My Thought on Season 3 of "The Shield"

Spoilers on Season 3 of "The Shield" Below:

The 3^rd Season of The Shield isn’t nearly as good as the previous two seasons that came before it. It’s not that it was bad (the show was still far outperforming most other tv series), but the show had become more unfocused. The stakes didn’t feel as high and a number of characters felt poorly utilized (Danny is barely given any major story time). The reason for this became clear to me at the end of episode 9’s “Slipknot”; the Strike Team really hadn’t been the Strike Team all season long. Under the watchful gaze of Claudette as their new supervisor, the Strike Team wasn’t out on the street beating up on drug dealers, prostitutes, and the like.

There were still complications as per usual; most notably the consequences of the Money Train blowing up in the Strike Team’s face, but the Strike Team didn’t feel like the ground would come out from them at any moment like in the second half of the 1st season or almost the entirety of the 2^nd season. 

Much of the conflicts thrown at the Strike Team were contained, too brief, or episodic, and this led to a stop-and-start feel that undermined the season. The consequences of Tayvon and Shane’s gruesome, bloody fight and the undercover squad blew over too quick and too forgettablely.  

There remained to be some incredibly interesting character and plot decisions. Aceveda getting forcibly raped was unnerving and disturbing, and ultimately brought out a battered, damaged side out of the character seen too infrequently. The Dutch received the opportunity to show a bit of the shattered, dark psyche underneath the brilliant (albeit desensitized) investigative mind (when he kills the cat to recreate the emotional experience of a rapist, it’s not just unsettling but tinged with deep isolation and sadness). Shane was given more screentime that humanized him far more than in the past, where he could at times be too needlessly, caricaturely mean and cruel. Racial questions that had been dealt with fleetingly or as subplots garnered entire episodes that handled them more fully, including “Slipknot” and “Riceburner”.

But too much of the third season was territory far too well-trotted; Vic and Claudette being at odds was too familiar at times, as was Vic and Aceveda butting heads. When the Dutch and Vic came into conflict at the end of the season (Wagenbach got the inclination that Vic had a hand in the money train) it felt like the plausible and grounded, but unexpected character turns and plot movement that had got me invested in the series in the first place.

The Shield in some respects remained inimitably, indelibly good. But in failing to shake up its formula enough this late in its run, it began to feel like it was just going through the motions.