This week marked the end of a great TV series: “The Shield”. Created by writer Shawn Ryan, the series ran for 7 seasons on the cable net FX. Here’s a nice write-up in Time magazine about the place of the series in recent TV history. And it is interesting to think about the series and another great series on cable TV “The Sopranos.” While the latter series debuted in 1999 and “The Shield” in 2002, during a majority of their run, they aired either simultaneously or ‘tag-team’ — at least that was the experience I had along with my wife as we watched every episode of both series.
In some ways the two series had a great deal of similarities. Both dealt with crime. Both had a powerful Protagonist figure, Vic Massey (Michael Chiklis) and Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini). Each of these men played a father figure role to a younger man — Vic to Shane Vendrell (Walton Goggins) and Tony to Christopher Motlisanti (Michael Imperioli). Each Protagonist had major ups and downs on the family front with both separating from their wives. And each series was violent.
But in another way, the series couldn’t be more different. Whereas “The Sopranos” approached the characters in what I would call a psychoanalytic way — probing into the inner demons of each of the primary characters, tracing in great detail their struggles to survive emotionally — “The Shield” was like a grand Shakepearean play, peopled by big, broad stroke characters involved in ever inreasingly more complex plots, subplots, and master plots.
Both series benefited from masterful writing. And while there was a ton of cultural attention paid to “The Sopranos” creator and EP David Chase, and justifiably so, there has been a shameful lack of coverage to this week’s series finale. So I was gratified to see that this month’s issue of Written By magazine, the trade journal put out by the WGA, featured Shawn Ryan and a number of writers who worked on the series. You’ll have to buy the hard copy to read those articles — and why haven’t you subscribed to Written By already?! — but they did post some interview material online here that was not included in print.
For those who don’t have Written By, I’m including one excerpt from the interview with Shawn Ryan about his inspiration for the series:
“I’ve tried not to talk too much about my own feelings about Vic Mackey. I wrote a pilot with no intention, no hope really of the show continuing on beyond that. And it was sort of inspired in many ways by watching the movie with Al Pacino and Johnny Depp, the undercover movie Donnie Brasco. Written by Paul Attanasio, I believe. It’s a great movie, but I remember sitting there watching it, and I’m on the inside as an audience member knowing the whole time that Johnny Depp is really stinging these mob guys, and I know it’s based on a true story. So I have a pretty good idea where the movie’s going–that Depp’s ultimately going to be successful. And I’m always a big fan of the unexpected and the twist. About two-thirds of the way through the movie, I think, Wouldn’t it be cool if Pacino just turned around in an alley and shot this guy? And then we the audience realize that the whole time Pacino’s known. And that we the audience have been led down this path [in the dark, like Depp's character]. Boy, I remember thinking, that’d be cool. so when I got to this [Shield] pilot, I remembered and set up this scenario that frankly I just thought was cool; let’s have this character Terry Crowley get inside and you think that this is going to be a story about how a guy inside is working to take down [corrupt cop].
Except, of course, in a shocking twist at the end of the pilot, Vic Massey wheels around and shoots fellow police officer Terry Crowley square in the head, killing him. If Ryan wanted to recreate in the TV audience that surprise feeling he imagined while watching Donnie Brasco, he sure as hell succeeded with me. I can still remember how stunned I was by that ending.
So we bid farewell to Vic, Shane, Ronnie, Dutch, Julien, Claudette, Aceveda, and all the other fascinating characters from “The Shield.” As for Ryan? He’s moved on to work with David Mamet on “The Unit.”. Best of luck to him on that. And thanks for “The Shield.”
P.S. One final quote from Ryan: “I said to my writers, ‘Listen, even the most evil people behave pretty well 98 percent of the time. And it’s the 2 percent where they occasionally go off the grid that is the difference between them and the rest of us.” That’s a great attitude to take as a writer in humanizing our nemesis characters.
P.P.S. Here’s a compilation of 10 of the best moments in Season 7 of “The Shield.”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHs7myY3uM4]
