worth checking out. I've been a fan ever since.

I saw Michael Chiklis on "The O'Reilly Factor" and Bill O'Reilly brought up the comparison of THE SHIELD with THE SOPRANOS. They're both critically-acclaimed crime shows about seriously flawed men on different sides of the badge. As much as I've loved the first three seasons of THE SOPRANOS, they just never got their groove back from Season Four on. People are still griping about that controversial "cut to black" finale.

But THE SHIELD has hit the high marks every season.

Love the cast, love the stories, love the show. (Make sure you watch it from the beginning though: it's worth the ride).