After The Sopranos introduced some moral complexity to the small screen and singlehandedly kicked off the Golden Age of Television, we saw a wave of shows about dark, brooding antiheroes in the mold of Tony Soprano. Walter White started cooking meth to provide for his family, Omar Little robbed drug dealers to line his own pockets, and Don Draper spent more time in the city with his mistresses than he did at home with his wife and kids.
With The Shield, creator Shawn Ryan came up with a very different kind of antihero. Whereas Tony and Walt and Omar are all criminals trying to stay one step ahead of the cops, Vic Mackey is a cop. Following the Rodney King beating and the Rampart scandal, Ryan realized that old-school American cop shows — shows like Dragnet and Columbo, about good, honest lawmen working tirelessly to put bad guys behind bars — just didn’t hold any water anymore. So, he created a police procedural for the age of police brutality and corruption, in which the cops ruthlessly beat suspects, steal from crime scenes, tamper with evidence, and even murder their fellow boys in blue.
The Shield doesn’t get the recognition it deserves as a TV masterpiece. It basically combines the two greatest TV shows ever made — The Wire and Breaking Bad — by mixing the messy criminal double life of the latter into the gritty realism of the former.
The Shield’s Corrupt Cops Upended The Police Procedural
The first episode of The Shield sets up a pretty familiar premise for a cop show. We’re following Terry Crowley, an undercover officer from Internal Affairs, who’s been sent to infiltrate Vic Mackey’s Strike Team and investigate any possible corruption. It seems as though this will be our protagonist — the audience surrogate — and the series will chronicle Terry’s quest to bring down Vic and his crooked cohorts.
But by the end of that first episode, Vic figures out that Terry is from Internal Affairs, murders him in cold blood, and pins the killing on a local crook. From that moment on, you’re hooked. You know this won’t be your average cop show. As it turns out, Terry isn’t our protagonist after all; his killer is. As the series goes on, we watch Vic and his friends abuse their power, exploit their positions, and enrich themselves off the back of crime and corruption.
The most compelling thing about The Shield is that these guys are supposed to protect us. Tony is in the mafia and Walt is a drug lord — they’re supposed to be the bad guys — but we’re supposed to be able to trust people like Vic to keep us safe, and in a post-George Floyd era, when that is becoming less and less true, The Shield is only becoming more and more relevant.
Vic Mackey Is One Of TV’s Greatest Antiheroes
James Gandolfini and Bryan Cranston and Michael K. Williams and Jon Hamm have all gotten their flowers for their rich, layered, three-dimensional portrayals of TV antiheroes, but Michael Chiklis’ turn as Vic Mackey remains criminally underrated. Vic has all the same complexity of those guys, contrasting his penchant for evil and violence with his genuine love for his family and the people who depend on him.
Chiklis was already a beloved TV icon from his role in The Commish, but The Shield showed off so much more range and depth. His Shield character was like a version of his Commish character who wasn’t afraid to break a few skulls in pursuit of his own skewed brand of justice. Vic deserves to be recognized alongside TV’s greatest antiheroes, and The Shield deserves to be recognized as one of the best (and most influential) shows of the Golden Age.
The Shield
- Release Date
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2002 – 2008
- Directors
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Guy Ferland, Scott Brazil, Clark Johnson, Dean White, Stephen Kay, Gwyneth Horder-Payton, D. J. Caruso, Nick Gomez, Paris Barclay, Peter Horton, Félix Enríquez Alcalá, Philip G. Atwell, Terrence O’Hara, Billy Gierhart, Brad Anderson, Craig Brewer, David Mamet, Davis Guggenheim, Frank Darabont, Gary Fleder, John Badham, Leslie Libman, Michael Fields, Scott Winant
- Writers
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Shawn Ryan, Glen Mazzara, Charles H. Eglee, Kim Clements, Kevin Arkadie, Gary Lennon, John Hlavin, Lisa Randolph, Reed Steiner, Angela Russo-Otstot, Diego Gutierrez, Ted Griffin, Elizabeth Craft, Emily Lewis, Jameal Turner, Renee Palyo