FX's double feature: Out with the old ("Shield"), in with the new ("Sons of Anarchy")

The return of "The Shield" isn't until a week from Tuesday. But I'm giving it and the new FX show "Sons of Anarchy" early reviews for two reasons: A lot of people are gone over the Labor Day weekend and might want to preset their DVRs; and "The Shield" is far and away the series whose absence my readers have noticed the most.

The seventh and final season of "The Shield" begins at 9 p.m. CT Sept. 2 on FX, 15 months after the season six finale aired. In yet another repercussion of the WGA writers' strike (of which "Shield" creator Shawn Ryan was a leader), FX put the brakes on the final production of these episodes last winter.

Out of sight, out of mind. The leading recap websites don't even have "The Shield" on their menus as I write this. Even the most devoted fan of this series shouldn't be surprised to find herself a little disoriented as she wanders once more into the maze of storylines that is "The Shield."

The hour begins with an especially jarring non-linear recap reel of the previous season, and then comes the opening: a violent confrontation between bad cop Shane (Walton Goggins) and even badder cop Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis). Watching these bang-bang-bang first minutes could be compared to being hustled into a room with a bag over your head, having the bag torn off and then getting dunked in a tub of ice water. Yes, it gets your attention -- but you still aren't sure what the hell is going on.

Well, for starters, Vic knows that Shane killed their partner Lem at the end of season five. Vic doesn't know, but Shane does, that the head of the so-called "Armenian money train" knows that Vic and his boys ripped them off way back in season two. And neither Shane nor Vic knows -- but their former boss Aceveda (Benito Martinez) does -- why a group of south-of-the-border outlaws are muscling into "the Farm," as the fictional Farmington distict of inner-city L.A. is known on the show.

Eventually, the action moves back inside precinct headquarters, aka "The Barn," and that's when, for me at least, familiarity returned. Throughout the seven seasons of "The Shield," there has been this wonderfully calibrated back-and-forth between the Farm and the Barn, between the high drama of the streets and the low-intensity humor of the dingy station house. (Not that the action scenes are without levity; Vic's unorthodox use of a car to end a gunfight in the first hour is an instant “Shield” classic.)

Mackey gets all the attention, for me it's Dutch, played by longtime Lawrence denizen Jay Karnes, who embodies "The Shield." (Shawn Ryan has said that Dutch was the first character he thought up.) Dutch is the frustrated cop, a lanky loser whose glowing self-assessment is continually taken down a notch by those around him. And as season seven opens, he is saddled by his slug of a partner, Billings (David Marciano), who's more interested in getting a disability settlement and leaving the force than with solving crimes.

Of course, serious business is transacted inside the Barn as well. Claudette (CCH Pounder), who's running the precinct, wants Vic out. Her chief obstacles are a crippling case of lupus and Councilman Aceveda, who now wants to run the city.

In a back room at the precinct, Vic puts it succinctly. "We both know that we're just here for survival," he tells Aceveda. "You want to be mayor, and all I want to do is keep being a cop."

And ultimately, that's why "The Shield" keeps so many pots on the boil at one time. Mackey has been running from justice since the first minutes of the first hour of this show. And yet, he's still a cop. With perverse interest, we've followed all his escapes, watching him get pushed into a corner and then, somehow, wriggling away, whether from suspicious bosses (of which Monica, Glenn Close's character from season four, might have been the most formidable), gang bosses (like Antwon Mitchell, played by Anthony Anderson, who will resurface this season) or dangerous wild cards (like the unhinged internal-affairs cop played by Forest Whitaker in seasons five and six).

And it's why, even at this late date in "The Shield's" amazing run, we still have no idea how it will turn out. 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.

One notable behind-the-scenes fact about "The Shield": For one of the most testosterone-fueled shows on television, it has an impressive female-to-male writer ratio. Four women now grace the writing staff -- double what it was when the Kansas City-born and bred team of Liz Craft and Sarah Fain were hired (they've moved on and work on "Dollhouse" now). I like to think they help to humanize the mayhem -- keep your eye on Danny (Catherine Dent) and something that happens to her in the first episode. Watch how she redeems it for full emotional and storyline value in episode three. A show that can pull that off is one special TV show.

"Sons of Anarchy," which begins at 9 p.m. CT on Sept. 3 on FX, would have reminded me of "The Sopranos" even if I hadn't heard the interview with one of its producers actually using the words, "West Coast Sopranos."

I mean, there just aren't that many TV shows I can think of that revolve around an aging, all-male mob society who operate with impunity in their sleepy communities; who have a flotilla of female enablers watching their back; and who see their protected world crumbling under pressure from interlopers -- not just aggressive cops who refuse to take a bribe but these young punks who have no respect, none whatsoever, for the values that made America what it is today.

The Sons of Anarchy (or SAMCRO, for Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club Redwood Original), have been living the good life in the hippie outliers of northern California for a generation. Ron Perelman plays Clay Morrow, one of the club's founders and its Tony figure, who never forgets that it's about honor and order and preserving the golden goose, which in SAMCRO's case is an illegal gun-running trade that supplies half the weaponry to the gangs of Oakland. Katey Sagal plays Clay's wife Gemma, sort of a not-nice version of Carmela.

But the show is actually supposed to revolve around Jax (Charlie Hunnam), Gemma's son by another SAMCRO founder (Piney, played by William Lucking). Clay is trying to toughen up Jax and ensure that the money train keeps moving. Jax is game, but he's a little uncomfortable with aspects of the thug life. Part of him -- the non-psychopathic part -- would like nothing more than to get out of town and marry Tara (Maggie Siff), the pediatrics doctor he's loved since high school.

Now throw in the even more violent skinheads, led by Mitch Pileggi; Tara's ex-boyfriend Josh (Jay Karnes again), who just happens to be an ATF officer; and, what have we here, former "Sopranos" victim Drea de Matteo as Jax's pregnant, drug-addicted ex-wife. All that, and several big names behind the camera (HBO mainstay Allen Coulter directed the pilot), and you have a formula that could pay off ... eventually.

"Sons of Anarchy" throws a lot at you the first two hours. That's one problem. The other concerns the actor playing Jax. I realize Hunnam was in "Children of Men," but viewers might be forgiven for thinking that Hellboy is the star of this show.

I suppose that "Sopranos" fans could be an issue for "Sons of Anarchy," too. The way I look at it, though, if we can have 20 crime procedurals on TV, why can't someone take a run at "The Sopranos" again? (Someone is remaking "The Prisoner," which is a lot more audacious than this.) It will take a while to figure out whether "Sons of Anarchy" was worth the investment of our time. Then again, that's one reason we watch cable. 

Program note: "Film students interview Shawn Ryan, Creator/Executive Producer/Writer of the acclaimed FX series The Shield, on Life After Film School, Fox Movie Channel’s half-hour series. On Life After Film School three aspiring student filmmakers interview successful directors, producers, writers and actors about the realities of the business of television production and filmmaking. The Shawn Ryan episode premieres on Fox Movie Channel Sunday, August 24 at 7:30pm ET (4:30pm PT), repeating at 10:30pm ET. The episode will repeat throughout the end of August through September." --FMC publicity