4: Crime pays (by the pound of flesh)-Shield: Season 3

This review is in regards to the third season of "The Shield", which is available on DVD now. The weird thing I've discovered about third seasons to many TV shows is that if your first two were great, your third will seem less so. By this time, the novelty and freshness that most audiences find will seem to disappear. To some degree, this is to be expected. The fresh new puppy on the block becomes one of the dogs. Out of the most recent surge of popular and edgy TV shows of the last five years, only a scant few can claim to still be edgy after two seasons. One reason this happens is because of familiarity. Characters we have come in with since episode one are still around, and until otherwise, we have no reason to believe they will ever leave or dramatically change. Shows like Alias and 24, while still producing great cliffhanger television, have had their share of criticism regarding this problem with their third seasons. Sure the characters are going through a lot of physical and mental drama, but something's missing. This is not for the lack of creativity on the writers' part, but eventually, everybody can become comfortable in their slot before too long. A rare case is the third season that really keeps an audience off-balance like it was the very first episode. Which brings me (finally) to the third season of The Shield. Being a fan of the show since it came out, I have to confess that like many viewers when discovering their favorite show won't be back with new episodes for months, you wonder if it'll still be good after a long withdrawal (although with DVD, it's a tad bit more bearable). Will my good show still be good when it comes back? Will it be still fresh after I last saw it? And what a closer the second season had. The Strike Team (led by maverick cop Vic Mackey, played by Michael Chiklis) managed to get a huge score after ripping off the Armenian mob; their politically ambitious captain Acevedo (played by Benito Martinez) gets a huge step closer to gaining political power to clean up the Farmington district of Los Angeles; one of the precinct's veteran homicide detectives Claudette Wyms (CCH Pounder) is about to be promoted to captain of the precinct. Unfortunately, Mackey is living estranged from his wife and kids, beat cop Danny (Catherine Dent) is fired from her job, while her partner Julien (Michael Jace) has been “outed” in his precinct and takes a brutal hazing as a result. As season three starts, the Strike Team is sitting on the cash they got and playing it cool (you know, in case spending money on a girlfriend's new car on a cop's salary seems a tad too suspicious to Internal Affairs). However, as a gang war is about to break out, Mackey and his boys find themselves in the thick of it. Oh, and as if sitting on a sh*tload of cash, heavily armed gangbangers, and internal tension between them all isn't enough, there's still the matter of the Armenian mobsters who want to know where their missing money is... There's no way to get too comfortable on this show, and especially for too long. Claudette finds her promotion and her career under constant threat, Julien is trying to live a normal Norman Rockwell family life while dealing with his suppressed homosexuality, the Strike Team deals with personal dilemmas while having to deal with competition from a transferred Decoy Squad, and Acevedo deals with an event so traumatic to ANY heterosexual male (shot as tastefully as something like this can be shot, thankfully), you realize that if the "reset button" on this show hadn't been used for target practice, it was after this season. A lot of this tension can be credited to the writers, who seem to have as much joy of pushing these characters to their limits (and in some cases) beyond it. A minor bit of tension between Mackey's partner and friend Shane (Walton Goggins) and team newbie Tavon turns from minor prejudice to an balls-out brawl that LOOKS like a balls-out brawl. Acevedo goes from being on top of the world, to planning revenge and becoming an psychological train wreck. There's the serial rapist case that makes good guy detective Dutch (Jay Karnes) commit a truly cold-blooded act sure to make animal lovers squirm in horror. And there's the reappearance of a insane Armenian hitman from the first season (played by series writer Kurt Sutter) that tests the Strike Team to its breaking point. Then there's the actors themselves, while being comfortable in their own shoes, bring out new levels of emotion and energy that keep this thoroughly involving. Michael Chiklis plays a cop who is trying to juggle chainsaws, personally and professionally, and like many people, failing miserably (albeit with more dire consequences). Benito Martinez manages to really take what must have read as an "over the line" storyline and turn it into a creepy examination on someone with a lingering mental scar that won't disappear no matter what power he has gained (although, the latter turns out to be useful when dealing with one of his assailants in a powerful highlight of this season). Even Shane and good-hearted Lemonhead (Kenneth Johnson) turn into truly interesting characters, making the final scene of the season more shocking and powerful, because it doesn't end with a literal explosion, but an implosion that rocks the Strike Team to its foundation. And of course, there's L.A. itself. The city becomes a character in its own right. You couldn't fake L.A. in Vancouver or anywhere else. The environment of the show screams "we're gritty, we're L.A.", as it damn well should. I once read that the script for the movie Collateral was set in New York. In retrospect, L.A. seemed like the most obvious place to put it. Likewise, you couldn't do The Shield in New York or in Chicago. After fifteen episodes of intense, edgy entertainment (that manages to be as good, and in some cases, better the the last twenty odd episodes before), do I expect familiarity from this how going into season four? Do I expect a happy ending to come from all of this internal turmoil and professional chaos? Well, consider one of the more upbeat endings of a show in season three: after a horrific personal violation, one character is seen doing the most rational thing they can do, which is drench their guts out in the precinct bathroom. What do you think?

3: stimuli for April 2, 2005

DVD-- "Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex", "Heat", "Raging Bull" MUSIC--Garbage-"Why Do You Love Me", Nine Inch Nails-"The Hand That Feeds", Theory of a Deadman-"No Surprise", Audioslave-"Be Yourself", Queens of the Stone Age-"Lullabies to Paralyze" MOVIES: "Sin City" TV: "The Shield", "24", "Robot Chicken", "The Venture Brothers" BOOKS: "100%" by Paul Pope