The Shield

[Paulie Dangerously]

Get a lovefilm months pass its on there

[lifetime fan]

Cheers mate but if its as good as people are saying I'd like the box set.

 

Anyone know the difference between the all black and the yellow and black box set? Found them for fifty quid.

[Sugar Ape]

Cheers mate but if its as good as people are saying I'd like the box set.

 

Anyone know the difference between the all black and the yellow and black box set? Found them for fifty quid.

 

I've got the black one and I prefer that. The black and yellow one is, I think, just the standard DVD cases inside. The black one has the DVDs in cardboard case files, with a description of each episode on them. Basically, it looks a bit cooler.

 

Deffo buy the boxset by the way, you will watch it more than once. Guaranteed.

 

4

 

[lifetime fan]

Yeah, the all black is a tenner more but it does look quality.

 

One thing I'm worried about is a few people have clamied the black box set has been edited more than the yellow and black as it is a 15 not 18.

 

Anyone heard this?

[lifetime fan]

Went for the safer option and ordered the yellow and black boxset with free delivery for £44.79

[Chairman Meow]

I've got the set like Sugar Ape has. It's the deluxe edition, some extra features and an extra disc of "Bonus Extra Evidence" or something like that.

 

Sure you'll love it LF, it gets better on repeated viewing I think.

[Pidge]

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Vendrell... the cunt.

[Iantn]

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Vendrell... the cunt.

 

Any reason?

[Pidge]

End of season 5.

[Iantn]

End of season 5.

 

Ah. Understandable.

[Section_31]

I warmed to him near the very end of the series though. Character wise though, small-minded soft shite with a big mouth who uses power to cover up for his frailties, he's a piece of genius and we've probably all met people like him.

[Iantn]

I warmed to him near the very end of the series though. Character wise though, small-minded soft shite with a big mouth who uses power to cover up for his frailties, he's a piece of genius and we've probably all met people like him.

 

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He's essentially a mini-Vic. It is, ultimately, all about his family for both and helping to provide a better life for them that their jobs don't really provide. Currently half way through five on a second watch and it's more clear this time than first how similar these two actually are.

 

You are right though on the small-minded part. Vic, whilst not the brightest ever, is smart enough to do what he does. Their wives and subsequent relationships with, are probably the biggest difference between these two.

 

Lem, and to an extent Ronnie, are the good elements.

[Section_31]

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He's essentially a mini-Vic. It is, ultimately, all about his family for both and helping to provide a better life for them that their jobs don't really provide. Currently half way through five on a second watch and it's more clear this time than first how similar these two actually are.

 

You are right though on the small-minded part. Vic, whilst not the brightest ever, is smart enough to do what he does. Their wives and subsequent relationships with, are probably the biggest difference between these two.

 

Lem, and to an extent Ronnie, are the good elements.

 

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I don't think of him as a mini-Vic mate, I think he's a totally different animal and they do what they do for different reasons.

 

Corine tells Mara once that Vic used to be a nice guy but that the job made him hard (as it would!) and in the episode with Apollo Creed in it shows Vic's former partner was handy with his fists when it came to beating up suspects and also taking things on the side, in co-pilot, you also see where Vic first did something corrupt because, due to the beuracracy above him, he had no choice, but says it was 'a little too easy'.

 

I think Vic wanted to be a good cop, but he saw how the system treated his former partner and others around him and wanted to take something back for himself - which he later admits to Becka Doyle.

 

Shane strikes me as a typical 'small' man. I actually wondered if, in his back story, he'd seen his mum get the shit kicked out of her or something and wanted to get a badge so he could exert some authority due to the fact he'd been knocked around or seen his mum knocked around when he was young and helpless.

 

There's a good voice over from Sean Ryan at the end of season five where Shane is telling Lem he'll break in prison (think it was that scene, or it may be when he's confronted by Vic in season six) and Ryan bascally says he's talking to himself, he's thinking what he would do if it was him, that he'd give up his friends because he's a coward and couldn't face prison.

 

Antwon Mitchell also says that to Kavanaugh, he paints Shane as the weak link and says 'he talks the talk, but if you put your foot on his throat he'll whine like a little bitch'.

 

He's much more of a bully than Vic, Vic kicks shit out of people who deserve it, Shane does it to anyone, usually people who aren't white.

 

I also really disagree with the notion that Vic's not especially bright, I think he's incredibly intelligent, as Kavanaugh points out to Aceveda, that he 'creates his own luck'.

 

Vic's an incredible character. I love the way he's a billy big bollocks too, he's always looking for other cops' approval and likes being heard and clapped and applauded by them. It's interesting that The Shield never really achieved greatness until they made Claudette his enemy too, IMO.

[lifetime fan]

Box set was delivered yesterday, starting it tonight.

[Ted]

Enjoy. Incredible show.

[Pidge]

It's not The Wire, not by a long chalk. But it is fucking ace all the same.

[lifetime fan]

Two episodes in and that sums it up nicely for me Pidge.

[Pidge]

It gets better, much better. But near the end of series six now, love it, but don't see the comparison to the very best shows.

[lifetime fan]

88 episodes, 86 to go, reckon we'll have finished it by the end of the month.

[Sugar Ape]

It gets better' date=' much better. But near the end of series six now, love it, but don't see the comparison to the very best shows.[/quote']

 

I very strongly disagree. It stands comparison to the very best shows. It's not my all time favourite, but it's damn close.

[Section_31]

Everyone's got different tastes but it's my favourite show to be honest. I don't like to compare it with The Wire as they're just so different. I was never hooked on the wire until the second time I watched the first series, I wasn't hooked on The Shield until I saw the first two episodes of season two of The Shield. The Shield grabbed me in a moment, the Wire grabbed me over the course of a whole series when I knew who was who, and what was going on.

 

Season one is by far the weakest in The Shield though. It was very much finding its feet, and characters who would become central to the cast during the first few episodes are often only glorified extras. At that point, the Shield wasn't going to be about The Strike Team, it was going to be about Vic. That's why Ronnie is such a shit actor, he's Sean Ryan (the creator)'s mate and is in the original script as 'Strike Team Extra'. Lemonhead was originally auditioned for the part of Terry but they liked him so much that they created a character for him. The studio didn't like Shane at all, he's hardly in it early doors, but the writers created an episode (think its' the one with the chicken fights) purely to showcase Walton Goggins' acting ability to the studio, and the rest as they say is history because the relationship between Vic and Shane, especially towards the end, IS The Shield.

 

 

 

The beginning and end of season two, season five (forest whitaker) and the last few episodes of the whole series will leave you breathless.

[FrenchEyeGlass]

Steaming through Breaking Bad at the moment and have this ready and lined up once I have.

 

Can't wait given some of the reviews.

[Kevin D]

Can only echo the sentiments of The boy Sugar and Section. It's an outstanding show that belongs in the conversation with any show I've seen; there's a wonderful article knocking about in one of the many Shield threads comparing the characterisation of Vic Mackey and Tony Soprano.

[Pidge]

Ah you can't knock the characterisation in this. It's fantastic. Single episode cameos stick in your head because of how brilliantly realised they are and how the impact the central guys.

 

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One that's stuck in my head is a prostitute in season 2 or 3, a one shot girl who Vic helps just after Connie gets killed off. She starts manipulating Vic into helping get rid of her heavy handed pimp, but then assumes Vic will take over as her protection. Vic is sickened by the implication and intrigued by the opportunity at the same time and it's a beautifully realised moment.

 

 

Right now I love Billings' role as relief at the point I'm at, plays off the main tensions brilliantly

 

Shaun Ryan is a top-class writer, equal to anything on the wire. But Simon put together something much more epic for me, with the depth, complexity and a strong rhetoric that aspires to highest literary level.

 

I don't know, maybe I've busted through this too quickly (although I went through most of the Wire - watched the first series on BBC and the rest on DVD - just as fast) and am feeling the yarn being pulled a bit more than I should. Or maybe the split perspective in the Wire kept it fresher despite how quickly I watched them.

 

I can't stress enough how much I've enjoyed both but it's like comparing a book I've enjoyed enough for it to leave indellible images and memories and characters with me, to a book I'm compelled to pick up again and again and again and which constantly reveals more with each reading.

 

edit: never watched the Sopranos btw, might be next on the list if it's on Netflix.

[lifetime fan]

Done the first 5 episodes tonight, I'd forgotten what it was like to have decent telly to watch.