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Another now common trend was introduced by the shield: movie stars coming down from their silver screen on Mount Olympus to mingle with mere mortals on the subway. In 2005, Ari Gold was probably still scaring Vince by comparing television to career death on Entouragebut He Armor Creator Shawn Ryan lured Glenn Close to a one-year commitment in the fourth season, perhaps certainly the show’s best. (Within two years, she would join the FX family with her own acclaimed series, Damages). The only season that gave him a chance is the show’s fifth, when Forest Whitaker did the same thing around the same time as Last king of Scotland.
So why is it the shield very often an afterthought on lists typically dominated by Mad Men, Breaking Badand The wire. On the one hand, it’s a little ugly. Breaking Bad may have adopted some of Shield narrative rhythms, but staged some of the most beautiful images and cinematographic sequences in the history of television. the shieldOn the contrary, it looks like CCTV footage. There were some good directors in the mix who helped establish the show’s visual language, like Clark Johnson and Paris Barclay, but their decision to make the show look more police that HBO wasn’t exactly aesthetically appealing.
You can say the same about the topic. Vic Mackey certainly helped establish the antihero mold that would put prestige television in a bind, but the character doesn’t have the redemptive or deceptive charms of a Tony Soprano or Don Draper. (Chiklis won a well-deserved Best Actor Emmy for the first season, earned a nomination for the second season, and was not recognized at all for the rest of the series.) Vic is a bad guy, and to defend the “hero” of that equation, Ryan and his writers routinely pitted him against many worse guys who did some of the most egregious things the FX Department of Standards and Practices would allow. Disturbing things happen on this show and almost every character is hopelessly compromised. The third season features the assault on a main character that is still considered possibly the most disturbing thing I have ever seen on television, second only to the events in sons of anarchythe spiritual successor to FX the shield.
But that attack – which happens to the character most obsessed with the search for political and cultural “power” – is not simply about shock value. Instead, it continues to inform one of the show’s most powerful stories, altering that character’s arc in intriguing ways that ripple through the rest of the series. It’s hard to watch, but damn if it’s not rewarding.