Thursday, March 18, 2004

I LIKE COP SHOWS. Always have, or at least I have ever since the 'rents started tuning my family in to Hill Street Blues because it effectively prevented us from watching Dukes Of Hazzard. Serious cop shows, you know? We're not talking TJ Hooker, Hunter or Enos. (Okay, I liked Barney Miller, but that's different.) I like narratives about transgression and redemption, dark places, flawed righteousness, moral compromise, good intentions and gunplay.

Now, I avoided it initially because I saw Michael Chiklis and thought: "Oh, yeah. That guy from The Commish." But, towards the end of last season I finally caught on to The Shield. This year, with a modernized, updated, DVR-enabled household, I fully intend to make the new season into a semi-religious weekly observance.

It's off to a great start, what with the Armenian mob thing and the gang war thing and the internal politics thing and the external politics thing and the fact that The Family Angle has been pushed aside so that we can all enjoy Detective Vic's moral ambiguity without having to empathize with him overly. If you haven't seen it, imagine Dennis Franz' Sipowicz without the whole "dark angel" angle to redeem him, and you begin to get the picture.

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