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The Shield
By Nick Radovanovic
Let me start by saying that I generally I am not a big fan of TV. Spending a good chunk of my limited time on earth parked in front of a cathode-ray tube watching other people pretending to have fun is not my idea of fun. Besides, TV can suck the time right out of you; it's almost as bad as the Internet. But there is one show I tune into religiously every week. Religiously may be an understatement. This show is extremely precious to me. One night a week, I unplug the phone. I turn off the cellphone. I make sure all my dependents are either out of the house or drugged. The show is The Shield, which in Asia is currently in its 7th season via a cable network called AXN. In the US, apparently, it showed on FX. The DVD for Season 7 is apparently due out on June 6, 2009. The show has won numerous awards and no doubt many people will be familiar with it. But for some strange reason, it gets far less mention than awful sitcoms replete with canned laughter, or groan-inducing, patently contrived shows such as House or CSI (which are both quite amusing only because of the inept and completely predictable way they are put together), and all the other dumbed-down low-brow junk that airs at prime time. Briefly, The Shield revolves about a small number of characters at a police station in the fictional precinct of Farmington in Los Angeles. Farmington reminds me a lot of Torrance or Compton. Numerous ethnic groups - Blacks, Salvadoreans, Mexicans, Koreans, Armenians - and gangs and, needless to say, crime provide plenty of fodder for the Farmington station (aka "the Barn") to deal with every week. The plot is always completely unpredictable, but it's not just the plot that makes this show so good. The acting is - for the most part - superb. Just about all of the actors do Oscar-calibre work in every episode. (If you ask me, Forest Whitaker, who played a leading role in Season 5, did far better work in The Shield than in The Last King of Scotland for which he did win an Academy Award.) Most of all, the way the show has been put together - by an an obsessive-compulsive perfectionist madman, probably producer Shawn Ryan, or possibly one of his minions such as Craig Yahata - makes it extremely believable. If the success of a work of fiction can be measured by how well it holds up the illusion of reality, The Shield succeeds better than any other mainstream show on TV. The success is on two levels, technical and political. With technical success, I mean the gritty camera work, the acting, the immaculate presentation of the extras, the dialogue, etc. With political, I mean the lack of correctness - the plot hasn't been designed to satisfy the Church-going home-schooling evangelist mother of five in the Midwest. It feels real because there are no good guys and no bad guys - just people with flaws and agendas, as is the case in real life. One other crucial aspect is that no effort has been made to simplify the convoluted twists and turns. The dialogue is fast and oftentimes you'll at first have difficulty fully understanding what the characters are talking about. This adds authenticity: if you were to hear two LA detectives discussing gang issues between themselves, you wouldn't understand much either. As is the case with an abstract painting or a literary novel, the value of The Shield is not immediately obvious - it takes study to be appreciated. The Shield is not without flaws, though. Season 6 was a complete disaster because the illusion of reality was completely shattered by an egregious error in casting. To play the daughter of an Armenian mob boss, they brought in a famous German actress called Franka Potente. Now, I'm not saying that a German actress can't play an Armenian mob boss. I'm sure there are skilled actors in Germany. But Ms Potente isn't one of them. The woman has no acting skills whatsoever. She only rose to fame because of one movie called Lola Rennt (Lola Runs) in which she does a lot of - surprise - running, but no acting. In The Shield, Potente mumbles her lines poker faced, in a barely audible monotone, with a pronounced German accent. She makes no effort whatsoever to mimic an Armenian accent, or to convey any sense of emotion. A plastic mannequin could have replaced her in any of her scenes - and maybe it did. I can't tell. Every time Detective Shane Vendrell would be in a scene with Ms Potente, I'd be screaming at my TV, "You goddam redneck idiot! That ain't no Armenian mobster, that's a German actress! Can't you tell? What's wrong with you, man?" That's how good Walton Goggins (who plays Shane) is at his job - utterly convincing. Apart from the Potente disaster, there are a few other minor details that I didn't notice at first but which became obvious while watching reruns on DVD. For instance, the background hubbub at the Barn would ALWAYS feature a phone ringing. When someone - anyone, whether gang member, crime victim, or cop - would require medical attention, they would ALWAYS be taken to the same hospital (Mission Cross, I think) and Detective Macky's wife (a nurse) would ALWAYS happen to be on duty. When Detective Macky would meet with a Mexican construction magnate called Cruz, it would ALWAYS be on a construction site - even in the evenings. One suspects they shot all Cruz-Macky meetings in one go, in rapid succession, on the same set. And confessions extracted from culprits in the interrogation room ALWAYS come in exactly the same way - the suspect suddenly starts talking about why he/she did it, without breaking down sobbing and crying hysterically (which is, I'm told, how most confessions come in real life). Still, despite these minor (except for the Potente disaster, which was major) blemishes, The Shield is without a doubt one of the best mainstream works of television entertainment ever produced, thanks to the sheer quality of the craftsmanship both in front of and behind the camera.
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Contributor's Note
If anyone knows where I can find Lem's grave site, let me know. I'd like to drop by and leave some flowers next time I'm in LA.
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Thanks for the recommendations. I very, very rarely watch TV, so when I do I want it to be good!!
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This intel was contributed by nick
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May, 2012
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