Down on the Farm (The Shield)

Member Name: silverstreak2

Product:	The Shield
Date:	26/07/05 (163 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Realistically acted, never boring

Disadvantages: Violence, bad language

Channel 5 is responsible for bringing some of the better elements of US drama series to UK screens, billing them under the collective heading of ‘America’s Finest’. One of the latest additions and perhaps the most controversial of all, is The Shield, set in Farmington, one of Los Angeles’ most socially deprived districts, and known locally as The Farm. Here, it seems, drug dealing, gang warfare and prostitution are an accepted way of life, and with murder being committed indiscriminately on a regular basis, to live until old age in this environment must surely be considered something of an achievement. To become a police officer in an area like this requires not only a steely determination to see justice done, but also a sufficiently hardened mental attitude, and the ability to retain a cold detachment from the extreme atrocities encountered on a daily basis.

The Shield’s central character is Vic Mackey, (played by Michael Chiklis), an experienced and streetwise detective, reminiscent in looks of a rather unpleasant night club bouncer, and who until recently, headed up the Strike Team, an elite squad formed to track down the most ruthless and evil elements of the criminal fraternity, whose despicable methods were equalled only by those of the Strike Team itself. Apparently unimpressed with the size of their police salaries, the team sought to supplement their income by means of accepting bribes, demanded rather than offered, in return for allowing the known gang leaders and drug dealers to run their illegal operations, untroubled by the prospect of arrest. As part payment, these individuals were expected to supply Mackey and his cohorts, from time to time, with the names and whereabouts of suspects not on the Strike Team’s Christmas card list, and to all intents and purposes, the team was, in the true sense of the phrase, a law unto itself.

Mackey’s superiors, if not fully aware of his tactics, were indeed, highly suspicious of his methods, but in typically hypocritical fashion, chose to turn a blind eye as long as the team was getting results, and the politicians were being kept happy. Aware that his boss, the politically motivated David Aceveda (Benito Martinez) was out to get him thrown off the force, Mackey constantly remained one step ahead, often using the same blackmailing tactics on the chief as he did with the criminals he did business with, but eventually, owing to financial constraints on the department, Aceveda was able to disband the Strike Team, thereby achieving his final self imposed task as Chief, before going on to fulfil his own political ambitions. Thus in this, the fourth season, Mackey is left temporarily without a defining role in a department where even his own colleagues have come to despise and distrust both his methods and his cavalier attitude to police work.

Indeed, distrust is the byword at the Barn, as the squad-room is nicknamed, and it seems that everybody, from the Chief downwards, has an ulterior motive in withholding the truth both from working partners and other elements of the squad. Mackey himself is constantly at odds with Claudette Wyms (CCH Pounder), a black female detective, who had high hopes of becoming Chief, also in the hope of toppling Mackey from his position of corrupt power, with the result that co-operation in situations where their cases overlap is given grudgingly, each invariably holding back a vital piece of information in order to thwart the other’s progress. Mackey has become so corrupt in fact, that he seems unable to differentiate between the perpetrators of crime and the people who seek to catch them, and blackmail and lies are now a permanent part of his psyche. Despite publicly giving support to Julien Lowe (Michael Jace), a uniformed officer whose homosexuality became the subject of bullying by fellow officers, one is left with the uneasy thought that Mackey intends to make currency of his ‘good deed’ at some point in the future, as he invariably does with everyone else with whom he comes into contact.

I’ve portrayed Mackey as being a thoroughly nasty piece of work, which for the most part, he is, and the only area where he shows an element of compassion, is for his three children of whom Matthew, the middle child has been diagnosed as autistic. Even here, however, Mackey uses his child’s condition as a reason to justify his extra-curricular activities claiming that he has no choice but to pursue whatever means he can to obtain the money for Matthew’s care and treatment. His long suffering wife Corinne (Cathy Cahlin Ryan), mentally drained as a result of the lies, the long periods of coping alone with family responsibilities and of course, the indiscriminate affairs which Mackey cannot seem to stop having, despite his repeated promises to reform, has finally called a halt to their marriage, and has begun to stand up to him in a way he’s probably never had to deal with before. There was a scene, during the last series, where he returned home to find his family gone, with no indication as to where they were, whereupon this physical and emotional bully of a man broke down and sobbed uncontrollably – a piece of acting so powerful that I was actually moved to feel sorry for him. Sorry, because he knows full well that he is the architect of his own misery, and just like an alcoholic or a drug addict, he simply doesn’t have it in his power to stop doing what he does.

The overwhelming majority of the population of Farmington is either black or Latino in origin, and by definition so are the criminals, so it follows that there is a massive amount of racial tension, among both the law abiding members of the community and the criminal fraternity – the honest citizens feel let down and victimised by the police, while the villains hate the white officers with a passion, and feel that the black policemen and women are ‘betraying the brotherhood’, by being on the side of authority. It’s a battle that’s never going to be won by either side, and from the police point of view, containment is really the only option available. It seems that the attitude of the police is that things have gone so far down the line in terms of depravity and sheer disrespect of human life, that the crime in their precinct is like a malignant cancer which can never be eliminated totally, something which all they can ever hope to do is to chip away at the surface to stop it spreading and invading what unsullied parts there are left. Morale in the department is generally very low, owing to the stressful nature of the job itself, the hypocrisy of the politicians, and the in-house back-stabbing which prevails, and no amount of departmental restructuring is ever likely to change things. Like the district which it polices, the police department itself is tainted, corrupt, and basically, rotten to the core.

One thing which I’m not altogether happy with is the excessive amount of bad language, although I accept that it’s necessary in order to portray the environment which the programme depicts, and there’s also a lot of localised slang, which I must admit, often passes over my head, and which is probably just as well, but which makes following the plot somewhat difficult at times. This, together with the sheer horror of the violence which pervades, both physical and sexual, combines to make this programme both shocking and depressing, and while I’ve seen it described in TV listings as gritty and hard hitting, these are, in reality, nothing more than euphemisms and I’m frequently left completely speechless and shell-shocked at the end of an episode.

The arrival of Glenn Close as Monica Rawling, the new department Chief, a woman who is as familiar with life on the streets as Mackey himself is, heralds a new era at the Barn, and having offered him the role of heading up her newly created Task Force, targeting the gangs, we await to see whether it tames him, or whether it merely gives him another avenue in which to pursue his corrupt activities. For her part, she has buttered him up because she wants to succeed where Aceveda failed, in cleaning up the streets and thereby furthering her own career, and Mackey, like a schoolboy attempting to impress a favourite teacher, is so far on his best behaviour, although he hasn’t yet figured out her motives totally, and doesn’t know whether to trust this new, unknown quantity. Why do I get the feeling that each has their own agenda and that nothing’s really going to change?

I’m aware that I’ve painted a dark picture of this series, and in deciding whether or not to recommend it, I hovered for some time between yes and no, and eventually plumped for yes, for the following reasons. Firstly, turning one’s head away from the nasty things in life doesn’t make them go away; violence and depravity exists, unfortunately, and will continue to do so, and do we turn our heads away from news items depicting such horrific events? On the contrary, like hungry vultures, we devour as much of it as we possibly can, all the while searching for any titbit of information available. Secondly, while I don’t doubt that this kind of lifestyle does exist in some of the sleazier areas of not only Los Angeles, but probably many other cities, we have to remember that the frequency of the more shocking crimes will have been exaggerated enormously for effect – after all, one violent murder in twenty odd weeks hardly makes for a successful TV series. It’s fiction, when all’s said and done, and we’d do well to count our blessings that most of us have a relatively peaceful lifestyle and don’t have to exist in such dreadful circumstances.

As Nick Ross says at the end of Crimewatch: “Don’t have nightmares”.

Summary: A gripping, if shocking portrayal of life in a deprived district of Los Angeles