TVSquad

I disagree that the characters have "no" redeeming qualities. You're saying Dutch isn't out for the common good? And what bad has Claudette done in this show (besides going out on the street in heels)? And Vic doesn't look out for his kids? Seems like he has some good values there, at least. And I wouldn't say the Strike Team has *only* dirty dealings on their mind; they're taking down the scum of the Earth every day.

Reply

I can see myself becoming completely disillusioned by exposure to the worst elements of society all day, every day, and ending up like Vic, rabidly protecting that which is closest to him at the expense of all others.

So yes...I can identify.

Reply

The crux of the series is, other than Claudette, the characters are all morally ambiguous.

Reply

people on the the sheild are much more real than any other show i've seen. that's why i love the show. in fact, these people are exactly the people you go to lunch with almost every day. you just don't know their dark corners. really, how much DO we know about people who surround us?

Reply

First, I'd wonder why you refer to Vic's murder of the cop in the first episode as "alleged." We saw it happen.

I think you are on target with your description of the milieu the show creates. It's a cesspool. What interests me about Vic Mackey is that everything he does is for what he considers to be a noble cause. That's what separates him from the Antwons of the world. But, despite Vic's supposedly good intentions, his actions are often vile (see cop killer, ep. one), and they don't really work. Everything continues to fall apart, and the world is still a cesspool.

Reply

i agree with keith. the whole point of the shield is that even the darkest characters have redeeming qualities. You said it yourself, Mackey "would do anything for his friends and family"- that's a redeeming quality. Not to mention that, at the end of the day, Mackey and his team want to put the 'bad guys' (and i know that on this show, most everyone exhibits 'bad guy' qualities) away. And Vick takes care of his wife and kids, despite his infidelities. He also looks out for his C.I.'s above and beyond the call of duty. Reducing Dutch to one instance where he strangled a cat is rediculous. Not to excuse it, but he did that in a moment of weakness and frustration to get inside the head of a serail killer. He's a good, honest cop who plays by the rules. He's a loyal partner, and overall a good guy.
I can relate MORE to these characters than to anyone on Grey's Anatomy, because these are REAL characters.
Yes, you are WAY off on your feelings.
I'd love to eat lunch with Mackey. And he didn't "allegedly" kill another cop. He did kill him.

Reply

Of course these characters are relatable. They are by far the most "relatable" characters television has to offer, simply because of the singular human trait that everyone has: they're not perfect. It's less of a "Holy crap, Rachel kissed Joey!" and more of a "Jesus, that guy is a lot like my friend Hairy Pete" kind of not perfect.

Let me put it this way: We all, on some level, think that we are perfect, or pretty damn close. Yeah, I may download mp3s, or boost a candy bar, or pee in the sink, but really, I'm a Good Person. In reality, we all have some thing in our past (or present) that we are ashamed of, or learned from, or dictate our behavior. The point is that we have all made mistakes, be they little ones or great big screwups, but that's what makes us each so uniquely individual. When we see Vic shoot someone in cold blood, we are aghast - we cannot believe what we have just seen. But really, who do you know who hasn't messed up like that? Who do you actually know who has never done anything wrong? That's not interesting tv to me.

These people on the Shield are fascinating characters, every single one of them, because we know they screwed up, and they know they screwed up. The fun comes in watching whether or not they can overcome their mistakes.

But yeah, really, they all are pretty horrible people. That's the kind of person who lives in our world, though.

Reply

I wouldn't mind being a friend of Vic. You know damn well that he'd look out for you!

Reply

There are lots of people on The Shield who I could have a comfortable meal with (to use the given example). Lem, Ronnie, Danny, Claudette and even Dutch. I think the problem comes when trying to paint them as black and white (good and bad) instead of seeing shades of "darkness" if you will. Other than killing that one cat, what's Dutch done really? Once Lem he was off the strike team he went to work with kids. And then he was ready to take the fall for his friends this season. No one may be a saint but they're not all as bad as Vic.

Reply

To me, "The Shield," is about how even good people will make bad choices when surrounded by corruption and filth. It is also about how even the seemingly smallest ethical compromises can lead to the ultimate ethical violations.

Vic Mackey is a lot like a lobster being cooked. He's in daily contact with the worst-of-the-worst, and gradually his ethical system shifts because he has to make ethical compromises. And then he makes more, and gradually his morals have been boiled off and he doesn't even realize it because he's made all of these small, progressive compromises.

He goes from excessive force and intimidation to murdering a cop. He goes from skimming off money from bad guys here and there to a large scale robbery and then helping rob a police evidence storage facility.

I don't know why people see Lemanski or Ronnie has less culpable or more likable. They and Shane are even worse since they're a classic case of groupthink. With a few exceptions, they blindly follow and adopt Mackey's precepts as their own. Moreover, the group dynamic between them and Mackey reinforces their declining ethical standards -- Lemanski's talk about protecting his family (i.e., fellow officers) sounds like it was ripped straight from a mob film.

You get the feeling watching the show that, if Shane or Ronnie or Lem had never met Mackey, that they would have been good, honest cops. But their relationship with Vic and his moral compromises has doomed them all.

The most troubling thing about the show is that Mackey is shown as being successful. He's a sociopath with almost no morals, but he is also damn good at catching criminals who are inevitably much more dangerous than he is. He's brutal, but gets results, and the writers clearly want to make the audience uncomfortable by presenting this utilitarian dilemma where Mackey and his crew often appears to do more good than harm. So what if Shane offs Lem with a grenade? The crew almost certainly saved far more lives than that in finding and busting the grenades in the first place.

But in real life dirty cops are rarely as efficient. They do lousy, sloppy police work and generally do more harm than good. Unfortunately, that's never been explored in "The Shield" to my knowledge. It'd be interesting to have an arc in which Mackey or Shane ends up murdering a civilian inadvertently because they're so preoccupied with holding their own lies straight that they screw up big time in their day job.

Reply

To me, "The Shield," is about how even good people will make bad choices when surrounded by corruption and filth. It is also about how even the seemingly smallest ethical compromises can lead to the ultimate ethical violations.

Vic Mackey is a lot like a lobster being cooked. He's in daily contact with the worst-of-the-worst, and gradually his ethical system shifts because he has to make ethical compromises. And then he makes more, and gradually his morals have been boiled off and he doesn't even realize it because he's made all of these small, progressive compromises.

He goes from excessive force and intimidation to murdering a cop. He goes from skimming off money from bad guys here and there to a large scale robbery and then helping rob a police evidence storage facility.

I don't know why people see Lemanski or Ronnie has less culpable or more likable. They and Shane are even worse since they're a classic case of groupthink. With a few exceptions, they blindly follow and adopt Mackey's precepts as their own. Moreover, the group dynamic between them and Mackey reinforces their declining ethical standards -- Lemanski's talk about protecting his family (i.e., fellow officers) sounds like it was ripped straight from a mob film.

You get the feeling watching the show that, if Shane or Ronnie or Lem had never met Mackey, that they would have been good, honest cops. But their relationship with Vic and his moral compromises has doomed them all.

The most troubling thing about the show is that Mackey is shown as being successful. He's a sociopath with almost no morals, but he is also damn good at catching criminals who are inevitably much more dangerous than he is. He's brutal, but gets results, and the writers clearly want to make the audience uncomfortable by presenting this utilitarian dilemma where Mackey and his crew often appears to do more good than harm. So what if Shane offs Lem with a grenade? The crew almost certainly saved far more lives than that in finding and busting the grenades in the first place.

But in real life dirty cops are rarely as efficient. They do lousy, sloppy police work and generally do more harm than good. Unfortunately, that's never been explored in "The Shield" to my knowledge. It'd be interesting to have an arc in which Mackey or Shane ends up murdering a civilian inadvertently because they're so preoccupied with holding their own lies straight that they screw up big time in their day job.

Reply

If your friends don't tell you their dark secrets it's not because they don't have them but because you are not "really" their "best" friend. I have thought myself an antisocial person but the things my friends and "acquaintances" (ie, people I don't like enough to want to be friends with but who I have to put up with because of work and who may think me their friend because I control myself . .) tell me are incredible in that, when I hear them, I think to myself, "Man, you shouldn't tell things like that to anyone . ."

Examples,

This guy at work lets me know a friend of his died in a car accident and that he was taken to court and charged in the death. A bit later, a couple of months, I learn he likes to do drugs like e and a couple of other things and that he knows how to get away with it on drug screenings. Then, he gives me a ride home one day where he drives like a complete maniac in a tiny car where any collision would result in serious injury. He got off in the trial; his father's a lawyer. As far as he's conserned he's entirely without fault. Yes, he was on drugs while driving that day, it was his girlfriend. It seems that the bigger the ass the more people want to hide it. This is an example of how someone can say things because he feels he's entirely without fault.

Since the last was a guy I'll try to be balanced and give you a woman's story this time. The father of her baby boy is annoying. She threatens to stop him from visiting. He takes her to court. The judge orders a paternity test: it's not his son, she picked him because he had more money of the three guys she was with at the time. Now he can't see the child at all, though he's emotionally connected to him as the child is already three. Oh, and no, the girl in question is not a ghetto girl. She makes 60k/yr and did finish college. And she told the story, not him.

I could go on as I'm sure I can remember at least ten more stories like this, some, much worse as friends have told me and I wouldn't relate them here. Wait aren't I an ass for telling other people's secrets, even if they are just acquaintances?

By the way, I don't like Grey's Anatomy - I couldn't watch it for more than ten, comercial free, minutes; a friend asked me to watch it as she really likes it, so I tried about a month ago. But I love the shield. I don't think it's dark, I think it's real. I would rather have Vic as my friend than, say, one of those Survivor dolls any day.

I get the feeling your favorite comedy was, hmmmn, Friends? I preferred Seinfeld.

Rico, you pee in the sink too? Man, I thought I was the only one?

In the world everyone's an ass and everyone has someone to whom they have been nice. Saddam had children, Hitler had his Eva, etcetera. Hiding it won't change it and won't make good tv.

Reply

I think your comments are right on the money. I love the show but I find myself tiring of it. The strike team are interesting, but they are some seriously dirty cops. In the first few seasons there SEEMED to be more "good" cops around, some of which were trying to rein Vic in, plus there were some even worse cops (not to mention the criminals). But over time many of those "good" characters were shown to be much more grey than we thought...Acevedo, Rawlins (with her take the house schemes), Dutch (not only killing the cat, but he has got some perv tendencies too), whatshisname the new capt (that chickened out at the car wash), Danny (with her adulterous affair), and now Kavanaugh (who would be more exciting if 1) you thought he might actually succeed, which you don't, 2) he wasn't already bending the rules and getting to be a bad guy too).
The ONLY major character that has been always on the side of good is Claudette. In fact, she was so unwilling to bend with the wind she didn't get to be capt. But she is the show's moral center. But she's tired now (literally). And her weariness is catchy. I think there's only so much of these negative characters you can take. We all know the world is full of grey, but I think part of us wants some good old black and white, good and bad, in our entertainment (since we don't get it in real life). And ultimately we want bad to lose, even if along the way it's sometimes fun to see it get away with it. Old horror movies were far better when you were cheering for the people that escaped or killed the bad guy and not the other way around. You can twist it a bit (think Dirty Harry or To Live & Die in LA, etc) but ultimately you want the good guy to win in the end (OR you want the bad guy to win as long as they aren't too bad--think James Caan in Thief and the like--when Vic killed that cop in the very first episode I knew he wasn't gonna be that kinda character). And with the Shield that just doesn't seem likely.

On a seperate point, anyone feel this season is not as hardcore as the past? Not as violent or edgy? And to me that's a good thing. Some of those scenes with Antwone or Acevedo's assault (and his twisted therapy afterwards) was a lil hard to take.

Reply

Ok, here's the problem with the Shield. It's apparent in a lot of the comments defending Vic. Vic is clearly the main focus. He's the guy we're all supposed to care about. And we do as evidenced by many of the comments above. We want to see good things happen to him. But he's a bad guy. Period. You can't defend or explain away what he has done and continues to do. He killed a cop to protect himself from exposure as a drug dealer. (regardless of his motives for being in business with drug dealers, he was in fact in business with drug dealers) Vic is such a good manipulator that he not only manipulates everyone around him he manipulates the audience into thinking he's not an utterly self-centered person. Vic talks a lot about putting himself on the line for other people, but whenever he does it it seems to further his own goals and manipulations.

This is not a show about how we all make mistakes and do bad things from time to time. It's about how we all can be manipulated into admiration for a selfish manipulative ends-justifies-the-means murderer.

Reply

You miss the entire point of the show - the writers do such a good job drawing you in to the fact that even though you know you shouldn't - you care about these dregs of society.

Notice in the comments that the only ones that are agreeing with you are making comments that show they haven't seen the show (not knowing what has happened.)

The show is all about shades of grey - that is why it is so compelling. Like 24 the show focuses on how even the "heroes" have their bad side, and it in a world of sugar coated "good guys always wear white, bad guys wear black" TV, it is different, and therefore, refreshing.

I think that the success of the show is the best testimony to the fact that the public is sick of being force fed it's opinion. We are allowed to make our own with The Shield. This is also one of the most compelling expectations I have for next week's debut of Thief with Adre Brauer.

Oh, and Dutch boy IS a desperate, lonely perv, and it leads to far more frightening displays than the cat killing when he was trying to get into the head of a serial killer that was able to best him, and end up killing more people than if Dutch had been able to get into his head earlier.

Reply

How can you guys say these are the guys you eat lunch with everyday. So you eat lunch with dirty cops. Dont get me wrong its a great show and i love the characters but to say they are the realest characters on TV is a little absurd. I dont know any dirty cops and I am sure most of you don't either.

Reply

All of the comments so far have been compelling and mind opening, and all I have to add is: I love the show, I have from beginning, will watch it until the end. I have a love/hate relationship with every character, and I find myself screaming at the TV screen A LOT, and it is so intense sometimes I am grateful when an episode ends.

Reply

Hi. I wanted to sign in on this. I have been an addict of this show from the outset. I can identify with several characters, but as one person said, this show is not predictable, with the exception of last night, between Shane and Lem.

I can only wonder where the next season will lead. Nothing that has occurred has been truly expected. Unlike most shows out there, you almost always know what is gonna happen next.

Thats the beauty, and fault of The Shield. You just never know.

I don't think that Vic will cut Shane any slack, once he finds out.

I believe that next season will more than likely be the last, only because the story lines are becoming more blurred.

Reply

does any one know when next season begins? after last night...talk about a cliff hannger..i'm very curious to know what's up..dutch is the "best dectictive"..that depends on who you ask...i still can't really believe shane killed off lem.that's a trip.we should have seen it coming..what an intresting story..

Reply