“The Shield” gets Close for its fourth season
BY KATE O’HARE Zap2it

St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri)
March 13, 2005 Sunday

Glenn Close stands on the front walk of a house on a corner in Los
Angeles’ Silverlake district, today’s location for the FX police drama
“The Shield.”

Wearing a neat gray suit, dark striped blouse and shades, gun on her
hip, she’s waiting for Michael Chiklis to work out camera angles for
his arrival at the location and his trip up the steps to meet Close.

Finally the sequence is sorted out, and Close smiles patiently at
Chiklis, then calls out, “I forgot it was all about you.”

Starting with the fourth-season premiere on Tuesday, Close, a five-time
Academy Award nominee, joins “The Shield” as Capt. Monica Rawling,
new commander of the Barn, a precinct in LA’s fictional Farmington
district. She steps in because former Capt. David Aceveda (Benito
Martinez) has been elected to the city council.

Chiklis’ character, Detective Vic Mackey, has spent three seasons
butting heads with Aceveda while simultaneously fighting crime and
lining his own pockets as the head of the elite Strike Team. After a
particularly lucrative scheme — robbing an Armenian “money train” —
went seriously south last season, the Strike Team broke apart. With
only Detective Ronnie Gardocki (David Rees Snell) still at his side,
Vic is stuck reviewing videotapes as part of a sting operation.

Rawling’s arrival could mean a new beginning, if Vic can control his
worst impulses.

“Certainly, in the short term, he will,” Chiklis says on the street
between shots. “He realizes there are some great opportunities to be
had by having a great rapport with this woman, but you can’t change
the spots on a leopard. She’ll give him a foot of leash, and he’ll
probably take nine.”

Close, digging into Mexican food during her lunch break, says,
“I don’t know if she’s out to reform anybody. She’s out to motivate
people. I’d like to think she’s a leader, but she’s a leader by example
and smarts. She would be very good at psychology, so certainly the
worst thing to do would be to set out to reform Vic. She’s trying
to redirect him, and it’s a huge risk. I don’t think she can afford
to trust him.”

In the season premiere, Chiklis meets Rawling when she visits a
crime scene. After she dispatches the situation with grace and humor,
he watches her depart, and the shock and awe on his face raise the
question: Does he want her?

“Sexually?” Close says. “On some subliminal level, there’s a
fascination. I don’t know if the writers have something up their
sleeves.”

While Mackey sorts out this new relationship, it’s time to mend
fences with former Strike Team cohorts Shane Vendrell (Walton Goggins)
and Curtis “Lemonhead” Lemansky (Kenneth Johnson).

“Necessity is the mother of invention,” Chiklis says. “Look, they
all have an innate understanding that if they don’t fix it somehow,
what’s the alternative? One of them steps in (excrement). They know
the other’s going to give the other up. There’s that constant fear.

“No matter what transpires between these men, there is that bond, when
you have fought next to each other and killed next to each other .. “.

And they were part of a criminal conspiracy. Chiklis smiles and
continues, ” … fought and killed and lived through certain things.
You can overcome a helluva lot to preserve that. They need each
other, and that’s going to ultimately win out. It has to go that way,
otherwise they have to end up killing each other.”

And by the way, Strike Team Detective Tavon Garris (Brian J. White)
is still recovering from a brutal beating by Vendrell, which led to
an auto accident.

“Tavon’s not dead,” Chiklis says.

But will he talk? Chiklis grins. “We’ll see.”