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

[Burt Ryan]

There is a part in the game were you have to plant drugs in a Mexican hideout without being seen. Turns out everytime you plant the drugs, You get find out and get a game over screen. You cant continue past that point in the ps2 version since you always get find out no matter what.

Oh, isn't that the first mission? I've seen a few gameplays and there's Vic planting drugs on a bed, and a dude comes out of the bathroom and catches him.

 

[Gravityqueen4life]

Oh, isn't that the first mission? I've seen a few gameplays and there's Vic planting drugs on a bed, and a dude comes out of the bathroom and catches him.

Yeah, That's the one. Turns out i was wrong btw. Its the PS3 version that is bugged. not PS2. must be a FPS issue.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

I've finished season 1 a while back and it was really good, but I just can't get into season 2. It feels like there's a laugh track missing with how incompetent some of the characters become between seasons.

 

[Hijo de D. Woodchucks Jr.]

Was i the only one who thought the therapist in the early seasons was diddle Cassette? he gave me the pedo vibs and i was shocked it turned out that was not the case.

Currently on Season 3, and I was thinking the same thing. Cassie starting to act out, just as she's blooming from little girl to early teen, having her mother constantly bitching out at her, obviously fooling around with Matty's tutor, up to just walking around in just her panties while he's with the kid like she's a two-dollar whore. Oh, and my personal favorite: when Vic confronted her about fucking the tutor, her reaction? "What did Cassidy tell you?"

Excuse you, hoe? What SHOULD Casssidy be telling me, you fucking skank?

I don't know how so many red flags were shown just for it to be a nothingburger.

 

[The Hardest R]

One of the consequences of The Shield being tightly paced is that some things are just not explored that probably should if they added an episode or two per season. I prefer that instead of overextending it.

Also I don’t think Corinne was meant to be portrayed as a good wife and mother. I think she was pretty mediocre at both and just wanted a quiet life with her kids. She didn’t sign up for Vic to do the shit he did but she did a pretty bad job of handling it.

 

[TheHarbinger]

Also I don’t think Corinne was meant to be portrayed as a good wife and mother. I think she was pretty mediocre at both and just wanted a quiet life with her kids. She didn’t sign up for Vic to do the shit he did but she did a pretty bad job of handling it.

The actress who played Corrine is married to Shawn Ryan, The Shield's creator, which was why she got tons of screen time. They had to justify her being billed as a lead actress to qualify for the higher pay levels for television acting. So she had to appear in a certain number of scenes for SAG-AFTRA rules. This meant massive amounts of unnecessary scenes where her character offers nothing to the story. Lots of the cast members would openly roll their eyes at Shawn Ryan during her scenes.

It is extremely common to cast your wife as the lead on a show you are producer for. The creator of Sons of Anarchy cast his wife as the lead. And CEO of FX had his wife play another lead on Sons of Anarchy for several seasons. They were at least both professional actresses though. There are tons of other examples of show creators putting their awful children or wives into the show with prominent parts. Mad Men had the creator put his son on the show in one of the all time most idiotic decisions for casting.

You usually sign a six year contract with a show which was why The Shield ran for seven seasons as well. So everyone could get one giant pay raise.

 

[Gravityqueen4life]

Spoiler: The latter

I guess enough painkillers can make even the worst kind of hurt go away. The thing you need to know is that Mara was innocent, and Jackson was innocent. They didn't know what they were drinking and their last moments together were happy ones. They left the way I first found them, perfect and innocent. They were innocent and they're in Heaven now and we'll always be a family. The guilty ones are me and Vic. Vic led, but I kept following. I don't think one's worse than the other, but we made each other into something worse than our individual selves. I wish I never met him. I see it all now. There's no apologies I can make, no explanations I can give. I was who I was, and I can't be that person anymore. I can't let myself...
We think this is where he was when we came in, because it stops there.

Still gives me chills.

 

[frozen_runner]

A was always impressed by this show, but I never really loved it.

It's easy to fuck up the process of writing bad people as interesting, sympathetic characters. Every show is not The Sopranos. I won't say everyone in The Shield is a bad person, but it did, back in the day, remind me of inferior shows like The Practice that was 100% filled with detestable characters who I actually hated.

I should give The Shield another shot.

 

[TheHarbinger]

It's easy to fuck up the process of writing bad people as interesting, sympathetic characters. Every show is not The Sopranos. I won't say everyone in The Shield is a bad person, but it did, back in the day, remind me of inferior shows like The Practice that was 100% filled with detestable characters who I actually hated.

Vic Mackey is written to be as sympathetic as possible to the point where it's almost painfully bad writing. They had him rescue tons of young girls from pedophiles in the first season to show the audience that he was still a crime fighter and could be rooted for. And why the moral and lawful cops like Dutch or Claudette were willing to look the other way when Mackey is smashing some guy's face in with the phonebook because it means arresting a rapist and saving a little girl. He's the lesser of two evils by far. His way might not be the 'right' way but it works. The writing was not subtle but they almost had no choice when in the first episode Vic is shooting another cop in the face. And so they have to overcompensate to the other extreme.

And they gave Vic two autistic kids to help justify his need to make tons of extra money on the side (giving a main character a special needs or hurt child is a cheap trick by writers to make characters more sympathetic). By the time his youngest is in daycare he is spending $50K per year on special needs assistance on a detective's salary. It was to give the audience a reason to root for Vic against the system that denies families proper care for their children. A big part of The Shield is that these cops don't make enough money to support a family and their wives must work as well.

 

[Samuel Fuller]

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 was FBI, not ICE, and he was told in no uncertain terms that he was riding a desk for life due to his attempt to get away with everything he'd done.

It was a fate worse than death for an adrenaline junkie like Vic.

 

[Samuel Fuller]

I wasn't mature enough at the time to get the all of the deeper and darker themes of The Shield, but I did enjoy all of the brutal justice Vic dished out (kiddy rapist cholo deserved that knife to the spleen). I need to watch this series again.

Also, I remember when The Shield was going to get a video game by Sammy Studios before somehow the project got the plug. That would have been so fucking sick, even if it was a licensed property video game. From the same devs and publishers that brought you Guilty Gear.

ARC System Works are the devs of Guilty Gear, Sammy just published the games.

ARC had nothing to do with the game.

 

[TheHarbinger]

He was FBI, not ICE, and he was told in no uncertain terms that he was riding a desk for life due to his attempt to get away with everything he'd done.

It was ICE and not the FBI. And Vic's terms only extend for three years. He rides a desk for a few years then gets a full retirement package. It's heavily implied he's not allowed to do any work whatsoever without being supervised. And that all of his coworkers hate him for being a cop killer and corrupt and are in disbelief that he works in their office. So he just sits at his desk for eight hours a day reading a book or listening to music. Like a prisoner.

It was a fate worse than death for an adrenaline junkie like Vic.

Some interpret him leaving his desk and grabbing a gun as him going to his death.

 

[Fishnumm]

Spoiler: The latter

I guess enough painkillers can make even the worst kind of hurt go away. The thing you need to know is that Mara was innocent, and Jackson was innocent. They didn't know what they were drinking and their last moments together were happy ones. They left the way I first found them, perfect and innocent. They were innocent and they're in Heaven now and we'll always be a family. The guilty ones are me and Vic. Vic led, but I kept following. I don't think one's worse than the other, but we made each other into something worse than our individual selves. I wish I never met him. I see it all now. There's no apologies I can make, no explanations I can give. I was who I was, and I can't be that person anymore. I can't let myself...
We think this is where he was when we came in, because it stops there.

Still gives me chills.

god that was the best scenes in the show if not the best

that whole finale was just perfect

 

[Dragged Into Sunlight]

Rewatching this again.

God, I forgot what a gigantic bitch Corrine was. She was Skyler White before Skyler White.

"Ugggghhhh, I'm a stay at home mom and my husband has to work OT constantly to provide for us including $25k a year for our autistic kid. What an awful asshole he is for never being around."

"I may have kidnapped your kids with no warning, fled the state, visited divorce lawyers, then kicked you out of the house when I decided to come back but how dare you find another woman"

"I spent 11 years working around your schedule when my only job was taking care of the household. How dare you not drop everything to accommodate my schedule when I go back to work"

The creator of Sons of Anarchy cast his wife as the lead.

At least Katy Sagal was a real actress. A very different situation.

I'll defend season two of the Wire, purely because the long shoremen plot was bleak as fuck and the fates of the characters being a metaphor for how the working class white folk are being slowly but surely destroyed by TPTB, to the point that even breaking bad can't save them. Also, Ziggy's a great tragic sad clown figure and his bad end is a testament to his actor's talent that he took what could have been a one dimensional annoying asshole and made him into a tragic figure at the end.

S2 of The Wire is such a great litmus test for taste. It's the best season for exactly the reasons you listed. But I guess people would rather see the black gangbangers have unrealistic conversations about chess and Roberts Rules of Order.

what is with adhd ass people thinking every plot unrelated to the main group is nothing but filler?

Idiots not understanding what A and B plots are and how they are important to developing character.

 

[Tepes Thot]

(Corrine was childish and insufferable)

One thing I didn’t understand about Corinne was the witness protection ending.
Nothing Vic did made me think she had to go that far. All his wrong doing was aimed at the streets, and only went as far inward as the Strike Team.

Was that just a pity offering from Claudette and Dutch to get her to turn?

 

[TheHarbinger]

One thing I didn’t understand about Corinne was the witness protection ending.
Nothing Vic did made me think she had to go that far.

Watch the show again. An armed man breaks into their home to kill her and bleeds all over the floor when Shane intervenes. Shane kidnaps her and her children and locks them in a shipping container. Vic and the Strike Team have threatened, kidnapped, and killed family members of major violent gangs. She knows that Vic shot and killed Terry Crowley. Vic hired private investigators to track her down across the country and found her easily using his drug and gang money. Kavanaugh stalks her and sexually harasses her and she accuses him of planning to rape her. Gilroy plants a loaded gun in her daughter's room.

She had plenty of reasons. There are probably another hundred examples of Vic's crimes impacting her directly or indirectly. Plus all of her money is dirty and she needs to relocate from Vic without using their bank accounts. With three children, two special needs, she has to have the FBI give her major financial assistance to be truly independent from Vic.

All his wrong doing was aimed at the streets, and only went as far inward as the Strike Team.

He killed another cop in the first episode because the cop knew about Vic being one of the biggest drug dealer enforcers in Los Angeles.

Was that just a pity offering from Claudette and Dutch to get her to turn?

It's definitely aimed more at destroying Vic than helping Corrine or his family. But Dutch did have a soft spot for Corrine in early episodes. She gets an accelerated entry into witness protection specifically because Claudette and Dutch are afraid that Vic will out maneuver them again.

 

[Dragged Into Sunlight]

I forgot about the reaction Aceveda's bitch wife had to him getting raped. She basically calls him a bitch.

 

[Fishnumm]

I forgot about the reaction Aceveda's bitch wife had to him getting raped. She basically calls him a bitch.

that was certainly an arc of all time

 

[Dragged Into Sunlight]

Dutch just strangled the cat. That always bothered me. You're going to let a guy that raped old ladies tilt you that badly?

 

[Dragged Into Sunlight]

And here we go with Claudette's moral crusade because a public defender was on prescription drugs. She's fantastic at being the biggest cunt imaginable even when technically right.

You know what the most unrealistic thing is about the whole show though? That all these hot women want to fuck walking penis head Vic Mackey.