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

[AFAB]

The Shield is a crime/cop drama released by FX that ran from 2002 to 2008 with seven seasons to air. It follows the exploits of the Strike Team and its leader, Vic Mackey, a corrupt cop who is trying to keep the streets of Farmington California clean while simultaneously lining his pockets with drug money, selling drugs back onto the streets, as well as making sure he and his guys' criminal exploits are never caught by his boss. Like killing an undercover cop that was planted on his team for example.

Anybody here like the show?

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

It's a good ass show, and deserves massive respect for not completely fumbling the ending like the vast majority of great TV has done this century.

 

[AFAB]

It's a good ass show, and deserves massive respect for not completely fumbling the ending like the vast majority of great TV has done this century.

Definitely agree with that, I don't think I can find any other shows that have as solid an ending as The Shield. Maybe Breaking Bad, but I felt The Shield had more weight to it.

As for the actual ending, I think Vic found a way to turn his ICE job into a successful fed career. He's crafty enough to worm his way out of sticky situations and I think he'll have allies within the department to help him.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

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.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

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.

Thank God every day for Shawn Ryan telling Kurt Sutter to shut the fuck up when he floated the idea of Dutch being a serial killer the whole time.

 

[newuser131]

iirc season 5 was supposed to be split in two parts and it was to be the final season. fx throw a dump truck of money at shawn ryan and we got two full seasons.

story wise, i felt the last two seasons were filler and should have stuck with the original plan. but the last two episode were good. especially, the vic mackey confession to the feds and the claudette interrogation of vic.

fx brought back justified, why not bring back the shield.

 

[I've Seen Some More Shit]

NIGGER
FAGGOT
SON

It's a pretty good show. I like it more than any other American cop procedurals.

 

[newuser131]

NIGGER
FAGGOT
SON

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.

for example, the boys. stormfront, a literal nazi, never says nigger, gook, kike, etc, in the entire season. but in the shield, we get lines like "your just a nigger with a faggot son". what kind of card carding nazi doesn't use racial epitaphs?

 

[Odd Opossum]

Obligatory "One of the best endings to a televison series".

fx brought back justified, why not bring back the shield.

the "content" we get today.

You answered your own question.

 

[Super Hans v2]

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.

for example, the boys. stormfront, a literal nazi, never says nigger, gook, kike, etc, in the entire season. but in the shield, we get lines like "your just a nigger with a faggot son". what kind of card carding nazi doesn't use racial epitaphs?

At some point this retarded idea that portrayal=endorsement came along. Sometimes it can be bent, like with violence, but God help you if you're a white person and say nigger in any possible context. It's like they react akin to a normal person coming across a baby rapist.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

Thank God every day for Shawn Ryan telling Kurt Sutter to shut the fuck up when he floated the idea of Dutch being a serial killer the whole time.

I dunno, I think it would've been interesting had they played their cards right. Introducing the seeds for the idea rather late (season four, I think?) was a risky move, so them dropping it makes sense, but I kinda like the idea of a detective serial killer.

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

Michael Chiklis was terrifying as a force of rage, and I loved that "I fucking hate you all" look towards the interrogation room camera in the finale.

Every bit of the line delivery had been impeccable. Unparalleled, even.

 

[Syaoran Li]

The Shield is criminally underrated as a series, especially nowadays.

I'd put it on par with The Sopranos and Breaking Bad in all honesty.

 

[God of Nothing]

Still haven't finished it but spoiled myself on the ending because caring about spoilers is for children. You think he'd bury the entire department after everyone there took advantage of his ill methods despite disapproving of them. It's not afraid to show just how fucking awful niggers and spics can be, which I can't help but praise on that alone. Need to find where I left off. Was binging and getting sick of it because of the whole procedural format. We'll never have anything like it again.

 

[The Hoh Rainforest]

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.

 

[God of Nothing]

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.

They could've been heroes, man.

 

[MirrorNoir]

Definitely agree with that, I don't think I can find any other shows that have as solid an ending as The Shield. Maybe Breaking Bad, but I felt The Shield had more weight to it.

As for the actual ending, I think Vic found a way to turn his ICE job into a successful fed career. He's crafty enough to worm his way out of sticky situations and I think he'll have allies within the department to help him.

He wouldn't. Vic's fate at the end amounts to two options:

1. He says "fuck it" and throws his life and second chance away to free Ronnie from the prison transport van taking him to jail, killing multiple cops in a potentially futile last ditch gesture to salvage the one fuck up he could fix (freeing Ronnie) and either dying doing it or basically getting killed by Ronnie first chance he can, or both men basically fleeing to Mexico with just the clothing on their backs and a giant bullseye on their back from the authorities to the Mexican cartels wanting them dead

2. Vic suffers in silence at ICE while trying to find his kids or at least, get Dani to give him visitation with his son and when that fails, vanishing in thin air when his three year contract is up since his life is ruined and his only hope is going some place on the east coast or middle america and getting a boring normal person job.

iirc season 5 was supposed to be split in two parts and it was to be the final season. fx throw a dump truck of money at shawn ryan and we got two full seasons.

story wise, i felt the last two seasons were filler and should have stuck with the original plan. but the last two episode were good. especially, the vic mackey confession to the feds and the claudette interrogation of vic.

fx brought back justified, why not bring back the shield.

Confusing shit.

Season five was going to be a regular season with an option for it being the final season if the show didn't get renewed for season six in a timely fashion. The episode order count got upped THEN the order came, to save money, that they were going to split it into two. And Forest Whittaker, who joined the cast as an attempt to recapture the lightning in the bottle that was Glenn Close's run in season four, started getting major buzz for Last King of Scotland which put a lot of eyes on the show and it's fifth season.

The plan, until they split the episodes for two seasons, was to end season five with Lem's death. There were rumors that they were also going to kill Ronnie too (and reveal Ronnie was Dani's baby's dad for added angst) at the end of season five so season six would be Vic vs Shane. But the split saved Ronnie from dying and they made Vic the baby's dad, combined with the writers deciding that Shane killing Lem needed to be less gruesome and soul crushing (originally Shane kills Lem full-on execution style in a slow, soul crushing scene but they changed it to the grenade death to make it quick and less painful).

Originally Kavanaugh was going to be gone for good after the first block of episodes/season five. But Whittaker had fun working on the show and offered to come back for several episodes in season six to wrap up his characters arc so long as they put them at the front of the season to accommodate his schedule. The second half of the season was plagued by not knowing if the show was renewed or not for season seven and generally speaking, the writers spinning their wheels. And season seven had to be rewritten from scratch when production was delayed due to FX moving the final season to the fall not the spring combined with Walt Goggins not being available for only a handful of days for the final third of the season and the chick from Run Lola Run declining to return for season seven (which might have been for the best, as Vic's daughter was supposed to be heavily involved in the original ending of the series, combined with an episode where we would find out that Ronnie was bisexual and been sent to a conversation therapy facility as a teenager, which would have been the mea culpa to fans for the controversial "pray the gay away" storyline the Julian character had as a condition for Michael Jace to continue in the series).

Also, the reason there is no Shield revival is that the ending went full scorched earth on any sort of continuation unless you completely excise the Strike Team. Also, SWAT basically is Shield but everyone's happy and well adjusted and features alt versions of Ronnie (a regular detective) and Lem (a SWAT officer) in it, as far as being an alternate earth what if scenario for "what if Ronnie and Lem never met Vic and Shane and avoided being corrupted by them and their lives destroyed".

 

[newuser131]

the reason there is no Shield revival is that the ending went full scorched earth on any sort of continuation unless you completely excise the Strike Team

zeitgiest nostalgia, for the most part, goes back 20 years. in the 2000s, everyone wanted 80s stuff. 2010s was a mix of 80s/90s. for this decade, i suspect it will be 2000s nostalgia. the shield, practically the entire fx and hbo lineup, can be give the revival mini-series treatment to supply this nostalgia. i can see fx do this for the shield, but i don't want to see it because i don't trust today's writers to bring the grit and realism that a shield series would require.

if you look at the behind the scene of tv shows back them, the writers rooms were always leftist, but they were professionals and knew how to write any character and situation, despite the writer's own personal feelings. the young writers has veteran writers to help guide through this process. and the writers had either life experiences to draw from or did actual research by talking to the people involved in that world they were writing (unlike today, where the writers would go into twitter or reddit for "research". human contact is important for empathy). the modern writing room lacks all these qualities.

tbh i get caught up in nostalgia from time to time, and, if they announced a revival mini series, it would peek my interest. but i know what type of writing we are going to get from today's writers room, so, NO, i do not want revival mini series. yes, it was a definite ending for the show but a competent writing staff can pull it off, but not today's writing staff.

 

[MirrorNoir]

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 (Dani having ascended the ranks to police Captain status and now in charge of the Farmington District/the Barn, maybe Tina as the new Claudette, Dutch having stayed as a detective who's death in the pilot at the hands of a serial killer he's investigating driving the A-Plot, Acaveda having become mayor of Los Angeles) in minor roles. No Strike Team or Cassidy or Vic's son by Dani as the new Vic, or bastard spawns of Ronnie, Lem, or Shane running around. At which point, you might as well just watch SWAT since SWAT basically is the spiritual successor of The Shield with all of the problematic parts MIA.

The alternative would be to just do a Teen Titans Go type adult cartoon comedy revival (minus Julian for obvious reasons relating to him being a murderer), which would take place nebulously between seasons one and two and just have everyone acting as exagerated stereotypes of their main personality traits with the added pandering being that they play up the whole "everyone, even the guys, all wants to fuck Vic" angle as far as making a hypothetical Shield cartoon be a harem black comedy where part of the drama is that everyone wants to have sex with Vic.

 

[newuser131]

in my head canon, the sons of anarchy show is the afterlife for the shield. when lem died, he got reincarnated as a sons of anarchy biker. when shane died, he got reincarnated as venus van damme. if vic dies, he gets reincarnated as a truck driver.

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