Anyone agree The Shield is the best thing ever?

I love Al, was happy to hear that a Deadwood movie next year on HBO was finally happening. Boyd is great too, but I think the last several episodes of the show with how he/Ava's relationship turned felt odd and forced.

Without The Shield I doubt all these other great FX dramas would've happened. It only had one season, but Terriers was a very good show on FX too. I do think The Shield gets forgotten; I always hear people mention Sopranos, Buffy, Lost, BSG, etc when it comes to great late 90's, early 2000s shows, but The Shield not so much - it's definitely in their league and helped progress TV shows having a main character who was bad/morally gray while still being likable or at least understandable.

The Wire and The Shield are my two favorite shows.

My roomate and I have been going through a bunch of shows that he had seen that I hadn't. Some of the prestige shows were in that such as The Wire, Justified, and Soprano's. We have now made our way to the Shield, about into Season 3. I gotta say while I might not be as hyperbolic to say it's the best thing ever, it's certainly quality. It deals with some heddy themes, especially considering when it aired. At times it's main cast is a little anti-hero/over aggressive, but I don't feel like the take is that your supposed to generally think Vick and Shane and the Strike Force are entirely redeemable characters.

Thus far only 3 seasons in my favorite character is Dutch. He's had several stellar outbusrts/rants that are near monolouge level. The one story arc in one of the early seasons that has the manipulative women he doesn't peg at all which leads him to him to rant about how dark the world has become and how he basically has to give up on everything was stellar. So much of what The Shield nails is the divide, in which it shows how the reality of the out on the streets doesn't always play with the bureaucracy of the system. We instantly jump to the conclusion that any officer "breaking the law" is dirty, but realistically speaking it's a more convoluted situation than that. I find it does a good job showing not only the varying ways you can attack some of those problems, but the consequences that come with. It's not perfect by any means, and I think thus far it's no The Wire in terms of quality. But it's not far off for me.

@devise22: just keep going :D

Sure is. There isn't a more misguided cast of characters with the worst type of honor than the ones in The Shield. The guest stars (Glenn Close, Anthony Anderson, Forrest Whittaker) were the best parts of their respective seasons.

I loved that the first episode is the match that lights the entire series. Everything up until the end of the series revolves around that first episode and the repercussions.

And finally, it suffers a bit from being a "serial" in that there are more crime of the week episodes than I'd like, but even those episodes drop background, history, and motivation of the characters. Most notably, episodes during Vic Mackey's early years with his Carl Weathers as his partner and mentor, which would shadow how Vic and Shane's relationship.

The show also delved in LGBT issues with the rookie cop, though that angle was dropped by the actor who played the cop.

I rank it slightly above The Wire as the best show on television.

This thread made me go re-watch Terriers again, and that one season is still tremendous. It holds up way better than I expected, and was arguably a fair bit ahead of its time in terms of progressive thinking, especially considering that most stuff from that time period is pretty cringe-y. The show, in addition to just being quality TV, doesn't shy away from LGBT issues in a fairly refreshing way at a time when most media was either afraid to go there or gave some ham-fisted, shitty portrayal. It also offers a rarefied quality depiction of addiction and mental illness. It's somehow an even better show than I remembered.

@norm9: That gay rookie cop was played by Michael Jace who would later go on to murder his wife in front of their two sons and is now spending 40 years in prison.

Anyway on to a less grim subject, whenever a show drops a subplot without resolving it my partner and I call it "lost in the Pine Barrens" in honor of one of the best episodes of The Sopranos "Pine Barrens". In the episode Paulie and Christopher go to the Pine Barrens to bury a Russian only it turns out he's not quite dead so they end up chasing him and Christopher even ends up shooting him in the head which doesn't slow down the Russian for a second. Christopher and Paulie end up losing track of the Russian and getting lost in the Pine Barrens until they get rescued by Tony. Anyway throughout the rest of the series you never find out what happened to that Russian and fans apparently constantly harass The Sopranos creator David Chase and that episode's director Steve Buscemi about it. I believe their responses range from "he died/went back to Russia" to "it doesn't fucking matter".

@bartok: Wait...ONE OF the best episodes?

Pine Barrens is one of the great episodes of television period.

I’m with you. I LOVE everything about that episode.