Very few police dramas expand or redefine the genre. Dragnet, Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue and CSI are among the few that have. Add to that very select list, The Shield .
Although Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue featured police officers straying into gray areas of morality, in The Shield, cops operating outside the law are the center of the action. Like in the Sopranos, viewers are challenged by these characters: Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) isn’t a good guy, he isn’t a bad guy, he’s something in between. To Vic, his rogue behavior serves the public interest. To everyone else, a cop with a pet crack dealing operation who murders, plants evidence and savagely beats suspects is a danger who needs to be taken off the street. But Vic is an old pro at this, and viewers get to watch him attempt to out-maneuver the forces trying to take him down, and not always for the best of reasons.
But the show is an ensemble, as the best cop shows have been, and everyone from beat cops to detectives to the police captain get their moments to shine. Especially impressive is Detective Claudette Wyms (CCH Pounder), who radiates morality, maturity and wisdom. Claudette has to deal with an over-eager partner (who, on paper, the audience should love, but who in practice practically invites the abuse the other officers heap upon him), a politically minded captain and, of course, the Strike Team, led by the obviously corrupt Vic Mackey.
Bear in mind that the series, which will begin its fifth season in January 2006, is constructed in 13 episode arcs. At times, the first few episodes will seem slow, but it’s always building to a shattering conclusion at the end of each season.
This is one of the few television shows that can justly be called a classic. More importantly, The Shield redefines what audiences can and should expect from police dramas in the years to come.
Strongly recommended to fans of police dramas. Be warned that The Shield skirts an R rating much of the time, especially in the adult and dark subject matter.
Joss Whedon, long a fan of Veronica Mars, just reviewed the new Veronica Mars Season One DVD set in Entertainment Weekly.
At the center of it all is Veronica herself. Bell is most remarkable not for what she brings (warmth, intelligence, and big funny) but for what she leaves out. For all the pathos of her arc, she never begs for our affection. There is a distance to her, a hole in the center of Veronica’s persona. Bell constantly conveys it without even seeming to be aware of it. It’s a star turn with zero pyrotechnics, and apart from the occasionally awkward voice-over, it’s a teeny bit flawless.
In return for all the Veronica love, Joss will be appearing in the sixth episode this season, apparently as a cranky car rental employee. (Kevin Smith was in last week’s episode as a publicity-loving convenience store clerk.)
“All the Money or the Simple Life Honey,” by the Dandy Warhols, has replaced Marty Casey’s “Trees” as my bounce-around happy fun rock and roll song of the moment.
That is all.
(And yes, I heard it first on the Post-Modern Rock podcast.)
From that great bastion of liberal thought, South Carolina, comes this editorial in The State newspaper:
We journalists have our share of faults.
As a group, we tend to be arrogant and nomadic, which too often results in our being quite detached from our communities.
We are independent, fiercely competitive and suspicious of secrecy, and we tend to distrust and even disdain authority — characteristics that suit us well for digging out corruption but can make us act like petty children where none exists. (It also poses some interesting morale and management challenges inside newsrooms, but that’s another story, and one I don’t intend to write.)
And yes, as a group we do tend to be more socially and politically liberal than our communities. And yes, this does show up in our news coverage.
As nomadic outsiders, journalists build community among themselves. This leads to the group-think that takes over within any group of people with similar education, similar social status and similar worldviews.
This creates huge blind spots that influence and limit our thinking. The blind spot that causes the greatest disconnect these days, of course, relates to religious and social issues, which have become the new litmus test of ideology in our country. Case in point: The concept of a “born-again Christian� was foreign to the faith traditions in which most journalists grew up (if they grew up in any), and so official journalism is distrustful of anyone who calls himself one.
When news coverage comes across as tone-deaf to much of middle America, it’s largely due to these types of limitations. To get an idea of what I’m talking about, think of President Bush’s initial bumbling response to Hurricane Katrina, which grew out of his unfamiliarity with poverty rather than any animosity toward black people.
You’d never guess this by listening to journalism’s ideologically driven critics on the right, of course. To hear them talk, journalists all have a simple agenda — to skewer Republicans and promote Democrats and liberal causes.
That has been the common wisdom at least since Spiro Agnew denounced us as “nattering nabobs of negativism� and, not too much later, the profession took out his Republican boss. And so it has become the lens through which many Republicans view the media, taking offense when we subject Republicans to scrutiny but not seeming to notice when we treat Democrats the same way.
Anyone who understands the journalistic mindset (see “disdain for authority,� above) realizes that journalists don’t care what the political views are of their targets. But most people don’t understand the journalistic mindset.
For those of you tired of the media discussing Judith Miller, yes, it’s another article/column/editorial about her. Fair warning before you click through and read it in its entirety.
Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld novels and co-author, with Neil Gaiman, of Good Omens, was interviewed by NPR yesterday on science-fiction themes invading literary fiction. Also interviewed was Susanna Clarke, author of the wonderful Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.
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