South Bend Tribune, IN
March 18 2005

Glenn Close new sheriff in town on FX’s ‘The Shield’
TELEVISION

By MAUREEN RYAN
Chicago Tribune

On FX’s breakout police drama “The Shield,” which premiered its
fourth season at 10 p.m. Tuesday, there’s a new sheriff in town.

Glenn Close has joined the series as Capt. Monica Rawling, a veteran
cop who’s charged with cleaning up “The Barn,” the police
headquarters in the fictional, gang-riddled Los Angeles district of
Farmington.

For the first three seasons of the show, Farmington was rogue cop Vic
Mackey’s turf, ruled by him and his take-no-prisoners “strike team.”
The role of Mackey, a cop who dispenses street justice according to
his own twisted sense of morality, won Michael Chiklis Emmy and
Golden Globe awards early in “The Shield’s” run, which isn’t
surprising; even when he’s seated behind a desk, Mackey exudes a
riveting fierceness.

And behind a desk is where Mackey can be found as the season opens.
The strike team broke up at the end of the previous season, after
Mackey and his three partners had serious disagreements over a
multimillion-dollar haul they’d stolen from a gang of Armenian bad
guys.

As Rawling arrives, outgoing Barn boss David Aceveda has Mackey, the
former king of Farmington’s mean streets, logging videotapes from a
boring sting operation. Needless to say, Mackey is not happy.

Rawling, played with increasing ease by Close over the first three
episodes of the season, doesn’t have to wait long to see a
demonstration of the in-house power struggles that beset The Barn.

In view of Rawling and the entire staff, Aceveda (Benito Martinez)
and Mackey lunge at each other as their ongoing disputes over tactics
and ethics finally boil over into a barely averted brawl.

“One happy family, huh?” Rawling mutters.

“Oh yeah, you hit the jackpot,” says Detective Claudette Wyms (CCH
Pounder).

But all those strained relationships make juicy viewing for fans of
the rough-and-tumble police drama (and be forewarned: The show can be
graphic and violent at times). Though “The Shield” always has been
watchable, the Armenian heist plot chewed up far too much of last
season. And Aceveda, as played by the excellent Martinez, has always
been a worthy adversary for Mackey, but it’s intriguing to see The
Barn’s charismatic bad boy face up to a brand-new boss.

Rawling is far too subtle to read Mackey the riot act over his past
bad behavior. Instead, she entices him to go by the book by holding
out the possibility that if he does, he can lead her new anti-gang
initiative, one that will use the proceeds from property seizures to
bring new funds to the beleaguered Barn. Is Rawling setting Mackey up
to fail, so she can get rid of him? Or is she cleverly using his
street-smart skills to her advantage? It’s tough to say, and it’ll be
interesting to see how their relationship plays out.

‘The Shield’
When: 10 p.m. Tuesdays
Network: F/X

Rawling isn’t Mackey’s only problem, however. He’s also contending
with a savvy new street leader, Antwon Mitchell (Anthony Anderson),
who’s got far more influence over the hearts and minds of the local
gangs and residents than Mackey does. And bad blood still lingers
between Mackey and former strike team cops Curtis “Lem” Lemansky
(Kenneth Johnson) and Shane Vendrell (Walton Goggins), who still
interact with Mackey but have new assignments with other units.

One of the strengths of “The Shield” is the fine work that comes from
the entire cast: Pounder and Jay Karnes, who plays Holland “Dutch”
Wagenbach, are particularly appealing as an effective, dedicated
detective team. As the new season begins, Wagenbach and Wyms are
paying for Wyms’ exposure of corruption that led to improper
convictions. Now many of those convictions have been overturned,
which puts both detectives in the doghouse with their colleagues and
the district attorney’s office.

Though he and Wyms have often been the moral center of the show,
Wagenbach is increasingly irritated that standing by his partner may
cost him his career. On the other hand, the future of patrol officer
Danielle “Danny” Sofer (Catherine Dent) is looking up, now that
Rawling’s ambitious plans are giving her a chance to shine.

One hopes the shake-up at The Barn will afford all these worthy
supporting characters some meaty story lines; though Mackey’s
travails have been intriguing enough, it would be good to see more
about Wagenbach, Wyms and Sofer. When it comes to Mackey’s former
strike-team buddies, we’ve probably seen as much as we need to of
Vendrell and his needy new wife. It’d be good to see more stories
centered on the appealing Lemansky, and possibly on the fourth
strike-team detective, Ronnie Gardocki (David Rees Snell), who’s had
so few lines over the course of the entire series that I never could
remember his name and took to calling him the Fourth Guy.

There’s only one serious wrong turn in the first three episodes of
Season 4. In a plot that feels recycled from any number of medical
dramas, Mackey and his wife contemplate suing a vaccine maker over
the autism that’s been diagnosed in two of their three children. It’s
a strange misfire in the otherwise bracing opening of a new regime at
The Barn.