FX's The Shield Appreciation Thread - Good cop and bad cop left for the day. I'm a different kind of cop.

[Kari Kamiya]

the only shield cast member that did not appear on that show was julien. the real life actor was convicted of murdering his wife.

Holy shit.

 

[Internet War Criminal]

I finished a rewatch recently, and two things surprised me:

1) I’m surprised at how much this show has hold up over the years.
2) I’m surprised at how much I’ve come to sympathize with Shane.

A ton of tv shows feel so dated, and have references that really aged badly, but The Shield really feels like you could watch it 30, 40 even 50 years later and it’d be just as relatable as it is today.

And for the first time in my life, I’m feeling like I’m getting Shane, or at the very least I’m feeling a lot more compassion for him (and even Mara, which I always hated as a uber-bitch of Skylar levels before). In a sense, he almost gets the “best” ending of all the members of the Strike Team. At the very least he goes down on his terms, he has his loving wife and his son with him, and fully came to terms with who he was and what he did.

What a fucking show.

The only characters I ended up kinda liking and wanted the best for before the ending was Dutch and Claudette if only because I liked their dynamic.

Nah, my disdain for Claudette just keeps on growing. She’s a fucking holier-than-thou bitch who is more than happy to use Vic’s tactics and other dirty shit when it works her way but still acts like she’s above it when she’s not, and she‘s definitely willing to bend the law when it suits her or protect those she finds close.

She also treats Dutch like dirt when it’s clear how much he idolizes her and how much he goes out of his way to help her.

Fuck Claudette.

the more i think about the shield and other shows from the 2000s, the more it gets me mad about the "content" we get today. there was a drive for these grounded shows to have some sense of realism and moral gray in the shows writing. we don't get that today.

As I wrote in the Sopranos thread:

It's kind of insane to think that around 2002-2004 you had The Sopranos, The Shield, The Wire, Deadwood, 24, LOST, Six Feet Under, Chappelle's Show, Curb Your Enthusiasm and second tier but still great shit like Reno 911, Veronica Mars, Arrested Development, The Office (UK) all playing on television at the same fucking time.

Holy shit 2002-2008 really was the golden age of television/the 00s the best decade

No, for sure, I left out a bunch of things that were really good at the time but took a nosedive and aren't considered classics anymore like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Scrubs, How I Met Your Mother, Entourage, Rome, Battlestar Galactica, Dead like Me, Little Britain, House, Shameless, To Catch a Predator, Kitchen Nightmares, Hell's Kitchen, The Office (US), My Name is Earl, etc (to be fair some of them came out Winter 2005 but still in the 2004-2005 season)

Shit, even stuff for the CW demographic was great: Firefly, The O.C., Supernatural, etc...

Fucking insane how much quality shit was going on at the time and we had no idea.

What a fucking time for tv

The final scene of the second season is one of my favorite television scenes of all time. In every other heist plot, the money-pile shot at the end is set up as the audience's satisfying payoff where the anti-hero rouges make off scott-free with everyone's dream payout. But in this show, the audience has seen two seasons of these assholes, we know who they are, what type of show this is and that this money can only lead to ruin and death (which it does). And the characters know it too.

Yeah, the fact that after the money train, they are not celebrating but instead they have that moment of… ”Holy Fuck. What did we do” realization as the gravity of it all starts to sink in.

Also, not enough people praise The Shield for their use of music

In the first episode, they actually managed to make Kid Rock’s Bawidtaba rock. The use of Magnetic Fields’ All of My Little Words a few episodes later over the dead lovers and guy who got arrested is magnificent. Smashing Pumpkin’s Disarm over that scene in Season 5. I Hung My Head in Season 6. Shit, they even managed to make Coldplay’s Trouble moving in the finale when he walks in his house and finds that his family is gone. Live’s Overcome at the end of Season 2. I’m sure I’m forgetting another half a dozen great uses.


And, of course, the best use of music being

Spoiler

Also I’m surprised that no one talked about what might be the best scene/episode/arc of the Shield: Dutch catching the serial killer, the whole interrogation, celebration in the barn, only to end up with him breaking the fuck down in his car at the end.

That was some masterful shit right there.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

Nah, my disdain for Claudette just keeps on growing. She’s a fucking holier-than-thou bitch who is more than happy to use Vic’s tactics and other dirty shit when it works her way but still acts like she’s above it when she’s not, and she‘s definitely willing to bend the law when it suits her or protect those she finds close.

She also treats Dutch like dirt when it’s clear how much he idolizes her and how much he goes out of his way to help her.

Fuck Claudette.

I had said "before the ending", she definitely became a worse person as the show went on, and even Dutch became an asshole. Everyone in this show was an asshole at the end of the day to the point you could rank all the characters on the Tier of Assholes, I stopped feeling a sense of support for anyone think sometime in season five and wanted everyone to just drop dead at some point. Unless the show's entire purpose was to be further proof LA/southern California needs to be nuked into orbit, in which case, good job on the creators' part, but it's definitely a "no duh" these days compared to 20 years ago, I think.

Only stuck around since it's one of my husband's favorites and my brothers had the whole series, so it was one of the ways we bonded while dating and he helped to clear things up. I will say I'm glad they got better with the one-cameraman approach to the series, it was almost nauseating how jittery everything looked in the first season. Very telling it was made in the early 2000s, I kinda miss that look these days.

 

[Internet War Criminal]

After reading your opinion on all of this, I wish we were married so I could help you run to heaven

 

[George Floyd Sneed]

I was privileged to watch the first episode of The Shield when it first aired and watched it all the way through to the end. I had even organized The Shield watching parties.

At the time it got compared unfavorably to The Sopranos and The Wire but I’ve noticed in recent years it’s starting to get a lot more respect compared to what it got. It was just a very tight show with remarkably few loose ends that remained. Few shows are ever really that tight.

Any sort of revival would have to be a sort of "next generation" sort of deal, with what few viably usable characters from showing up

In a “next generation” head canon of The Shield, I could see it starring Dutch as he gets shoved into a corner after he gets reshuffled around once The Barn gets shut down, Claudette dies from being old and black, Aceveda loses the mayoral race after The Barn shenanigans come to light that sinks his campaign, and Dutch is somehow given free reign to take on cases of his choosing. Danny is still a sergeant and thoroughly jaded and her son is now a rookie cop even though she dissuades him.

I don’t think a revival would really work. Too many characters are just gone.

 

[Internet War Criminal]

I was privileged to watch the first episode of The Shield when it first aired and watched it all the way through to the end. I had even organized The Shield watching parties.

I started a few episodes in Season 1. Word to mouth from the pilot suckered me in.

To this day I still remember watching Season 5’s finale at like, 3 in the morning, and being so shellshocked I couldn’t go to sleep until hours later.

Binging this show is so much better, I remember the wait time in between seasons and doing a rewatch of everything etc..

 

[BIG BILL HELL'S]

Dutch was the best.

• Strangling the cat (IIRC during the serial killer arc) and then just letting it drop to the ground still makes me laugh to this day. It probably shouldn't, but so is life.
• "When was the last time you saw your own dick without using a mirror?" said to a total deathfat also still sends my sides into orbit.

 

[MirrorNoir]

I was privileged to watch the first episode of The Shield when it first aired and watched it all the way through to the end. I had even organized The Shield watching parties.

At the time it got compared unfavorably to The Sopranos and The Wire but I’ve noticed in recent years it’s starting to get a lot more respect compared to what it got. It was just a very tight show with remarkably few loose ends that remained. Few shows are ever really that tight.

In a “next generation” head canon of The Shield, I could see it starring Dutch as he gets shoved into a corner after he gets reshuffled around once The Barn gets shut down, Claudette dies from being old and black, Aceveda loses the mayoral race after The Barn shenanigans come to light that sinks his campaign, and Dutch is somehow given free reign to take on cases of his choosing. Danny is still a sergeant and thoroughly jaded and her son is now a rookie cop even though she dissuades him.

I don’t think a revival would really work. Too many characters are just gone.

The Shield was always seen on the same level as Sopranos; it was the show that broke the illusion that only HBO could do high quality cable shows and turned FX from a dumping ground for reruns to a legit cable company that proved that basic cable could make shows just as good as HBO's.

With the Wire, it's a bit more complicated; revisionist history has tainted most talk about the Wire. The show was a flop in it's first season, forcing Simon to have to retool it for season two to focus on white long shoremen and the docks to salvage shit and even then, the show was strictly cult show until critics started glowingly praising the show with season four (which is ironic, as most of season four was planned to be a spin-off for Aidan Gillen's character that was introduced in season three that had to be repurposed for season four when HBO refused to give Simon a spin-off show).

Standard comparison for Shield Vs Wire is that Shield is Shakespearian in tone and Wire is Dickension in tone. Shield is about characters, Wire is about a community/social issues with window dressing of police/drug trade to bring in normies.

The only places that treated Shield like a red headed stepchild were HBO dicksucker websites like Television Without Pity; a website that infamously refused to cover ANY FX show for about 4-5 years and the few shows that DID get covered, were lucky to only get recapped for a single season before the recappers dropped them. Shield and Nip/Tuck got shitted on a lot there, which is funny as the shows (and FX in general) had a rather thriving community of fans talking about the shows on their forums, much to the general disdain of the website.

 

[God of Nothing]

Finally finished it.
I wonder why no character bothered to point out Claudette was far more pissed about Vic being good with himself rather than him getting actual justice. Doing Ronnie in front of him was petty and accomplished nothing. Even showing the pictures of Shane and his family. Really, I have no idea how Dutch doesn't set her aside and tell her how much of a hypocrite she is about everything, down to calling him sanctimonious. But I suppose every grimy show need their token "good" guy.

Last two seasons are really missing something. Shane going against Vic is like watching a retarded chihuaha trying to throw down with a pitbull several times its size. New eye candy made a surprisingly good character before she got sidelined. Also, Acevada didn't get nearly as much as he needed to, especially when Vic learned what happened.

 

[Super Hans v2]

Spoiler

I wonder why no character bothered to point out Claudette was far more pissed about Vic being good with himself rather than him getting actual justice. Doing Ronnie in front of him was petty and accomplished nothing. Even showing the pictures of Shane and his family. Really, I have no idea how Dutch doesn't set her aside and tell her how much of a hypocrite she is about everything, down to calling him sanctimonious. But I suppose every grimy show need their token "good" guy.

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.

 

[newuser131]

if it makes you feel any better, the Claudette character had lupus and even she said she would last too long. this was in 2008, so in 2023, she is probably died.

 

[Poppavalyim Andropoff]

I watched it from the pilot cause it had the guy from The Commish

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

 

[Internet War Criminal]

Claudette was far more pissed about Vic being good with himself rather than him getting actual justice. Doing Ronnie in front of him was petty and accomplished nothing. Even showing the pictures of Shane and his family. Really, I have no idea how Dutch doesn't set her aside and tell her how much of a hypocrite she is about everything, down to calling him sanctimonious. But I suppose every grimy show need their token "good" guy.

When you realize that Claudette and Dutch are basically nerds getting bullied and Vic and the Strike Team are the Football chads getting away with it, their dynamic starts to make a lot more sense. They basically never grew out of it and at the end of the day they are just REEEEEing that Vic Mackey once again gets away with everything like he always does while they are unappreciated geniuses who should totes have the admiration of everyone else and be the real cool kids, because cool kids say “no”.

They are written like that, because they are basically the wish fulfillment/insert of the writers who see themselves as morally superior to Vic and the people who root for him, and they themselves were nerds who were mercilessly mocked by cooler people who got away with shit that they wish they didn’t get away with.

Claudette is also a hypocrite because she’s perfectly fine playing backroom politics and lying innocently (like pretending to Vic she’s going to help him stay on the force) while turning around and say HOW DARE YOU DO THIS TO ME, A PROUD BLACK WOMYN, IT WAS MY TUUUUURN when someone does it to her.

Assinvada was at least as morally shady as Vic was, and he gets away with pretty much everything because, again, see what I said about the writers.

 

[God of Nothing]

Claudette is also a hypocrite because she’s perfectly fine playing backroom politics and lying innocently (like pretending to Vic she’s going to help him stay on the force) while turning around and say HOW DARE YOU DO THIS TO ME, A PROUD BLACK WOMYN, IT WAS MY TUUUUURN when someone does it to her.

I'm rewatching the earlier seasons. At the end of season 2 now and Claudette turns a blind eye from Vic's shenanigans until it starts affecting her, which is probably the biggest display of her hypocrisy. Defending a pedophile Vic beat also really rubs me the wrong way because she had no problems with it in the first episode.

Assinvada was at least as morally shady as Vic was, and he gets away with pretty much everything because, again, see what I said about the writers.

Aceveda was just pathetic by the end. Nothing but a shadow of the man he wanted to be. Him not getting any flak doesn't strike me as escapism but a display of how different he is: a man who was willing to sacrifice everything to do what was right (him risking everything near the end of Season 2 when the chief tells him to fire people) to a dick-sucking rat who just wants to stay afloat.

 

[TVB]

As I wrote in the Sopranos thread:
What a fucking time for tv

I'm just gonna quote my couple posts from the Sopranos thread as well.

You're forgetting 24, Oz, early-Smallville, Prison Break, early-Dexter, Stargate, Futurama, South Park, Family Guy, American Dad, Aqua Teen, King of the Hill, Everybody Hates Chris, Everybody Loves Raymond, Kings & Queens and Jimmy Neutron.

Tripping the Rift, Drawn Together, Clone High, Robot Chicken, Venture Bros., Superjail, Metalocalypse, Invader Zim, Farily Oddparents, Billy & Mandy, KND, early-SpongeBob, Avatar: TLA, Rescue Me, Homefront, Yes Dear, Malcolm in the Middle, That '70s Show, 30 Rock, WWE Smackdown and Raw, etc.

Yep, I still stand my point here. The 2000s will always be the final great decade.

 

[Odd Opossum]

When you realize that Claudette and Dutch are basically nerds getting bullied and Vic and the Strike Team are the Football chads getting away with it, their dynamic starts to make a lot more sense. They basically never grew out of it and at the end of the day they are just REEEEEing that Vic Mackey once again gets away with everything like he always does while they are unappreciated geniuses who should totes have the admiration of everyone else and be the real cool kids, because cool kids say “no”.

They are written like that, because they are basically the wish fulfillment/insert of the writers who see themselves as morally superior to Vic and the people who root for him, and they themselves were nerds who were mercilessly mocked by cooler people who got away with shit that they wish they didn’t get away with.

Anytime a villain protagonist-centered show has a character be a good counterpart to the main character, it always fails because the viewers see them as whiny moralfagging hypocrites who should shut up. I can't tell if that's a writing issue or an audience issue.

 

[Internet War Criminal]

Anytime a villain protagonist-centered show has a character be a good counterpart to the main character, it always fails because the viewers see them as whiny moralfagging hypocrites who should shut up. I can't tell if that's a writing issue or an audience issue.

A writing issue.

No one ever complained that Dr. Melfi in The Sopranos or Agent Beeman in The Americans were moralfaggots who should shut the fuck, for example.

People hated Skylar because she was a cunt, not because she was right.

 

[Odd Opossum]

No one ever complained that Dr. Melfi in The Sopranos or Agent Beeman in The Americans were moralfaggots who should shut the fuck, for example.

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.

 

[Internet War Criminal]

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.

Hard agree to disagree. Don’t recall a single person complaining about Melfi’s morality, at least during the show’s run. She was a psychologist trying to help her patient do better, she was a nice person doing nice thing, she wasn’t a hypocrite and ultimately she dumped him when she realized there was nothing she could.