The Shield

interesting to read (in back of last week's guardian) that csi is spinning off a new series, "csi miami" or something. and will star david caruso from nypd blue. which is good. (but phear the photo of him on imdb). he was also in the odd episode of HSB as the leader of the irish gang, the Shamrocks.

andy

i think the show thinks it's better than it is. it's facile like they watched oz and missed the point. i'm getting bored of the grant mitchell bloke, and the toothy guy in his squad (the one who had the beef with the basketball playa... if his name isn't really Jerry i'm dumbstruck) is the most punchable guy i've ever seen

where do i know that tough black woman detective from? homicide?

actually, that's a lie, she hasn't been in er since 1997.

http://us.imdb.com/Name?Pounder,+CCH

andy

surely all tv cop shows are based on "shades of grey" these days? my prob with THE BADGE (aw you changed it) is that it does it really obviously and exploitatively and without any sort of tenderness or awareness of previous convention. "hey kool, bad cops!!" not much commingling of goodness with that badness either. so far.

oh SHE'S cch pounder!! i love her even more now. and i remember cHIPS now thanks

As for Five: (1) BULLETS. MADE. OF. MEAT. (2) VOMIT. CAM.

The Shield = best programme EVAH. Last night's was aces. They're repeating the first series on CNX at 9pm Mondays - they're about two thirds of the way through the first series

andy

Boomtown is also great. I was disappointed that they more or less ditched the alternate perspectives with the later episodes.

Sad to see Glenn Close go, but perhaps she was best as a one-season deal. Season 4 may have been the best yet - it has a really nice arc from start to finish, with the old players gradually rejoining just as they're set up as adversaries. Also, many great moments, including (spoilers!) Dutch finally standing up for himself and even giving Vic a little punch, Shane and Vic's standoff, Dutch and Claudette laughing along with/at the coffee-throwing guy (and his arrest), and Monica v. Antwon in the interrogation room.

In a tight black shirt.

actually this is basically what I did with Spencer last time I was in town.

fkn awesome.

i fucking can't believe i missed this show up until NOW. i wanna rub his bald head and make a wish.

i just started watching season 3, after a long hiatus. this show is completely ridiculous, but it always sucks me in. i was thinking earlier tonight that the Shield is to The Wire what Lair of the Minotaur is to Opeth. i think it's the great acting and intense pacing of the show that keeps me coming back. i'm afraid to read this whole thread because of spoilers. i don't even know how many seasons there are now.

Haha, i've only recently started season 3, just like you. The first season of this show really didn't grab me, but I have to say the second did a good job at that. I agree that the acting and the pacing are great and are what makes this show so enjoyable.

There are six seasons and there will be a seventh and final season if I remember well.

good lord, that's a lot of Shield.

Yes that is indeed a lot of it. I would enjoy it, but Im afraid we're gonna see more and more of Vick vs Corine and that part of the show kinda bores me (actually, she bothers me, I really cannot stand listening to her). And also, I want more Wagenbach even though the show doesn't have much reason to concentrate on him.

Dutch is so great.

ookay, i take that back. he's great but a bit weird.

ANDRE BENJAMIN plays a tiny role in it!

THE FINAL SEASON
STARTS SEPTEMBER 2ND

WATCH AND LEARN DAVID SIMON

The FX site for the show has some one-on-one cast mini-interviews (Vic / Shane; Vic / Lem; Wyms / Aceveda; Shane / Gardocki -- they also had Billings / Dutch once upon a time, but those were taken down) (and they're not in-character interviews, fyi), as well as clips from a roundtable w/ the main cast & Shawn Ryan MCed by Elvis Mitchell.

I'm really fucking excited for this, it has kind of crept up on me, but I've got high hopes for this season. I thought series 6 started off pretty poorly but by the end I was right back into it (maybe this was just cos series 5 was so majestic that it took me a while to accept that we wouldn't be getting any more Lt Kavanaugh action).

six was funny, maybe broken-backed, but i thought the aus/nz dude was good and the big thing it led up to (ie vic and aceveda getting dirt on everyone -- can't remember details) was awesome and a big cliffhanger.

i guess it lacked a really 'big' special guest stars like 4 and 5 tho.

yeah the cliffhanger has really given series 7 the potential to be amazing. I also loved Shane kidnapping Vics family to stop them getting murdered and Vic just thinking Shane was being a cunt.

I think it was less down to Forest being a big star (i thought series 4 was the worst by far) and more that they picked the perfect actor for the role and the storyline was one that we pretty much knew was gonna happen since series 1.

I'm guessing they avoided the BIG STAR on purpose (for the sake of refocusing on the core cast, & possibly because of the lack of $$$). & I liked having semi-recognizable character-actor types filling the key special-guest roles for the season (Hyatt, Hernan, Kasakian's daughter).

I feel like a dope, tho, for not catching onto Kavanaugh's transformation over the course of S5 (until I heard the commentary) -- Whitaker lost 20-30 pounds!

Bagging on S4 is NUTS -- Close & Anthony Anderson (and any scenes w/ the two of them together, especially that climax where they throw down in the interrogation room) were A++++! I was actually humdrum on S6 (possibly because of post-Lem depression), but watching in again in prep of the new season softened me on it a bit (despite that still-awkward ep centering around Corin's dream about Lem).

Agree with you on Anderson but really not with you re Close, she didn't convince me AT ALL, and it just felt like her character was pretty hastily put together when compared to a lot of the others.

And yeah, I forgot about the dream thing, that was a pretty big miss.

i thought series 4 was the worst by far

damn son. i thought close was well good. tbh i think the show only really took off with series three.

Is anyone still watching this? Season 7 has turned into one of the best televsion experiences in recent memory & has approached Wire-like highs in terms of police procedurals IMO. The ending will be Shakespearean tragedy in terms of the fallen mighty.

Gah! didn't mean to use "in terms of" twice in a row. Bad form. Move on please..

Also: Walton Goggins deserves Emmys, Golden Globes, smiley faces & gold stars.

he is getting his own show on amc!

I'm still a bit dumfounded that there hasn't been any discussion of of the 7th season on ILX. The latter half, especially, has been masterful in its weaving of threads from various points in the series into as spectacular a final act as any TV show could hope to achieve. If The Wire was journaistic in its realism, The Shield is bowing out with Shakespearean levels of unraveling tragedy which easily trump the comparative whimper of Tony Soprano's fade to black (not that I didn't love that as well). Seriously, you guys are missing out. The series finale is on tonight..

Sorry for all the pompous Shakespeare references. It's just that there's some serious sins-of-the-father/King Lear & tragedy-of-moral-order/Macbeth type shit going on, and it has me totally geeking out in an English-major sort of way.

Sorry for all the pompous Shakespeare references. It's just that there's some serious sins-of-the-father/King Lear & tragedy-of-moral-order/Macbeth type shit going on, and it has me totally geeking out in an English-major sort of way.

whoa how did that happen

Vic's "sentence" was a thing of beauty.

oh no! still anticipating the torrent for this.
can't wait - all the previous episodes have been insane.

^^ Argh! Why did I click on this without having seen the finale yet. I'm waiting for a Rpdshre (initial torrents are bound to be crazy lopsided). I'd be surprised if they don't start popping up in an hour or so. I'll report back..

DR, I'm comforting myself by assuming that your quotes around sentance imply a galaxy of metaphorical possibilities :)

*e

Shane as the figure of pathos and twisted, repulsed/repulsive "sympathy" (takes me to ugh-growths/discoveries in the emotion-garden)--the monster-child of V-for-Vic,and more vulnerable/accessible than Mackey at this point--hyperactive and cut loose (won't say much about plot for those who haven't seen the finale yet--but don't expect too much from the very end)("closure" is maybe b.s end-of-XX-Century notion anyway?)

Brilliant. Devastating. I literally had a visceral reaction to this: it left me numb & slightly nauseated. I tried to palette cleanse afterward with some comedic fare, but couldn't undo all the abyss-staring. Dunno if I'd actually recommend taking this journey to this end (for the uninitiated), but goddam if it isn't effective as hell.

but don't expect too much from the very end - If yer referring to Vic's fate, I repectfully (& totally) disagree.

I was hanging out with a friend, under the impression that FX would rerun the finale immediately at 10:30. As a result, since 1 - they didn't rerun it until midnight 2 - it went to 10:45, I saw the denoument but thought it was the cold open. It was pretty hilarious for a cold open!

thought it was a nicely appropriate finale

SPOILER

SPOILER

SPOOOOOILLLLLER

shane going benoit was really hard to sit through but appropriate.

I meant the very *very* end (end of last scene).

**PLUS DE SPOILER**

Shane's ending i saw coming - not his family's tho. couldn't help but squirm as they panned over to them.
Vic otoh - i could never have dreamed up the purgatory they sent him to.

fuuuuuuuuuuuck

Season 7 has turned into one of the best televsion experiences in recent memory & has approached Wire-like highs in terms of police procedurals IMO.

probably the best last few eps of any show i've ever seen, definitely pips 'the wire'. the last one is devastating.

Yeah, last two eps were flawless. Just fucking great storytelling, regardless of the medium.

in the shield s01e01 why is the baddie playing a dreamcast?

also why does chiklis shoot that one guy from homicide in the noggin?

the make him as an undercover.

also it's the inciting incident for all seven series.

also it's a calculated "wtf, i must watch the second ep" moment. and i reckon that's the problem with it, because (spoiler) it's ever so slightly out of character, it's a step too far.

hmmm I must have been distracted, didn't see the make

dope show imo

can't remember how they figure it out.

i <3'd this show from ep one, but it gets BETTER, and im honest o, the final season was on some next, wire-beating shit.

dutch kinda reminds me of kyle chandler in homicide, hopefully he'll meet his own coffin sex fiend in later seasons

just at the end of sn.1 now, it's been good not great but heartened that nrq says it gets better and better

stick with it imo

I have frkn all six seasons on dvd, I kinda have to : D

oh shi-, teo got got

xxxxp : IIRC they figure out the guy is undercover cause some guy high up in the police administration warns Mackey about it.

***spoilers***
You know that one corrupt police guy (amongst many corrupt police guys) who Vic sends to Mexico, but he comes back and gets killed, if I still remember correctly.

***end spoilers***

And yeah cozwn stick with it, this show gets better and better. Season 4 has Glenn Close, 5 and 6 have Forest Whitaker and they're both amazing. And the last few eps are indeed amongst the best I've ever seen.

oh man the end of season 2 was so great but too dark esp. that end shot

guhhhhhh

in the shield s01e01 why is the baddie playing a dreamcast?

lol

julian is one fkd up dude

great actor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Chiklis#Future_Projects

In the wake of Bernard Madoff scandal, Chiklis is developing a series at FX about a similar investment scheme. The project, called "House of Cards," concerns a group committing an elaborate scam similar to the alleged Madoff fraud. Chiklis has been developing the project since February 2008 after he and his wife became victims of a Ponzi scheme themselves. "Cards" will likely center on the leader of the scheme, with Chiklis planning to executive produce but not star. FX expects to attach a showrunner/Head Writer to the project shortly. [1]

Oh, oh yeah.

holy shi!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

shane and tavon's fight in sn.3 ws fkn INTENSE

srsly fkn hell

how can tht one strike team dude who got his face burned grow a full beard?

and now aceveda gets raped o_O

http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/0gKM9ja4ln9Hi/340x.jpg http://media.entertainment.sky.com/image/unscaled/2008/11/20/ITV-Im-A-Celebrity-2008-Contestant-David-Van-Day-Wk-47-Nov08.jpg

so uh dutch just killed a cat. how about that?

lololol

i thought you had a job?

but yeah shane v tevon was epic. can't believe that was as long ago as series three. maura is probably my favourite character.

i dunno. the last season was effing amazing - but the two before that had me questioning my devotion to the show.

i thought they were tite, both of 'em. six maybe more toward the end.

From [spoiler 1]'s murder to when [spoiler 2]'s stooge rats him out was pretty much just boring (and nearly superfluous) set up.

otm. both events = wowesomes. but everything in between was ugh.

TNT (or whatever channel it is) needs ad revenue, I guess.

lawl ty dan

man this show is fkn complicated sometimes

now on sn4. sn3 ws too fkn epic!

aceveda is into rape-porn and shane has gone all darkside

srs I never had any trouble following the wire but with this I'm like whu?

the final season was on some next, wire-beating shit. - The Wire & The Shield, despite their generic categorization as "police procedurals," had very little in common. The Wire ended how it needed to, quietly & matter-of-factly, which may seem mundane in comparison, but to have done otherwise would have betrayed what the show was all-about. Being character driven, The Shield had the license to bring the melodrama to a boiling point & I would argue that the entire series is worth watching, if only for the reason of arriving to those last two episodes. Fucking goddam brilliant. It couldn't have ended more perfectly.

I would also say that those episodes, taken together, were better than any other film or television I saw in 2008.

I was worried about glenn close but she's gooooood

so's the fat dude (antoin mitchell?) from harold & kumar

glenny c is 'mazing.

not going to front that i completely followed every step of the shield! it's kinda involved.

it really does go up a notch with s03, doesn't it? i can't remember why -- must re-screen -- but it always had my stomach in knots, and didn't let up... ever.

yeah it definitely ups the intensity in 3 by quite a notch; season 2 was a nice setup into it as well. as you say, sn3 just gets relentless by the end, esp. when people start losing feet to the armenians

i think it might be that they showed less interest in the b- and c-plots involving julian and wotshername, etc. and maybe they made dutch a bit weirder?

was rescreening the west wing last night and realized that it's usually the 'omg we have bse in america/omg a train of radioactive shit blew up' stuff that is superfluous.

oh MAN! the shane/vic face off in season 4 is AMAZING

whittaker's a dick

ws the season 5 rookie

looooooooooool so sick when whittaker gets egg on his face busting vic mid-sting

love that look lem does, it's so ambiguous

whittaker is perfect for his part but yeah WHAT a fanny

such a great villain tho; I think I actually hate him

oh man the vic/shane relationship is too good; the scene w/the two from sn4 where shane breaks down bcs he's beholden to antoine miller and then when that is mirrored in sn6 with the revelation re:lem is just too much

the first of those was one of the show's great breathless moments; shane's arc throughout the seasons is too good

this show def has "things to say about america", apropos the wire thread. interesting things about "institutions" too, which is trad wire ground

it's lauded "moral ambiguity" is def not all it has at all

getting a bit heavy now; the shane maura stuff is heartbreaking

srsly this is how you END something you've built

inexorable 4life

:OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

the immunity interview

dude, just wait..

holy smokes

what to say

:D for the quality, ;_; for the characters

Love that Jay Karnes' real-life wife is yearning for some Dutch in her boudoir.

Finally watched the last series - watched the 2nd half of it in one sitting off work today feeling poorly.
OMG that was fucking amazing. 10/10

I would love more people I know to watch this show but you can't persuade anyone to watch anything new these days because they have about 20 people a day urging them to watch The Wire - it's annoying!

did anyone watch season 1 of sons of anarchy, the nocal biker drama thing? it's being trailed in the UK now as "from the creators of the shield".

Season 1? No. Like 3 half episodes while I was too lazy to get up and turn off the set? Absolutely.

last one ever on tv tonight (on five us anyway, no doubt the whole of this series will get a repeat on five proper). end of last week was a bit of a shocker. as was the episode when he joined the fbi.

oh, spoilers btw

the last two eps are up with the greatest tv ever

ha ha, that ending. could've gone any of three ways. that long zoom in with only the aircon as a soundtrack was great.

I just finally finished the last episode last night. fucking devastating.

Also: Walton Goggins deserves Emmys, Golden Globes, smiley faces & gold stars.

― Sugar hiccup, Makes a pig soar and swoon (Pillbox)

so otm. Goggins just takes it to a whole other level in this season. what a fuckin powerhouse.

i don't want to get into any spoilers, especially since it's a fresh bump, but i found this show's end game to be a billion times more satisfying than the Sopranos. I think the first thing I told my partner after watching it was that if the Sopranos had wrapped its last season this way, it would probably be my favoritest show ever.

goggins is so, so great in sn7

Just watched the last season this past week too! Very impressed at how consistent they managed to keep it throughout.

And yes, not to raise any spoilers, but the big shock at the end was horribly unsettling.

http://myspace-556.vo.llnwd.net/00011/65/51/11671556_l.jpg
^^^^fkn love this picture too

omg soooo cute. where did you get this?

gis

at the end of sn4 why doesn't glenn close tell vic tht they're going to go after him and lemansky in sn5? (sn4 is so great btw; the whole antoine mitchell, juan lusano and glenn close story arcs)

jesus... the death of curran... I missed that last time through. v.v.heavy

I would love more people I know to watch this show but you can't persuade anyone to watch anything new these days because they have about 20 people a day urging them to watch The Wire - it's annoying!
― look at you: lookin' like a lobster (tpp), Saturday, April 18, 2009 12:41 AM (4 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

fkn t-bomb

emolia is so fucked up

Just finished this up tonight - glad I made time to watch the last two back-to-back. Absolutely stunning, particularly the penultimate episode. Should be held right up near the top of the best television ever.

this has the darkest ending of any show that comes to mind at the moment. half the characters are left dead or devastated or in purgatory and the rest can enjoy the cleanup. and it's probably the grimmest possible ending for vic, total poetic justice.

incredibly fucked-up shit throughout this show, which i don't think worked all the time (i dunno about the whole aceveda rape shit and dutch strangling the cat was just o_O and not in a really good way) but when it did, like shane vs tevon or antwon mitchell having those two uniform cops grabbed off the street and murdered, it was A++. really tightly plotted though i gotta say sometimes when vic was running to and fro from one side to the other trying to play them against each other for his own benefit (this happened about 25 times during the show), it reminds me of this post:

the only onscreen things that stress me out are certain episodes of frasier, where he has like 2 dates, one in the bedroom and one in the kitchen and he has to keep running around trying to fake his way through the whole thing....RUN FRASIER RUN THEY ARE ON TO YOU!!!!!!!

― M@tt He1ges0n, Thursday, August 21, 2008 4:04 PM

btw i think aceveda had andre benjamin killed.

this show overall was faintly ridiculous and to some degree as i was watching it i felt as though shawn ryan and co. painted themselves into a corner with the ending of the very first episode, but in the end i realized that ryan had carefully and cleverly shifted that perception i had into it being that mackey himself had ended up painting himself into a corner he couldn't get out of and the show dealt with it perfectly. i still think in some ways that ryan had that "oh shit!" ending to the pilot and then himself was like, "oh shit..." because how can you top that and how can you make mackey sympathetic after that? but i think when it was all said and done, he just went with his gut and it made the character even better. he saved himself from paying for his crimes in a legal sense, but literally everyone despises him and he has no friends nor family left. so fucked.

i would compare it to the sopranos ending, which was perfect in its own way, but this was more so.

It's been a while seen I watched this, but Aceveda's not the kind of guy who would just murder a political activist, right?

aceveda's a motherfucker with some dark secrets

No, he definitely is - he gets into all sorts of dark shit with the rapist, he gets into rape fantasies with the prostitute. I just don't think he'd go around murdering his political rivals, that seems too far.

the grimmest possible ending for vic, total poetic justice

Just watched season 7 (streaming on Netflix) in the past week, just saw the finale this morning. The a/c and lights make that last scene so perfect.

Oh man I didn't realize he was The Thing. lol

Yes, that ending is just brutal. Totally loved this show.

i get chills and choke up just thinking about the title of that last episode. how this show didn't win a zillion emmys is criminal

OK FINNALLY saw the end of this. Been avoiding this thread forever.

Don't know what to say (without spoiling). That was intense. I kind of love/hate Ronnie. David Rees Snell apparently acting in an entirely different show from everyone else for all seven seasons, his lines (what few of them there are) are like lead balloons.

i don't think we need to worry about spoilers at this point!
like i said up thread - i fucking loved the finale.

I literally finished it 10 mins ago btw. A little shellshocked to say the least...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLrJiTrtRXA&feature=player_embedded

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04WtANMS6VQ&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45MLkPWl8CM&feature=related

him yelling at Vic as they hauled him off.... dude got his face burnt off and didn't even get *that* mad!

I do feel like at some point the show gave up on some of the characters in the service of hyping up the tension, something they couldn't always seem to sustain - Vic finding out that Shane killed Lem, Kavanagh's attempt to frame Vic - these could have been drawn out a little longer I think. But most of all, I really missed the whole strike team camaraderie. The events of the final episodes certainly got to me, but nothing made me tear up as much as the montage in the closing credits of the final sequence where you got a brief shot of Lem and Shane strutting through the Barn in their prime. Also what happened to Julian being in the closet? A quick winsome glance at a gay couple walking Sunset in the penultimate episode and that's it?

Anyway, god bless this show. I've watched every single episode of The Shield (more screentime than any other show I've had loyalty too) and it was never less that a blast. Well, sometimes it was less than a blast but that was because of Shane's annoying wife mostly.

Where can I get Shane's boots?

haha:

http://www.kennyjohnson.com/about1.html

Remember, it was always about Shane and Vic. Their story preceded "The Shield," as such, so everyone else in the end did turn out to be peripheral.

soooo i just finished this show. i think it is the most upsetting television i've ever watched.

Also what happened to Julian being in the closet? A quick winsome glance at a gay couple walking Sunset in the penultimate episode and that's it?

― Salted gnocchimole (admrl), Saturday, July 3, 2010 10:50 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah, i definitely feel like the show gave up on Julian, which is too bad; i was invested in his story.

Yeah the end is especially brutal. Sorry for not warning you

kinda wish shane's letter hadn't been so "on the nose", otherwise it was a totally perfect way to go out

The cliche' "Shakespearean" is actually appropriate here I think. It's a modern day tragedy on some Hamlet shit

i don't know how to talk about this show without spoiling like crazy so spoiler alert:

btw i think aceveda had andre benjamin killed.

― omar little, Friday, September 25, 2009 5:02 AM (10 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

OMG REALLY??? can i admit that i kept wanting aceveda to be redeemed, possibly only bc i think benito martinez is dreamy. and the season where he gets raped is so wrenching and it's so horrible when everyone in his life reacts badly to it on top of his clear trauma.

like, i was like, could aceveda's wife, instead of shaming him for getting raped, give him a hug and tell him to get some help?

thematically, a lot of the show seemed to be about how destructive a rigid notion of proper masculinity is.

kinda wish shane's letter hadn't been so "on the nose", otherwise it was a totally perfect way to go out

― ('_') (omar little), Wednesday, August 18, 2010 7:38 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this hadn't occurred to me while i was watching, but i know what you mean. actually for a split second when claudette was reading the letter to vic, i was like, "did she make this up?" just because it seemed so on-the-nose.

Totally. Dutch was pretty f'ed up in that respect.

xp

also, claudette!!! best ever!!! when she told dutch she was dying i teared up!!!! in a better world people would be offering cch pounder star-making vehicles left and right!!!

if anyone ever needed the "girl problems" thread it was dutch

dutch is a character i am also v invested in but REMEMBER WHEN HE KILLED THAT KITTEN????? holy shit i was like, if they turn dutch into a serial killer i just don't even know.

all these actors are great btw <3 jay karnes

i'm glad to see walton goggins with another epic role of moral ambiguity on 'justified'

guys i have so many THOUGHTS

yeah walton goggins is incredible

Clearly

also what my dad would call "a funny-looking kid" so i'm glad he's getting work

Is it bad to crush on pretty lady cop obv. put there to make me have crush on her?

I never remember her name!

But she was cute. And HOT when she was pretending to be a porn star

Danny? or Maria from Harold and Kumar? who was Tina on this.

she is v v pretty

yes =)

if they ever remake the wild bunch walton goggins should be lyle gorch.

it's so disconcerting in the final episode when everyone finally finds out all the shit mackey's done and they're all like, "he's a monster" "he's a reptile" because you've been watching this whole goddamn show about him and even though you don't like him you've sympathized with him and you're like, yeah he's a reptile but he loves his kids! or maybe that's just me.

No, but he ends up being pretty hateful IMO

totally, it's crazy that the show is about him. actually during the final season i would breathe a sigh of relief whenever the show cut from mackey drama to just about anyone else's drama. he's hard to take

i am going to marinate on this aceveda-killed-andre 3000 thing and maybe return to this thread at another time

i think his last shreds of decency were his loyalty to his bros and his love for his family, but in the end he totally betrayed ronnie and corinne was freaked out enough (rightly) that she went into deep hiding and the family sure didn't seem to broken up about that, so it's kind of the ultimate poetic justice.

poor corinne

I thought the wives were terrible to be honest. They definitely had to put up with a lot of crap but they were also kind of dislikeable and the script made them look stupid

mara is a truly impressive bitch, one of the least likable characters ever, but i feel bad for corinne. her life was hard!

and when mara and shane and jackson are on the lam, there are even a couple of scenes where i feel bad for her. though i don't like her.

still so mad that shane never had to answer for what he did to tavon btw

i mean, i guess he did in the sense that his life became misery and he killed his wife and kid and himself but specifically he didn't pay

i kinda like how vic drove everyone who tried to catch him quite literally insane to the point of breaking the law except for claudette, who just kinda marinated on it for a few years and then pulled the trigger.

i don't know if u guys remember but in i think the fifth season? when billings is the interim captain and fucking up left and right and claudette is losing patience with the way kavanaugh and the brass have mishandled the vic situation, she totally blows up at the chief (i think that's who that dude was?) about all the various incompetences at work, and billings is all backing her up until she calls him worthless to his face or something. it was classic; i could drink a case of that and not be full.

i may have clapped in delight

huh. i've totally forgotten what you're talkig about. i should rewatch the last season.

sometimes the end of episode music choices were a little heavy handed, like "disarm" in one of the season finales. i liked x's "los angeles" at the beginning of the final episode, though; it made me think, "they could have used this in every episode, really" btw i totally want to move to l.a. now due to this show.

{SPOILER} the last two episodes alone justify the long slog through the series imo. The Shield & Breaking Bad have been a master-class in carefully overlaying complex plot and character elements and ultimately drawing them together in a rewarding a satisfying way. I mean, Mackey's immunity confessional & the dead cold stare.. & the way he nervously props up those snapshots around his workstation, folding the Strike Team photo down to just Lem & himself.

Living in LA is JUST like The Shield

earlier today i was at a coffee joint and this car SCREECHED up to the curb and a couple of plainclothes strike team dudes rolled out with thousand yard stares and ran into the place. came out two minutes later with a couple of iced coffees.

amazing!

http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2010-08/55626383.jpg

From today's dead baby story

thought officer 2 was removing a wedgie but no he is closing gate

there were a lot of scenes by taco stands. made me hungry. i envy you guys.

also, it is a beautiful city

it is, most of the time

but yeah, taco stands are kind of ridic. We are pretty blessed in that respect

it's been pretty violent around my 'hood lately, actually. the shield wasn't really exaggerating the way things are around this area, except stuff like anthony anderson killing a couple of uniformed cops.

:(

i'm glad to see walton goggins with another epic role of moral ambiguity on Predators.

where do you live now "omar"?

we had a gun battle outside a high school and then a dawn raid on like a hundred people supposedly affiliated with the five Mexican drug families.

Somebody say "money train"!

you must live or have lived in atwater near the "avenues"?

i live by silver lake and sunset. helicopters multiple times every night lately!

I live just off the avenues-highland park/glassell park

We just watched the season five finale of this show and OMG noooooooooooooooo! Although I can't tell quite yet whether I'm more upset about Lemansky or about Dutch employing lessons in "pimpology" to manipulate vulnerable women, the cat-strangling crepe.

;_; Lem

season five is my favorite Shield season

Forrest Whittaker is crazy eyed.

http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTyCKWk9bdf3GJsEvuvmw_cveh7Ed5s_NGzy9uuHfTtUAdw6qWnxSF_Wu-WjQ

haha my sister really hates his performance as Kavanaugh but i think it is gr8.

We finished it. Intense.

What should I watch now??

the rest of your miserable life wither away while you sit at a desk filling out reports.

^^^ as I mentioned to Jeff, Vic's punishment is actually not far from my real job, right down to the lights and air going off unless I dial an extension to turn them back on again. ;_; Of course, I'm not a rage-filled, murderous strike-team cop who can face down a foot-chopping, Armenian mobster holding a gun to his nose with about as much stress as I feel ordering a complicated drink at Starbucks.

Anyway, this show was amazing. I kind of want to watch it again, but probably not any time soon.

Claudette Wyms is my favorite television character ever. ***SPOILER*** I cried so hard when she told Dutch she was dying. Jesus. Claudette can't die. I need her.

oh Jenny i missed that but claudette wyms means more to me than a lot of people i know in real life. after i finished the shield i went around talking about her a lot. that must have been weird for people.

Probably, but I would have understood.

Is it only the one late episode where we see the unkempt inside of Claudette's house?

I think so.

Yes.

guh, this show was the best, wasn't it?

I've just started season 2. It's not as polished as the other US dramas I've been watching, and some of the acting is a bit shitty, but damn there's some fine breathless plot-juggling going on here.

My current wishes are for

a) Whiney Julian to man up and be gay
b) Less rubbish sub-Soundgarden crap on the soundtrack

Stick with it. Been a while, but I want to say season 2 is only OK, and then it's all golden from there. But I could be thinking of some other show.

Concur. Stick with it. I want to watch it all agai.

Again.

Oh I'm definitely enjoying it.

Probably in my top 3 shows ever.

Definitely stick with it. Season 3 is where the show starts getting really good, and it stays consistently good at least till season 6.

I just started season six, and it's still pretty great. Kind of over the top, way too much earnest Nickleback type shit, and definitely a bit more basic-cable level acting and such than the big epic HBO series but it's still totally worth it.

Fucking Vic Mackey, seriously.

The final episode is my favorite final episode of any series.

the series had sort of bottomed out for me - but the last season was like a phoenix rising from the ashes the of earlier, crappier seasons; culminating and what, as eazy pointed out, is a seriously all-time amazing ending.

whole series on hulu plus now

Hmmm may watch again.

this sure is a lot of kid rock in the pilot

The music in The Shield is uniformly terrible.

Weird that one episode that closes with Magnetic Fields.

Got about a far as the fifth episode of this? Does it improve?

I found the first season to be quite patchy, at times amateurish. Everything from S2 is great though, stick with it.

It's always a lot more hyper and rough round the edges than The Wire or Breaking Bad say, but that's part of the charm.

It's got a real unique gnarly energy.

And it's got the tremendous Walton Goggins who I rate as a great actor.

S1 is pretty weak IMO, possibly the weakest first season of any great show I can think of. Doesn't quite find itself til season 2 yeah and I think the money train shit is where it really picks up steam.

i got kind of tired of it towards the latter middle. totally picked up for the last season tho.

I've only watched up to S4. I will pick it up again further on down the line, but I definitely thought 'right, that's enough for the time being' at the end of the fourth.

claudette calls everyone 'son'

Claudette is my favorite thing about the Shield.

Having skipped a few early seasons: is it only late in the show that we see Claudette outside of work?

I just finished series 3 tonight, it rocked bells. Loads of pluses like how they handled Vic's autistic kids sub-plot quite realistically and without too much schmaltzy melodrama. Walter Goggins/Shane - he has the coolest accent I have ever heard and he could easily turn me gay. The strange Claudette/Dutch dynamic and Dutch's cat strangling scene was extremely dark for a cop show. It was a hell of a lot better than I expected it to be. It was probably the opening music that put me off it previously, it sounds more suited to some more run of the mill type shit.

I need to watch this all the way through again. So awesome.

Except the Dutch/cat part. Poor form Holland!!!!

Mamet wrote/directed that episode btw.

almost done with the first season of this. was coming here to post "does it get better?" but skimming this thread real quick i see that it does! there are some qualities i already like for sure--chiklis is already great as mackey, and a few characters like dutch have room to become great later on--but all in all it's only okay so far?

Get's better for sure.

http://www.mandatory.com/2013/09/10/good-cop-bad-cop-an-oral-history-of-the-shield/

holy shit

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/20/showbiz/shield-actor-michael-jace-homicide-charge/index.html?c=homepage-t

Whoa!

Oh no!

Having skipped a few early seasons: is it only late in the show that we see Claudette outside of work?

it's only a quick shot but you do see her come home to her dog in the pilot, during the end-of-watch montage.

been starting to rewatch again, and since reed diamond is the strike team rat (i always forget he was in this until i realize they kill him off in the pilot) i was sort of struck by how much this show's multi-story plotting and sorta ensemble cast and handi-cam directing make it like 'homicide', with really distinct and developed characters, even though it clearly has mackie as a focal character. i was thinking maybe it had to do with the direction - the camera seems way more to treat each character focal, when on them (even the family of a guy they arrest in s01e02), than even homicide does. the first pedophile dutch interviews in the pilot somehow seems like he is just as much a character as dutch for the duration of the interview, where in 'homicide' the emphasis is so much on the detectives that there's always a kind of distance from the suspects and others (cf. the stupefying 'i was drinkin' guy in the pilot, or the suspect they get a confession from who refuses to say why he did it, or the araber, who stays lead-suspect-but-maybe-not (pembleton and bayliss kind of trade doubts/convictions after they're done with him in the box), and maybe even stays kind of unknown/unconfessed to himself (his near-breakdown over being so pathetic as to love a little girl) in the adena watson case). which maybe has a lot to do with the stupidity-of-murderers theme in 'homicide' (which they do a riff on in the one where they see the videographer's film about them?), since they generally act as if they're smarter than the perps ('thinking cops', bayliss says in the pilot).

anyway, i was struck that they could manage that much turn-on-a-dime focus on each character's segments / role in the plot and its transient plots, yet still have the strong focal character in mackie. and i was wondering if maybe that's partly an artifact of being familiar with the show, so the secondary characters seem more prominent. but i think not. different idea: we feel closer to vic as viewers because we're privy to the things he conceals from the other characters (even though they suspect). then i realize that many characters have similar secrets. julian's closeting, aceveda's rape, claudette's… cancer?, dutch and the cat. none of those are such structurally foundational secrets for the show, but it does make sense that the other characters would eventually (in time) get secrets to develop their thickness/independence from vic's focal existence, sort of to counterbalance his dominating presence in the story. (and that, say, is why shane is a more important character than lem or the other guy; he's in on terry's death from the pilot onward.)

i would not be surprised if that secret-sharing structure has something to do with the use they make of vic in the pilot to beat the location of the 8-year old victim out of the second pedophile. unlike the usual cop show but-the-law/but-the-costs lip service, which usually at least keeps some tension in the prospect of getting to the victim safely or getting a solid conviction in the process, up to the point where the matter is settled, on this one even claudette, the moral voice, is like, welp. and they do find the girl, and it's sickening and horrifying - not like a trembling-unseen-unsaid-it's-all-ok-now scene from another show. to the point where as the viewer, barring any critique of the position the show has put you in, you're not at all going to be all, that was a violation of proper procedure and the suspect's civil rights. because they find the girl alive.

Has begun season 6, season five was an immensely powerful cat-and-mouse game. Actually, I'm calling it: The Shield > Breaking Bad.

No doubt. Shield > almost every other show made.

lol does lem really have a tramp stamp

holy shit - http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Verdict-Reached-in-Murder-Trial-for-Shield-Actor-381401761.html?_osource=SocialFlowTwt_LABrand

really sad story

Hell of a good Gita Jackson piece here, and not just about the show:

https://aftermath.site/the-shield-mini-room-television

I was with her all the way up till "Ryan Murphy's 9-1-1 is a delight".

I admit I tripped over that as well but I have to assume this is coming from looking at it as a true camp classic of absurdity, because it is.

not gonna read this thread b/c we are only on S4, but it was extremely satisfying to see Shane Vendrell get his ass handed to him by Antwon Mitchell in the "Tar Baby" episode