The setting is an empty house. A man, Shane Vendrell, is bathing his two-year old son, Jackson. His wife, Mara, calls to him from the other room. She needs to go to the bathroom, but cannot get up. Her collar bone is broken, her arm in a sling. He helps her to the toilet. He sits on the floor while she pees, and they talk while their son plays in the bathtub next to them. When she is done, he wipes between her legs and flushes the toilet. It is one of the most intimate moments I have ever seen onscreen, all the more so for being so casually done.
Yet here they are, these awful people, and the scene is truly beautiful. Familial love in its purest, deepest form. You can’t help but love them a little, and maybe even wish them safe passage.
From the 1920s through the late 1960’s, every film released in America was subject to what was known as the Hays code, named for it’s author, Will Hays. The code limited all forms of language, violence, and sexuality that could be shown. It also stated that “no picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence, the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin.”
I wonder what Will Hays would have thought of the F/X show The Shield, which ran from 2003-2009. It contained just about everything Mr. Hays tried to shield (ahem) us from. Yet in the end, The Shield does everything moralists like Will Hays want. It shows right and wrong, and the lasting results of both. The rules may bend, good people may do bad things, but justice does come. It’s just that, in The Shield, it takes a full seven years for that terrible swift sword to fall.
Television is a medium with a unique opportunity. It can show us characters in something like real time over the course of years. We can watch characters, in whom we have invested deeply, change and grow as we ourselves do. Unfortunately, financial considerations (having to do with accessibility, and the pot of gold known as syndication) have mostly led TV producers to choose shows that are mainly individual, self-contained episodes.
Thankfully, this has changed in the last 20 years. Shows like The Wire and The Sopranos have shown the amazing things that continuous stories can do. I would argue that The Shield is as good as either of those shows, though it is not nearly as well known.
The Shield is the story of Vic Mackey, the leader of a “strike team” of police that attacks gang activity in a brutal section of Los Angeles. In the very first episode, Vic kills a fellow police officer he suspects (correctly) of being an informant. So we know the kind of man he is from the beginning.
Despite this, Vic is a riveting character. Breathtakingly corrupt, he is also incredibly effective, almost irreplaceable. Savage one moment, heartbreakingly tender the next, Vic, as Walt Whitman would say, “contains multitudes.” Much like The Sopranos, The Shield plays with our identification with its lead character. We as viewers know how bad Vic is, but part of us always wants him to get away with it. Vic is like the viewer’s id. He has an aura of invincibility. He does what he wants, when he wants, and always seems to find a way to get away with it. Until he doesn’t.
Vic’s partner in crime, his lieutenant, is Shane Vendrell. Shane idolizes Vic and tries to emulate him. Unfortunately, Shane is none too bright. When he strikes out on his own, the results are disastrous. It falls to Vic to clean up his messes, until there comes the mess that turns them against each other.
The irony is that Shane, who does a seemingly unending series of ghastly things, finds his humanity when he goes on the run. Vic, who seems to get away scot free, learns nothing. In the end, despite everything, one’s sympathy goes to Shane. This is helped by the performance of Walton Goggins as Shane, who in the final season of the show gives one of the most beautiful performances I have ever seen.
Watching this story play out over the seven seasons of The Shield, you realize why the moralizers like Will Hays are wrong. It is not because they seek edification through stories. It’s that they want that edification to come cheap. Seeing the good guys win and the bad guys lose in 22 minutes is not life. It’s propaganda. Watching the fruits of malfeasance work themselves out over 7 years, however, is something else. It’s Greek. More to the point, it’s art.
Romans 6:23 says, “The wages of sin is death.” That phrase does not refer to those who are sinned against. It’s the sinners themselves who will die. By actually giving the devil his due, The Shield shows you how that happens in the way that only great art can.