The Shield

TV SHOW TITLE: The Shield
CREATOR: Shawn Ryan
YEARS ACTIVE: 2002-2008
GENRE: Crime Drama
RATING: TV-MA for violence, language, and sexual situations
GRADE: Pass


The city of Los Angeles is plagued with crime whether it’s gang-related, corporate, or the work of a sadistic serial killer. With Detective Vic Mackey and his Strike Team on the case, the justice may be worse than the crime itself. Vic is not afraid to break the rules when it comes to catching criminals. He’s not above torturing suspects or even killing and intimidating other cops if it means closing a case or saving his own ass. Even under the hawk-like eyes of Captain David Aceveda and the scrutiny of his peers such as Detective Dutch Wagenbach and Officer Danielle Sofer, Vic Mackey manages to stay one step ahead of everyone else and leaves a trail of blood and broken bones in his wake.

Unlike crime dramas such as Castle, NCIS, Bones, and Rizzoli and Isles, The Shield takes the viewers to a much darker place where the humor is raunchy and the violence is graphic. As I’ve mentioned in the opening paragraph, Vic often tortures his suspects to get a confession or information to a bigger arrest. Over the course of the show, he has whipped a suspect with a chain, burned a suspect’s face on a stovetop, stabbed a cop killer with his badge, and in the first episode shot another cop named Terry Crowley because Terry was a rat within the Strike Team. Vic Mackey and his team are like police brutality on steroids. The more people complained against him and his tactics, the more bruises and scars those people got. It’s an endless stream of graphic beatings and torture until the city is safe again, at least from the original gangsters, but not Mackey.

As vicious as Vic can be, the things he did on the show will never compare to what happened to David Aceveda in the third season of the show. David is investigating the home of a Mexican gangster named Juan Lazano. Juan jumps David from behind, binds his hands with a TV cord, and orally rapes him while Juan’s buddy is filming the whole thing with a smart phone. The sodomy was disturbing enough, but it was the ongoing trauma, family dissention, and blackmail David experienced afterwards that made The Shield hard to watch. When it comes to TV-MA-rated shows, I’m not a wimp by any stretch of the imagination, but even David Aceveda’s oral rape storyline was enough to shake me to my core.

If you strip away all of the torture, forced sex, limb chopping, burnings, and blood, you still have a well-written detective show. Yes, all of that hardcore and disgusting content is good for the Nightmare Fetishists out there, but The Shield isn’t just about violence and brutality; it has substance. It asks the bold question of whether or not the ends justify the means and how far we’re willing to trust the government to protect us when they commit questionable acts. Police brutality is an ongoing problem even in today’s world; just ask the families of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. The Shield does what all forms of media should do: it holds a mirror up to society and shows everyone its ugliest features. The show doesn’t glorify police brutality; it questions it. And by the end of the series, everybody on that show gets what they deserve whether it’s for better or worse.

But sometimes all you want from a detective show is a solid series of cases where the police work is intelligent and the laws and techniques are well-researched. You’ll get all of those things with The Shield. Shawn Ryan wasn’t just putting together a montage of beatings; he was putting together solid cases that real police officers and detectives would have to solve using their sharp investigative skills. Even Vic Mackey and his Strike Team are capable of using smart investigative tactics; otherwise, they wouldn’t be detectives.

All in all, The Shield is the complete package that a detective show is supposed to have. The only things that separate it from other shows is its dark nature, it’s bold statements, and its TV-MA rating. The show was revolutionary in more ways than TV being allowed to use the word “shit”, which is why it deserves a passing grade.

　

***TELEVISION DIALOGUE OF THE DAY***

VIC MACKEY: Do you want to catch this criminal or not?

DAVID ACEVEDA: Going undercover as dirty cops. You guys think you can pull that off?

VIC MACKEY: We can try.

-The Shield-