That iconic FX series -- which not only put a virtually unknown channel on the map but also blew the doors open for all of basic cable to go premium without charging extra -- is ending its run this fall with a seventh season being called The Final Act. Filmed before last fall's actors strike hit, it has already sent seeds drifting across the fields of tubedom. Key writer Kurt Sutter is now running that brawny Anarchy saga, about the parallel society of an outlaw motorcycle club. Key writer Glen Mazzara is producing the ambitious movie-spinoff series Crash as a Shield-level gambit for Starz. The writing team of Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain has moved to Josh Whedon's mind-wiping Fox midseasoner Dollhouse.

And TNT is loading up on original drama series, and USA is full of them, and Lifetime is into the act, and even AMC is Mad Men-ing. And thank goodness, because, well, have you seen what the networks are running lately?

Nothing to compare in the specific or even in the aggregate to the FX presentations at the Television Critics Association's L.A. press tour Tuesday morning. Give them three hours, they'll give you an entire bleeping network! First up: Glenn Close, Ted Danson and new cast regular William Hurt for the second season of Damages, currently being shot in New York for a January return. Next: Sons of Anarchy, a series about a subject you think you don't want to know about -- relationships among arms-dealing bikers? -- only to discover in the deep-reaching pilot episode that you do. And finally: The Shield, which would be a TV classic if it ended rightnow, without ending, but returns Sept. 2 for 13 final episodes that promise to keep ratcheting up the fireworks, the tension, the societal smarts.

Did we mention that Nip/Tuck returns in January, too, with another 18 episodes, plus more to come till it wraps in 2011 with its hundredth episode? Then Rescue Me storms back in the spring, airing another 22, and adding Michael J. Fox as the new boyfriend-in-a-wheelchair of Denis Leary's onscreen ex. The FX comedy It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia drops back in on Sept. 18 with 13 half-hours, then another 39 to keep it running. And it gets a companion comedy on Oct. 9: Testees -- be careful how you spell it -- from Kenny & Spenny wacko Kenny Hotz, about thirtysomething pals playing medical guinea pigs.

You get breathless just writing or reading about the wealth of quality/distinctive stuff. Even the FX shows that don't make the long haul -- the Iraq war drama Over There, the Hollywood smarmfest Dirt -- are worth a look, if not two or three or seven. The FX trademark, delineated Tuesday during critics' Q&A with Fox program chief John Landgraf, is that they've always "allowed the writer to almost wholly reinvent the genre, or put something on the air that's really different. We've also tried to experiment with tone," as in Eddie Izzard's comedy-drama class study The Riches. (It's two, two, two shows in one!)

Shield creator Shawn Ryan [at far left in TCA panel pictured above] noted that when he originally pitched the concept some seven years ago, then buzz-free FX was telling writers "they'd do anything except a cop show." But of course, The Shield isn't that, despite the surface "franchise." It's about modern urban life as faced by public servants and putative friends, buffeted by cultural and social dilemmas where neither choice is desirable, forced to scramble through sticky wickets resulting from decisions either way. So are their actions good? Bad? Expedient? Inevitable?

It's like watching a football game, said cast member Catherine Dent (beat cop Danny), analogizing how her husband records gridiron action on TiVo for later viewing, steadfastly refusing to know the outcome/score until he watches the game all the way through. "People focus on the finale," she demurred after critics pushed for early clues. "What people are going to be gratified about is, this is going to be a really good game."

She got agreement from series star Michael Chiklis [pictured above left], whose electric performance as good/bad/different kind of cop Vic Mackey kick-started an entirely new career (he's not your mother's Commish anymore). Because the show was now heading toward an end, the actor/producer said, "the writers were able to write with almost reckless abandon, where they knew that things were spiraling out of control and unwinding and one bomb after another drops that you can't take back." Through the deaths of colleagues, and threats to his family, and his own violent acts since the 2002 pilot's original sin -- let's not forget he put a bullet in the head of a fellow cop ready to reveal his corruption -- Vic has "definitely become a guy that understands there is tremendous consequence, not only for himself but everyone around him, for the decisions that he's made." Chiklis said. "He's in that vortex, and he's swimmin'."

"This finale is what Vic Mackey deserves" was the firm declaration of co-star CCH Pounder, who plays frequent adversary/boss Claudette Wyms, arguably the show's "moral center" (a term about which the actress is not crazy). Another firm promise of closure came from later cast addition David Marciano (he's the work-shirking comic relief of Det. Billings), who alluded to the end of "The Sopranos" with its controversially vague blank screen. "It's been mixed reviews about that finale, but I will tell you about this finale, there will be no mixed reviews," Marciano said of the series-ender. "You're gonna feel like you've gotten your money out of it."

Even Ted Danson [pictured] is back as misbehaving billionaire Arthur Frobisher. "That doesn't necessarily mean he survived" the first-season finale, teased producer Todd Kessler. His partner-brother Glenn added, "The show moves back and forth in time, so we have the opportunity to use actors in ways that are not conventional," though he said this year's mix of flashes forward and back will be "slightly less complex and easier to grasp."

Sons of Anarchy will be more complex than you might expect. Unless, of course, you know to expect more already from FX. Its richly human portrait of dangerous dudes on the wrong side of the law doesn't necessarily put them on the wrong side of civilized society. The guys in this outlaw motorcycle club have created, in fact, a parallel society of their own, with distinct rules, ranks, family structures and even, said series co-creator Sutter, "regret and remorse."

Ron Perlman, beloved of tubeheads for Beauty and the Beast (but best known this week for the $36 million opening weekend of his movie Hellboy II), plays the gang's ruthlessly criminal top dog. Former British Queer as Folk and American Undeclared star Charlie Hunnam is the heir-apparent son of the club's founder, who's starting to wonder whether this is really the life his late father intended. Katey Sagal, the Married With Children icon who has strutted her dramatic stuff on The Shield (she's married to Sutter), is thus the woman in the middle, mother to one, lover to the other, described by Sutter as "kind of a bad-ass rock 'n' roll chick."

The elder biker generation's motivations actually sprung from their experience with the most conventional structure of all: the military, Sutter said. "They began as fraternities, of brotherhoods of guys, most of them just [Vietnam] war veterans getting together to blow off steam. And in a very short period of time, a lot of these clubs morphed into essentially organized crime syndicates. And I thought that was such an epic arc." Perlman noted, "These are guys who pretty much came to this after having given the ultimate sacrifice to their government. And then they came home, and they got a little bit disillusioned about what heroes and warriors are supposed to be greeted like. And they formed an alternate kind of thing to depend on, an alternate family, an alternate political structure."

Which, if you think about it, is another FX trademark (TM) -- whether it's the surrogate couple formed by those Nip/Tuck doctors, or the Vic-Shane-Lem-Ronnie axis of The Shield. At FX, you're family. That goes for fictional characters, real-life show writers, or well-fed FX viewers. This is one clan you count yourself lucky being born into.