The Lonely Goatherd Blog: The Shield Season 5 DVDs and Death of Curtis Lemansky Photo Gallery

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March 31, 2007

The Shield Season 5 DVDs and Death of Curtis Lemansky Photo Gallery
Just laid my hot little hands to the four DVD set of The Shield, Season 5. Those who know will tell you that it may be their best season yet. That's 11 hours of the best cop drama ever put on a tv screen.

In the DVD package, we get audio commentary tracks on every episode. Plus, there are some 25 deleted scenes. There's a tv panel from somewhere with Shawn Ryan, Michael Chiklis, and Forest Whitaker. Plus, there's an extensive documentary on the filming of the pivotal season finale, "Postpartum."

From the extra chatter, the thing that jumps out at me is some of the explanation about the creator's intentions with Forest Whitaker's character, IAD Lieutenant Jon Kavanaugh. Basically, this internal affairs guy came in obsessing on Vic Mackey like he was a great white whale. Kavanaugh went ruthlessly coloring to the very edge of the lines in his quest for "justice."

Series creator Shawn Ryan says in these commentaries basically that the character was expected to get a mixed reaction as a person. Sure he was playing rough, but he's working within the law to bring down a cop killer. So even allowing for sympathy for Mackey, Ryan was figuring it'd be maybe a 50/50 audience reaction between people liking and hating Kavanaugh.

Instead, he reports, they got more like a 90% reaction of pure HATE for the Kavanaugh character. The audience despises the guy, despite the fact that he's the "good" cop. Forest Whitaker himself seems absolutely befuddled and even a little indignant about this reaction to the character. Vic's the cop-killer, but Kavanaugh's the bad guy?

For my part, I'm a little surprised by this explanation of intent from Ryan. Well OF COURSE everybody hates Kavanaugh. I would have thought that this was absolutely the intention of the writers. Well yes, Vic Mackey is corrupt, and will eventually have to answer for the murder of the snitch cop in the series pilot. He's done some unquestionably bad things. But he doesn't have malice in his heart, and he's done a lot of good in the balance. One unfortunate but understandable murder aside, Vic Mackey's not such a bad guy.

But Lt Kavanaugh is purely evil and malicious. For starters, he's doing nothing to bring down actual bad guys. He's purely motivated by wanting to GET VIC, by any means that he can justify as "legal." He cares not how many lies he tells, or how many lives he destroys doing it. For crying in a bucket, he cut off Corrine Mackey's checking account so she wouldn't even be able to buy groceries for her children. The whole larger point of his character seems to be a demonstration of how much wickedness can be justified by the pursuit of "justice." Cathy Chalin Ryan as Corrine Mackey and Forest Whitaker as IAD Lt Jon Kavanaugh

Cathy Chalin Ryan as Corrine Mackey and Forest Whitaker as IAD Lt Jon Kavanaugh

SPOILER ALERT - If you haven't seen season 5 of The Shield, you may want to stop reading right here, and go get the DVDs.

Indeed, Lt Kavanaugh was perfectly happy to absolutely consciously set up Detective Curtis Lemansky to be murdered in prison by wicked cop-killing gang banger Antwon Mitchell, despite specifically recognizing him as the good guy, the conscience of the Strike Team. Snitch, or I'll serve you right up to a known cop killer.

This sets up the "Postpartum" episode, in which Lemansky's partner and buddy Shane Vendrell panics and kills him first. But even this murder doesn't give Kavanaugh a moment's pause in his malice. Right at the crime scene, with everyone standing round and Curtis Lemansky's body still smoking, Kavanaugh feels the need to taunt Vic. "Are you happy now?" And yet Forest wonders why everyone HATES his character.

This brings us to the grooviest bonus of the DVD set. They made a whole extra mini-episode of The Shield, identified as "Season 6 Prequel." It's a few seconds short of 15 minutes (including a minute or two of "Postpartum"), detailing the funeral of Curtis Lemansky. In one sense, it doesn't substantively advance the series plotline, so you wouldn't really be missing anything from the big arch of the show if you saw season 5 on FX and then start watching season 6 without ever seeing this.
Claudette Wymms, Shane Vendrell, Vic Mackey and Ronnie Gardocki at Lem's funeral

Claudette Wymms, Shane Vendrell, Vic Mackey and Ronnie Gardocki at Lem's funeral

But it's a beautiful eulogy for Lemonhead, and a last hurrah for Kenny Johnson. It has a perfect little flashback storyline as Vic ponders on his greatest memory of his best buddy in an unofficial police arm wrestling match. Actor Kenny Johnson was considered a world-class competitive arm wrestler in the day, so that's a little nod to him. Plus, the writers really twist this brief story beautifully as a demonstration of his character and heart, and a nice little double bow on top of "scamming the scammer."
Curtis 'Lemonhead' Lemansky's last hurrah on The Shield

Curtis 'Lemonhead' Lemansky's last hurrah on The Shield

I've captured and captioned 30 pages of images of this "Season 6 Prequel." This includes the actual murder, shown as Shane Vendrell's guilty flashback during the funeral - starting on page 11.
Shane Vendrell, seconds away from murdering his partner Curtis Lemansky