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The Shield - Final Season Official Thread

Discussion in 'Lounge' started by Firesole, Sep 2, 2008.

  1. Firesole

    Firesole Season Ticket Holder

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    Finally its back! Tonight the best show on television The Shield returns for its final season! I cant wait!

    How will it end? Will Vic go down? Will Shane pay for his actions? Will Ronnie get his face grilled?

    Will Aceveda get some manloving?
     
    FiN.in.RI, Skeet84 and maynard like this.
  2. Skeet84

    Skeet84 New Member

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    I can't wait! This show is great and I can't believe it going to end.
     
  3. Firesole

    Firesole Season Ticket Holder

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    I wonder who will be the main enemy this season. It will be hard to top the Armenian mob, the Grillface child rapist, oq the wacked out IA officer
     
  4. Skeet84

    Skeet84 New Member

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    Very True. I wonder how Vic is getting out of retiring!
     
  5. maynard

    maynard Who, whom?

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    i am so excited! the shield tonight. the fins on sunday. we have been waiting and extra six months for this. so far the show has never disappointed
     
  6. slickj101

    slickj101 Is Water

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    Been waitin for this for a long time. I hope Carl Weathers, thats prob Apollo Creed to you, makes another appearance.
     
  7. Firesole

    Firesole Season Ticket Holder

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    I've seen every episode of this show? When did he make an appearance?



    Oh wait, nevermind. It came to me as I was typing. He is a P.I now and rolled around with Vic, and asked for Vic's help on a case.
     
  8. Blade

    Blade New Member

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    Finally. I cant wait. Vic is the man.
     
  9. FiN.in.RI

    FiN.in.RI Paul pierced through..

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    can't wait myself... was the ending affected anyway by the Writers strike?
     
  10. Higgi

    Higgi Numb

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    best show on regular cable no doubt! like someone said earlier, i cannot believe it is coming to an end. even if i wanted to believe that vic would go down, i have a feeling he wont.
     
  11. slickj101

    slickj101 Is Water

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    O I def think he will in some way.
     
  12. MelbournePhin

    MelbournePhin New Member

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    hell yeah! im stoked. football and the shield. kind of weird, as it usually airs in the spring
     
  13. Ray Finkle

    Ray Finkle Member

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    Well here's my prediction on how the show ends, I think Terry Crowley's brother kills Vic. Remember when Kavaungh brought him into the house Vic killed Terry, his brother told him he'd get revenge. This show does a great job at bringing things back from previous seasons and foreshadow a lot of things.

    I think we can also see Shane thrown in jail at the end too for Lem's death or something else he ended up doing/done in the past.

    Anyway I love the show, one of the best written shows on TV. I'm sad to see it end but I'd rather it end on a high note than drag and end up sucking.
     
  14. MelbournePhin

    MelbournePhin New Member

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    im gonna hate to see this end. i wonder how that new series sons of anarchy or whatever its called is gonna be
     
  15. Blade

    Blade New Member

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    Great way to start the season.

    The sons of anarchy looks good. Ill have to check that out tomorrow.
     
  16. slickj101

    slickj101 Is Water

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    lol @ Help me stuff my box Dutch.
     
  17. Higgi

    Higgi Numb

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    awkward.
     
  18. maynard

    maynard Who, whom?

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    i thought the show was pretty good. i think next weeks episode looks a lot better. on a side note, the broadcast quality of fx for me at least was terrible. it really detracted from the show
     
  19. Blade

    Blade New Member

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    Yea, i did noticed that. I switched to HD a few months back and seeing the quality of the shield, I was like, wow thats horrible.
     
  20. MelbournePhin

    MelbournePhin New Member

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    kind of boring, but i know it will get better
     
  21. Boomer

    Boomer Premium Member Luxury Box

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    It's a very good programme. But to call it "the best show on television" means that you remove The Wire, the best show in the history of television to something other than it's rightful position.
     
  22. Firesole

    Firesole Season Ticket Holder

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    It is the best written show on television right now. In case you missed it The Wire is no more. Furthermore I'd argue that if the Shield were on HBO or Showtime it would blow away The Wire and The Sopranos. the stuff they get away with on F/X amazes me. Take last nights show for example.

    I'd also argue that Dexter is just as good as the Wire.
     
  23. Skeet84

    Skeet84 New Member

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    The Shield on HBO would be really sick. They only get away with so much on FX.
     
  24. Boomer

    Boomer Premium Member Luxury Box

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    I know The Wire is no more. But it still makes The Shield - an excellent programme in it's own right, look mediocre.

    Don't get me wrong, I like The Shield. But from the word go, The Shield has been an inferior clone of one particular show - Homicide. It's no co-incidence that the two shows share aesthetic similarities; Clark Johnson, for years brilliant as Meldrick Lewis on Homicide (where he cut his directorial teeth), directed the pilot for The Shield, and in the commentary Shawn Ryan basically admits they shot it Homicide style.

    But the resemblance isn't just superficial. Dutch is blatantly a poorer version of Tim Bayliss. Ambitious but nerdy cops who have a high opinion of their own policing abilities. But where Dutch's frailties are often little more than sketches (crying after the interrogation of the serial killer was hilarious - a two minute 'analysis' from a fortune cookie murderer and we're supposed to be in Dutch's head? Thanks Sigmund), the years of horror that Bayliss experienced over the Adena Watson case was a Botticelli fresco. The Shield just couldn't resist actually making Dutch some sort of profiling genius. Where as Bayliss's very first case is that rare thing in detective fiction - unsolved.

    And The Shield's ongoing search for a genuine villain (Armadillo? Please. Dezerian was nothing more than a cartoon character. And Sticky Fingers was, well, a Tupac video come to life) owes everything to one man - Luther Mahoney. THE archetypal modern villain. He was the ink dropped in the glass of milk, starring in person in just six episodes, but defining the fortunes of so many major characters. Vic Mackey can be shooting suspects until the end of time, nothing will compare to the slack-jawed awe of seeing Kellerman light up Mahoney (except maybe that moment in season three of The Wire when you know who did you know what to you know who, but just keep that between me and you for now).

    And the real kicker in all of this? Homicide was based on David Simon's book, and he ran the fifth season, including the Luther Mahoney arc. See, TEN years ago Simon was doing what The Shield wants to be when it grows up. The Wire is what he did next. Ten years from now, Shawn Ryan will be making a ******ed version of The Wire, and I'm sure someone somewhere will be giving him all the blog-fellatio they can over it.

    Of course, the major problem with The Shield has always been that it just doesn't make sense and it went there from the pilot; Vic Mackey executes another cop. Then they spend the next five years bottling it and trying to mumble excuses about why he did it and how he became a cop who does actually give a toss about dealing with the bad guys sometimes (he loves kids, you know? You better not be a paedo when Mackey's about...)

    They betrayed their own pilot. And why? Because the pilot was grossly underwritten. For nothing more than shock value (failed, by the way), they have Mackey kill a cop. How do they top that? Mackey's a monster. Oops. We have a problem. How can we write a show about the essential conflict within him now?

    It's popcorn television.

    Leaving aside the laughable notion that The Shield is social realism of any kind, this is a strange point. For me it's the detail that entertains in The Wire. It borrows what it needs to from Dickens. At the core of the show are a series of characters who beyond being impeccably drawn, are also given personalities beyond their narrative exegencies. A cursory list of individual scenes to illustrate - Omar Little whistling The Farmer In the Dell? Brother Mouzone shooting Cheese? McNulty repeat crashing his car drunk? Bunk setting alight his ***** smelling clothes? Ziggy's duck? These are all oddities of character that would have been very much at home in a Dickens novel. So too would the Bildungsroman of Bodie or Michael Lee. Unlike shows such as The Shield, merely portraying the ghetto isn't enough. The Wire shows us why the ghetto is, and how school kids turn into corner slingers.

    A show like that doesn't need the soap opera elements of 'mystery and romance' to drive its characters, and the narrative doesn't need to stoop to sentamentality or happenstance. That sort of cheap trick would only, well, cheapen it. I can't make you like it. There are a million Bruckheimer procedurals and bombastic Shields out there.
     
  25. Boomer

    Boomer Premium Member Luxury Box

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    Oh and putting The Shield on HBO just makes it The Shield with worse language.

    It never could be The Wire. Oh and if we're going to get into some intellectual badinage about The Wire, please don't reveal any plot lines from the final 3 episodes of Series 5 as I have yet to see them.
     
  26. Firesole

    Firesole Season Ticket Holder

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    No don't worry, we're not gonna get into any great debate about the 2 shows. I absolutely loved the Wire, don't get me wrong. ( I only saw about 2 seasons of it myself) But I absolutely love The Shield. They are 2 different types of dramas. I loved the Sopranos, (even when everyone starting dogging it the past couple of seasons) and there have been numerous other shows that I have really enjoyed.

    It may all come down to one thing for me though. Never, and I mean N-E-V-E-R has a television show touched me and actually made me feel for a character the way that the Shield has when they killed off Lem. I still feel shcok and disgust when I think about that moment.

    I've never seen an episode of Homicide, so I don't really know how the Shield compares to it, so I'll take your word for it.

    BTW, here's my favorite television dramas, past and present:

    The SHield
    Dexter
    The Wire
    Rescue Me
    The Sopranos
    Rome
    Brotherhood
     
  27. charlestonphan

    charlestonphan Junior Member

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    glad the Shield is back... great show, my all time favorite. too bad it will be gone after this season. not many shows fall under the category of "must watch TV" for me these days.

    did anybody else notice Michael Chiklis seems to have bulked up quite a bit?

    and Maynard i noticed the picture quality was awful in parts of the show last night too.
     
  28. Stitches

    Stitches ThePhin's Biggest Killjoy Luxury Box

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    I love the Shield.

    I don't get HBO, save for a free month a few years back. When I got that, I watched all the wire I could, and thought it was great. Better than the Sheild? I can't say, as I have not seen enough of the Wire. I'd like to though.
     
  29. maynard

    maynard Who, whom?

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    homicide was great, though i really dont quite see the dutch/bayliss comparison

    im not sure the shield really needs a villain. mackey suffices
     
  30. MelbournePhin

    MelbournePhin New Member

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    good stuff today. that little gangabnger was something else
     
  31. Blade

    Blade New Member

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    good episode tonight. i cant believe i forgot it was on. luckily DVR saved me.
     
  32. Boomer

    Boomer Premium Member Luxury Box

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    There's huge comparisons between Dutch and Bayliss.

    What's the point in a series with no villain? 99% of the time you're cheering for Mackey anyway. It's like Dexter; 99.9% of the time you want Morgan - the serial killer - to "win". Take The Wire. There's very little difference between the 'good guys' and the 'bad guys'. Sometimes only a badge.
     
  33. Firesole

    Firesole Season Ticket Holder

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    no villian? Every season has brought us some of the best villians on tv.

    Please feel free to start your own homicide or the wire thread. This thread is about the shield and it's final season, thanks.

    Back on topic, I thought last nights show was a little ho hum. But the preview for next week looks promising.
    Posted via Mobile Device
     
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  34. Brown42000

    Brown42000 Chillin

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    I hate Vic's daughter.


    Yeah he was.
     
  35. NaboCane

    NaboCane Banned

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    The preview for next week's show looks promising. Looks like Shane might get a bit of what he deserves.
     
  36. charlestonphan

    charlestonphan Junior Member

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    i thought last nights episode rocked, and next week should be very good as well. i have a feeling the last few episodes will be a rolling-thru-the-streets-of-LA, to the finish gunfight, between Shane (with his Armenien friends) and Vic (with Ronnie and some Mexican gang bangers) is what they are building up to.
     
  37. charlestonphan

    charlestonphan Junior Member

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    if i am not mistaken, that is Michael Chiklis's daughter who plays Cassidy o the show. you'll note that she si already taller than him. :lol:
     
  38. maynard

    maynard Who, whom?

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    i see bayliss as a much more dynamic and multi-faceted character. dutch is much more flat to me. there may be some tie-ins and similarities, but with bayliss, the inner conflict was played up much more. i think there can be similarities though

    your last sentence typifies the shield in almost all cases. the only way mackey is able to log all the arrests he does is because he deals with criminals and indirectly kills a lot of people for it.

    actually, forest Whittaker was a hell of a villain who made the audience question why it is they root for mackey. acaveda has also been a very good
    counterpoint to mackey

    the shield to me is less about right and wrong, because the lines are so muddied. there are very few lines any character wont cross that they almost become parody and only serve to keep that specific character sane

    to me, its really more like watching animals in the wild. though it may sound silly, i really think its apt. what really only matters within the context of the show is survival in a really cruel world. if "farmington" is even remotely a depiction of reality, i cant see how any detective could live through it. last night you have an entire neighborhood cheering and dancing for a teenager who murdered three people as he is being carried away. so the message is about what do to in that kind of world and how is destroys those who may have at first been trying to do things the right way
     
  39. maynard

    maynard Who, whom?

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    previews look insane
     
    Big E likes this.
  40. Boomer

    Boomer Premium Member Luxury Box

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    Thanks for offering me advice on where I should or shouldn't post.......NOT.

    You have some low standards for villainry if you think Antoine Walker is even close to the same ball park as a Marlow Stanfield or a Luther Mahoney.
     

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