The Shield” [ ]
Tonight at 10 on FX
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WITHIN the first five minutes of tonight’s premiere of “The Shield,” you will see: a stiff with large breasts and a potholder covering her now-unmoving parts; cops pulling down a guy’s pants so they can punch him right in (as my mother liked to call it) his down-belows; a grief stricken woman who falls to her knees in front of a detective while assembled cops laugh because it looks like she’s performing oral sex.
In minute six, the show gets good.
Although it’s been described by other critics as a cop version of “The Sopranos,” I don’t see it. The only similarities are the fact that the lead characters are unlikely sex symbols, and on both shows you’ve got a bad guy with a heart somewhere in there.
In this case, the bad guy with a good heart is Michael Chiklis, who used to be a pudgy guy with a good heart in “The Commish.”
He is now a buff guy with a good body, which goes along way in my book. In fact, he no longer looks like Michael Chiklis as much as he looks like the demon love child of Bruce Cutler and Bruce Willis.
Chiklis is Vic Mackey, a rogue cop (not again!) who plays by his own rules and is being investigated (please not again!) by Internal Affairs. So why is this still any good? Because Chiklis is so good, because the writing is very good, and the cast has actors other than great-looking Gen Xers who look like they fell out of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.
Backing up Chiklis is CCH Pounder as Detective Claudette Wyms, who is straight but knows that the cops who work in Mackey’s “strike force” are so crooked they can see around the corner without moving.
Then there’s Mackey’s partner in crime and punishment, Detective Shane Vendrell (Walton Goggins), officer Danny Sofer (Catherine Dent) and the boss who wants to bust all the bad cops, Capt. David Aceveda (Benito Martinez).
On tonight’s opener, Mackey recruits to his elite team a cop who is working for Internal Affairs and trying to nail Mackey and his group. It gets ugly.
Meantime, back to the stiff. Turns out the dead woman has a six-year old daughter who is missing. Traditional cop work brings them to the dead woman’s husband – the little girls’ father – a huge, out-of-control crackhead. Yes, he killed his ex, but not his daughter. Turns out he sold her – to a pervert with a dying mother.
No, this is not a show for sissies.
The only thing that doesn’t work here is some of the dopey, buddy-buddy cop dialogue that’s as real as Cher’s face.