loooooooooooooool yes
When the priest tells Aderholt, “I saw them once without their disguises” I guffawed audibly
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The video look was really off-putting. When you’re trying to create the feel of the 80s when nothing was shot on video back then it’s distracting. I’m weird like that as it totally harms my ability to fall into the movie magic. I need minimum standards.
Any access aside from signing up for epix?
I work in the movie and TV industry, so I won’t mention any sites where you can find this sort of thing but they exist where you can basically get anything you want to see.
Yeah I don’t want to work that hard.
The way I recommended upthread was using Amazon Prime if you have that and doing the free EPIX trial. Just get ready to binge quickly because there are some good shows on there that have more than one season.
To kind of take this slightly back on topic, in season one many of you may remember the character Chris Amador. He was Stan’s partner. His character was drawn as a real cocky ladies’ man who had been spurned by average looking Martha. He begins to stalk Martha just knowing he’ll change her mind or something and stumbles into a problem that leads to his untimely end.
A good writer would say, ‘what motivates this character to act this way?’ and/or ‘is there something deeper going on with him that puts him in this situation?’ A bad writer uses characters as MacGuffins to get what he or she wants out of the plot. In this case, the writer(s) said if we have this guy stalking Martha, he’ll eventually intersect with our main character leading to a confrontation. Based on how the plot developed, this was exactly how they used the character.
The biggest missed opportunity with the character was that they could have undermined that surface to give the character a different backstory than what they presented to the audience. With the existing elements as shot in the post-death apartment scene, I could have re-written/re-mixed that scene to humanize the character instead of bolstering the super s****y persona.
In the scene, Stan sees there are messages on the answering machine so he hits play. There’s a long stream of women talking about dating the guy. It would have been so much better if it had been the voice of his mom saying something like, ‘Chris, it’s mom, I haven’t heard from you for awhile and wanted to know if you’re doing okay?’ or any number of similar other directions they could have used the answering machine to tell us a different story than what was on the surface for the character.
They could have created a sparse apartment that didn’t give the idea of a ladies’ man at all. Because if they did that, it would have created a rich character out of someone who was ultimately treated as chattel toward advancing the plot (same thing applies to that great OD scene). Him stalking Martha and being this ladies’ man made no sense but you’d have a hard time convincing the creator of the show of the error of his ways there due to how many times he repeated this exact same pattern with other characters and plot lines.
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I enjoy Bosch. I read all the novels that then existed more-or-less back to back about a decade ago and have watched the show as it comes out. However I do often think it’s about the exact worst cop show I can still stomach. It’s incredibly generic in lots of ways and I would guess must set off a lot of “cop propaganda” buttons. I don’t know if you can stand it, but if you can then The Shield is absolutely nowhere near it in that regard.
I watched the first episode of Happy Valley years ago and never went further. No knock on the show which seemed good and has great reviews from people I trust, it’s that the guy playing seemingly a Jerry Lundegaard-ish role was a British comedian I love and I just wasn’t up for seeing him be an awful person doing tragic stuff at the time. I always mean to go back, maybe one day.
Interesting thoughts about Bosch. It’s definitely in the ‘supercop’ genre, but I don’t really see it as pro cop propaganda. I kind of see it as almost anti-cop.
In general, Bosch is a guy who plays by his own rules because he thinks the police department is run poorly and goes after the wrong things. He hates authority, hierarchy, and bureaucracy with the power of a thousand suns but plays just enough of the game to not be able to be fired. What he seems to like is solving a puzzle and putting away someone who did something bad. He has ends justify the means issues but generally colors a lot more inside the lines than most supposedly ‘good’ TV cops. I feel you see the conflict he has in what he does but it’s all he knows. I think his character’s actions and motivations make more sense as the Vietnam veteran portrayed in the books rather than a first Gulf War vet but it’s not a big issue to me.
I find the criticism that it’s generic interesting because I think it’s one of the better layered cop shows out there. I’m generally invested in what happens with almost every character regardless of whether I like them. In a way, each season is a story about how the crime(s) affect the people involved in investigating them more than about the crime(s) being investigated something that is generally more appealing to me in the cop genre (a big reason why I liked True Detective Season 1 so much).
There are serious departures from the few of the books I read but I think it’s generally okay in those departures. I really loved The Black Echo. I’m curious as to what you think of the casting. I think the Chief as written in the books is basically a carbon copy of either the Raymond Barry character in Falling Down or the John C. McGinley character from Point Break. That said, when I saw Lance Reddick as the part I thought he was perfect all the way down to the jaw clenching thing (he’s much more likable in the TV show than the book). For Bosch, I basically envisioned the character as similar in personality and looks to Robert DeNiro in Midnight Run. I never in a million years would have thought of Titus Welliver for the role but I think he does a good job with the character to the point where I probably can’t think of anyone else playing the part anymore.
Happy Valley’s very good, worth watching. I hope you can get past your casting issue to revisit it.
Well, I disagree with you about Fargo, but the rest lines up pretty well with what I like in TV, so I’ll give a shot.
Anyway, the short pitch is: The Shield is really a tragedy more than anything, as the corrupt cops eventually end up destroying themselves through the consequences of all the shit they’ve done. But it’s amazing and relentless in a way that TV simply rarely is. Really, that’s what separates the show from everything else on TV for me: The fact that every action has consequences, nothing is ever undone, and the main characters bring their own fates onto themselves. And it always moves forward-- each scene advances the story in some way-- which gives it a sense of unity and momentum a lot of other shows lack-- no crooked timelines or scenes of people just sitting around emoting or anything like that.
(Except for one episode that is terrible and should not exist.)
So imagine the intense parts of Breaking Bad but more frequently, combined with the cases of the week like Justified. (I also rewatch Justified more than Breaking Bad and like it better on the whole these days. BB feels like a lesser Shield to me.)
The long pitch (spoilers therein):
I’d like to hear your thoughts on why you disagree about Fargo. To me, season 1 was as perfect as TV can get for me. Season 2 and 3 are still great for me, but not as good as season 1. If they stick the landing on season 4, it will be my official favorite show of all time because they managed to tell 4 completely different stories extremely well while holding up an iconic universe.
I have a tendency to like quirky or slightly eccentric cop dramas or anything that has bad guys who do increasingly stupid things in it who luckbox into getting away with everything until they don’t. One of my favorite books in this genre is Swag by Elmore Leonard.
How many episodes should I give The Shield if I don’t immediately like it?
I felt like season 1 made less sense the more I thought about it afterward, and the more I thought about the cutesy character names the more I got annoyed by them. The bad guy is MALVO. The detective is SOLVErson. The dumbass is CHUMPh.
And the dumbass is also ripped off of Burn After Reading, which underlines another problem I had with the show, especially season 2-- how much of it just lifted characters and scenes wholesale from Coen Brothers movies, not even as homages. Like they were trying to paper over a lack of story. I’d rather just watch the originals.
I don’t know if I’d call it quirky, but it’s definitely intense, and it’s definitely a cop drama where bad guys do increasingly stupid or at least risky things, and get away with it until they don’t. The bad guys are the cops, tho. (It’s based on the real-life Rampart scandal in the LAPD.)
Well, the first season is the shakiest, so I would say stick with it if you find anything you like in that. (There are a few really good episodes, and I think toward the end of the season it starts to pick up.) If you watch the season 2 premiere and you still feel like it’s not for you, then it’s probably not for you. But it’s a three-act tragedy, so it’s hard to recommend skipping any of it to get to the best stuff. (Except “Co-Pilot,” skip that one.) But it does pretty much continually get better. Also, I’ll add that it’s the best ending to any show I’ve ever seen.
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Oh yeah, I can pimp my podcast here. My wife and I did a three-parter on The Shield with the author of those articles guesting. The first one is spoiler-free so it might be of interest to you. (Part 2 has spoilers and Part 3 we mostly talk about shows you can watch after The Shield to scratch that same itch. I can link them if anyone wants.)
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This is another reason I think you’ll like The Shield– more than any show I’ve seen, it’s the one where everyone is a full player in the drama, and has their own moralities, motivations, goals, and things they will do anything to achieve. Nobody exists merely as a plot device for another character.
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The generic-ness and the cop propaganda for me both come mostly from Bosch’s character. He’s the noble outsider cop fighting corruption both without and within. As you say, the supercop genre. I think it strays into propaganda with Bosch because the show endorses his code and view of policing without much examination. That code I think can only exist in a morally straightforward (and therefore fictional) universe.
I don’t see much self-conflict in Bosch to be honest. I think he’s sometimes angry or resigned at the world for making him and his work necessary, but he thinks it is and, as you say, knows no other life anyway. I think deep down Bosch likes who he is given the way the world is, and his negative emotions are largely disappointment when other people don’t live up to his standards.
I agree with a lot of what you say about the characters, they mostly all hold your attention, but another thing that keeps it down for me is the lack of much real greyness with them. It seems as if people are either good or bad (cops or otherwise). Possibly we’re sometimes unsure where they fall for a while, but once Bosch works them out then they’re either people to be neutralised or redeemed regardless. Maybe The Chief in the TV show is the one character that’s not true of, but I suspect by the end they’ll smooth off any edges.
Ok yeah fair points. I guess some of those things don’t bother me as much. The performances were compelling enough for me to buy into a lot of the rest of it.
The first part is why, also the cops are portrayed as decent people barring a few bad apples. I’m not sure it’s possible to make a cop story that isn’t effectively propaganda. Not one anybody wants to see. Even the Shield, for all that it’s an effective tragedy, the corruption is the mistakes, the brutality the exception. IRL it’s the norm.
I guess my point is everything you do to tell a good story with a cop at it’s center just further humanizes the actual fascist paramilitaries in our midst and obfuscates their function in our society and I don’t think we need any more of that.
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This might be one of two flaws. One is that it’s maybe the show’s fault for not providing a more traumatic backstory that fits with the book character’s clear Vietnam PTSD motivating him a lot. I don’t remember if his mother being murdered was in the book but that seems to be what’s providing most of his motivating trauma of being a cop in the show (the insatiable need to get justice for the unsolved or neglected). That doesn’t have the same effect as being a tunnel rat who never knew what was going to greet him on the other end and planning for everything. The other is that it might be a flaw in Welliver’s performance. I feel the nuance you think is missing is in the book but kind of agree it’s not in the show (could be me projecting the book character onto the TV character). I’d possibly put that down to Welliver’s aloof way he plays the part. It’s effective that he seems tightly wound but that often comes down to aloofness. I feel like where you see his nuance is when he and Maddie talk about various aspects of work. I think he wants her to be the ‘good cop’ version of what he perceives to be his ‘bad cop’ no matter where that ends up. What he’s ultimately realized is that he just wants her to be ‘good’ on the side of justice even considering where she ended up with a once mortal enemy of his.
In a lot of ways, Welliver makes it seem like Bosch only cares about the outcomes he’s interested in which I don’t really think is how the character was intended as written. I don’t consider it, either way, to be as big of a flaw as you do but definitely can see your point of view about it.
To me, there’s no doubt the Chief is the best character in the show and it’s a major improvement from the book. I think his character is extremely grey and I like that aspect of the character. I especially liked how he said f it to running for Mayor last season because a lot of his thoughts were basically how I felt at the time about ‘doing what consultants wanted’. I do think the two other interesting side characters are Crate and Barrel. Those both have a lot of nuance for the type of characters they’re playing and you can tell the only thing either lives for is the job. It plays into the pathetic nature of people having their only sense of self worth through their job (a modification of pro athlete syndrome essentially).
For the propaganda aspect, I’m pretty much immune to the effects of propaganda in TV shows and am almost always on a sharp lookout for agenda based storytelling. I don’t care what bent a person who makes a show is as long as that bent doesn’t affect the storytelling (my exceptions to this are shows that bring attention to an issue). I doubt the makers are doing it with an agenda to glorify cops, I think they’re just trying to do a character based cop drama that’s not boring. There aren’t very many of those types of shows that aren’t wildly over the top.
As a final aside to this post, one of my favorite shows growing up was the NBC supercop show, Hunter. I think I liked it mainly because of his witty quips. It for sure glorified the renegade cop (haven’t revisited it though I’d like to) with a sense of justice that causes him to push big edges where he shouldn’t. His partner was a moderating influence and they tackled some really heavy stuff in it. The hallmark of the supercop genre is almost always ‘look at how badass this person is’ as someone to be admired. I never really thought of it that way but just enjoyed the genre. The mediocre FOX show Deputy was the latest entry in that genre (had a very surprising leftward bent for FOX that was pretty solid on immigration issues).
I enjoyed reading your perspective on Bosch and I’ll probably view it in a little different light next season.
If Colin Farrell and Vince Vaughn were in it, I wouldn’t have made it past a few episodes. They were the main reasons I didn’t give up on it even if it was like watching a gymnast on the bars nailing a routine and then face planting on dismount nearly every episode.
I don’t really have any argument with any of that. I think the type of person who tends to make cop shows (with some exceptions) is very likely to idolize cops (I’d imagine a person like David Simon does this genre better than most because of his approach as a reporter and trying to remain neutral). The CBS shows employ most of those cop worshiper types though Dick Wolf is probably responsible for a lot of the insane views Trump has about cops and crime in Chicago.
I think Michael Mann is probably the foremost writer in this genre (movies not TV, though he has done great TV as well). He has an ability to describe and relate to both sides of the law, something that I think is crucial to doing a cop show well. Heat is basically his masterpiece in that type of storytelling. Taylor Sheridan is also exceptional in this genre. These are people who realize not all cops are bad nor good and not all criminals are completely bad. They think each person has good and bad side, which is why their product is so good when displaying authoritarians in a way where they are rarely glorified. Sheridan is very much a ‘do the ends justify the means?’ type of writer and he rarely if ever tells you what to think about what you’re watching.
One thing I do think about The Shield in this regard, and it’s very similar to the work of James Ellroy (another famous chronicler of a fictionalized LAPD), is that it takes violence and corruption in the world as a given, and everyone is navigating it-- the police are corrupt and violent because the world is corrupt and violent. And what we see especially of the Strike Team is that they aren’t there to protect and serve, but really function as middle managers trying to keep the peace between the gangs (and take a cut for themselves) in the disputed territory of Farmington.
Even the “good cops” are capable of doing (and do) fucked up things, and even the best and most morally upright have to find ways to compromise in the name of effectiveness. That’s why one of the funniest lines of the show is season 7, Dutch to Billings: “I can’t be a part of anything unethical.” To live in this world forecloses the possibility that you will never have to be a part of anything unethical.