Vic Mackey can never be at peace: The Shield

"The Shield" just keeps coming at you. I keep thinking, well, maybe I shouldn't watch it, it's not as sophisticated as The Wire, not as complex a Damages (thank Gog), not as literary as The Sopranos, and so on - but each time I check in for an episode I'm immediately caught up and totally attentive. Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis), with his bulletshaped head and linebacker's body, remains the angriest cop on TV, one of the dirtiest, the scariest. As Season 6 moves along (episode 2), we get closer to the inevitable point when Mackey leans that his partner Shane killed another partner (Lem, in Season 5), and then Mackey's wrath will be unleashed on Shane. We watch Shane wither through the first 2 episodes, terrified by Mackey's violence and his fierce loyalty to his band of brothers, the only thing Mackey cares about apparently. Mackey thinks the Mexican drug-lord Guardo killed Lem, and is in pursuit of Guardo. Shane (and the other partner, I don't know his name - the two fade into nonentity beside the maelstrom of Mackey's personality) has to go along with this, chasing Guardo, but he knows the truth will come out. He keeps trying to deflect Mackey, to get him to forget Lem, but it's not going to happen. The internal affairs investigator, played by the great Forrest Whittaker (see him in Criminal Justice, if you can, for an early look at his talent), seems to be done, caught and charged with forging evidence to nab Mackey. Great jailhouse scene as Forrest and Chiklis confront each other through the bars, and Forrest says he's at peace. Are you? he asks. Mackey/Chiklis says : Not yet. Two words of great irony, as we know he can never be at peace.