David Rees Snell: I think I love you

While staring into the surf during my recent vacation, I finally made a life decision: I decided I was ready to start watching The Shield again. I'd taken a little break, because it was beginning to consume me, but I've decided I'm ready to dedicate all my spare time to the travails of the Farmington PD again. If you find all of these posts about The Shield boring, then go watch the show and come back. Seriously. Do I have to buy season 1 for every one of you and sit you down in front of it?

If you're still here, I'm sorry to disappoint all of you who found this page by googling "Michael Chiklis bulge," but this post, for once, isn't about Michael Chiklis. It's about David Rees Snell, who plays Detective Ronnie Gardocki on the show. That's him, kinda blurry in the background in the photo, and that's how he is in most episodes.

Even though he only gets about 6 lines per episode (every episode), I love him. And I know I can't convey that as well as this person did on youtube, where you can find a 4-minute montage of all of Ronnie's best moments set to a dance remix of "Hungry Eyes." But I will try:

I might like him so much because he's got a good sense of humor, or because he looks great in a sweatshirt. But it's probably because he has one of the best beards in the business (we won't mention the 'stache he had in season 1), and I'm not the only one who things so because it's the most commented-on topic of conversation on the discussion board of his imdb page.

David plays back-up man Ronnie, who is the only guy who has managed to deal with the disparate personalities of everyone on the Strike Team. Yet he's mysterious. How did he learn so much about computers and safe cracking? Why is he so good with dogs? Who is this horrible woman he's dating that made him shave the beard? As the members of the Strike Team drop like flies, we see more and more of Ronnie, but just enough to whet our appetites.

I feel kind of bad for David. He gets to be just behind the action all the time, and he joked in a DVD commentary one time about how they were always having him go "around back" when they bust through a house and never show him. But his imdb page also says he's married to the most under-shown female regular on the show: Melanie Myers, who plays Paula the patrol woman, the occasional female confidante to Danny (like when she needs to talk about women stuff like almost kissing Dutch). No one on the internet seems to know when they got married, but I like to think that they spent their free time on the set getting to know each other, and ultimately making out in the "cage" after hours, and then falling in love.

I'm so desperate to see more David Rees Snell that I'm rather angry that the Hallmark Channel Original Movie "Desolation Canyon" isn't available on Netflix. Not only is David in it, but so is Kenny Johnson, who played poor Curtis "Lemonhead" Lemansky on The Shield. (Rounding out the cast is Stacey Keach and Patrick Duffy.) I have no doubt this critically lambasted Wild West adventure would keep me very entertained, as the only reason why I watch that new Holly Hunter program is to see Kenny have TV sex with her.

Anyway, I have to go back to watching The Shield now, so please enjoy this little Ronnie moment, and tell me he's not the cutest:




Or check out this short film, which is pretty dumb but stars DRS when he was a 20-something sideburned cutie without a middle name.