(S02E12) "Either you or me goes home in a bag." - Jax to A.J.

The showdown we've been waiting all season to see finally happened tonight and even though it didn't end the way the antagonists deserved (i.e. heads removed where the shoulder meets the neck, placed on a stick and paraded around town on a substandard Japanese import), it still had my head spinning.

The show opens with SAMCRO preparing for their big, inevitable smackdown with the League by keeping all of their loved ones under lock and key at the clubhouse. But instead of just jumping into the fray head first with baseball bats twisted in barb-wire and all, they do what they should have done from the beginning: they plotted and planned. They turned the tables on the League and by doing so, turned the League on each other.

Already announced was that the seventh and final season of the amazing The Shield will premiere on September 2nd, but now comes word that it will The Shield finale will air November 25th. I know that gives us the full thirteen episodes promised but as it's been more than a year since we've had a new episode to chew on, forgive me if this suddenly feels like a really short-lived reunion. There is something so magically beautiful about what Shawn Ryan has created here; I'll go ahead and dub it the best cop show I've ever seen on television.

The thing you have to wonder about is how it's all going to end, and I do believe Ryan will give us a definitive ending here. Vic Mackey has been the "hero" of the series, but still ... should the Strike Team get away with all the shit they've pulled over the past six seasons? Shane's treatment of Lemansky deserves retribution, but is Shane necessarily a worse guy than Mackey? Remember how the first episode wrapped. There is a line of victims behind these guys, and each one is in it as deep as the guy next to him.

(S06E04) To say the Strike Team experienced a shakeup in tonight's episode would be an understatement to say the least.

Claudette once again shows her brilliance by leading Vic along into thinking he's got a chance to stick around at The Barn. Somewhat surprisingly it works like a charm. Vic chums right up to his new replacement of all people, and Julien being added to the team is met with no fuss. Vic is one well-behaved little puppy.