Ronnie
Gardocki
source: en.wikipedia.org
Detective Ronnie Gardocki
is the fourth member of the anti-gang police task force known
as the Strike Team on the FX Network drama "The Shield". A quiet introvert
who is skilled in field of surveillance and other electronic police tools, Ronnie
Gardocki is the show's resident man of mystery due to the fact that very little
is known about his background.
Background
Despite the lack of exploration of the character's backstory (indeed, very
little is known about Ronnie's past as of the end of the show's fourth season)
and the character's status as "the guy in the background", the character
has garnered a fanbase amongst fans of "The Shield". Many relate to
Ronnie's mysterious nature and the character's often mild mannered and nerdish
personality, which is a sharp contrast to the more testosterone driven members
of the Strike Team. This makes Ronnie, in some fans' eyes, a perfect point of
view character, allowing them to cast themselves into Ronnie's shoes and experience
the often illegal antics of the Strike Team vicariously through Ronnie's eyes.
Man
of Mystery
Very little is known about the background of Detective Ronnie Gardocki;
one thing that is known is that Ronnie has an extremely close friendship with
fellow detective and Strike Team leader Vic Mackey. The season two episodes
"Partners" and "Co-Pilot" established that Ronnie and Vic
met during the period after Vic's original partner Joe Clarke was fired from
the police force due to complaints about him using excessive force on suspects
but before Vic became partners with Detective Shane Vendrell. The two have a
close bond, with Vic being willing to sacrifice his career via admitting his
various crimes to protect Ronnie while Ronnie willingly stayed by Vic's side
after the Strike Team disbanded at the end of season three. However despite
his close friendship with Vic, Ronnie was not involved in Vic and Shane's scheme
to kill turncoat Strike Team member Terry Crowley and remains oblivious to the
fact that Vic murdered a fellow detective.
Since the show began, elements of Ronnie's personality and background have
been revealed with clues towards Ronnie's personality. It's been shown that
Ronnie has allergies (during a season one episode, he comments that he's allergic
to cats among other things), plays cards (the character is often seen with a
deck of cards in his hands or playing cards when he's on the street working
with his fellow Strike Team members), and is skilled with computers and other
electronic devices. As the Strike Team's resident surveillance expert, Ronnie
often stays behind during many Strike Team missions but has shown to be quite
capable of handling intense and violent situations regarding being an active
police officer on the streets.
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The character of Ronnie Gardocki appeared on and off during season one, with Snell appearing in about 2/3rds of the episodes of the series including an uncredited appearance in the show's pilot. To explain away why a member of the Strike Team would be missing in action most of the time, the writers established Ronnie as the team's surveillance expert and often had Ronnie away doing surveillance work, though later in the season the writers explained Ronnie's absence by having characters use Ronnie to run their errands.
The writers ultimately gave viewers their first look at Ronnie's personality in the episode "Dragonchasers". The episode firmly established Ronnie as being a nerd by having the Detective sent into a stripclub to investigate a stripper who was using the club's private lapdance room to lure customers outside the club, with promises of sex only to have an accomplice rob the unwitting victim. When in the lapdance room with the stripper, Ronnie nervously chatters away about assorted nonsense while receiving his lapdance. His ramblings (including discussing golf, of all things), results in his failure to get the stripper to solicit him for sex. When he returns to the rest of the Strike Team, the group (having heard Ronnie's entire encounter with the stripper via a hidden wire Ronnie was wearing at the time) mercilessly mock Ronnie over his nerdy behavior while receiving his lapdance.
Fan response to the character at the end of the first season was mixed; while
the character did have fans, some disliked the character. Complaints usually
centered around David Snell's porn star-type moustache and the fact that some
fans considered Ronnie to be a blatant "redshirt" character, who was
on the show for the purpose of being killed off later down the line to create
an atmosphere of danger for the rest of the characters.
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Season
two
In season two of the show the writers, realizing that many fans saw Ronnie
as a "redshirt" character, decided to play around with this belief
by giving the character his first major storyline. David Snell's character would
now appear in every episode of the show, from season two onward (the sole exception
to this being the season two episode "Coyotes").
Early on in the season the Strike Team were ordered by Captain Acaveda, in the interests of promoting ethnic diversity, to select a non-white detective to fill the vacant fifth member slot of the Strike Team. Meanwhile the Strike Team began a vicious war with a Mexican drug lord called Armadillo, who sought the wholesale slaughter of all possible rival gangs in Farmington so as to gain complete control over the city's streets. His use of rape and burning his enemies at the stake horrified Vic, especially after Armadillo used these techniques to kill a drug dealer who the Strike Team was protecting in exchange for a vow to keep his drug activities at a tolerable level.
Fearing that Armadillo would rat out Vic 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), Vic burned Armadillo's face using the burner on a stove in his house and ordered him to leave town ASAP. Armadillo responded by ordering the death of all Strike Team members and murdered his own brother (who the Strike Team had arrested earlier in the season) so as to keep the Strike Team from using his brother as a pawn against Armadillo.
These events horrified Ronnie, who began to fear that Armadillo's flunkies would kill him and his friends. Furthermore when Ronnie told Vic, Shane, and Lem that he believed that one of Armadillo's followers had been following him, they laughed at Ronnie and dismissed his fears as paranoia. To get his mind off of being killed, Vic had Ronnie go to the hotel room Vic (who had been expelled from his home by his soon-to-be ex-wife) was staying at to retrieve some things for Vic. When Vic returned to the hotel room with his girlfriend, the two were horrified to see Ronnie laying on the floor near death with his face burned by a stove burner. As they rushed to get Ronnie to a hospital, Ronnie revealed that Armadillo was responsible for the attack on him and disfigured Ronnie's face as payback for Vic disfiguring him.
The Strike Team vowed to inflict a swift death upon Armadillo for his attack on Ronnie, not only to avenge what the drug lord did to Ronnie but also to keep Armadillo from exposing the Strike Team's highly illegal activities. Realizing the Strike Team would kill him, Armadillo arranged to turn himself over to the police willingly. Armadillo then threatened to reveal that he disfigured Ronnie as payback for Vic disfiguring him, which would result in the ruining of Vic's life and career, if Vic didn't convince Ronnie to take back his statement regarding Armadillo disfiguring him and allow Armadillo (who by now had all of his people in place to control the drug trade in Farmington) to leave for Mexico while his top flunkies ran the day-by-day aspects of the drug trade in Farmington for him.
Facing a horrific ultimatum, Vic shocked Shane and Lem by telling them that he would never force Ronnie to recant his statement about Armadillo disfiguring him and would confess to burning Armadillo's face to negate Armadillo's blackmail scheme. Shane and Lem, despite being told that Vic would do everything possible to convince IAD that the rest of the team had nothing to do with his disfiguring Armadillo, quickly sprung their own scheme without Vic's knowledge: they convinced a disgruntled gang leader who had been demoted to running errands by Armadillo to get himself arrested so he could be put in the same holding cage as Armadillo, then slipped him a shiv, and sat back and watched him kill Armadillo. Vic was freed from having to admit to engaging in police brutality, though his on-again, off-again lover Officer Danny Sofer was scapegoated for failing to properly search the gang leader for weapons when she arrested him and ultimately is fired from the force over the incident.
Ronnie survived his encounter with Armadillo, but was left permanently disfigured. After the resolution of the Armadillo arc, a flashback episode aired that featured Ronnie participating in the formation of the Strike Team. The flashback episode was done for several reasons, one of which was to give the make-up staff on the show the time needed to create a suitable make-up job regarding the scars on Ronnie's face. While the flashback episode itself fleshed out the background of several of the show's characters, the episode only further created an aura of mystery around Ronnie. The flashback episode established that Vic had hand-selected Ronnie as a founding member of the Strike Team and refused to tell Shane and Lem the reason for selecting Detective Gardocki. The flashback episode did reveal one aspect of Ronnie's character, as Ronnie revealed that he grew his trademark moustache to make himself more attractive to women. It also established that Ronnie was the only member of the Strike Team to openly question Vic's decision to have the Strike Team break the law in their pursuit of arrests within the Farmington District when the group began their slippery slope down the road to become crooked cops.
The following episode ("Coyotes") saw the end of the search for a new Strike Team member, as Vic, Shane, and Lem select a detective named Tavon Garris to join the team. Taking fear for the character's continued presence on the show to its natural extreme, the writers fiendishly had the characters hinting that Ronnie would not be coming back to active duty and ran a somewhat cliched subplot where Lem is extremely resentful to Tavon for "taking Ronnie's spot" on the team before ultimately accepting Tavon as a teammate by the end of the episode.
However, to fans of the character, Ronnie would make his return to the show
in the following episode ("Inferno"). His face still had scars from
Armadillo's attack and that his near death experience had caused him to want
to take a more active role with the affairs of the Strike Team. In particular
Ronnie spent his downtime, after receiving an emergency skin graft for his face,
planning out a means for the Strike Team to rob the Armenian mob, by hijacking
their "Money Train" convoy. Vic had proposed the plan early in season
two upon stumbling upon the existence of the "Money Train". But assorted
personal problems and increase tension between the Strike Team and Detective
Claudette Wyms caused him to shelve the plan. Ronnie, having previously scoffed
at Vic's original intent on using the "Money Train" loot only as a
nest egg for the Strike Team members in the event they get fired or maimed,
had come to realize through his own brush with death what Vic intended the scheme
to be about. So playing on Vic's guilt, Ronnie convinced Vic to let the team
go ahead with Ronnie's plan for robbing the convoy. Vic agreed and Ronnie's
plan was carried out. However, Ronnie's plan took an unexpected detour when
the Armenians in charge of the Money Train heist turned against each other,
resulting in several deaths before the Strike Team moved in to successfully
carry out Ronnie's scheme.
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Season
Three
During season three, Ronnie continued to gain more screentime and would
appear in all 15 episodes of the season. He would also start to find a voice
in regards the Strike Team's internal power structure as the person who was
willing to ask the questions no one else was willing to ask. Ronnie also sported
a new look, as David Rees Snell grew a full beard; while the change in appearance
was never officially acknowledged during the third season, it is generally accepted
that Ronnie's beard was a means for the show's writers to sidestep the issue
of Ronnie's disfigurement.
At the start of season three, Ronnie charged into action and saved the lives of his fellow Strike Team members when Vic, Shane, and Lem found themselves almost executed as a result of a blotched sting operation. Ronnie also was the one who discovered that a large sum of money from the "Money Train" loot was stolen. It was this storyline that redefined Ronnie's position inside the Strike Team, as he took on the role of "Devil's Advocate" and openly pondered the notion that either Vic and Shane of being the thief. Vic's reaction to Ronnie accusing Shane was one of great horror, as Vic defensively accused Ronnie of messing up and miscounting with regards to the discovery of a missing portion of the "Money Train" loot. However, Vic slowly realized that Ronnie might be telling the truth though ultimately the real thief would be revealed to be Shane's girlfriend, who had secretly discovered the existence of the loot and took a portion of it. Ronnie retaliated by being the deciding vote along with Lem in forbidding Vic from using the "Money Train" loot to pay for treatment for his son's autism, citing the fact that it was not safe for any of the Strike Team to begin spending the "Money Train" loot given that forces were still looking for the identity of the people behind the heist. Vic, who knew ahead of time that the team would veto the use of the money, begrudgingly accepted Ronnie's decision to vote against him.
By the end of the season though, Ronnie was once again marginalized as the
show focused more on the growing tension between the rest of the members of
the Strike Team with Ronnie given the role of having to get between Shane and
Lem to keep the two from attacking the other. However Ronnie was able to contribute
to the team crippling the Armenian mob's west coast criminal syndicate in the
finale, discovering a fake business being used by the Armenian mob that led
to the mob being brought down by the Strike Team. However, Ronnie's contribution
did little to save the Strike Team from imploding. As the season ended, Ronnie
was sent to try and calm down Lem, who quit the team after Shane accused Vic
of hating Lem and only wanting to keep him on the team so that the powers that
be wouldn't disband the Strike Team.
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Season
Four
At the beginning of season four, David Rees Snell's screen time grew even
more. During the first couple of episodes of season four, Ronnie was Vic's partner
and that the two were working on a hidden camera sting operation that had been
started up towards the end of the third season. In the first episode of season
four, the writers even gave Ronnie his own subplot as Ronnie sought to help
an abused child who's father was caught on hidden camera physically abusing
his son. With Vic's help, Ronnie arranged for the father to get into a fight
with Vic, which caused the father to break his parole and be sent back to jail
and his son was sent to live with relatives.
As season four progressed, Ronnie found himself once again forced to play mediator between the warring members of the Strike Team, reunited by Vic with the ulterior motive to keeping an eye on Shane, who was now in league with local drug kingpin Antwon Mitchell. In an effort to ease tension between Vic and Shane, Ronnie stole one of the department's hidden cameras and planted it in the car of Detective "Dutch" Wagenbach, so as to get footage of his disastrous blind date as well as footage of Dutch singing along to his car's radio, which he then showed to his fellow detectives, both of which had longstanding personal problems with Detective Wagenbach. However, soon Ronnie would be planting a hidden camera in Shane's car and finding out if he was leaking police intel to Mitchell regarding the various investigations into his criminal empire. The camera would ultimately capture Shane being ordered by Antwon Mitchell to kill Vic, which put Vic in a position of having to kill Shane before Shane killed him. In a private moment, Ronnie confided to Lem that he honestly hoped Vic would kill Shane, if only to provide closure to the growing problem that Shane represented to the Strike Team.
In the end, Vic opted to spare Shane's life and was forced to play out a complex scenario in order to recover the dead body of a girl Antwon Mitchell had murdered using Shane's gun, as well as that of his new partner, Army, as a means to permanently bind Shane to Mitchell's criminal organization. Complicating the issue was the sudden murder of two patrol officers, which many believed were ordered by Antwon as a warning to the Farmington Police Department and its new Captain, Monica Rawlings. As Rawlings demanded Antwon (who was out of town when the murders took place) be brought into custody, Vic was forced to broker a deal with Antwon to obtain the body, which Ronnie and Shane were sent to recover. During their time together searching for the body, Ronnie was quite open with his scorn for Shane and the mess he had made with his antics, with him ordering Shane to wade through urine and feces from an overturned port-o-potty and do most of the digging in a location that the two believed the body to be buried.
In the end, Antwon revealed Shane's involvement with his criminal activities,
which caused Vic to switch gears as he ended up being forced to use the hidden
camera tape containing Antwon making blackmail threat to Shane, to spin a scenario
where Antwon was attempting to frame Shane and his partner for murder in order
to force them to give police intel on Antwon's organization to him. In the process
though, Vic admitted that Ronnie knew about the tape too, which placed Ronnie
in hot water as well. Since the two had not told Rawlings about the hidden camera
in Shane's car, the legality issue regarding the tape was in question. Captain
Rawlings briefly contemplated firing both Ronnie and Vic for failure to alert
her of the tape but was talked by Vic into agreeing to pretend that she authorized
the hidden camera being placed in the car so that they could use it as leverage
against Antwon.
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Season
Five
In Season Five, Ronnie is also under investigation by Internal Affairs Detective
Jon Kavanaugh. However, unlike the rest of the Strike Team, Ronnie has been
careful with hiding his share of the remaining Money Train cash and looks like
the one member of the Strike Team that could possibly walk.