FX drama hands in its 'Shield'

Critics know the drill. You watch the preview screener of a new show, and it's usually good or mediocre. Sometimes, it's horrible. Occasionally, superb. Only once in two decades has a series pilot climaxed with a twist so game-changing it actually rocked me to blurt a what-a-shock expletive.

That was "The Shield." And that's why the seven-season drama's inexorable conclusion -- two terrific episodes, the last of which airs 10 p.m. Tuesday on FX -- is such an occasion for celebration.

It's not just for the 88 rousing hours in this saga of rogue cop Vic Mackey's L.A. police "strike team," obliterating the line between being good cops and/or self-interested crooks in blue.

It's not just because "The Shield" sustained the ambition of its 2002 pilot, incarnating flesh-and-bloody characters (including extended guest stints by Glenn Close and Forest Whitaker), while also probing the intersection of law enforcement, politics and citizens who just want both to work by whatever methods necessary.

It isn't even the way the series expanded the boundaries for ad-supported TV with adult story lines, language and authentic urban violence.

The show's ultimate achievement may be that "The Shield," in an odd dovetail with the presidential election, has broken barriers in a way that inspires a fresh sense of hope amid uncertain times.

The hope here is for the future of TV drama -- in an era when shrinking broadcast networks strain to create new hits, and as onetime premium cable titan HBO founders after game-changers like "The Sopranos."

Bursting out of nowhere back in 2002, "The Shield" proved basic cable could deliver frank content without scaring off advertisers. That one show could elevate an entire channel from obscurity into the spotlight.

So much so that the industry awarded ensemble star Michael Chiklis the first lead Emmy for basic cable (2002). The show itself grabbed the Golden Globe as TV's best drama (2003).

A just end?

Vic Mackey really does want to clean up the streets, but he wants to do it through rule-breaking, head-bashing and personal enrichment.

Onlookers may be appalled, but, geez, the guy's effective. Who cares about his means to an end?

But what's the cost of that, to him and to us as that society?

"The Shield" addressed that right from the mind-blowing pilot, which climaxed with Mackey's gunshot to the face of a cop close to uncovering his sins. The series thus became: How will Mackey pay? Or: Will he?

Creator Shawn Ryan and his corps of young writers also charted the broader implications: for business, for politics and for everyday citizens. Deals with the devil get made everywhere.

Payment now comes due in the final stretch amid a high-octane cocktail of gunplay, betrayals, murders, suicides, desperation deals and multiple lives generally spiraling down the drain.

As the episodes unreeled at Ryan's screening, gasps were frequently heard from jaded critics who thought they (we) had seen it all. The plots mix horrific violence with tart black comedy and sharp cultural insights.

That makes this finale more overtly satisfying than, say, that of the "The Sopranos." Which just stopped. "The Shield" culminates.

"You have all these dominoes start to fall," says FX programming chief John Landgraf, "and you have these characters finally become existentially aware of their condition and what it is that they've wrought upon the world."

And now "The Shield" wraps it all up.

With a bang.