Ronnie Gardocki
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Ronald Gardocki | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| First appearance | "Pilot" (episode 1.01) |
| Created by | Shawn Ryan |
| Portrayed by | David Rees Snell |
| Information | |
| Nickname(s) | Ronnie |
| Gender | Male |
| Age | late 30s, early 40s |
| Occupation | Police officer |
| Title | Detective, Strike Team member |
Detective Ronald "Ronnie" Gardocki, is a fictional character on the FX crime drama The Shield. He is portrayed by David Rees Snell.
Contents |
[edit] Character sketch
[edit] Physical appearance
Gardocki was originally known for his trademark “porn-star” mustache. Episode 209, “Co-Pilot,” revealed that Gardocki grew the mustache to make himself more attractive to women. Since the attack by drug boss Armadillo in season two, he has had burn scars on his face. In season three, he removed the mustache and grew a beard. His clothing style seems to have changed along with his facial hair. Originally, Gardocki dressed in a 1990s grunge style complete with loose-fitting, unbuttoned flannel shirts. Since growing the beard, Gardocki has abandoned his grunge look and taken to wearing golf shirts and a varsity jacket. While the change in appearance was never officially acknowledged on-camera, it is generally accepted by fans that the beard was a means for the series' writers to sidestep the issue of his disfigurement[citation needed].
[edit] Personality
Few elements of Gardocki's personality and background have been revealed. The character can be considered an example of the "man of mystery" archetype. His past and personality are clouded in mystery, though he is trusted implicitly by the protagonist, Vic Mackey.
Outwardly, Gardocki can be described as "geeky" due to his interest in electronic equipment and computers, as well as his general social ineptitude. He appears to favor the Beretta 8045 Cougar F as his sidearm. He has severe allergies (in one episode, he comments that he's allergic to "everything but sheet metal") and is shy around women. His mild-mannered personality sharply contrasts with the more aggressive, testosterone-driven members of the Strike Team, which has added towards the character's popularity with fans[citation needed].
Gardocki exhibits a meticulous, often cynical attitude regarding human nature and the harsh realities faced by the Strike Team due to their dangerous jobs and illegal schemes. While Gardocki usually keeps these feelings and concerns to himself, he is not afraid to take the side of devil's advocate against Mackey and the rest of the Strike Team during times of crisis.
In particular, Gardocki is often forced to make Mackey acknowledge the renegade behavior of Shane Vendrell and the threat that he posed towards the Strike Team because of his knowledge of the team's illegal activities. He was an early advocate for killing Shane to prevent him from betraying the Strike Team to gang leader Antwon Mitchell; he was also the first to express fears that fellow detective Curtis Lemansky might have turned state's evidence against the Strike Team, though Gardocki was against taking violent action to silence the man.
Gardocki's violent side was exposed in season 5. As the Strike Team tried to break up a riot between a group of blacks and Hispanics, a black man struck Gardocki in the back of the head. After finding out the identity of the culprit, Mackey, Vendrell and Gardocki tracked him down, and Gardocki beat the man bloody.
[edit] Romantic life
Gardocki is consistently portrayed as single due to his ineptitude with the opposite sex. In the first season, for example, he turns off a lap dancer after talking about golf during his dance. In the fifth season, Gardocki begins bragging about having a girlfriend to his fellow Strike Team members. The girlfriend has yet to be introduced onscreen, so her existence is questionable. Gardocki is established as a possible candidate for the paternity of Patrol Officer Danielle Sofer's son, due to the great deal of interest he showed in the details of her pregnancy, but this was later proved incorrect.
[edit] Relationship with Vic Mackey
One element of Gardocki's background that has been extensively touched upon is his close friendship with fellow detective and Strike Team leader Mackey. The season two episodes "Partners" and "Co-Pilot" established that Gardocki and Mackey met after Mackey's original partner Joe Clarke was fired due to excessive force complaints, but before Mackey met and became partners with Detective Shane Vendrell.
The two have an unspoken bond of loyalty that forms a sharp contrast towards Mackey's dysfunctional relationship with Vendrell. This loyalty is established during season two when Gardocki was disfigured by a pedophile crime boss who Mackey had similarly disfigured earlier in the season. When the crime boss is arrested, he threatens to file a police brutality complaint against Mackey if Mackey doesn't force Gardocki to recant a statement which identifies the crime boss as his attacker. Mackey's response was to state that he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he were to force Gardocki to release the man who mutilated his face. In turn, Gardocki's loyalty towards Mackey is shown when he stands by Mackey after the Strike Team disbands at the end of season three.
Despite (or possibly because of) his close friendship with Mackey, Gardocki has been kept in dark regarding some of Mackey's darker plans. Gardocki was not involved in the murder plot against turncoat Strike Team member Detective Terry Crowley. Both Mackey and fellow conspirator Vendrell go out of their way to avoid discussing the crime in front of Gardocki; it is implied that they believe Gardocki will turn against the group if he finds out what the two men had done.
However, in spite of their fears, in the wake of Internal Affairs publicizing the belief that Mackey may have murdered Crowley, Gardocki has continued to fully support Mackey during the investigation. In season six, When Mackey reveals to Gardocki in that he did kill Crowley, Gardocki says that he wished Mackey had told him the truth so he "could have looked out for you better".
[edit] Character history
[edit] Season one
Gardocki appeared in about two-thirds of the season's episodes, including a brief appearance in the pilot, for which David Rees Snell, the actor who portrays him, went uncredited. To explain why a member of the Strike Team would be missing in action so often, it was established that Mackey often has Gardocki run errands.
Gardocki's personality was first truly established in "Dragonchasers". The episode establishes his shyness around attractive women during an investigation involving a stripper. Gardocki is sent into a strip club to investigate a dancer who is luring customers outside the club with promises of sex, only to have an accomplice rob the unwitting johns. While alone with the woman, Gardocki's nervous chatter annoys the stripper so much that she does not offer sex, and the investigation is a bust. When he returns to the rest of the Strike Team, the group (having heard the entire encounter via a hidden wire) mercilessly mocks Gardocki.
[edit] Season two
Fan response to the character at the end of the first season was mixed. Complaints usually centered around Gardocki's apparent "redshirt" status; fans seemed to think that his purpose as a character was to be dramatically killed off later in the show's run[citation needed]. Gardocki's first major storyline played up upon that belief, bringing the character to the very brink of death, only to have him escape and live on. Though actor Snell would not see his screen time expanded dramatically, Gardocki would go on to appear in just about every episode of the show from season two onward.
Early in the season, the Strike Team is ordered by Captain David Aceveda to select a non-white detective to fill the Strike Team's vacant fifth slot. Meanwhile, the Team began a war with a Mexican drug lord called Armadillo, who sought to gain control over the city's streets.
Fearing that Armadillo would rat out Mackey and the Strike Team to Detective Claudette Wyms (who was investigating Armadillo with a vengeance after he brutally raped and disfigured a young girl who offered to testify against him), Mackey beats Armadillo, burns his face and orders him to leave town or be killed. Armadillo responds by declaring he will murder the Strike Team, and then murders his own brother to keep the Team from using his brother as a pawn against him.
These events horrify Gardocki, who begins to fear that the crime boss would succeed and kill the Strike Team before they could bring him to justice. Gardocki's also suspects that he is being followed by one of Armadillo's men. In an attempt to distract Gardocki, Mackey sends him on a minor errand. When Mackey returns to meet Gardocki, he finds his friend lying on the floor near death, his face having been horribly burnt on a nearby stove burner. As they rush Gardocki to a hospital, he reveals that Armadillo was personally responsible for the attack.
The Strike Team vows to kill Armadillo for the attack. Realizing this, Armadillo turns himself over to the police, knowing that it was the only way to ensure Mackey could not touch him. He threatens to reveal why he disfigured Gardocki, an admission which would ruin Mackey's career, if Mackey doesn't convince Gardocki to recant his statement accusing Armadillo of disfiguring him. As well, he demands that Mackey allow Armadillo to leave for Mexico, having successfully escaped any punishment for all of the horrific crimes he had committed in the city.
Mackey shocks Shane and Lemansky by saying he would never force Gardocki to recant, and he will confess to burning Armadillo's face to ruin the blackmail scheme. Shane and Lemansky, without Mackey's knowledge, convince a disgruntled gangster to get himself arrested. They arrange for him to be put in the same holding cell as Armadillo, and slip him a shiv, with which he kills Armadillo. This frees Mackey from having to admit to brutality, and revenges Gardocki for the disfigurement. However, Mackey's occasional lover Officer Danielle Sofer is fired for failing to properly search the gang leader for weapons when she arrested him.
Gardocki survives, but is left permanently disfigured. After Armadillo story arc, a flashback episode, titled “Co-Pilot” aired which features Gardocki participating in the formation of the Strike Team. The flashback episode was used in part to give the make-up staff the time needed to create a suitable job regarding the scars on Gardocki's face[citation needed]. The episode established that Mackey had hand-selected Gardocki as a founding member of the Strike Team, and had refused to tell Shane and Lemansky the reason for selecting Detective Gardocki. It also reveals that Gardocki was the only member of the Strike Team to openly question Mackey's decision to have the team break the law in their pursuit of arrests within the Farmington District.
The following episode ("Coyotes") saw the end of the search for a new Strike Team member, as Mackey, Shane, and Lemansky select a detective named Tavon Garris to join the team. The writers hinted that Gardocki would not be coming back to active duty. Lemansky spends the episode being resentful towards Tavon for "taking Gardocki's spot" on the team before ultimately accepting Tavon as a teammate.
Gardocki makes his return to the show in the following episode, "Inferno". His near-death experience causes him to take a more active role in the Strike Team; particularly in planning out a means for the Strike Team to hijack the Armenian mob's "Money Train" convoy. Mackey had proposed the plan earlier in season two, but assorted personal problems caused him to shelve the plan. Gardocki, having previously scoffed at Mackey's plan to use the "Money Train" loot as an emergency nest egg for Strike Team members, realizes the logic of Mackey's scheme. Gardocki convinces Mackey to let the team go ahead with his plan for robbing the convoy.
[edit] Season Three
Gardocki appears in all fifteen episodes of season three. At its start, he saves the lives of his fellow Strike Team members when Mackey, Shane, and Lemansky are almost executed after a botched sting operation. When a large sum from the "Money Train" loot is subsequently stolen, it is Gardocki who notices, and openly suggests that either Mackey or Shane is the thief. Mackey defensively accuses Gardocki of miscounting the money, but eventually realizes that Gardocki might be correct. The real thief is revealed as Shane's girlfriend, and Gardocki retaliates for Mackey's distrust by voting to forbid Mackey from using the loot to pay for treatment for his son's autism. He states that it is not safe for any member to use the loot, given that the police were still looking for the identity of the people behind the heist.
By the end of the season, as the show focuses more on the growing tension between the rest of the members of the Strike Team, Gardocki is relegated to the role of mediator between Shane and Lemansky. In the finale, Gardocki cripples the Armenian mob's west coast criminal syndicate by discovering the main front organization used by the mob. His contribution does little to save the Strike Team from imploding. As the season ends, Gardocki is sent to speak with Lemansky, who has quit the team.
[edit] Season Four
At the start of season four, Gardocki becomes Mackey's partner. In the first episode, Gardocki seeks to help an abused child whose father has been caught on hidden camera physically abusing his son. With Mackey's help, Gardocki arranges for the father to break his parole, causing him to be sent back to jail. His son is sent to live with relatives.
As the season progresses, Gardocki continues to mediate between the warring members of the Strike Team, which has been reunited by Mackey with intent to keep an eye on Shane, now in league with drug kingpin Antwon Mitchell. In an effort to ease tension between Mackey and Shane, Gardocki plants a camera in the car of Detective "Dutch" Wagenbach, so as to collect embarrassing footage of the man. This he shows to his fellow detectives, both of whom had longstanding personal problems with Detective Wagenbach. Soon after, Gardocki plants a camera in Shane's car to find out if he is leaking police information to Mitchell. The camera captures Shane being ordered to kill Mackey, and Gardocki confides to Lemansky that he wants Mackey to kill Shane first, to provide closure to the problem Shane represents to the Strike Team.
In the end, Mackey spares Shane's life, but is forced to broker a deal with Mitchell to preserve Shane's job. Gardocki and Shane are sent to recover certain evidence, and during the errand, Gardocki openly scorns Shane and his actions, ordering him to search through the sewage of an overturned portable toilet.
Eventually, Antwon reveals Shane's involvement in criminal activities, forcing Mackey to spin a scenario in which Antwon was attempting to frame Shane for murder. In the process, Mackey admits that Gardocki knew about the tape, putting Gardocki in trouble. Captain Rawlings briefly contemplates firing Gardocki and Mackey for failure to alert her of the tape, but eventually Mackey convinces her otherwise.
[edit] Season Five
In season five, Gardocki is under investigation by Internal Affairs Lieutenant Jon Kavanaugh. Unlike the rest of the Team, Gardocki has carefully hid his share of the remaining Money Train cash and looks like the one member of the Team that could go free. Gardocki plays an integral role during the investigation, searching the Barn for bugs and removing them so efficiently that Kavanaugh decides to stop planting them altogether.
[edit] Season Six
Gardocki meets with Mackey and Shane at Lemansky's grave site, where they fire their own twenty-one gun salute. Gardocki discovers that Lemansky had no intention of betraying the team and feels a measure of regret for suspecting his former friend. It is unknown whether or not the investigation into the Strike Team continues to include him or if it is now solely focused on Mackey. At one point, Detective Gardocki is assigned to work a methamphetamines case with Wagenbach and Billings, and, after handling the suspects in brute Strike Team style fashion, seems to catch the eye of Officer Tina Hanlon, though she soon transfers out of the department. Gardocki shaves his beard off for the first time since season three, revealing the scar from Armadillo's assault.
Shortly after Shane's involvement in Lemansky's murder becomes public, Gardocki is approached by his former teammate, who seeks to drive a wedge between the remaining members of the original Strike Team. Gardocki remains loyal to Mackey rather than betray his friend.
|
|||||||||||
