I never got that the show was trying to put Claudette on a pedestal. Her personal life is a fucking trash fire, what she did in the last couple episodes was just an extension of that. All that she really had going for her was that's she's a good detective. She wasn't expected to be a decent captain either, city hall just needed a non-white woman in the chair.
Around season two they retooled Claudette to be Vic's main rival after they had Acaveda effectively bend the knee after the season one finale, to an alliance with Vic purely to damage control things after Gilroy (Vic's mentor) tried to screw him over. But it was mainly due to the fact that CCH Pounder, along with Walt Goggins, were the break-out stars of the show in terms of Shield being the show that made people realize "She can really act" after years of "that guy" supporting actor gigs ala Goggins (who was also a "that guy" type supporting actor).
They did with Melfi because she has Tony as a patient for the entire series, and I haven't watched The Americans to argue on that one.
Complaints about Melfi from fans of Sopranos tend to center around the contrivance of the rape storyline in season three (done purely because Loraine Bracco was getting antsy about not getting to do anything on the show, so David Chase had "Employee of the Month" written as a spotlight for her by way of giving her a rape storyline).
The central complaint about Employee of the Month tend to focus center on the fact that Melfi didn't tell Tony about getting raped so that he can kill her rapist, after the episode had a BS plot twist where the cops fuck up the investigation and as such, can't arrest the man who rape her. These folks ignore the fact that the entire point of the episode is to put Melfi in a "what you truly are deep down in your heart in the dark" character exploration. Mainly the fact that even though she COULD have gotten Tony to murder the man who raped her, she ultimately didn't and while she rationalizes it to herself that "she can have him murdered at any time she wanted to have him murdered via telling Tony", in the end she doesn't tell him.
(Granted this also raises another complaint about the episode, though one about the writing and not the character; mainly that even though the show has established that Tony has police contacts and made it explicit that he had his police contacts spying on Melfi, that Tony NEVER fucking finds out about the rape through a third party source)
As for Agent Breeman, he's actually portrayed as 100% likable and a central aspect of his character in his role on the show, is that he gets along very very well with the main villain protagonists, granted he never finds out that they are Russian spies until the last episode of the series. Granted the show makes a point of showing he's no saint himself (he basically burns a Russian immigrant with mob connections that he blackmails into being a spy for him that results in her capture by the KGB and ultimately her death) but he is quite chummy with the main villain protagonists, to the point that in the final episode the husband character even tells him, after he lets them go even when he has them dead to rights, his fears that the guy's new wife may or may not be a Russian sleeper agent sent into his life purely to keep tabs on him after the main characters are deemed by the KGB to be too emotionally involved with the guy to properly spy on him.
And as for Skylar on Breaking Bad, I am firmly in the "Skylar did nothing wrong" camp. Especially given how fast Walt went from "I just need to make money to make sure my family is provided for" to " Sure, let's commit mass murder! I'm the King of Meth! No one can stop me!".
In hindsight Skylar is basically Corrine on a show that had the internet. Not a fun character, kind of a bitch, but also overly hated by retards who actually think her husband's a good guy instead of a mess nobody should have to put up with.
I'll always give the show credit that they had Corrine be one of the smartest characters on the show in so far as she got the fuck out of dodge the second that she realized Vic was doing bad shit and kept her distance/turned on him when it became apparent that she was going to be dragged down with Vic. Granted it had the side effect of fucking over Ronnie, but Corrine and her behavior in the show seemed to be that of someone who had the self-awareness to say "no, jut no!" whenever shennanigans tried to drag her into her husband's world as an accomplice.
Only in the last few years have people started to give the show it’s due. For a long time, people were convinced it was far inferior to The Wire, which was a huge favorite of hipsters. I think there will be more people who will appreciate the show over time.
Besides the Shakespear/Dickens comparison, you can also compare The Shield to Venture Brothers to The Wire's Rick and Morty. Both well loved and respected, but like Venture Brothers, The Shield held true to itself and largely didn't over the top go out of it's way to try and convince critics and normies that watching it made you "smarter". And even the most insufferable Wire fanboys will admit and concede that The Shield has the better ending whereas The Wire has an utterly forgettable ending that cops out on all fronts, to such a degree that the Cedric Daniels character is the only person who actually stands up and says "fuck that shit" and walks, in terms of having a proper climax to his character arc (where he finally tells the corrupt elite that he's tired of their bullshit and just ragequits, per his first wife's advice that "the only way to win a no-win situation is to no play the game").
