The Shield and The Wire

[alexsarll]

Monday's really been 'bent cop night' on TV these past few weeks, with the increasingly enigmatic Ashes to Ashes and The Shield both entering their endgames. And I realise I've written less about The Shield than usual. In part this is because it's the last series, so it's all too convoluted to explain now to anyone not already initiated. But beyond that, a large part of my Shield evangelism was about trying to encourage people who were hungry for more after The Wire to check out the second best cop show of the 21st century. And I wasn't the only person with that idea, except because most people (yes, even the ones who like good TV) are total dicks. So they had to go that little bit further and say that The Shield was *better* than The Wire, because you could come up with the cure for cancer and there'd still be some snotty-nosed little twunt who felt that their own inherent cool meant they had to start the backlash. I'm getting annoyed just looking for the sort of stuff I mean, so here's a representative example, although I've definitely seen worse. Generally they come from the perspective of a teenage boy reading nineties comics, who assume that Nastier necessarily equals More Real necessarily equals Better. The cops in The Wire are, for the most part, trying to do the right thing, whereas the cops in The Shield are utter gits, so the latter must be more Real and True, right? Well, if you're a kneejerk hippy dipshit, then yes, sure.
But beyond that, just like the '9/11 Truth' numpties are clinging to an inverted version of the neocon myths they despise, desperately hanging on to the notion that The USA Is In Control, even if they call the USA the villain of the piece, rather than admitting the far scarier truth that nobody's driving, so people who think The Shield is the real story don't realise how much they're buying in to their enemy's worldview. I've said before that The Shield's worldview is straight out of de Sade - the triumphs of vice and the misfortunes of virtue. The good cops mean well, but mess up; the bad cops leave a trail of blood behind them, but they put villains away. That's a bad cop's excuse, right there. Take the specific example of Antwon Mitchell from Season 4, a gangster turned peacemaker whom the dodgy cops correctly suspect of actually using his community work as a front to build a supergang. That's taken straight from the Rampart scandal, whose Crash Team directly inspired the show's Strike Team. Except the real Antwon was a guy called Alex Sanchez, who really was trying to bring peace to the streets, and got harassed, framed and eventually deported by cops who (depending how conspiracy-minded you want to get) either couldn't believe any ex-gangbanger would change, or wanted to keep the kids in poor neighbourhoods divided (subscribing to the cock-up theory of history, I would myself favour the former explanation).
More generally, the show makes the bent cops of the Strike Team so charismatic that you're always praying for them to get away with their outrages. Well, most of them - redneck Shane and his even more stupid wife are and always have been in dire need of a lead shower. Oh, and if you're one of the people who think The Wire lost its plausibility with the final season's plotline - just wait until you see the ludicrous twists and turns of The Shield's final season. It's a caper movie with more gunfire.
Which is not to say it's a bad season, or a bad show. I'm backlashing against the backlash a little here, trying to re-establish the correct order of things. But yes, if you like The Wire you should watch The Shield. It's a damn good show. Just not a truer, or better, show than The Wire.

Comments

[shewho.livejournal.com]

i have just got stuck into season 3. i'd forgotten how much i like it.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I would apologise for the Season 4 spoiler up there, except that part of my point is that in The Shield, it comes as no surprise whatsoever.

I do love it, which is why I get so annoyed with people making me argue against it by overpraising a show which is really easy to justly praise.

[shewho.livejournal.com]

fret not, i'll be sure to forget by the time i get there!

and yeah, it's pretty awesome, but it won't replace the wire in my heart. i think i actually started watching the shield first (the first time).

anyway, anyway. people are idiots. ignore 'em!

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I was on The Shield first too, simply because it aired on a channel I had!

Though the one difficult bit was watching both at the same time, keeping LA and Baltimore slang separate in my head while watching two lots of urban brutality...

[kenix.livejournal.com]

Goddamn, totally forgot to watch Ashes to Ashes. To iPlayer I go!

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Thank heavens for modern technology, eh? Though I do find that it's a lot slower since it went HD, and I'm not entirely sure the shininess compensates. I mean, my eyes and my screen are only so good...

[my-name-is-anna.livejournal.com]

What do you think of Ashes to Ashes so far?
I've only watched the first episode, and there was that silly bit where she gets abducted by a mad doctor, and is then right as rain five mins after.
I liked the bit about 'Oo there's someone in 1982 who knows about Diana in 1997!!!'

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

The physics of 1982 aren't real physics, they're 1980s cop show physics - we know that right from the speedboat shootout in the first episode of the first series. Similarly now with the biology. I have no idea where they're going with it all, but I like that they are clearly going somewhere - that doctor was back again last night, and there was some very interesting misdirection about a Tyler...

[my-name-is-anna.livejournal.com]

Oh and the stripping woman who comes from Hyde, and then they are all really nice to her. Hyde being that magic land where people come from when they are in the middle of a coma.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I still suspect there was something more to her and I can't quite put my finger on it, precisely because of Hyde.

[publicansdecoy.livejournal.com]

What about the very first scene of this series? Who could the patient possibly be?

-x-

[oneofthose.livejournal.com]

I'd say the patient is the man who knows she doesn't belong in the 80s.
But whenever you get to a bit where you go, "hang on, she wouldn't have recovered that quick," you do have to keep reminding yourself it didn't really happen therefore she can recover as quickly as her imagination needs her to.
Of course, that means they can get away with all manner of continuity errors.

I am pleased they've solved most of the problems of the first series. The one-liners are back. The action is back. And they've injected some mystery into the coma story. I love how they're letting her forget she's in a coma (though I still think they made a mistake making a new 'Sam' in the first place. They should've let us think there was and then revealed it was Gene who didn't belong).

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I can still see ways they could pull that one - it crossed my mind with the 'giving up your power to a Tyler' line, although of course we now know that was misdirection. Or was it a precursor? With a dreamworld, anything is possible - except is it necessarily the case that this is wholly a dreamworld?

I love being this puzzled by a show I trust to eventually provide an answer.