The Shield - The Complete First Season

Rating:
Summary: Shield yourself
Review: This is crass, vulgar and poorly acted. Bring back the Comish!

Rating:
Summary: ONE OF THE BEST SHOWS!!!!!!!!!!
Review: I love this show!!!! Our friend recommended this show. I must admit, at first I had doubts about another cop show but this show is so amazing! Everytime, I wish the show would never end! The Sopranos really have a competition except this is way better because they deal with people's everyday problems and gets to the root of things. The SUPER COPS are crooked as a politician but you gotta love the way they handle things. No matter what they do, you just can't hate them. It's too much drama but it's the dramas they have that makes the show so awesome! This is a MUSTTTTTT SEEEEEE especially if you like action!

Rating:
Summary: THE SHIELD ROCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: I didn't start watching the show until the 1st season came out on DVD, and from the very start of the 1st episode I was hooked to it. This is in my opinion without doubt will rank as one of the best shows in the history of TV.
Michael Chiklis just blows me away every time he portrays Vic Mackey. Well don't take my word for it, go and see the show yourself and I will guarantee my whole paycheck that you won't be disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: Do we really need this show?
Review: The answer is obvious: NO. This is one of the most unnecessary shows ever made for TV. Why is it that there just aren't anymore good ideas for shows? I could come up with one!

Honestly, this main character Vic Mackey, who is as boring as he looks (gives new meaning to the word "lunkhead", he's supposed to look like a raging bull but rather he's just full of it), is a worthless rip-off of NYPD Blue's Andy Sipowicz. Only this guy takes twice as many corner cuts. He doesn't care who he has to hurt or kill to get the 'badguys', which at the end of any given episode translates into him being the real enemy of the public at large. And he puts so much negative effort into being tough, that you wonder WHY he works so hard.

Is there an explanation for any of this conflict? Not really, at least not a good one. It's just TV made-for-stupid-men drama. This is not drama, it's supposed to be intense. But what's intense about a guy who doesn't make sense? He's just another vessel for the audience, mainly non-thinking men again, to get some of their aggression out through. But this character is no hero, and for some reason, stupid people think this equals genius. Not exactly. There is no one to sympathize with, every character is a hollow and uninteresting dumbass, even poor CCH Pounder (and she's great!).

I'm going to have to stop here, this show doesn't deserve any more thought. This next new season though will see Glenn Close (The Natural, Dangerous Liasons, Fatal Attraction) join the cast. And to belate the obvious, she's never done a TV show before. But the awards she's been nominated for will long outlast this piece of crap show.

Rating:
Summary: Tv's #1 Drama
Review: If you love drama this is the show for you. explosive action every second,Every episode leaves you wanting more. I Watched Season 1&2 and got hooked. Now I Can't Wait For Season 3 On Febuary 22, 2005. Season 4 Starts In march Check Your Local Listings The Premire date Should be March 15, 2005.

Rating:
Summary: More Realistic Than Most TV Shows
Review: "The Shield" made history by earning the most Emmy nominations ever for a basic cable drama series, with Michael Chiklis winning the coveted Emmy Award for outstanding lead actor in a drama series. I am now halfway through season one on DVD. The show is outstanding for many reasons. It is a police show. That is not uncommon. What is unusual is that the characters in the show are complicated human beings who have both good qualities and bad qualities. As in real life each person is not all good or all bad, but they are complex human beings capable of bravery, generousity, and other good qualities on one hand, and greed, deceit and even murder on the other hand. It is an excellent drama with good writing of the scripts and good acting. Another plus, is, of course with the DVD one does not have to sit through many commercials.

Rating:
Summary: Best of all DVD series I have bought!
Review: It is great so see such great tv at my own pace. I also have volume two and I am on the list for Feb. release of volume three.
I wish I could give more than 5 stars!

Rating:
Summary: It Raises the Bar
Review: Cop dramas have been with us since the days of radio, first there was "Dragnet", "Police Story" in the 70's, "Hill Street Blues" in the 80's, and "NYPD Blue" in the 90's. With each decade the format has grown and changed, usually for the better. Along with "The Wire", "The Shield" has not only evolved the format for this new milliuium, it has turned it on its ear. Characters are flawed. The good guys aren't always good and the bad guys may not be that bad. In "The Shields" first season we're introduced to a broken down sub section of L.A. where a dilapidated precicent struggles with success, failure, and corruption.

Much like "Hill Street Blues", we follow the work of beat cops, detectives, a strike team, and the precinct's Captain. Michael Chiklis plays Vic, head of the departments counter strike team. It is usually Chiklis' tough domineering mug we see when the show is promoted and it's easy to think that this show is nothing more than a testosterone fueled hour of blazing bullets. In reality the show is far more melodramatic, there's a rookie cop who can't admit he's gay...even to his boyfriend, a arrogant but smart police detective who craves the respect he thinks he deserves, an ambitious precinct Captain who has his eye on a city council seat, and of course there's Vic's task force; who bully there way through the streets of L.A., planting evidence on suspects as quickly as they place on the cuffs.

"The Shield" leans towards shock value (maybe too much with victims getting their feet nailed to floors and pedophiles who trade kids like baseball cards). Even the last few episodes of the first season looks like Faluja Street Blues, but for the most part these moments of jaw dropping awe usually kick-start each show before the blaring Latino music pounds away and a broken police badge reassembles itself with the opening title. What makes this show really work is how it creates complicated characters that we end up caring for. Vic is a corrupt cop that should be off the street, but then you imagine the streets without him and you see that even a corrupt cop has his place. It's dark thinking like that which you don't expect from a police drama and that's when "The Shield" shines.


Rating:
Summary: Hooray for the bad guy!
Review: So many times characters are either all good or all bad. That's not how life is. Bad people are sometimes heart-rendingly good and good people screw it up so bad you wonder if they're really gonna make it into heaven. And that's the making of a good believeable character. Enter The Shield. A great assortment of characters who blur the line.
Crap! Am I cheering for that guy?
But he's the Commish..No he isn't!
But I know why he's doing it! Wait it doesn't matter if he's stealing this money out of love for his family! Does it?
When does the new season come out again?
If you liked NYPD Blue before it devolved into nothingness, you'll love The Shield - it's a million times better.

Rating:
Summary: The remedy for your standard TV cop fare....
Review: Tuesday nights at 9pm,I'd drop everything to watch this show. If I had to work,my VCR was set to record it,even sacrificing watching a new episode of "Law & Order:SVU". It's that good,people.

What with all the hype that you hear about the NBC ironhorse "Law & Order"franchise(and I love all the shows,don't get me wrong) and the slickness of the "CSI"shows,it's a shame that the best cop show on TV since the first season of "NYPD Blue"gets such a low profile. And maybe that's a good thing. "The Shield"is so raw yet has brilliant writing and character development that it transcends the writing that you usually see on the aforementioned TV shows. Michael"The Commish"Chiklis plays anti-hero cop Vic Mackey with such a razor sharp precision,you can't help but lock your eyes on his performance. Balancing between volatile powderkeg and good guy softie,Mackey is the best character to hit TV(cable or network)in years.The story arcs are compelling,the rest of the cast is amazing(shouldn't CCH Pounder get an Emmy nod?)and the dialogue is crisp and edgy.With the benefit of basic cable on the writers' side,they can use profanity with much more freedom that the network cop shows,thus giving it a much more realistic angle. Hands down,it's just one of the best shows on TV to date. The first season is brilliant and by the middle of the second,you'll be beyond hooked.I wouldn't be surprised if "The Shield"fills the void for when "NYPD Blue"ends this year.