Roughly 10 years ago, one of the greatest cop dramas ever told on the small screen was wrapping up its run of 7 seasons, 88 episodes, and multiple award wins. FX’sThe Shieldbrought the story of Det. Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) to a close, not with the violence, gunfire, and bloodshed the gritty series had become known for, but with a more realistic finale akin to that of its premium network counterpart,The Sopranos, which put a hard stop to Tony Soprano’s story just a year earlier. Against all odds,The Shieldhad taken the easygoing and creatively comedic lead actor ofThe Commish, turned him into a brutally violent and manipulative anti-hero, and let him get away with (almost) all of his sins squeaky clean while everyone in his circle of influence suffered. The finale may have been the end of Vic Mackey’s story and the end ofThe Shield, but it was just the beginning of Peak TV.
Even all these years later,The Shieldis still on par with those dark, mature, and boundary-pushing premium channel series it was created to compete with. FX, a network that had the better part of a decade’s worth of growing pains in the mid to late-90s, aspired to the standards of HBO, Cinemax, Showtime and the like in the early 2000s, elevating its cable channel programming to that of premium-tier packages without the cost to consumers. What they got was a carousel of award-winning shows led by showrunners who became household names and talented cast members who got their big breaks on the small screen. And it all started withThe Shield.
Before we get too deep into Mackey’s demise in 2008, it’s important to know where he started. Originally marketed asRampart, due to taking its inspiration from the Rampart Division of the Los Angeles Police Department’s corruption scandal in the late 1990s,Shawn Ryan’s take on the anti-gang task force made its debut on FX asThe Shieldin early March of 2002. Initially appearing similar to a well-produced episode ofCopsthanks to its cinéma vérité, shaky-cam style of filmmaking, the pilot introduced audiences to a rough-and-tumble group of enforcers whose job it was to rid the fictional streets of Los Angeles' Farmington district of drugs, crime, and gang violence while also going home to be fathers, husbands, and good friends to each other. That’s what you get on the surface: some rough talk among friends and colleagues, even rougher action when it comes to street justice, and some good-natured ribbing of the new guy, Terry Crowley (Reed Diamond). When audiences meet Crowley in the pilot, he’s just been appointed to the squad and acts as the everyman for viewers to relate to.
(Spoiler alertfor a 16-year-old pilot.) But the real punch, the thing that separatesThe Shieldfrom all the other cop dramas before it, happens next: Vic, who leads his own little criminal gang composed of fellow cops Shane Vendrell (Walton Goggins), Curtis Lemansky (Kenny Johnson), and Ronnie Gardocki (David Rees Snell) in order to get their tough jobs done while taking a cut for themselves, opts to fatally shoot the outsider Crowley and frame a suspect for the deed. So the character that viewers could most relate to, an outsider thrown into this hectic world, isn’t going to grow along with the audience; he’s dead on arrival.Thisis howThe Shieldstarts out; it grabs you by the collar and shakes you out of your broadcast-TV doldrums to let you know you’re not inLaw & Orderland anymore.
That bold storytelling approach led to the series becoming a breakout hit. The early success ofThe Shieldsnowballed into other dramas likeRyan MurphyandBrad Falchuk’s “I can’t believe they did that on TV” seriesNip/Tuckand, later,American Horror Story, andDenis Leary’s PTSD dramaRescue Me. And that was just for FX, a network that would go on to launch successful dark comedy seriesIt’s Always Sunny in PhiladelphiaandArcherwhile also continuing its platform for gritty dramas likeKurt Sutter’sSons of Anarchy(which premiered asThe Shieldwas coming to a close and features a fantastic guest role for Goggins) andGraham Yost’sJustified(also starring Goggins). Other networks took notice, notably AMC, which launchedBreaking Badthe year ofThe Shield’s final season, andThe Walking Deadnot long after that. (Sutter andTWD’sGlen Mazzarafound early success in their careers withThe Shield, leveraging those experiences into heading up darker dramas down the road.)
But it wasn’t justThe Shield’s ballsy pilot that launched it into TV history and inspired a rise in prestige television; its excellent series finale, regarded as one of the best ever made, also provided a fantastic bookend to a game-changer of a show. (Anotherspoiler alertfor a 10-year-old finale.) Over the 88.5 episodes, including “Wins and Losses” a mini-sode directed by Sutter, Vic’s team paid for his transgressions in various ways: Crowley meets his maker early on, Lemansky is killed by Shane when it appears as if Lem has turned on their team, and the resulting guilt (along with the guilt from their other nefarious deeds) causes Shane to take the lives of his family and himself. Vic, on the other hand, cuts a deal with higher-ups, one that lands Ronnie in handcuffs while Vic himself walks away scot free. Mackey even manages to parlay his deal into a job with ICE. But that’s where his own personal Hell comes into play.
Mackey, whose own family has been relocated by witness protection to keep them safe (from him, as well), is resigned to a desk job, forced to wear a suit and tie, and forbidden from carrying his firearm for at least three years, or else he loses any privileges of his deal. For a man like Mackey, a man of action and intensity, this is like a sentence in purgatory for him. It’s telling that one of the last shots of the series is Vic reacting to the sounds of police sirens outside and contemplating whether or not to join in the chase once more. It’s also a fitting and infuriating end to not only one of television drama’s greatest anti-heroes, but to one of TV’s greatest stories ever told. The rest is TV history.
The Shield: The Complete Series arrives on Blu-rayfor the first time December 11th.
