i agree with you somewhat

i think chiklis is at his best when he is outright lying and generally being despicable but some of the pained looks and emotional scenes i didn't think he pulled off that well. i liked his consistency though throughout the seasons (still not done)

i thought glen close, anthony anderson, and forrest whittaker were really really good. his wife is horrendous. CCH pounder is really great. dutch too. wasn't a big fan of julian's acting.

also just watched mulholland drive for the first time the other day and somehow failed to notice that the lawyer in S5 was watt's boo

nath

It's ok to be wrong.

The acting is cringe worthy at best during the first couple of seasons and the writing equally as bad through out all of the seasons.

I enjoyed watching all of the seasons but I nearly quit during season 1.

I've just started The Shield, have a couple episodes left of season one. It isn't even close to The Wire so far, sorry nath. Just too many procedural elements to it to measure up, it just seems like it's way closer to a typical cop show

You're right, through "close to the end of season 1" The Shield does seem like a typical cop show. It's not, and it continually gets better, and it's only after seeing the whole thing that it really becomes obvious just how good and how well-written it is.

None of you are offering any examples of anything. Just "It's bad 'cause I say so." And if you think the writing of The Shield is bad, then you don't know what writing is.

None of you seem really interested in discussing the show the way I want to discuss it, anyway. (I have some great reading material to share for anyone who does, BTW.) Maybe if The Shield made more of an effort to signal that it was an Important and Serious Drama, by using Expensive Sets and Cinematic Tricks, people would respect it better. But I think the house style works perfectly for the world of the show and enhances the drama.

why are you so condescending all the time? the whole "you only appreciate it if you're smart enough to appreciate it" attitude is just ridiculous. is it really impossible to "get" the shield, not be an idiot, and not enjoy it?

How am I being more condescending than the people who say "Sorry, you're just wrong?"

Dudd, if you want a real man's show, then you should check out Hannibal. I believe my thoughts are it are known.

Let's go through those three quotes one by one for the tone police. It's not about being "smart enough." Jesus, if I thought the people here were too stupid to "get" The Shield, I sure as hell wouldn't be wasting my time trying to convince them it's really good.

It's about saying what you actually mean. Everyone's responses to me have been so broad and general that it's hard to have a conversation.

I don't think The Wire and The Shield merit a direct comparison, because their literary ancestors are so different. How is this condescending? I feel like such a comparison misses the point of The Shield primarily for that reason, and would gladly have followed up on that point.

That's the kind of conversation I'd love to have, but so far no one is interested in having it, just in telling me I'm wrong. Hence quote #2:

Quote #3:
If he'd said "The Shield has cheesy dialogue," I wouldn't have argued. I don't mind it but I can't deny that there's some cheese and some cringe-worthiness to it. But dialogue isn't writing. Writing is story and plot and consistent characterization. At that, The Shield excels. I don't think what I've said is any more condescending than the typical tone around here, and even if it is, given that I was responding to someone who said, quote, "It's ok to be wrong," I was not the most condescending person in a two-person exchange.

I fight hard for The Shield because it's underrated, and it's underrated because it doesn't announce itself as an Important Drama through its style or subject matter. In fact, it's actually exciting, and most Important Dramas announce themselves in part through their stuffiness and lack of action.

I'd love to have a conversation about why that is and see if I could change people's minds about it. Instead everyone tells me "No ur wrong lol." And I'm the one being condescending?

one person said "nath it's ok to be wrong"- i ignored him and figured you would do the same. i don't think, however, clowntable was arguing from a right/wrong perspective. it seemed to me that he was just giving his personal reasons for preferring the wire to the shield.

when you respond to that with "you just didn't get it" or "none of you want to discuss the show on my level"...then yes, you come off condescending.

I am a little more hardcore fighting for The Shield than other shows, because it's one that it's easy to put on in the background and watch for the action moments and the plot happenings and miss what makes it really so good. It is a show that is possible to watch and not think about much and enjoy. It is also a show which can give a viewer a tremendous amount to think about.

That said: clowntable said The Wire was better than The Shield because of the acting. I didn't agree and gave examples. Not condescending; in fact, a genuine attempt to engage the subject.

I also said the comparison of one being "better" than the other misses the point, which I believe. I have many reasons for that, but we didn't go further. I mean, if saying someone missed the point is condescending, well... fine, call me condescending, because people miss the point sometimes.

Anyway, I would rather discuss the show than how I "come off" when talking about it.

And it's not that I think any of you guys are dumb, it's that in my experience when people watch the whole series and don't fully enjoy it, it's largely because they weren't paying much attention to it, because it's an easy show to put on and grind in the background and only turn your head up when you hear a commotion. It's a reaction borne from experience in talking about the show, not from anything particular about any of you.

Dudd is right that it does not seem like much more than a high-paced procedural during the first season. But if you liked that season at all, stay with it, because it gets better and better, and it still has the best finish of all time to a TV series. I mean... I drafted the final season #1 overall in the TV draft. You know how I feel about this show.

The acting on The Shield is great, although I strongly disagree with Nath about CCH Pounder's relentlessly heavy-handed performance. The Wire had a lot of very weak acting - but that's not a mortal sin on a show with like 80 important characters.

I think what makes The Wire >>> The Shield is the tightness of the plotting. Everything on The Wire had a point-conveying purpose (think Bunny Colvin's introduction many episodes before he became relevant - and excepting some of season five's sloppiness).

The Shield had plenty of plot wrong turns and non-starters (e.g. the eventual fumbling of Michael Jace's character). Anyone who's seen an ep of SoA knows that Kurt Sutter has horrible FPS (or laziness) when it comes to planning out a season arc. His fingerprints become very evident as the show goes on.

In conclusion, Nicky Sobotka's girlfriend's tits should be in True Detective season two.

The Knick is on Cinemax apparently. HBO GO pulled a fast one by providing the first episode there for a while, fooled me. So now I'm going to marathon Big Bang Theory.

I absolutely loved The Shield, enough so that I need to rewatch both it and The Wire to decide which one I like more. The Shield did seem to transform quite a bit after the first season, it should be interesting to go back and see it again. RONNIE is a criminally underrated character from The Shield.

Loved Ronnie.

But Ronnie's ascent (from what I read fron the writers) came more from fan reaction than having any sort of arc in mind. The show works out excellently in the end but it looks more like a happy accident than genius.

More thoughts later, but the "Julien is a self-loathing gay man" plot was dropped largely because Michael Jace didn't want to play a gay character. Shawn Ryan also mentioned that gay men who try "living straight" tend to make it work for about 7-10 years before their internal conflicts really cause problems. Since the show is supposed to be set over ~3 years, it was impossible to make the timeline work for further conflict given the decisions Julien had made already. (Oddly, you excuse "season five sloppiness" in The Wire, but you don't make any such allowances for The Shield having to adjust for behind-the-scenes problems with actors- not just Jace, but they had problems with a couple prominent guest stars late in the show's run.)

I think The Shield is incredibly tightly plotted, although not as complex as The Wire. The Shield impresses me so much because it gets seven seasons out of one fundamental story, introducing very few new elements after act I, and without walking back the consequences of any character actions.

And literary-wise, The Wire is Dickens or Tolstoy; The Shield is Shakespeare or Sophocles. One is a dense and sprawling portrait; the other is a tragedy tightly focused on a small group of people.

The full seven-season plan of The Shield didn't come formed until sometime in seasons two or three. But I don't see how that's a problem; it is actually quite brilliant the way only two major events drive everything that happens in The Shield.

Ronnie was originally cast in the pilot because they needed a warm body for the Strike Team, but he already starts becoming important as soon as season two. I don't think they made the decision to feature him because of fan reaction; his role grew as the story demanded it did. It works either way; "happy accident" is a meaningless criticism that can't be proved or refuted.

I think you're unfairly docking The Shield for things you would forgive in The Wire.

Ray Donovan spoilers. I don't watch this show and I thought this was hilarious.

Well I guess this also qualifies as bad acting (at least imo)

Discussion has gotten way out of hand.

Also the writing for Shield is indeed pretty good. Dialogues are another thing (at times, by and large I think they are fine as well) as nath said. I do disagree about the "dialogues are not writing" side remark though. Dialogue is extremely important especially if you aim at drama. I mean classical dramas are dialogue heavy (or dialogue only) for a reason.

That's also why I kind of have to roll my eyes at the Shakespeare comparison. Shakespeare was a dialogue genius (and language genius)

But that's not the kind of comparison I'm trying to make between The Shield and Shakespeare. I'm comparing the nature of their work; Shakespeare wrote drama, not novels (The Wire) or collections of short stories (The Sopranos). The Shield's antecedents are more MacBeth or Oedipus Rex than War and Peace or Great Expectations.

This guy explains it better than me. (link contains spoilers for the whole series)

edit: This is good too for how the style of and performances in The Shield enhance the drama.

3 episodes into Bojack Horseman and I'm really enjoying it

Yeah I loved Bojack as well. Style of humor was right in my wheelhouse.

I`ve eaten pie at the twin peaks diner /coolstorybro.

Recommendations on new stuff? Anyone?

This fall has been doo doo.

Help me here before I Ray Donovan.

I'm liking Gotham but Batman is the only superhero TV/movie stuff I watch so I might be biased. None of the other stuff interests me at all.