Ellen Gray | Looking for the right ending

0 Comments | Philadelphia Daily News, April, 2007

THE SHIELD. 10 tonight, FX.

I'VE BEEN thinking a lot about endings lately.

Hard not to, really, with HBO's "The Sopranos" now a third of the way through its final nine, and the producers of ABC's "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost" indicating that they don't share "Law & Order" producer Dick Wolf's obsession with outlasting "Gunsmoke."

Even the CW's "7th Heaven" is planning a May 13 series finale - just a year after its first one failed to take.

On FX, "The Shield" is in its next-to-last season, that very knowledge a luxury too often found only on cable.

I might have wrapped up things sooner there, before it began to seem that Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) had more lives than a cat.

Or maybe...