The Shield

Conscience is a killer. There are cops who work strictly according to the rules. There are cops who bends the rules for a good cause. And there are cops who just break the rules over their knee. And then there’s Vic Mackey (“Good cop and bad cop left for the day. I'm a different kind of cop."), who remains completely unimpressed by any rules apart from his own ones; he makes them up as he goes, as necessary, regardless of laws, public opinion, colleagues, politics, moral principles, gangs, mafia, family... Simply against everybody/thing with the motto “the end justifies the means" and if the means bring with them some dough, all the better. Primarily in the first two seasons, the authors did not even attempt to hide the fact that they found their inspiration in the LAPD Rampart Department anti-gang unit scandal. Vic is one of the most intriguing and most complex series characters ever and one thing is sure, regardless of whether you love him or hate him, you will certainly will form some opinion of him. The Shield is unarguably amoral, tough, most of the time realistic, despite certain screenwriting over-eagerness, and pumped full of adrenalin and action, engrossing and absolutely uncompromising. All of the action has corresponding consequences, sometimes lasting several episodes or even a whole season. The whole thing begins awfully mundanely and you can’t tell it apart from other cop dramas, but very soon it begins to become what makes it such a (genre) paradigm. Even the characters that seemed rather template-style at the beginning manage gradually to warm up to become unexpectedly sophisticated and so this is not just about Vic. I suppose the flimsiest characters here are Aceveda who epitomizes the saying “the way to hell is paved with good intentions", the rightly ambitious and slightly arrogant dolt Dutch “redneck xenophobe" Shane and Whitaker’s Jon Kavanaugh. Just a shame that the creators shunt Lem and Gardocki of to the sidelines in season five. The first four series are conceived as the “tough daily routine of the staff of a police station in the worst precinct of LA for gang violence, specially focused on a special, corrupt unit headed by Vic Mackey" and as of season five it is conceived as a trilogy involving the “even tougher daily routine, this time round just serving as a front for complete concentration of the fall and fight for survival of the members of Vic Mackey’s Strike Team." Faultless in formal terms, one of the few situations where a shaky camera pulling you into the action actually works well and in fact it is essential to this series which just wouldn’t be as good without it. The denouement, which would have impressed even Shakespeare (even though in terms of karma, it would have been better if Vic had his downfall doing something that he would never normally have done - see the beginning of season six), is clear from the outset, which changes nothing about the fact that the final episodes are often praised as candidates for the best series finale ever. I just have a tiny observation about the closing scene of the initial episode and about the deed that subsequently resounds throughout the series. That character would never act so stupidly,and probably would never do something like that at all. But this changes nothing about the fact that The Shield is a modern day classic and, if you have any doubts about that, just hope that a bald-headed guy never rings your doorbell and starts spelling out in semaphore the reasons why it is so good. P.S.: And this has nothing at all to do with the often mentioned The Wire, although Vic could easily end up coming into contact with Walt or Tony. (01/03/2012) (less) (more)