The look on her face is priceless, as she realizes...

Betsy Draper's father dies (4th episode of Season 3 of "Mad Men"), which is unfortunate, as he added an interesting element of tension to the Draper family. Despite his weird behavior (dementia), he was quite kind to the children, especially the daughter - a real contrast to the ice-cold Betsy and the distant Don. Not sure what further plot elements can play out in regard to Betsy and her brother - focus will shift back to the Sterling Cooper office. There, we see Peggy trying further to come out of her shell, moving to Manhattan - and needing advice from Joanie as to how to find a roommate (she seems destined to find a mismatch). Peggy's mother, as is the pattern on this series, incredibly mean to her when she learns Peggy wants to move to Manhattan. And in a 3rd interesting plot development, as Sal pushes off his wife (I'm working), she asks him to tell her what's troubling him. He says he's concerned about moving into directing a live commercial, as opposed to drawing storyboards, and he acts out for her the dance sequence he has to direct. The look on her face is priceless, as she realizes, evidently for the first time, that Sal is effeminate - this may be the source of all their problems. Not sure how that will play out, but Don has been discreet with Sal's secret. Show continues to be edgy and cold and dark, not for everyone but for those who can stand the cold waters it's compelling, addictive. I would hate to be in this world, but glad to have a glimpse of it.

Chilling like an ice pick: Marriages in trouble on Mad Men

Three strong narrative intersect in 3rd episode of Season 3 of "Mad Men," and the emerging theme is marital tension (at least in two of the narratives). Especially interesting is Joanie's domestic life, newly wed with her priggish husband, the young doctor who can provide her with an enormous ring and the stature of a professional marriage - but little else. He obviously is overwhelmed by (and maybe embarrassed by?) her sexuality. Very good tense dinner party with his boss at the hospital and another resident. We learn, though an inadvertent comment, that her husband is not performing well at the hospital - and even more tellingly that he keeps this from her: I don't like to upset Joanie. At the same time, another party, as Roger Sterling throws a bash for his yooung (2nd) wife, former secretary at the firm who now lords it over the others. The Drapers attend, their own marriage deep in trouble. A governor's aide makes a strange pass at Mrs. Draper - there will be more to this. Roger's wife, drunk, grabs at Don, which leads to tense words between Don and Roger: Nobody thinks you're happy. We think you're foolish. Meanwhile, Peggy gets stoned with some of the other young execs: she's not wound as tight as everyone assumes. Series remains solid and tight, well written and beautifully produced. The chilling coldness of the characters is like an ice pick. You would not want a steady diet of this kind of show, but you can't stop watching once you start.

How cold and cyncical characters can succeed: Work in advertising!

Second episode of "Mad Men" Season 3 sets up more plot points for the series - Mrs. Draper's dad, suffering from Alzheimers, comes to live with the Drapers, and he'll be impossible to manage; the conflict between Cosgrove and Peter Campbell as they face off to become chief of accounts heats up - Campbell screwing up a meeting with the group that wants to tear down Penn Station (Draper comes to the rescue and takes on the account, personally), Cosgrove working to land the Diet Pepsi account. Peggy steps out of her shell a bit, inspired by an Ann-Margaret film clip, and wants to be more sexy - heads into a bar alone, hooks up with a guy. He's a dolt and thinks she must work as a secretary, and she doesn't disabuse him. I'm guessing we won't see him again, though a love interest for her might be a good plot element. Roger Sterling (John Slattery, my lookalike) dealing with family estrangement - his daughter doesn't want his new 20-something wife at her wedding. The Brits who bought Sterling Cooper seem unable to manage the company. As noted, lots of plot elements - not much coherence - in this episode. And other issues raised in episode one - Don's infidelity, Sal's homosexuality - don't even come into play. You get right down to it and Mad Men isn't so much about plot as about style and vignettes: the incredible coldness of all the characters, the cynical way they fake themselves through life, and turn that cynicism to their advantage as account execs.

Can you have a TV series in which every character is hateful?

Started Season 3 of "Mad Men" (and they're already advertising Season 4). It's like watching a house fire or a train wreck. Everything's horrible, but you can't stop watching. I suppose it's a great show - I'm still in for it in Season 3 - an unquestionable well acted, written, and especially designed. But how can you build a whole show in which every single character is unlikable? You'd think it's impossible. Here in first episode of Season 3 Dick Draper, after coming back home to his (pregnant) wife and being really sweet to her in first scene, goes off on a business trip and has sex with (or begins to, until a fire alarm goes off) with a flight "stewardess." Sal, the art director, maybe the most sympathetic character, still hasn't come out, even to himself, that he's gay - but Dick sees Sal in his hotel room with a half-naked bellhop. Uh oh. In the spirit of the show, he will probably use that information to gain some advantage over Sal, when needed. Meanwhile new British ownership fires longtime employee and promotes to young execs (the hateful Peter and the feckless Osborne?) to be co-chief of accounts, hoping they'll fight to the death. Peter, the most unlikable of them all, no doubt will do some really dirty stuff to best his rival. That's the way this world is, a teamwork of hate and contempt. Doesn't sound like anything you'd want to watch, right?, but so easy to get hooked on it - sometimess I guess we just want to root against someone else, everyone else.

Who's going to make a great film about outsider art? : Seraphine

"Seraphine" got some very strong reviews, and it's interesting to a degree as a biopic about a real outsider artist, Seraphine, a social outcast with religious obsessions who scrubs floors for a living and paints to save her soul (her guardian angel told her to paint her visions). It happens that she's hired to clean for a leading Parisian art dealer, champion off Rousseau and Picasso, who learns of her talent and shows her strange works in his gallery. Though she did sell her art, her mental condition deteriorated and she spent her last years in an insane asylum. It seems to me that the movie may have played down her insanity, as she seems mainly eccentric (wearing a bridal dress and giving away possessions) and self-destructive (spending wildly) rather than a menace to anyone else. I wonder if that was so? Her actual artwork - which the movie uses (at least images of her artwork) - doesn't do much for me, all closely patterned images of flowers, blossoms, fruit. Others disagree. Have to wonder how many other great "outsiders" remain still undiscovered, not having the good fortune, in a sense, of scrubbing floors for an art dealer. Did his patronage make her famous, or her talent? Or both? In a funny way, this film makes a good bookend with the much more commercial Coco Before Chanel: both involving extreme talent exhibited by an unlikely and unfortunate provincial French woman, same country setting, nearly the same time period, in both cases the woman championed by a powerful man - but then the conclusions are so different, Chanel going on to fortune and Seraphine not. Also Seraphine and her patron both struggle through life and particularly through the war (WWI). I wish I liked this movie more, but the pacing was glacial and the story line felt curiously removed from Seraphine, we really end up knowing little about her other than her art. Remember the outsider artist in Junebug? He was more interesting, and scary.

A very powerful movie with one troubling flaw: Precious

I liked "Precious" (and I know I'm supposed to say that it's based on the novel Push by Sapphire) much more than I thought I would. I remember reading Push (source of the film Precious directed by Les Daniels) when it came out and thinking it was kind of melodramatic and tendentious, if well-meaning. Turns out it was a great source for a movie. Precious really throws you right into the strange and sad and terrifying world of the young girl's life: school where she tries hard but can't succeed, home where her mother is a cruel tyrant, social agencies where she's enmeshed in bureaucracy, a new alternative school where it will be a struggle for Precious to fit in. And yet - things do work out for her, in a sense, but in no easy way, it's a constant and for the most part completely believable struggle, as she gains her freedom from the horrible mother and gains a bit of self-confidence, prepares to move forward with her life. To the film's great credit, we begin to understand the mother, too, and for once a movie doesn't blame everything on the unfeeling social workers and the crushing bureaucracy of the system. The social agencies do help, and Mariah Carey, surprisingly, is terrific as a thoughtful but tough social worker. The scenes in the classroom are a bit derivative, think Freedom Writers and probably a dozen other films, but the violent confrontations between Precious and her mom are unprecedented, and the Precious's interior monologues are poignant and revealing. Great acting by Monique and the Oscar winner (name?) who plays her mom. I can understand, however, that this film is particularly disturbing to black viewers (in the same way that A Serious Man disturbed me and other Jewish friends), in that the black characters, except for Precious, are pretty much all horrible and the sympathetic characters are white or mixed-race (and the comic characters are Hispanic?). I wish that hadn't been so; it's a troubling (and avoidable) flaw in an otherwise very powerful movie.

Read something by Tolstoy Instead (of watching The Last Station)

What's with the incredible fascination with the last days of Tolstoy? So many writers have been drawn to that trope, the old man, surrounded by sycophants and bloodsuckers, trying to shed all his worldly wealth, fighting with his wife, at last lurching off to a remote railway station where he dies - with the world press waiting beside the railroad tracks, one of the first great celebrity media events of the modern world. The movie "The Last Station" (by Michael Hoffman, based on Jay Parini's novel) faithfully tells the story but adds little to the well-trod ground. It's a typically BBC-type high-production value enterprise, with a great star turn by Helen Mirren as Countess Tolstoy. Christopher Plummer got an Oscar nod for his Tolstoy, but I don't see why: big, bombastic, but strip away the beard and the peasant outfits and there was nothing special I thought. The special twist on the story is that most of it is seen through the eyes of Tolstoy's secretary (Bulgokov?, played by MacAvoy is what's become a typecast for him as the acolyte to the tortured great man, cf Last King of Scotland). Bulgokov struggling with conflicted ideas and loyalties: should he be spying on Tolstoy? Must he be a true Tolstoyan and remain celibate, despite the advances of sexy, athletic co-worker (what do you think? any guesses?). The fact is there was nothing to make the movie interesting or moving as a story, a drama. The orchestral score - surging strings, an occasional trilling on the piano - was noisome. Do yourself a favor and read something by Tolstoy instead, maybe The Death of Ivan Illyich.

Revanche echoes Bergman and Breathless - but please don't make an American version and trash it up

Here's a movie that, judged on its own terms, is almost perfect. Read any capsule summary of Gotz Spielman's "Revanche" and it sounds like a total downer: excon working in brothel falls for Ukrainian prostitute. Who would watch it? Drawn by strong reviews, we did and found it an amazing, thoughtful, tense, provocative film. A little more plot summary (spoiler!): the excon robs a bank, during the escape a cop accidentally shoots and kills his girlfriend, excon plots revenge (revanche?) against the cop. Though this sounds like an action picture - and it does have some very tense scenes, a robbery, a chase, a lot of graphic sex - it is a surprisingly deep and thoughtful movie, with a lot of exploration of the spiritual angst of the characters (obvious echos of Bergman) and a very credible portrait of a criminal couple who are obviously losers (obvious echoes of Breathless and many other French new wave movies, and maybe a bit of the great recent Japanese film, Oasis). Also, the plot is very spare and credible, a few surprising twists but they all make sense, unlike so many other recent thrillers from the U.S. and France. A totally strong movie. Who is this guy Spielman? I hope he makes more films. My fear, of course, is that Revanche will be remade as an American movie - and it could, possibly, with luck, be a good American movie, translated to the streets of Chicago or something. But it could also lose everything, become a 3rd-rate Bonnie & Clyde - a solid adult drama trashed up as an action flick.

A play you'll get to see only once - The Voysey Inheritance

You will probably get only one chance to see "The Voysey Inheritance," and it's worth seeing. Yes, it's a curiosity, rarely performed, but it's being staged now at the Second Story Theater (Warren, R.I.), in a really good, intimate production (Ed Shea, dir.). Voysey was written ca 1905 by Harley Granville-Barker (I had some of his Shakespeare books), one of those old British theater names that's always coming up, but I'm guessing none of his plays but this have endured. He's pretty much a 2nd-rate Ibsen, at least on the evidence of Voysey, interested in social issues, finance, how money and class status can wreck families - typical Edwardian "problem plays," in which an earnest young hero faces an ethical dilemma that tears him apart. Why is it second-rate? Compared with Ibsen, much too talky (and this version is an adaptation and emendation by Mamet, of all people) and much less mysterious. We see the problem almost immediately, as young Voysey confronts his dad, a financier who's been stealing from his clients to live in luxury and keep the firm afloat. Obvious and creepy prescient evocation of Madoff et al. Young Voysey, on his father's death, must decide whether he should come clean or keep the scam going in the vain hope of building back enough capital to pay back all of the original investors. Good dilemma, and good to watch him wrestle with it. A few very powerful confrontations between Edward (?) Voysey and some of the investors, and several of the other family members, who can't face the truth. Play doesn't really resolve in an effective way, however, and ultimately we don't care too much about this pathetic family (possibly because there are so many Voyseys it's hard to get a clear image of any one of them). Worth seeing - once - though the play is probably destined to fade once more into oblivion.

A stonger attack on capitalism than anything by Michael Moore: Up in the Air

"Up in the Air" is a more effective attack against capitalism than anything Michael Moore has ever done. It's a devastating look at the cruelty of the corporate culture, the layoffs of people who have given their lives to their work and are fired by some hired gun (George Clooney), brought in to do the dirtywork. There are great, moving, scary interviews with the laid off/fired/let go (some played by nonactors), extremely hard to watch. Part of the beauty of the film is watching the tables turn, a hotshot young girl out of biz school comes in with her plan to completely change the Clooney's company, a ridiculous (though scarily credible) idea to do the layoffs by a script, through a i-chat format. Everyone learns something by the end, and the strength of this film is that it doesn't flinch or make anything easy. It could easily have devolved into a lighthearted comedy a la The Desk Set, but it's sharper than that (for which I credit the book by Walter Kirn, which I haven't read, yet). I did have trouble with the surprise at the end (spoiler!), in which Clooney learns that his road fling, Vera FArmiga, is married with kids. Okay, sure, I can accept that she'd want a road affair as so many guys do, but if that's the case she would not have spent the weekend entangled emotionally with Clooney at his sister's wedding - nor would she be likely to have literally lied to him about her marital status. More likely she'd have said she was on the verge of divorce or something. Still, a really strong movie, well acted, great performance by Anna Kendrick (Reitman, the director, has a way with precocious young women who sound well older than their years but look younger).

Main reason to watch The Shield: Chiklis, hands down

Finished Season 6 of "The Shield" and it's a pretty good concluding episode - and by no means is everything concluded. Shane makes a desperate attempt to made amends with Mackey/Chiklis by turning against the Armenian mobsters he's befriended, once he learns they will kill the families of police officers who'd crossed them in the past (i.e., Mackey) - and Shane tries to protect Mackey's wife and children. Inexplicably, he doesn't explain to them what he's doing, but he locks them in a trailer - this does protect them, but they think they've been kidnapped, so you know that (in Season 7) Shane will pay a price for this. Mackey, meanwhile, discovers that the Mexican mobsters have a whole cache of documents that they can use to blackmail everyone in power in LA; this discovery is clearly enough to get him to turn around the members of the review board and keep his job. I'm personally totally confused about the Armenian mafia and the role it plays or will play in this series - it's enough keeping straight the crossed loyalties of the Mexican, Salvadoran, and black gangs. Hope it simplifies in the next season. Interestingly, we're even developing a romantic subplot as Dutch, the very likable detective, realizes he's way out of his league with the beautiful Tina - he's humiliated after he sees her having sex with Hiatt - and he falls into the arms of the sergeant whose name I don't know, single mom and nice person. Lots of action, always very smart and sharp, throughout the whole season - but the main reason to watch it is Chiklis, hands down.

Mackey's desperate attempt to stay in the game: The Shield

Vic Mackey is now very close to the "hearing" that will knock him into retirement - he knows the deal has been fixed - and in one last desperate effort to keep his job as head of the strike team he vows to find the Salvadorans who chopped up 12 Mexican gangsters. Pretty gruesome stuff. Mackey does manage to capture two, whom he grimly delivers the Mexicans for vengeance, but this seems not nearly enough to placate Captain Wims and let Mackey/Chiklis stay in the game. Not sure where he's going to head next in the final episode of Season 6 of "The Shield." This one, as usual with this series, includes a lot of strands. Shane, paired with Ronnie, is trying to bust the Armenian mobsters (but we know, and Mackey suspects, that Shane has something else going - in fact he's being paid by the Armenians to protect them from rival gangs). Also, Detective Billings seeking emotional vengeance against his partner, Dutch, by leading him to believe the hot young officer is interested in him. And finally there's the pursuit of the councilman, Acevedo, who Mackey believes interferes too much and may have exposed an undercover agent. How can these strands all tie together in one more episode? They probably can't. The Shield moves so fast though that you don't particularly worry about the finer plot points. Good to see in this episode that the focus coming back to Mackey. As noted in many other posts here, Mackey/Chiklis is the dubious heart of this series. An emblematic scene for The Shield is Mackey storming into an alley, about to make a bust, with his team members following in his wake, blurred and indistinct.

Mackey has to make Shane pay for Lem's death - right?: The Shield

I have to say that "The Shield" inevitably depends on Chiklis/Vic Mackey, and the less he's the dominant figure in the episode the weaker the episode is. Though Season 6, episode 8, is still pretty powerful, the season now is like a bomb ticking away, but not yet exploded. Shane continues to pursue his plan to get transferred out of "the barn," i.e., away from Mackey (who's threatened his life), and he's diligently trying to get together enough cash to move his family - mainly by pursuing shaky connections with, of all things, the Armenian mob. The beautiful woman running the mob while her dad's hospitalized - surprise appearance by Franka Potente (makes me think she'll continue to play a role in The Shield, you don't bring her in for one episode) pays Shane to take on various nasty assignments. Honestly, I'm not that interested in Shane, nor in Russell, the third cop on the team, who's just now realizing the depth of the dirt on Mackey (further evidence that those around Mackey are total nonentities). Mackey, in this episode, learns that Capt. Wims (CCH Pounder) plans to force him out regardless of how well he "plays with others." So Mackey now has nothing left to lose. He's got to confront Shane, though, and make him pay for Lem's death, right? Another interesting plot line developing as the federal agent under cover with the Salvadoran gang, Hernan?, has gone dark - and we suspect he may have been exposed by the developer who's close to the city councilman, Aceveda. Too many people talking too freely about the under cover agent, especially Wims - and that may come back to haunt her.

We literally laughed out loud @ In the Loop

"In the Loop" is a totally entertaining movie in that so-British way, that will remind you of the fast-paced British comedies of the '70s (and in deeper ancestry of the American screwball comedies and even farther back smart Anglo-Irish drama, e.g., Wilde) - though I don't mean in any way that it's antique or fusty. It's about a totally feckless British minister (of foreign affairs?) who blurts in a radio interview that the country is not likely to go to war, apparently not the party line, and then he is subjected to some very rude handling by the communications officers. All the characters are, as the British would say, spot-on: dead accurate portrayals and caricatures of government officials in England and DC (half the movie is in the U.S.), bright and ambitious young aides, handlers and speechwriters, diplomats, a general (James Gandolfini, the only well-known actor - great!) - everyone plotting for advantage or else being walked all over by the more crafty, more devious, more cruel. The dialogue is so smart and snappy and fast-paced, we literally laughed out loud but then stifled the laughter because you don't want to miss a line. This movie really seemed to fly under the radar. No audience for this kind of smart, edgy satiric drama I guess - no monsters, no explosions, no 3-D effects, no romance, no scenery, no decor - no viewers. Maybe it earned out, I hope so. The satire at times goes over the top, but as anyone who's worked in government (or communications) knows, reality itself often goes over the top. If you can imagine The Office crossed with, say, The West Wing - this is it.

Fully demanding of your attention at every moment: The Shield and The Wire

Episode 7 ("Exiled") of Season 6 of "The Shield" deals with a lot of plot points (it always seems that in a season series there's a lot of plot to wrap up at about the 70% marker, right?), but still a tense and demanding episode. Mackey has threatened to kill Shane and says he never wants to see him again, bu we know these two do have to face off eventually. Shane gathers all the evidence he has about the crimes and and Mackey have committed on the force and let's Mackey know that he will unload this confession if Mackey makes his move. Shane seems to be setting up some kind of elaborate sting or heist, but it's not clear what his motive is. Money for a getaway? The dramatic problem is that the protagonist (Mackey) is kind of out of things in most of this episode, it's more about Shane, who's always in Mackey's shadow. Mackey/Chiklis is the fuel that drives this engine, and The Shield is nothing without his active presence. Well, not nothing - I still admire the great and smart writing and scripting. As M. notes, they don't make it easy for you - they don't actually "explain" anything, as so many cop dramas do. You just see it and hear and it and have to figure out what everyone's thinking and doing. It has a somewhat documentary look, lots of handheld cameras and ambient noise (the phones in the station, or "the barn"; the moving camera every time they bust into a stash house, guns drawn, which is every episode). In that way, The Shield is a lot like The Wire, fully demanding of your attention at every moment.

Mackey at last learns who killed Lem: The Shield

"The Shield" Season six, episode 6, continues the torrid pace of this extremely powerful cop drama that rises well above the expectations (my expectations) of the genre. In this episode, Mackey (Michael Chiklis) at last figures out that his partner/teammate Shane killed fellow teammate Lembrowski. Mackey is torn apart at the amazing betrayal by Shane - Mackey has threatened to kill whoever killed Lem but had no sense ever that it would be another copy - and also by the fact that he'd tortured and executed another man, Guardo, whom he thought had killed Lem. Tremendous, long confrontational scene between Mackey and Shane - and perhaps Mackey is disturbed by some of what Shane says, i.e., that he had to kill Lem because Lem would have broken and ratted them all out for a previous murder and many other dirty-cop crimes. Maybe part of Mackey agrees with that and understands it. Still, Shane drives away a marked man - how will they play this out in future episodes? Something odd developing between Mackey and the new guy on the team, Mackey's intended replacement. Are they bonding? I think not, that inevitably the force is not big enough for the two of them and they'll have to go man-to-man. Mackey angling to beat the forced retirement and stay on the job - which we know will happen. I know it's just a story, and there are certain conventions for telling the story within a 47-minute slot, but I'm always distrubed by how busy and eventful the detective's lives are - always three plot lines each episode, solving the gruesome crime of the day, pursuing Mackey's personal agenda (catching Lem's killer), and dealing with family/domestic crisis (though this theme is not dominant in The Shield).

Who exactly is supposed to like this movie: Wild Things

Have avoided till now seeing "Where the Wild Things Are" because the combo of Spike Jonze (nee Spiegel) and David Eggers seemed far too hip for me, but Josie brought home the DVD so we watched last night, and I'm left with the question: Who, exactly, is supposed to like this movie? Or, another way of putting it: Why would you make a 100-minute movie out of a thin but intriguing picture book? Does it ever work? Leave the book as is! Some things are meant to be short, or short subjects. But no - anyone who read the excerpt of Eggers's novelization that ran in the New Yorker would know that this project was doomed - bloated, pointless, wandering, chaotic. First 15 minutes were pretty good, a quite realistic and credible portrayal of a young boy with some place on the spectrum of social disorder (autistic? aspergers?) - no friends, prone to violent tantrums. After a spat with his kind but harried mom (Katherine Keener, who's everywhere all of a sudden), he runs away. She chases, can't catch him (and inexplicably goes home without him, leaving him somewhere at night wander the streets of LA? Impossible!), as we blur to the inevitable dream sequence - boy, Max, sails off to an island inhabited by the Wild Things. After some initial tension (and a pretty good sequence of his beaching the sailboat on the shore), Max convinces the Wild Things that he is a king, and they therefore treat him with great deference (yet another echo of colonialism, the white guy, no matter how puny, always seems to merit the obeisance of the natives, cf Avatar). And then, not much happens. He doesn't face any crisis, offers no yearning for home, learns nothing, changes nothing - big so what. About half-way through, Josie says: And I'm supposed to care about what, exactly. Exactly! Nothing. Eventually, Max decides to go home - and just think of the comparison with other similar movies, e.g., Wizard of Oz, with the great yearning for him, the perils of the journey, will she ever make it back to Kansas - but here he just hops in his sailboat and goes. Nothing's ever prevented him. Of course he "wakes," runs home, and his mother embraces him, end of story. So, again, whom will this appeal to? Kids won't like it and not because it's too dark but because it's too vapid. Some put this on their top-10 list, perhaps in our own obeisance to the stature of Jonze and Eggers, perhaps impressed by the technical difficulties of the live-action filming with Gargantuan puppets. But did anyone actually like this movie? Or did critics like it because they expected others - children? - would? Not that top-10 lists can be political - heavens, no!

The Wire/Sopranos/Shield - Which one is underrated?

Episode 5 of Season Six of "The Shield" (Haunts) was one of the best ever. Every night when I think about watching The Shield I think, oh yeah, another TV police drama, I kind of forget how really good it is - and I'm totally engrossed while watching. Honestly, this show earns comparisons with The Wire and the Sopranos, and gets overlooked because it's on network (much better to watch it on DVD and avoid the commercial breaks). I doesn't really have the depth of character and family relations of the Sopranos nor the subtle interplay among the rival police and gang factions of the The Wire - but within its tight (47 minute) time frame it creates a very solid drama with one extremely stong character, Vic Mackey/Chiklis. This episode again shows that Mackey, despite his violence and corruption, lives by a code; he goes with some rogue cops on a moonlighting freelance job to break up a drug ring, and he finds a line he won't cross - and punches out a sadistic excop. Meanwhile, Shane goes deeper than ever into his torment and guilt, gets beaten badly by the stepdad of the teenage girl he's been having sex with. His wife, whom we have seldom seen, learns of the affair, kicks him out of their house - but he comes back, bruised, addled, high on oxy, tearful, armed, suicidal, and has a very powerful scene in which he confesses - first time saying it aloud - that he killed Lem for fear that Lem would cut a deal and rat out his partners (Shane, Ronnie, Mackey) for past crimes. Great scene - but where does Shane go from here? How does he deal with this information that's now out in the open?

Keeping the rage inside - for a while: The Shield

Episode 4(?), The New Man, of "The Shield" Season 6, puts Mackey (Michael Chiklis) is a unprecedented position: he's the nice guy, trying to please the boss. His boss, Capt Claudette Wyms (CCH Pounder - who's also in Avatar!), tells Chiklis if he can "play well with others" she can recommend against his forced retirement (she later tells the new guy, Mackey's replacement, that it was a lie, just to get Mackey's cooperation). Mackey believes her and is uncharacteristically welcoming to the new guy, Hiatt?, from INS. The others on his team, Ronnie and especially Shane, are not welcoming, really resentful and spiteful toward Hiatt. Macky, meanwhile, seems much more at peace, having killed the guy (Guardo) whom he incorrectly believes assasinated his team member Lembrowski (Lem). In a reversal, Shane (who did kill Lem), is now broken up and seemingly angry that others have "forgotten" Lem. He's of course the most relieved of all, the heat's off him (he thinks), so he for the first time can be even tougher than Mackey about standing up for Lem. That's a lot of plot, but pretty easy to follow through the season. What's great about this episode is watching Mackey tryinig to be a nice guy - the episode builds around his attempt to protect a guy who wants to leave a gang. When the guy (Cervantes?) is shot to death, Mackey is in despair - and he goes absolutely insane, tearing up a the whole waiting room at the hospital ICU. The anger just explodes out of him. It's reminiscent of the great episode in season 5 when Kavanaugh (Forrest Whittaker) tears up his own apartment - a really quiet, tense guy who kept his rage inside, for a while.

Everyone's afraid of Mackey: The Shield

Mackey continues his fierce ways in episode 3, season 6, of "The Shield," in this episode tracking down the Mexican drug lord Guardo and torturing him to (near) death, then executing him. Mackey still believes Guardo killed Mackey's partner Lem, though we know that Guardo was innocent and another one of Mackey's team, Shane, was complicit (I can't remember exactly how that came about - might have to go back and watch that episode from season 5.) Shane, torn by fear and guilt, tries to dissuade Mackey from torturing Guardo. Of course when Mackey kills Guardo it takes a big load off Shane's mind; Mackey thinks he's closed out his quest for vengeance for Lem's death. Something tells me it won't be that easy and that Mackey will learn he'd killed the wrong guy. The torture scene is pretty awful. It's also awful to watch Shane and third partner - what is his name? - stand by as Mackey tortures someone. Everyone's afraid of Mackey - you want him on your side, you don't want him against you, but it's a form of torture in itself to be a member of his team. He draws his partners into hell - corruption, brutality, a code of selfrightousness and anger at everyone else on the force and in the world. I miss Forrest Wittaker (Kavangaugh), who now seems to be out of the plot - contract issues? or just the way the story line developed? He was a great counterweight to Mackey, and always interesting to see him act, to catch the way he phrases even the simplest observations.