Any and every regular reader of this column should by now know how much I love smart TV. It has become my primary source of entertainment lately, other than, so sadly, the horrors (albeit sometimes perversely humorous) of the Trump administration and its GOP enablers.
One big reason I love smart TV is how it enables me – and I’m not alone here – to binge on a TV series. That doesn’t mean I dismiss the old analog week by week episodic schedule of watching series (as I am currently doing with the second season of I’m Dying Up Here and the last season of “my soap,” as my gal pals would call their favorite afternoon dramas, “Nashville”). There’s a nice rhythm to that schedule I do enjoy.
But it’s quite satisfying, among other benefits to me, to latch onto a series and follow it whenever I have time through its seasons to the end (when I almost always get a bit blue until the next binge show grabs me). Even more so when it’s a series I missed in its first run.
My latest and highly addictive binge is The Shield, a police drama that ran for seven seasons from 2002 to 2008 on the FX network and is now available on Hulu. As I’ve noted before, it might seem odd that a progressive leftist like myself is such a fan of great cop and crime shows. But the best of them – like most of the greatest stories in whatever medium, books, movies and TV – are evocative morality tales.
Moral, ethical, criminal and personal challenges and compromises pulse through The Shield like heart-blood. Especially the show’s central character, plainclothes Detective Vic Mackey, marvelously played by Michael Chiklis. The shorthand on Mackey (on Wikipedia and elsewhere) is that he’s “corrupt.”
Yes, one might say that. But what one learns over time about Mackey is that he’s less simply corrupt but instead operates outside the norm by his own moral code – the mark of every great antihero.
Mackey leads the anti-gang “Strike Team,” as the series begins, out of an experimental police substation (headquartered in an old church building) in the fictional Los Angeles ghetto neighborhood of Farmington, aka “The Farm” in series slang. The cop shop overall is a swamp of moral, ethical, criminal and personal challenges and compromises, as is its neighborhood plagued by drugs, violence, gang wars and (one prime cause of the aforementioned) poverty.
And also over time one sees Mackey’s kind and gentle side, and the viewer comes to care about him, hope his criminal acts don’t land him in boiling water, even if (it’s not a spoiler to say) in the pilot episode Mackey shoots another cop in the face and kills him. That’s the kind of complexity of character that makes for compelling drama. And The Shield is populated by such characters.
And many fine actors. It’s great to see Walton Goggins, who shone as Bowd Crowder in Justified, in another show, Glenn Close thrums with strength and energy in her one season as chief of the Farm station. Always enjoy anything that Forest Whitaker does. And Anthony Anderson, who was a cop on Law & Order, is equally adept as a criminal in this series. Many of the rest of the cast prompt me to head to IMDB to see what else they’ve done; maybe one series might be my next binge.
The Shield is shot with handheld cameras, which underscores its real life feel, Of course it’s not real life, which despite the darkness of human actions throughout I think is far worse. But it’s damn fine TV with twists and turns that keep me watching often and happily.
CD: As Long as I Have You by Roger Daltrey – The lead singer of The Who continues to shine outside his band. I’m still digging on his simmering collaboration with guitarist Wilko Johnson, Going Back Home, some four years after its release. This set is largely in a R&B mode with classic soul songs, tunes from Stephen Stills, Boz Scaggs and Stevie Wonder, and two originals. His potent voice still thrills. Who bandmate joins in on guitar on a number of tracks, but the spotlight is all on Daltrey.
Movie: Chuck – New Jersey undercard heavyweight boxer Chuck Wepner inspired Sylvester Stallone to write “Rocky” when he went up against Muhammad Ali for the title belt. Liev Schreiber turns in a nicely nuanced take as the working-class hero who was a contender.
Documentary Film: New Wave: Dare to Be Different – During the early 1980s a small Long Island radio station, WLIR, opened up the commercial airwaves to new wave music. This tale of pluck and passion (available on Showtime) recalls an exciting era when rock music was changing.
Rob Patterson is a music and entertainment writer in Austin, Texas. Email orca@prismnet.com.
From The Progressive Populist, November 1, 2018
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