The Shield

The Shield (this season and every season) is an intoxicating head-gamer of a show that grabs you by the throat.

What remains compelling about The Shield as it heads into its last hurrah are the gray areas and ethical gradations of the characters that have defined it.

Season openers don't get much more incendiary: There are severed feet, a ''beef'' between rival Armenian, Mexican, and Salvadoran gangs, and a murder committed by another member of Vic's Strike Team.

All I can say, at this point, is that the first eight episodes of Season 7 are tight, unrelenting, complicated, fierce, wonderfully acted.

The Shield, which, based on the three I've seen so far, looks to be going out the way it came in: fast and furious, bloody but unbowed.

He has always been wrapped a little tight but now he's about to explode, and Chiklis plays it beautifully, making it sound as if he must measure every phrase so that just opening his mouth doesn't release all the frustration in a nuclear blast.

Nothing about the seventh and final season of The Shield feels like a show running out of gas.

For the uninitiated, the show's dense plotline has become a head-scratching web of scorned relationships between Armenians, Mexicans, corrupt politicians, dirty cops, police commissioners and Mackey, of course, in the center of it all, doing whatever it takes to hang on to his badge. For the longtime fan, however, the story is complex yet riveting, making complete sense, especially after witnessing Mackey's hellacious journey to get here.

Chiklis always sells his end of it, and when he has a great actor opposite him, you don't really notice how puzzling the story arcs would get.

Things may end badly for Vic, or not, but this I know for sure: The next time The Shield cheats its viewers will be the first.

You couldn't wander in at this point and not be lost. Yet here's one series worth catching up with on DVD.

Tonight's season premiere does a fairly good job of wrapping up the sixth season finale and setting the stage to move forward but there's still a fair amount of cleanup to be done.