The Shield
 

Quick show of hands....


Who has watched the FX network's program "The Shield" ??

It is a extreme cop show with a twist... Michael Chicklis (formerly of 'The Commish'), plays a cop in a bi-polar struggle between good 'coppery' and 'werkin the system'. Kind of some sort of Dudly DoRight fightin' succeeding at pimpin' da' system. (The character exposes dat Pimpin da system as "ain't easy"...shizzle I'm typin in dogg...{wait .. Dogg dont know how to use quotes and shizzle..}) He is a veritable good-cop-bad-cop rolled into one person.

First season was "over the top" addictive (and I do not watch much TV)

Second season played "catch up" with a bold storyline and behavior that was totally predictable and freakin' dissapointin'

I usually found better things to do than tune in to the second season. (For instance, takin a leak...clean the toilets...)


The current (third) season has re-sparked my interest (until the previous episode)

It's a show that has used "shock value" to take it "over the top"

I found the limit of decency when one of the characters was orally raped.


Who else has viewed the episode? Do you think is warps past obscenity or is simple profaine entertainment....?

I've no desire to watch 'The Shield'. I thought the Dennis Franz character on 'NYPD Blue' was overdone, and just from the promos I get the impression that this is just more of the same and then some. Stabler's occasional 'indiscretion' on 'L&O: SVU' is enough for me - I'm very aware that cops are not all Joe Friday, but I'm afraid that too much of that kind of thing (knocking suspects and witnesses around, and worse, killing other cops, generally acting like a thug with a badge) tends to glamorize that kind of behavior and maybe even justify it in the minds of the public, not to mention the real-life cops we have to live with.

To me the show isn't about their work as cops at all, it's about their personal lives. The "bad cop" image is there, and they certainly play it up in the promos to make it look more edgy, but the episodes themselves tend to be more about Michael Chiklis' relationship with his family, and the cops' relationships with each other, etc. Unlike NYPD Blue, where you start with a crime and Dennis Franz beats people up until they catch the guy who did it, The Shield tends to start with the cops, and they just happen to be doing police work in the background, in my opinion.

When Scopulus originally posted this, I hadn't seen the episode (we always catch one of the many reruns later in the week because Tuesday nights are very busy). But now I can comment on it: I thought the amount of the oral rape scene that they showed was a little much, it could have just been implied a little more, but as a plot element in and of itself, I didn't mind it--but maybe that's just because I've been hoping that character would have something awful happen to him for a few episodes now. :)