The Shield is better than Boardwalk Empire but worse than The Sopranos, BB, the Wire, even BCS.
The Shield is far superior to BB and BCS. It's not even near the artistic level of Boardwalk though. It's a show that can be watched over and over and gets better each time like Wire, Oz, Sopranos, and so on. Even when you know the major plot twists it still gets better each time through. I've seen the show a few times and never felt like I was getting burned out.
The Shield is over the top every episode. Every day they are dealing with a gang shooting or serial killer. Every day they are being hunted down by a cop killer or some maniac. It's like Oz where every episode something insane happens and every season they kill off a main character or do something to shake up the show. It's fast paced but not obvious about it because the stakes are usually high.
Some negatives about The Shield:
- Cases are solved in the most unrealistic way every time. Through confessions and interrogations. They never solve cases with forensics.
- Criminals never use a lawyer. They just blurt out their crimes like retards. Every single time.
- The detectives never go to court. The criminals go from interrogation to jail which leads to some weird storylines.
- The detectives are going from serial killer cases to catching peeping toms and cuckolds.
- Vic's immunity deal makes zero legal sense. It's dramatic. But ridiculous and would not be possible in real life.
- Shaun Ryan's wife gets massive amounts of screen time in later seasons playing Vic's wife. She is the only nurse in the entire hospital apparently.
- Glenn Close puts on an all time stinker acting performance. No one could buy her as some alpha police leader. Nor as a politician.
- Forest Whittaker plays the most absurd IA office in movie history. He's like a cartoon character.
- Michael Chiklis is 5'5" and isn't intimidating. The actor who played Dutch having to cower to him was hilariously bad writing. The actor tried to refuse doing the scene even because he felt it was unrealistic.
- The Shield lead to Sons of Anarchy. Quite possibly one of the worst shows ever committed to television.
The black fag cop killing his wife in real life was like a Shield level plot. She was an Olympic runner...and he shot her in the legs and said "Try to run from me now!". Life in prison for him.