The Shield - Season 1

Question: What do you get when you mix a group of dirty cops, a wannabe politician, and a diverse cast of struggling humanity? Answer: The Shield, one of the edgiest shows on TV cable, The Shield broadcast on the cable channel FX.

The first season of The Shield introduces Detective Vic Mackey (played by Michael Chicklis), a gritty cop who straddles the fence of legality while leading a renegade, but effective, strike force within the Los Angeles Police Department. Mackey is a gritty, dark character with violent tendencies. Intellectually, Mackey is an ends-justify-the-means kind of guy; he is morally committed to exploiting the means to justify the ends. He comes to embody the anti-hero character-type popularized by characters such as HBO's Tony Soprano of The Sopranos and Al Swearengen of Deadwood.

In addition, Mackey also seems incapable of understanding that police work will not make your rich. With his crew, Mackey has established a "retirement fund" comprised of dirty, laundered, or just plain stolen money gleaned from the criminal underbelly the strike force seeks to eliminate.

But Mackey does find ways to get violent, sociopathic, and desperate criminals away form the general population, so despite the initial instinct to revile him, one learns to see his character in a (somewhat) forgiving light. He also displays momentarily brilliant flashes of humanity, but they are always fleeting and many times are self-serving.

Captain David Aceveda (Benito Martinez) is an aspiring city councilman who acts as the foil to Mackey. His ostensible motives are just and fair, wanting to end Mackey's reign of police terror and implement a clean, law abiding strike force.

But, like Mackey and many other characters in The Shield, Aceveda is more nuanced than he appears. His righteousness seems to stem as much from political and career ambition as it does from any pure source of moral rectitude.