I really HATE Shane!!!
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Balthazar Bee — 10 years ago(May 28, 2015 04:40 AM)
I guess it comes down to whether or not you believe what Shane
wrote in his suicide note
. I do.
But it's the way these threads inevitably pop up to claim that "Vic is more X than Shane" or "Shane did Y and Vic didn't" that gets me down.
The Shield has the most powerful conclusion in the history of television, full stop. It puts the lie to satisfying piffle like we saw in the final episode of another dramatic show about men behaving badly. It's so good that reductive debates about which characters we "hate" and which characters we don't suggest that some of us missed the point.
To wit, the OP felt compelled end his post with this nugget:
I was happy when I saw him committing suicide.
If this is accurate, well, I don't know what to say. -
livefreeordie-154-825860 — 10 years ago(June 01, 2015 04:00 PM)
Well maybe 'happy' is not exactly the right word to use but think it was the best end for Shane's closure . He couldnt bear the burden of all the bad things he've done. I felt sorry about his unborn child and his son though. It was really sad that they had to pay too for his wrong actions.
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fatality713 — 10 years ago(July 30, 2015 02:24 PM)
I don't think he felt the weight of his actions. To me Shane took the coward's way out like he did throughout the show. He so no more moves left so he took his own life. He was also self-serving and disloyal to the end. After spending god knows how long leaching off his friends to help him and then blackmailing them when they got tired of it he tried to burn them after his death when he saw no more use for them.
The problem with Shane was that he thought he was a leader but he was truly a follower. When he had someone guiding him that knew what and when to do something, Vic, he did well. When he had someone guiding him that was also self-serving and incompetent, his wife, he did very poorly. -
Balthazar Bee — 10 years ago(August 01, 2015 10:21 AM)
When he had someone guiding him that was also self-serving and incompetent, his wife, he did very poorly.
I don't think this characterization of Mara is accurate, particularly the self-serving bit. She had several opportunities to give up Shane in the final episodes, essentially skating on the accumulating charges, and she didn't.
And, while it's true that Shane clearly didn't think the Strike Team was as deserving of his loyalty as his own family, he was certainly dedicated to the latter, with tragic results.
Vic told himself (and everyone who would listen, finally) that he was doing everything for his family, a theme that would be explored in slightly more on-the-nose fashion in Breaking Bad, but he doesn't get the tidy, last minute revelation that Walter White has that it was all for him. But it was.
Finally, if you're going to wave the disloyalty stick at Shane and give Vic a pass, let's not forget
Ronnie Gardocki
. -
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Balthazar Bee — 10 years ago(August 08, 2015 11:22 AM)
Shane certainly didn't. That's my point I'd say he
did
feel the full weight of his actions. We've all done things we've instantly regretted, and it's obvious that Shane recognizes how far he's fallen immediately. He'd rather it was him.
The fallout from this, where he becomes self-destructive, begs his wife for forgiveness, gets it, tries to move on, then runs face-first into Vic's ludicrous righteous indignation (the scale of which I don't think he anticipated)that is some of the most interesting character work on any show in history. But I don't think the people playing a game of "Team Shane vs. Team Vic" quite understand that.
Lem's tragedy is Shane's tragedy is Vic's tragedy is the tragedy of the whole Shield universe. I empathize with all of them, because I feel like I've been all of them at some time or other. But the Shane-me can look himself in the mirror and own up to his deficiencies of character; the Vic-me walks around oblivious, doing all sorts of terrible stuff and rationalizing up a storm.
They've both earned a nice, cozy spot in hell. The difference is Shane will feel right at home, knowing he's earned it; Vic will spend the entire time with that incredulous "how did
I
get here?" look on his face. -
Naphthous — 9 years ago(December 02, 2016 02:09 PM)
I was going to voice my disagreement with some other stuff you wrote, but instead I want to call out how great this comment is:
They've both earned a nice, cozy spot in hell. The difference is Shane will feel right at home, knowing he's earned it; Vic will spend the entire time with that incredulous "how did I get here?" look on his face.
Brilliant.
You may have a bit of an obsession with hell and damnation, though. -
livefreeordie-154-825860 — 10 years ago(June 01, 2015 03:44 PM)
I agree with the last words of Shane in his suicidal note. If he never met Vic he wouldn't do any of these things. He always was a greedy person in the inside but he was too stupid to act like that by his own. He needed a leader to trigger his viciousness and Vic was the right one.
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vorion5 — 10 years ago(August 07, 2015 08:13 AM)
Only difference is that Shane was too greedy and not nearly as smart as he thought he was for most of the series.
This. Shane wanted to be a main player equal to Vic and he was outsmarted time and time again by the criminals he tried to work with. Vic could see how situations would play out from about 10 different perspectives and Shane, maybe 3. He was far too emotional to play at the level Vic did and had little patience to let things develop before getting cocky and threatening.