The Shield

[maggie2]

So today is shipping war day.  gabrielleabelle  has a good post on why shipping misses the point.  I'd add that the other reason it's silly is because BtVS is polysemic.  (I'm still having a love affair with that word, it means capable of different interpretations).  We all really can win here.  I thought #34 was very nice for someone with my sensibilities.  People I disagree with strongly think that #34 was very nice for their sensibilities.  So why all the screaming?

Anyway, I just finishing watching seven seasons of The Shield, which really isn't polysemic (that I've noticed, anyway), but is really quite good.   It's gritty LA cop stuff, which I mostly don't like.  I can never keep track of how all the drug deals work.  But it delivers a remarkable character: Vic Mackey, who has some genuinely heroic traits, who also cuts corners in pursuit of the good and goes terribly terribly wrong as a result.   For the most part the show does a good job of not dialing back on either the heroism or the villainy so at least for me, I hit the finish line both loving him and hating him.  There's more to be said -- below the cut with full spoilers for all seven seasons.

The other huge strength of the show is the way that the villainy metastasizes, first in Vic himself, but second (and most dramatically) in the lives of his team members and his family.   Vic heads up a team of police called the Strike Team.   They work hard to get the really evil dudes off the street.  Vic can go out of his way to help at least some of the innocents who the evil dudes harm.  He's also dedicated to his family.  The problem is that he decides that because his goals are noble, he can do pretty much whatever he thinks it takes to get the job done.  So he can skim off cash or even stage major thefts because he's got two autistic kids who need extra care.   And he can torture and kill some of the bad guys so he can get big arrests of the other bad guys.  Oh, yeah, and he can kill a cop who is put onto the team to get evidence of all these short-cuts and take down Vic and his team.   As he goes on, the brutality gets worse.  But most interestingly, he starts being willing to sell out his main goals to protect himself.   He betrays one of his team members rather than going to jail.  His actions put his family at risk.  He's willing to let a fair amount of serious crime go down if other interests are more compelling.

The metastasis is that he takes his team down with him.  They learn about the short cuts, and in the case of another riveting character, Shane Vendrell, the lesson is learned even more skew than Mackey's practice.  So Vic shoots a cop they don't really know to protect himself.  Shane ends up blowing up a very good friend to protect himself.  Vic makes a lot of shady deals.  Shane gets in bed with a major league bad dude.  But Shane, too, is trying to be a good guy -- a good cop, and a good family man.  And in the end it all comes to a head and he kills himself and his family.  Of the three guys originally on Vic's team, one ends up killed by a fellow team mate, one ends up committing suicide, and the third ends up in life in prison after Vic sells him out to save his own skin.   Total train wreck. 

The metastasis also impacts the people who take on Vic, most notably the IAD officer, Kavanaugh (Forrest Whittaker) who wants to take Mackey down.   Kavanaugh is all about the straight and narrow.  But Mackey keeps eluding his snares and taunting him, and Kavanaugh loses all perspective, finally sinking down to Mackey's level.  He realizes this at the very end and does the right thing, but not after destroying his own career and leaving Mackey in a good place.

So, pretty great drama.  If it weren't for all the confusing drug deals, I'd for sure watch the series again at some point.  As it is, I still might.  You get real character arcs, and a drama where choices count.  That always works for me.  And Vic ends up in a spot that is really a perfect form of justice for him.  Interesting contrast with Angel.  Angel's story is also about short cuts and metastasis.  But where the Shield is willing to craft a 'just' ending that holds Vic accountable for his crimes; AtS really didn't.  I can admire the inclination to have the writers not judge by delivering dramatic justice to their characters, but the conventional tale where the bad guy is held accountable remains emotionally satisfying.  Especially when, as in this case, it's done in a way that leaves you still caring about and even admiring the character, even as you see that his fate is richly deserved.

Comments

[deird1]

polysemic

Oooh... New word...
*drools*

[angearia.livejournal.com]

Oooh, I could eat that word!

[deird1]

I really need to find an excuse to use it. *ponders*

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

I got it from Candleanfeather who is just totally awesome.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

I love The Shield (and funny that you should mention AtS; Shaun Ryan, showrunner for The Shield, is a former AtS worker...)

And yes, the corruption spreading from Vic's actions (and to them) is at the heart of the series. I was watching the three last seasons (season 5, with Vic facing off against Kavanaugh and Lem... oh god, Lem... really is incredible), and kept wondering how the hell they're going to pull off not sending Vic to jail, which would have been a pretty cheap ending. Instead they sent him to hell. Cut him off from everything, made him betray everything he'd been teling himself he was fighting for... and yet he's still out there, still walking the streets. Guh.

Your point about the bad guy getting what's coming to him at the end is interesting. When The Sopranos was nearing its end, David Chase said that viewers didn't want Tony to go to jail because it's what he deserves; they wanted him to go to jail so they could feel better about cheering for the bad guy for 7 seasons. And so he did what he did. I think The Shield pulls off a similar, if slightly less ambiguous, moral: yes, Vic is punished, but not nearly as badly as those affected by his actions.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

Glad to find another fan! The whole story about Lem was amazing.

I think Vic was punished as much as a guy like Vic could be. He's got a talent for not letting things hurt him. If he'd gone to jail, he'd have been the righteous unjustly imprisoned guy. Humiliating him was far more effective. Though, of course, you can be pretty sure he was going to rationalize it his way sooner rather than later. I love that last scene of him, though.

It is appalling to encounter the figure whose command/interpretation of his own world is so unyielding that you really can't punish him the way you can punish people who have a more give and take posture to the social web. Shane, for example, was totally vulnerable all the way through in a way that Vic never would be. So even though he was often darker, I worried more about him.

So much to love about that show. We haven't even mentioned Claudette or Dutch (whom I ended up liking quite a bit). Aceveda I thought was a weak link -- the actor was not so good. I enjoyed Glen Close's season a lot. But it's the last three seasons that really starts swinging for the fences.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

I love that last scene of him, though.

Especially since it tied back to the final scene of s1, with Vic breaking down after realising his family have left him. Have you seen the unedited cut of that scene that's on the s1 DVD? It's just Michael Chiklis having a nervous breakdown, one take, for about five minutes. Fantastic actor when he wants to be.

Shane, for example, was totally vulnerable all the way through in a way that Vic never would be. So even though he was often darker, I worried more about him.

Yup. After season 5, I pretty much just wanted Shane to die. Painfully. Slowly. By the finale, he broke my heart.

And Claudette! Oh god. I'm going to have to rewatch this, aren't I?

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

Especially since it tied back to the final scene of s1, with Vic breaking down after realising his family have left him.

Ooh, I hadn't made that connection. Huh, foreshadowing of the total collapse yet to come. I was in too much of a hurry to watch the excerpts. I was watching through Netflix, and fairly obsessed with turning around the discs in a hurry.

And Claudette! Oh god. I'm going to have to rewatch this, aren't I?

Her ending was as moving as Vic's, I thought. Getting to the ICE in time to find that Vic had immunity. Big blow. Loved her last bit about how she was going to cope with the Lupus. I think she's light version of Vic's dark, though. Self-assured enough to define the world around her and thus not really be so vulnerable to it. I think that contrast is the point of the early plot line where she nearly sinks her career rather than not reopen the cases with the bad attorney.

If you wait a year, I'll rewatch with you! But if you rewatch sooner, be sure to post about it!!