Episode Rankings: The Shield

The Shield is such a fascinating series, a Shakespearean tragedy about cops. It may have its issues with pacing and tone, it might be a bit too grimdark at times, but The Shield does so much right. Its themes and subject matter feel ahead of its time, the acting and character work is top-notch across the board, and probably most infamously, this show has one of the greatest series finales ever made. Even if you don't end up loving The Shield as a whole, that finale is mandatory viewing. Here's my ranking of its episodes:

1. Family Meeting (S7.13) - Damn. Near. Flawless.
2. Postpartum (S5.11)
3. Possible Kill Screen (S7.12)
4. Kavanaugh (S5.08)
5. On Tilt (S3.13)
6. Dominoes Falling (S2.13)
7. Back In The Hole (S4.10)
8. Parricide (S7.08)
9. Scar Tissue (S2.08)
10. Chasing Ghosts (S6.06)
11. All In (S3.12)
12. Enemy Of Good (S5.02)
13. Ain't That A Shame (S4.13)
14. Baptism In Fire (S6.02)
15. Of Mice And Lem (S5.10)
16. Circles (S1.13)
17. What Power Is (S3.10)
18. Tar Baby (S4.05)
19. Homewrecker (S2.06)
20. Dragonchasers (S1.10)
21. A Man Inside (S5.07)
22. Cherrypoppers (S1.06)
23. Extraction (S5.01)
24. Back To One (S6.03)
25. Moving Day (S7.09)
26. Dead Soldiers (S2.02)
27. Streaks And Tips (S3.04)
28. Insurgents (S4.06)
29. Pilot (S1.01)
30. Smoked (S5.09)
31. Breakpoint (S2.12)
32. Barnstormers (S2.07)
33. Tapa Boca (S5.04)
34. Animal Control (S7.06)
35. Cupid & Psycho (S1.08)
36. Strays (S3.11)
37. Genocide (S7.04)
38. Bang (S4.03)
39. Rap Payback (S5.06)
40. Blowback (S1.05)
41. Partners (S2.03)
42. Blood And Water (S3.02)
43. Carnivores (S1.11)
44. Coefficient Of Drag (S7.01)
45. The Quick Fix (S2.01)
46. Spanish Practices (S6.10)
47. Party Line (S7.10)
48. String Theory (S4.09)
49. Slipknot (S3.09)
50. Pay In Pain (S1.07)
51. Bitches Brew (S7.07)
52. Trophy (S5.05)
53. Bottom Bitch (S3.03)
54. On The Jones (S6.01)
55. Carte Blanche (S2.04)
56. Hurt (S4.07)
57. Fire In The Hole (S3.13)
58. Game Face (S7.05)
59. Our Gang (S1.02)
60. Haunts (S6.05)
61. Jailbait (S5.03)
62. Coyotes (S2.10)
63. Two Days Of Blood (S1.12)
64. Doghouse (S4.04)
65. Playing Tight (S3.01)
66. Cracking Ice (S3.08)
67. Petty Cash (S7.11)
68. A Thousand Deaths (S4.11)
69. Cut Throat (S4.08)
70. Mum (S3.05)
71. Inferno (S2.11)
72. Exiled (S6.07)
73. Greenlit (S2.05)
74. Dawg Days (S1.04)
75. The New Guy (S6.04)
76. Snitch (S7.02)
77. The Cure (S4.01)
78. Recoil (S6.09)
79. Judas Priest (S4.12)
80. Safe (S3.07)
81. Riceburner (S3.12)
82. The Spread (S1.03)
83. Money Shot (S7.03)
84. Grave (S4.02)
85. Throwaway (S1.09)
86. Posse Up (S3.06)
87. The Math Of The Wrath (S6.08)
88. Co-Pilot (S2.09)

The Shield (Season 7)

With so many shows ending horribly, The Shield is the one show that's pretty unanimously considered to have a fantastic ending.

I'll be frank, Season 7 got off to a bit of a slow start, as it had to continue a lot of the plot points kicked off in the previous season, which left Aceveda and Shane under the thumbs of two different types of mafias, Mexican and Armenian respectively. Vic spends much of this half of the season trying to pit the Mexican and Armenian mafias against each other, while also trying to negotiate for an ICE job he can move to once he loses his police badge. There's a lot going on here, and with all the complex table-setting, it's hard for me not to feel like things ended up getting a bit too complicated. There was so much going on that I found it hard to keep track of everyone, and that doesn't even go into the fairly hit-or-miss subplots. On one hand, Vic plotting to get revenge on Shane for killing Lem is great, as is Dutch assuming a kid is a serial killer (another great exploration of his unique detective style). On the other hand, Mara is still as obnoxious as always and Cassidy gets a whole subplot about her downward spiral into crime that I found entirely uncompelling. While the season slowly got better as in went along, with Vic's attempt to kill Shane and the shooting in Episode 4 being noticeable highlights, I still couldn't really help but wonder what all the fuss was about with this season.

But then the episode Parricide happened, and things completely spiraled out of control. Shane is caught trying to kill Vic and has to go on the run from the police, Corrine learns about Vic's crimes from Mara and starts trying to help the Barn take him in, and Vic himself ends up leaving the Barn. Season 7's first half may have been a slow burn, but it led to one hell of an explosion, as this second half was ridiculously tense, especially when it comes to Shane being on the run. Walton Goggins does a fantastic job of showing just how panicked and desperate Shane is throughout this whole stretch, and the rest of the cast also gives series' best performances. There's a serious emphasis on "Point Of No Return" moments, with pretty much every single episode changing the status quo so irreparably that there really isn't no other choice for the show outside of ending. And what an ending. Season 7's last two episodes make for one of the best ends to a TV show ever, simultaneously being satisfying, rewarding and earned, as well as unpredictable, depressing, and Shakespearean in its tragic nature. My reviews of The Shield were pretty mixed all things considered, but it was all worth it for this.

Season 7 had some of the best episodes of the show, especially in its final few episodes:

Parricide: I already raved about this episode earlier in my review, it's the powder keg that completely blew up this show's premise and served as a massive turning point for the season. One of my favorite moments of the whole series was Shane being outed as trying to kill Vic and Ronnie to the Barn only for the show to cut to Mara telling Corrine about Vic's crimes, as if that wasn't a big enough twist! The writers of The Shield just do not care, do they?

Possible Kill Screen: The last ten minutes of this episode are phenomenal. Vic Mackey getting into ICE, confessing to all of his crimes for full immunity on all of them, saving Corrine, implicating Ronnie, and managing to evade Claudette at the very last second made for such an outstanding ending, made even better by Chiklis's best performance in the whole show. Mackey's crimes being revealed should be satisfying, but I never felt worse upon this episode's end.

Family Meeting: Series finales are so damn hard to pull off, there's so much you need to nail with one. You have to give every character a satisfying resolution, you have to sum up the themes of the show, you have to wrap up the overall plot in a climactic manner, and you have to do all that without being too neat or predictable. Family Meeting does this all so confidently and flawlessly, this really may be up there with Not Fade Away as my favorite series finale of all time. Vic not getting arrested or killed, but rather a "fate worse than death" was just perfect and creative to boot. He ruined the lives of everyone around him, from Ronnie being arrested, to Shane committing suicide, to his family going into hiding, it's all his fault, and he has to live with it. And that's not mentioning even the side characters like Dutch, Claudette, Billings, and Aceveda getting screentime, as well as a few more cases to end the series off with what feels like a true summation of all of the things that made it great.

Season 7 of The Shield wasn't the best one of the series, between the slow first few episodes and Cassidy's subplot, this season did have its flaws. However, it did manage to bring the show to one of the greatest and most earned series finales of all time, ending with a nail-bitingly tense second half.

4/5 Stars

My ranking of The Shield's seasons is:

1. Season 5: Kavanaugh is a fantastic character and he single-handedly makes this the best season of The Shield. It also really helps that the frantic pacing and tight plotting makes for an especially tense season.
2. Season 7: While a bit slow-starting, the moment Shane goes on the run, Season 7 bursts into action and builds towards what is probably the greatest series finale of all time.
3. Season 2: Season 2 goes full dark, full serialization, and crafts a fantastic main storyline that builds to a very satisfying and climactic finale.
4. Season 4: The attempt at a soft reboot was clumsy and caught me off-guard at first, but as the season went on and began to explore its themes, it ended up being the most thought-provoking season.
   
5. Season 3: Season 3 is easily the darkest season of The Shield, but I think it went a bit too far at times. It's definitely ambitious, and I admire that, but man was this season way too hard to watch.
6. Season 1: Season 1 is basically a standard procedural show that isn't quite able to fully commit to its intended tone, at least not yet.
7. Season 6: While it does do a lot to resolve Season 5 and set-up Season 7, this season doesn't do much to stand on its own outside of just being a transition season, and is less than the sum of its parts. 

My ranking of The Shield's finales is: 

1. Family Meeting: One of the great series finales of all time. It balances genuine bittersweet farewells that leave everyone on the cast in a good place, with punishing the main character in the best and most earned way possible.
2. Postpartum: Even if it doesn't resolve everything, Postpartum is a dramatic, jam-packed, and heartwrenching finale that ends with easily the most crushing and tragic death of the series.
3. On Tilt: A true tragedy of an episode that leaves pretty much the entire cast in an awful place, a fantastic end to what is essentially The Shield's first half.
4. Dominoes Falling: All of the build-up towards that Money Train heist really paid off in a grand, bombastic, and twisty finale filled to the brim with shocking moments.
5. Ain't That A Shame: While a bit of a let-down, the action is bombastic, Rawling gets a great sendoff, and the hook for Season 5 is fantastic.
6. Circles: There wasn't really much Circles could do given how procedural the first season was, but it's still a bombastic and action-packed way to end off the season.
7. Spanish Practices: While it has a decent amount of exciting hooks for Season 7, it suffers a lot from Season 6's disjointed structure and doesn't really feel like a finale.

7 > 5 > 3 > 2 > 4 > 1 > 6

Favorite Episode: Family Reunion

The Shield (Season 6)

Season 6 of The Shield doesn't feel like a season of television. It feels like a transition between seasons, with its first half tying loose ends from Season 5 and its second half setting up Season 7, and nothing to help it to stand on its own as a season.

Season 6 starts directly after Season 5 ended, with Lem dead and tensions between Vic and Kavanaugh more strained than ever. While the Strike Team not being under investigation means the stakes don't feel as high anymore, Kavanaugh is still as fantastic of an antagonist as ever, as he immediately jumps at trying to frame Vic for Lem's death. However, this doesn't last long, as Kavanaugh admits to his crimes and leaves the show after the second episode of the season. This isn't immediately a problem, as Shane keeping Lem's death a secret from the Strike Team and Vic trying to figure out who did it still manages to be as tense as Season 5 was. The conflict between these two is great and it leads to some of the best-acted scenes in the show not involving Kavanaugh. However, you soon start to realize that this season doesn't really have much of a driving force outside of the Vic-Shane conflict, and it leads to a season that just doesn't feel cohesive in the slightest. Kavanaugh leaves in Episode 2, the presumed antagonist Guardo Lima is killed the episode after, Vic learns Shane killed Lem in Episode 6, and the rest of the season is just spinning its wheels. The pacing here is just so bad, there's no focus at all.

These wheel-spinning issues start to become even more noticeable with some of the season's really awful subplots, the worst of which being Hiatt's new Strike Team. A few episodes into the season, Claudette hires a new guy to take over the Strike Team from Vic when he retires, a decent idea until you meet the guy. Kevin Hiatt is such a dull, generic character. He has no chemistry with the rest of the class, no defining traits, he's here until he gets mercifully written out in the finale. Julian joining the Strike Team also could have been interesting since he has been pretty violent at times, but he gets nothing to do this season, making me wonder why they even bothered adding him to the team. I'm also not a fan of Dutch and Billings being a cop duo. Obviously Dutch had to be split up from Claudette once she became captain, but those two had such a fantastic sense of chemistry that's hard to top. It feels like the writers wanted to sell to you that Dutch and Billings have this bicker-y odd couple chemistry, but it feels really forced in comparison. Not to mention, it sucks to see my favorite character (Dutch) pretty much relegated to comic relief for much of this season. The only decent subplot was Aceveda's new backers, but even that wasn't worth basing the season's cliffhanger on.

Still, this season did have its good episodes, they just so happened to be good because they were resolving plot threads from last year:

Baptism By Fire: I feel like this was originally meant to be Season 5's finale, as it's pretty much entirely about Kavanaugh's fall. Personally, I think Postpartum worked a lot better as a finale, but that doesn't make Baptism By Fire any less of a fantastic episode. The final few minutes especially were fantastic, between Kavanaugh admitting to his crimes and his final confrontation with Vic. I'm gonna miss the guy, but at least Whitaker went out with one last outstanding performance.

Chasing Ghosts: Similarly to Baptism By Fire, this was a decent episode made great by a fantastic final few minutes. That eight-minute long confrontation between Vic and Shane that ends off the episode is easily one of the best scenes in the series. It's tense, emotional, heartwrenching, and Michael Chiklis and Walton Goggins give their best performances in the show yet.

Overall, Season 6 has its good moments and episodes when focused around the Lem stuff, but everything else is either lacking in meaningful plot progression or just flat-out bad. It's easily the weakest season of The Shield to date.

2/5 Stars

The Shield (Season 5)

Vic Mackey is the protagonist of The Shield, of course he is! He's the main character of every single season... except for this one. Season 5 isn't about Vic, it's about Jon Kavanaugh, and what a fascinating figure he is.

After last season ended with Internal Affairs launching an investigation into the Strike Team, Season 5 starts with the debut of the IAD officer who kicks off that investigation, Jon Kavanaugh, played by Forest Whitaker. With only 11 episodes this time, Season 5 focuses pretty much entirely on Kavanaugh's investigation, and what results is an incredibly tense, taut, and gripping season as the Strike Team slowly has every single one of their past crimes come back to bite them. Right from the first episode, Kavanaugh kidnaps Lem and forces him to wear a wire, and things just get worse for the team from there, just as I like it. But the highlight of this storyline is easily Kavanaugh himself. He's such a fascinating character, starting as an awkward yet confident detective and slowly devolving into the human equivalent from Eggman from those fandubs. As Vic continues to evade him and piss him off, Kavanaugh takes the investigation a lot more personally and slowly spirals out of control, delving into the same sort of corruption as the guy he's pursuing. Forest Whitaker's performance illustrates that perfectly, giving the role just enough hamminess to make Kavanaugh terrifying. I liked Antwon but this is hands down the greatest antagonist in the series.

Okay, now that I'm done raving about Kavanaugh, Season 5 did still have a lot of other fantastic elements to it. While it does remain mostly focused on a single storyline, even the subplots all managed to be pretty solid, particularly Claudette keeping the fact that she has lupus a secret from Dutch, which gives her some of her best material to date. Danny's pregnancy was also decent, though it didn't get too much of a focus. And I enjoyed the subplot of the new recruit mostly because it was interesting to see someone with a more idealistic and slightly spoiled point of view be repeatedly confronted with the fact that the LAPD sucks. But the best non-Kavanaugh aspect of Season 5 is the dynamic between the Strike Team as they're being investigated. It gives me Season 3 vibes as the team getting pressured on their past crimes ends up causing a lot of tension between them all, leading to yet another finale where they lead to each others' downfall. It's so painful to watch Vic and the team repeatedly talk about how they're family and will never betray each other when that's exactly what ends up happening in the finale.

While this season didn't contain a single bad episode, it did have some noticeable highlights especially as the tension ratched up in the second half:

Enemy Of Good: While Kavanaugh's introduction in the premiere was great on its own, Enemy Of Good immediately ups the stakes by giving Lem, the most conscientious member of the Strike Team an incredibly difficult choice. Seeing him grapple with having to wear a wire was tough since my experience with The Sopranos made me believe his days were numbered right there and then, but I didn't expect him managing to discretely tell Vic about it by the end of his very episode. A great showcase of how well-paced this season was, nothing felt dragged out.

A Man Inside: Claudette and Dutch were always some of my favorite characters in The Shield. Even with Dutch's flaws, it felt like they were the few members of the cast that you could genuinely root for. A Man Inside is yet another interrogation episode, this time being about Claudette working through her illness to solve a case. It's a triumphant episode for the character... until she falls off the stairs in a painfully unfair cliffhanger.

Kavanaugh: This was easily one of the biggest episodes of the season and a huge turning point for Kavanaugh's character. Not only do we learn a lot more about his relationship with his wife, but said wife ends up causing him to absolutely snap, imprisoning Lem, screaming at the entire Barn, and giving up on his morals to take Antwon's deal.

Of Mice And Lem: "I've come to make an announcement! Vic Mackey is a-". Sorry, had to make the joke. Of Mice And Lem is another strong penultimate episode where things continue to spiral out of control in the fight between Kavanaugh and the Strike Team. And while Mackey's talks with Antwon, Lem's whole dilemma, and Julien taking it out on a homophobe is all great, the highlight is easily Kavanaugh's amazing and unhinged pissing speech. Seriously, this guy is Eggman, I swear.

Postpartum: It's kind of crazy that this wasn't originally supposed to be the Season 5 finale, the season was actually cut short a few episodes early. It definitely doesn't fell that way, however, even if the conflict against Kavanaugh wasn't fully resolved, stuff like Claudette becoming captain, Danny giving birth, Becca cutting ties with the Strike Team, and of course, Lem's heartbreaking death made for easily the best season finale (and episode) of the show to date.

Overall, as someone who hasn't been as enamored with The Shield as I would have hoped so far, Season 5 feels like it's on a completely other level of quality compared to every other season before it. Jon Cavanaugh is such a fascinating and interesting character played to perfection by Forest Whitaker, and he was the exact antagonist this show needed to really put the pressure on the Strike Team. Season 5 was tight, brilliantly paced, and intense from start to finish, an absolute triumph.

5/5 Stars

The Shield (Season 4)

Season 4 of The Shield started off feeling like a soft reboot of sorts, with a lighter tone, premiere that essentially reintroduces the cast, and of course, the stunt casting of Glenn Close. As a result, the first few episodes just felt off tonally, but once I realized what this fairly focused season wanted to do, I slowly started to really come around it.

Season 4 starts off on a pretty shaky note, with the Strike Team separated and Aceveda leaving for a new captain named Monica Rawling, played by Glenn Close, to take over. The Strike Team separated isn't that big of an issue, as much as I missed their chemistry for most of this season, it was still really satisfying to see them reunite. Rawling, on the other hand, definitely took some time to grow on me. Close is great here, and her dynamic with Vic is excellent, but her character just felt so much less interesting than Aceveda... at least until she really starts to implement her civil forfeiture policies. This is where Season 4 kicks into high gear, as much of the season grapples with the concept of civil forfeiture, dealing with its good and bad aspects and tackling all the minute aspects of that controversy. You can understand where Rawling is coming from, but the show never paints her policies as an unambiguously good idea, and we even have a strong subplot about Julien (the rare black cop) being against the policies himself. More than any prior season of The Shield, Season 4 really feels like it's trying to deglorify the police, and whenever it stays focused on the civil forfeiture debacle is when it's at its most engaging and thought-provoking.

Season 4 is a really focused season, fairly lacking in the mess of subplots and story beats that the last few seasons had. Pretty much the entire season is focused around Rawling, with even the main antagonist Antwon Mitchell, played by Anthony Anderson, being frustrated about her policies. Similarly to Rawling, it took a while for me to find Antwon an interesting antagonist, probably because I spent much of the first few episodes seeing him as Dre from Black-ish. However, after a brutal showing in the fifth episode, I was immediately sold on Antwon as a threat, and his charisma and seeming untouchability made for hands down my favorite antagonist in the show to date. Unfortunately, just as Season 4 had a rough start, it also had a bit of a rough ending. Halfway through the season shifts focus to a bunch of cop killings, which causes Vic and Rawling to think it's because of the forfeiture policies. It wasn't, it was actually caused by a bunch of Russians, completely unrelated to the policies. Even more Rawling gets fired in the finale, but that wasn't because of her policies either! Season 4 posed a bunch of genuinely fascinating and thought-provoking questions, and just refused to offer some sort of answer or conclusion. 

At its best, however, Season 4 had some pretty strong high points:

Tar Baby: While the season had been slowly improving in quality over the last few episodes, the ending of Tar Baby was where I was hooked. Antwon shooting Angie in cold blood as Shane and Army watch was a terrifying yet incredibly well-executed scene that showed me that The Shield still had its bite, and that Antwon is not at all close to Dre.

Back In The Hole: As much as I've griped about Season 4's ending, I will say it definitely didn't help that Back In The Hole was essentially the climax of the season. I'm a big fan of interrogation scenes, so the fact that the majority of this episode was an electric interrogation between Vic, Rawling, and Antwon made for one of the best yet. Even more, Rawling starting to suspect that the Strike Team is corrupt leads to some great confrontations within the team, as well as set-up for the finale's fantastic hook.

Ain't That A Shame: While the underwhelming events of Judas Priest definitely dragged this finale down a bit by proxy, the sheer amount of stuff that happened in Ain't That A Shame still made for a really solid ending to the season. The Strike Team chasing after the drug lord led to some of the best action in the show to date, the set-up for an Internal Affairs investigation was an exciting hook for Season 5, and Rawling still managed to go out with a bang as she arrested Antwon for real.

Overall, Season 4 is a bit of a frustrating season. It had a shaky start as it struggled to adjust to its new status quo, and an underwhelming resolution that dropped all of the season's interesting elements. But that middle section was so damn good, dealing with some fascinating ideas, boasting the show's best antagonist to date, and focusing around a single well-developed and morally flawed character.

Oh, and one more thing. Stop showing the goddamn rape scene in the Previously On segment!

3/5 Stars

The Shield (Season 3)

Coming the tense and exciting second season, Season 3 of The Shield goes for a different tone. It's darker, more consequence-driven, and unfortunately a lot more uneven.

Season 3 primarily deals with the fallout of the Money Train heist last season. Sure the Strike Team got the money, but between the rising tensions between them as well as their case falling apart, it's fascinating to watch them lose everything they worked so hard for. However, this plot is very much a slow burn, hardly being brought up for much of the season. And with 15 episodes this time around, Season 3 can't help but feel a bit long and drawn out. Thankfully, as per the usual, there are other subplots that this season introduced, some of which are better than others. My personal favorite is the Decoy Squad, a rival team to the Strike Team who I found to be incredibly likable. I also enjoyed seeing Dutch hunt the season's major antagonist, the Cuddler Rapist. Despite Claudette being sidelined a bit due to her promotion, Dutch is still in an incredibly fun and interesting character to watch, and the mystery was intriguing. I really liked how this season explored the unintented consequences of Dutch's psychological approach, at least until that moment where he kills a cat to try and understand a serial killer, a scene that I think went a bit too far. And it's not just that scene, Season 3 as a whole was really depressing and hard to watch. Sometimes it worked like with Tavon's injury and the Strike Team falling apart. Other times, it's a lot more complicated...

If you've seen this season, it's pretty obvious that I withheld talking about one specific storyline, a storyline that I think deserves a whole paragraph for itself: Aceveda's rape. I'm not sure how to talk about Aceveda's rape. If you've seen my reviews of The Sopranos' own third season, you'd know that I am not a very big fan of rape being used as drama. And the big rape in The Shield is awful, it's horrifying, it surpasses that FMA episode as one of the most sickening things I've seen on a TV show. While it's happening, it feels like it's there for hollow shock value, much like Dutch killing the cat. However, what I do admire is the way the show deals with the fallout of Aceveda's rape, because there aren't many TV shows that are actually willing to depict a male character getting raped, and Aceveda's whole experience feels different in a lot of ways. Everyone he reveals the rape too blames him for not doing anything about it, with no one seeming to show the poor guy any sympathy. It's gut-wrenching to watch but sadly very realistic, and it all makes you want to see Aceveda get his revenge. I do think all of this fallout is well-executed and putting my own biases aside, I can't say it wasn't well-done. One thing I definitely can criticize, however, is the show replaying the same goddamn rape scene at the start of every single episode in the Previously On segment. I hated starting every episode of Season 3 wanting to throw up.

While a bit of a slow burn, Season 3 does have some fantastic episodes near the end:

What Power Is: This episode had a bit of a slow start but wow, what a goddamn payoff. That whole interrogation scene between Aceveda and his rapist was a fantastic battle of power, starting off tense but slowly becoming triumphant as Aceveda systematically tears the criminal to shreds. And right after that, Dutch manages to arrest the Cuddler Rapist, making for two wins back-to-back. Given how painful this season of The Shield has been, I definitely didn't expect such a rewarding episode.

All In: It's pretty obvious that the highlight of this episode is easily the ending, where Lem's decision to burn the money leads to an incredibly dramatic confrontation between the Strike Team. But there's also the Strike Team trying to gaslight Tavon, Dutch getting more suspicious about the money train heist, and the surprisingly funny subplot about Aceveda having a rabid fan.

On Tilt: This was another really fantastic season finale that felt equal parts satisfying and absolutely depressing. It was obvious that the Strike Team was going to fall apart by the season's end, but when it actually happened, it was so messy and heartbreaking. It really solidifies Season 3 as a flat-out tragedy, and not just one for the Strike Team. Dutch and Claudette also end up getting the short end of the stick here, both having the Barn turned against them for trying to do what's right. While I think Dominoes Falling felt more finale-ish with its myriad of cliffhangers and resolutions, On Tilt was just a flat-out better episode of television.

Overall, I'm not really sure how I feel about The Shield's third season. It had so much stuff I liked but also a lot of stuff I didn't. The finale was great, the Cuddler Rapist was a solid antagonist, the Decoy Squad was a ton of fun, and Aceveda's rape was kinda groundbreaking. However, this season was also overlong, sluggish at times especially compared to its predecessor, and perhaps a bit too grimdark.

3/5 Stars

The Shield (Season 2)

While I enjoyed the first season of The Shield, I felt its episodic structure came at odds with its attempt at dramatic story-telling and led to the season feeling a bit scattershot. Thankfully, Season 2 is a huge improvement with a more focused and serialized structure and much more gripping drama.

Season 2 of The Shield is primarily about the Strike Team facing off against a child molester and drug dealer named Armadillo, who threatens to out the Strike Team's crimes after Vic literally grilled his face off. I can't overstate how much better it feels to have an overarching antagonist who wasn't just revealed in the last two episodes, Armadillo feels like more and more of a threat as the season continues and the tension slowly heightens as the Strike Team eventually gets in danger of dying let alone being outed. The rest of the storylines this season are pretty great, particularly the Barn being watched by an auditor (whose story ends up being pretty damn crippling), Mackey trying to win back his family, and the Strike Team devising a plan to discretely steal from the Armenian Mafia's Money Train. While each episode still has their own storylines, there's still a much stronger focus on the serialization which leads to a much more focused season... at least for its first half.

A little over halfway through Season 2, the crew faced a big issue: Danny Pino, the actor for Armadillo, had to leave the show. I don't want to criticize anyone involved for it, stuff like this happens when working in TV, but with the main antagonist dead and five episodes remaining, Season 2 did start to suffer a bit. The biggest issue here was a filler flashback episode (Co-Pilot) that was solely made so that the crew could think of how to proceed with the season, but ends up feeling pace-killing and at times a bit contradictory. The last four episodes never get that bad, but without Armadillo, there definitely isn't quite as much urgency. Thankfully, the finale decides to end the season with the Money Train heist, a fantastic decision that still managed to feel climactic and tense.

This season was also fairly consistent (outside of Co-Pilot), but the highlights were much more noticeable this time around:

Homewrecker: This episode absolutely punched me in the gut. I was able to tell the writing was on the wall for Connie the moment she got kidnapped, but that didn't make it any less painful. The whole final sequence was thrilling, tense, and terrifying because I knew The Shield would never let Connie get out alive, and I was right. This was easily the most heartbreaking episode yet.

Scar Tissue: While Armadillo was written out a bit early, I'm glad the crew of The Shield took the time to give him one hell of an exit. Ronnie nearly dying in the previous episode already cranked up the tension to 11, but then Claudette comes in and bumps it up to 12, leaving the Strike Team closer to being outed than ever before. Armadillo may have gotten killed in a pretty neat way, but Claudette knows pretty much everything about the Strike Team now and the season hasn't ended yet.

Dominoes Falling: While I enjoyed Circles, all of the buildup made for a way better finale this time around. There was the Money Train heist, the several layoffs, Julien being beat up, and Aceveda winning the primary, with all of these storylines interweaving and interacting making for a very satisfying and twisty finale. Vic's wife leaving was a big twist but here, I can't help but feel nothing is going to be the same again.

Overall, Season 2 of The Shield is a big improvement over the first with a much more compelling overarching storyline and a stronger emphasis on serialization and character drama over a procedural structure. While Armadillo getting written out early did hurt the final stretch of the season, we still ended up getting a pretty great finale.

4/5 Stars

The Shield (Season 1)

We've learned a lot over the past few years but one big thing is that cops kinda suck. Not just in a "gives too many traffic tickets" way, but in a "do we really want these kinds of people protecting our city" way. This makes The Shield a remarkably interesting series, as it was the first big show to portray the police in a really unflattering way. While as early 2000s as you can get, it really is ahead of its time in a lot of ways.

The Shield is about Vic Mackey, a cop who is a part of the LAPD's experimental Strike Team division. Strike Team is entirely composed of corrupt cops, willing to break the law to stop criminals. At its core, this is another anti-hero drama not unlike The Sopranos, where you follow an awful and unsympathetic main character and watch as he suffers the consequences of his decisions. However, I found the Strike Team particularly unlikable even by the standards set by these kinds of shows. Not unfun to watch, mind you. Michael Chiklis makes a great lead and Walton Goggins will always be a fantastic actor, but I just find these guys hatable in a way I don't for someone like Tony Soprano or Dexter. Maybe it's because, unlike most of these anti-heroes, the cops in Strike Team are supposed to be the good guys. They're supposed to defend Los Angeles and yet they act like the mafia a lot of the time. And it's not just the Strike Team, The Shield really doesn't pull its punches in making the LAPD a pretty scary and miserable place. It also doesn't help that there is a lot of crime in Los Angeles, too much for the LAPD to feasibly do by the book, which ends up causing both criminals and the public to criticize the police for uselessness. There's a lot of moral complexity in the world of The Shield and nothing is anything close to the black-and-white morality of most cop shows.

However, despite all of these differences, The Shield is also a bit of a procedural. Each episode deals with its own storyline and there are more competent cops like Dutch, Claudette, and Danny who have their own investigations that they try to solve by the book. While the concept of a "dark cop procedural" does sound pretty novel, it leads to the season feeling a bit scattershot both tonally and in terms of its story-telling. While much of the Strike Team stuff feels like the part of a standard drama, the material regarding the other detectives can range from just as dark and dramatic to reasonably light-hearted and filled with pun-heavy black comedy. It also doesn't help that the season doesn't really have a concrete overarching story (outside of maybe Captain Aceveda looking into Strike Team), instead balancing its episodic storylines with its many subplots. The subplots are actually all pretty great, with the Strike Team dealing with the fallout of killing a fellow cop, Dutch's investigation of a serial killer, and Julian dealing with his homosexuality. On the other hand, the episodic storylines range in quality drastically, and the fact that many of them seem to wrap up pretty neatly doesn't mesh with the show's theme of consequences all that well.

While this season was fairly consistent in quality so far, there were definitely some episodes that were better than others:

Cherrypoppers: Cherrypoppers did a really good job of showing off what makes The Shield different from your standard procedurals, and probably had Mackey at his most oddly sympathetic. There's something kind of funny about Dutch asking the Strike Team to help stop a criminal, only for them to stop a completely different (though no less horrifying) criminal. It also led to a pretty downbeat ending where the killer pretty much gets away, an effective subversion of most neat and tidy procedurals (not to mention some episodes of this very show).

Dragonchasers: While I didn't love every storyline in this episode, Dutch's interrogation of the serial killer he spent a third of the season chasing easily makes for the highlight of the season. Every single interrogation scene in this episode was electric, and seeing Dutch finally score a victory was very satisfying.

Circles: This finale was definitely the best episode of the show so far. The cop killers were a truly scary threat that put every character in danger, the final confrontation with Gilroy was great, and Aceveda and Mackey end up having to work together for once. The ending where Mackey's family left him was a really surprising twist given how early in the show it happens, and seems to set up an exciting new status quo for Season 2.

Overall, this was a solid first season of The Shield, with an interesting and well-acted cast and an unflattering yet morally intriguing depiction of the police. However, the half-procedural-nature of the show leads to some weak episodic storylines and a fairly inconsistent tone.

3/5 Stars