The Shield is dead, long live the Shield. I still don't know how I feel about how it all ended. There was a lot that was perfect, that happened exactly how it had to happen. Some things were...well, less than satisfying, even if they were somehow appropriate.

The bad...Ronnie. Christ, what the Hell. The groundwork for Ronnie's fate was very much laid out last week, and still I somehow hoped it wasn't going to end that way. After everything, seeing Vic throw him under the bus to suffer under the full weight of the Strike Team's collected sins was fucked up, possibly the worst thing he's ever done it its own way. Ronnie stuck by him, and after it all he still trusted him, and paid for it with his life, at least life as he knew it.

I think I was most bothered not by what happened to him, but how it was treated. Ronnie was hardly used and developed as a character for five seasons, but I always liked him. Then suddenly for the last two seasons, with Lem dead and Shane...Shane, he became far more prominent. And then suddenly, he was wrapped up and tossed away in one 90 second sequence. It was a heavy moment treated far too lightly in my opinion.

Shane's final exit was much darker than I expected. His suicide wasn't the shocking thing, that actually seemed right. But when they showed the bodies of his family, posed and peaceful as if asleep, that shocked and actually shocked me. I thought family meeting would be send the wife and kid/s on their way, stay behind and take the blame...anything but what it actually was.

And lastly, Vic Mackey. I really thought after all that happened he would have gone out in some sort of blaze of glory. Gunned down fighting, making a last stand of some sort. Although I guess losing the only two things he cared about besides himself, and winding up sentenced to his own mundane cubicle and paperwork Hell is also very fitting in its own right.

There are still unanswered questions but I suppose their have to be. Anything short of a forced "kill everyone" ending is going to leave some loose ends. In the end it was an amazing, shocking, perfect yet disappointing finale. I felt fulfilled and totally empty by the end, and that right there is The Shield.