Quote: Cop killing triggers a shakeup on 'Shield'

By MARISA GUTHRIE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Thursday, March 22nd 2007, 4:00 AM

The sixth season of "The Shield" will not end harmoniously for Vic Mackey and Shane Vendrell, heretofore partners in unethical behavior.

"It's really come full circle," said Walton Goggins, who plays Detective Vendrell. "The next sin has been committed. [Now] it's brother against brother, so to speak."

When the fifth season ended, Vendrell had gruesomely murdered his Strike Team brother in arms, Detective Curtis Lemansky (Kenny Johnson), who, he feared, would become a government snitch. How Detective Mackey (Michael Chiklis) finds out about Vendrell's egregious transgression and what he does before and after, is the central sin of season six, which bows April 3 at 10 p.m.

And it will continue to reverberate into the seventh and final season of the FX drama, which goes into production in June and premieres next year.

"It really does change the dynamic between Vic and Shane in a really profound way," said series creator Shawn Ryan.

In other words, forgiveness is unfathomable and revenge is inevitable.

"The Shield" - groundbreaking for its shockingly flawed antihero (Mackey) and operatic basic-cable violence - was to finish its run at the end of season six. But the denouement was put on ice after Ryan and his writing team finished the first three or four hours of season six and realized there was enough creative fodder for a seventh season.

It's a familiar TV scenario, especially if a show remains popular and is still making money. "The Sopranos" famously extended its run beyond the five seasons creator David Chase has said he initially plotted for the New Jersey mob family. The last nine episodes of the sixth season of the HBO drama begin airing April 8.

Ryan and his team have scripts for the first several episodes of season seven, but he declined to offer even an oblique hint of how the show and specifically Vic Mackey might go out.

"I'll never get tired of these characters," said Ryan, adding that if some network executive wants to resurrect any of them on a spinoff, he's game. (And he joked about getting Jay Karnes' Detective Dutch Wagenbach a job on "Cold Case.")

"But," he continued, "I am viewing this seventh season as an ending to what we know of as 'The Shield.'"

The cast isn't exactly rushing to put their characters out to pasture.

"It's very much bittersweet - the idea of coming into the last season," said Chiklis, "because this has been such a miraculous experience, personally and professionally."

But they've also embraced the old showbiz adage. "Leave them wanting more," said CCH Pounder, who plays Lieutenant Claudette Wyms, "as opposed to beating out every story line."

"We never wanted this to get long in the tooth, where people are rolling their eyes and saying, 'Okay, guys, call it a day already,'" added Chiklis.

"I think ... we did it right. It just feels complete and correct and everybody feels great about it."

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