Television has always had a love affair with the occupation of “cop”. I read somewhere that the most portrayed occupation in television and movies is a police officer. Whether good or bad or slightly a little of both, we love to watch the men and women in blue that live inside crime dramas.
The “police officer” we identify with has had to evolve. From early cop shows like the clean-cut, one dimensional Dragnet to the ground breaking ‘80s Hill Street Blues, and even later to the ‘90s NYPD Blue - which introduced us to Detective Sipowicz. As an audience, we had to evolve too thanks to history and the way we view the job of a cop.
Rodney King is forever a part of my social psyche, as well as the OJ trial. Was it with these two few moments in history that we realized that cops are real people that are tempted by corruption and greed. Are they are hard-working, intense people that will do anything necessary to close a case? TV has brought it home time and time again, this need to see the dark world of crime and how these crimes are solved. And again I feed my need with The Shield.
I was not a fan of the original show on TV, actually I am a fan of writer Kurt Sutter, but I have just begun to relish his work with ‘Sons of Anarchy’. Gritty, gripping drama that sucks you in and you can’t wait for the next show.
This set contains the entire show of The Shield - all seven seasons. That’s 29 discs, 88 episodes of the fictional Farmington District, LA, and the crimes they solve and the politics involved.
The show centers on a special task force inside Farmington that is headed up by Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis also known to children everywhere as ‘Thing’ in the Fantastic Four films). The Farmington District (or ‘The Barn’ as it is nick-named) is shaped by a neighborhood that is immersed in gangs, violence, drugs, and corruption.
Ironically, The Barn precinct is an old, abandoned church. This gives the set inside the precinct character and an interesting angle. The camera sweeps - we see crosses and stained glass windows and an occasional pew and we hear the occasional ironic verbiage about God vs. crime.
And in this world, Vic Mackey appears to be God. He can really move and shake things, though not always in the most wholesome of ways. Where do I start trying to describe Vic Mackey?
This character is so complicated you could spend a lot of time trying to psycho-analysis him! He makes my head spin. Good or bad? Well, definitely bad! The man murdered a member of his own strike team (granted, the man would have exposed him as a dirty cop, but still! WWJD???).
There is something about Vic Mackey that draws you to him. He has a soft spot for women and children (and this might lead to his downfall through a woman CI and her child). He loves his own children and family and is a good father. He is a great friend - we see his friendship with his partner Shane go through many tests, but he remains true and loyal.
Vic’s partner and long-time friend Shane (played by Walton Goggins) could be talked about for long periods of time too. In my humble opinion, the character of Shane is a foil for the really bad in Vic Mackey. While I was watching this set, I thought, “I could hate Shane”. And I did.
While I constantly rooted for Mackey and hoped things worked out for him, I hoped Shane would get the bad end of things. A couple of times in the series, I could see the end coming for Shane and my mind was cheering.
In a nutshell, Shane is the weak one and Mackey is the strong one. The worst almost comes for Shane when he splits from Mackey and becomes the drug dealer Antwon Mitchell’s “boy”. One of the roughest scenes to watch, Mitchell has Shane on the floor as Mitchell shoots and kills a fourteen year old girl in cold blood.
The series is surrounded by solid performances from all sides, including many more detectives in The Barn: Ronnie who is a part of Vic’s team (David Rees Snell), Lem who is also a part of Vic’s team (Kenny Johnson, Saving Grace), Captain Aceveda who is the politically motivated Captain of the first three seasons (Benito Martinez), the successful but internally insecure detective Dutch Wagenbach (Jay Karnes), and his partner Claudette Wyms (CCH Pounder).
Other detectives whose stories the series revolves around are Julien Lowe (Michael Jace) who has to deal with many personal issues, and his partner Danni (Catherine Dent), who by Season 5 is pregnant and the mystery centers around who the baby’s father.
There are entirely too many stories and sub plots going on with each of these characters and too many twists and turns to mention here, suffice to say the acting is brilliant, the writing edgy, and you keep watching to see what will happen next.
The series has a guest starring Glenn Close, who takes over Avevada’s position as Captain Monica Rawling in Season 4 and shakes Farmington up. She is very tough on crime and begins the ‘seizures’ which take away citizens’ homes and other properties if bought with drug money. This is a very controversial stand, especially with the Black population, and has ultimate consequences for Close’s character.
Season 5 guest stars with the great Forest Whitaker who plays IA Detective Jon Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh is out to prove that Vic and his team are corrupt, and things get a bit sticky.
As part of the audience, I was thoroughly immersed in these stories. I tended to forget that Mackey killed one of his own (a cop on his team) in cold blood, and pinned the murder on a dead drug dealer laying in his own blood in a bathtub.
The almost stuttering Kavanaugh seemingly stumbles all over himself to close his case and bring Mackey and the others in his team to justice - but don’t be fooled. Kavanaugh has the skills and the tenacity to bring Mackey down.
But because Whitaker plays Kavanaugh to the hilt, you hate him. Not just hate, but you despise him. When things finally take a wrong turn for Kavanaugh, we see that he is so bent on following the rules that he even books his mentally estranged ex-wife for a crime, and in a downward spiral that we saw coming from the beginning, begins to go corrupt himself in order to bring Mackey down.
Season 5 sees The Barn on shaky ground anyway as the temp Captain that replaces Rawling lets Kavanaugh walk all over him (note that Kavanaugh demands the Captain’s office and gets it). Temp Captain is played by David Marciano, whose character Detective Steve Billings makes you wonder: how did this man make detective? Billings is a coward and a braggart who takes credit for other’s work, as we see when he observes a crime at a car wash and hides so he won’t have to get involved.
Special features are included on every episode - commentary by actors, writers, or others involved in the show are added. At 88 episodes, that is a lot of commentary! Plus, some deleted scenes are added in each season.
This is a beautifully boxed set. It looks like a coffee table book and opens with each page covered in ‘memorabilia’ of the season. The ‘pages’ are actually sleeves that hold the discs.
But therein lies the problem. While it is a beautiful set, the discs are not well protected. Two episodes were lost to me due to disc being scratched or messed up by the adhesive that holds the pages together and discs in place. I honestly could not watch them because of the skipping. Other episodes skipped and I had to fast-forward and then replay to get the disc to work. This was a huge disappointment to an otherwise great show and nicely displayed set.
Other than the frustrating problem of packaging, I thoroughly enjoyed The Shield. It is a lot to watch, but well worth the effort, and very engrossing. It is a DVD set worth owning, and would be 5 stars if not for the damage to the discs. This might make others shy of spending this much money, and I wish the manufacturer had taken the life of the discs vs. the packaging into consideration.
The Shield: The Complete Series Collection is now available at Amazon . As of yet, there is not a release date for this version of the DVD in the UK. Visit the DVD database for more information.
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