The Shield`s Vic Mackey May Fall on his Sword

LOS ANGELES–When violent cop Vic Mackey signs off on the series finale of The Shield, he’s going to get “what Vic Mackey deserves.”
So says Shield co-star CCH Pounder, who was at Tuesdays FX TCA press tour session along with producers and co-stars from the series.
Emmy-winner Michael Chiklis, who plays kamikaze cop Mackey, was live via satellite. His bullet head nearly exploded up on the hotel ballroom’s gigantic hi-def screen after Pounder’s provocative remarks. The finale of The Shield is a top secret, and Chiklis and executive producer Shawn Ryan seemed anxious to keep it that way until it airs.
The seventh, and final, season begins airing in September on FX. When it airs in Canada is like trying to predict the weather. I lost track of how many calls and emails I got at the Toronto Sun asking when this series was returning. It bounced around CanWest stations for years. If anybody out there has the Canadian scoop, please weigh in with a comment here. [UPDATE: CanWest’s Amy Waters says Season Seven of The Shield will premiere Tues., Sept. 9 at 10 p.m. E.T. exclusively on Showcase. That’s one week after the FX debut.]
Chiklis, who has moved on to play The Thing in those Fantastic Four movies, will leave it to critics to decide if Mackey gets what he deserves. He did say that “the writers have continually been able to do something that I marvel at, which is to come up with twists and turns that happen and when you watch them, they’re so surprising and stunning. But then when you look back at it, you go, well, yeah, that makes perfect sense. And what thrills me about the finale is you will not see this coming. You will not know what we do. That when you look back at it you’ll go, holy cow, yeah, that’s exactly right.”
Pounder was sticking with her prediction. “I think it’s the greatest finale ever that you’ll ever see anywhere. Hands down. Blew my socks off.”
Producer Ryan simply said he tried to write “an ending to the series that that network deserves.” That process was interrupted last winter during the writers’ strike. The last days work on the episode had to be completed without Ryan on the set.
The stars and producer were asked if there might be a follow up Shield movie. “You’ll have to see if there’s enough people left intact on this show,” said Ryan. Added Chiklis, “Exactly. How do you talk about making a movie when we don’t even know who lives?”
In other FX news:

• Kenny vs. Spenny idiot Kenny Hotz has landed a deal for a new comedy series called Testees, which will premiere Oct. 9 on FX. It is about goofballs who earn their keep as medical guinea pigs. Showcase in Canada has the balls to pick it up; it will likely premiere north of the border Oct. 14.
• Nip/Tuck will sign off after a sixth, 19-episode season. By the time it all ends in 2011, exactly 100 episodes will have aired.
• A wheelchair-bound Michael J. Fox will guest star in a four episode arc as a new boyfriend for Tommy’s estranged wife when Rescue Me returns next April to FX. Showcase, says Waters, will likely air the Rescue return close to FX’s debut.
• William Hurt, Timothy Oliphant and Marcia Gay Hayden will join Glenn Close`s Damages next season (also on both FX and Showcase), with Ted Danson`s evil tycoon character Arthur Frobisher somehow surviving into a few Season Two episodes.