Tuesday March 12, 2002
5012-01-179
Detective Vic Mackey leads an aggressive Anti-Gang unit called the Strike Team. They are ramping up their control in the Farmington district, while Captain David Aceveda is working to eliminate corruption in the precinct. Aceveda and Detective Terry Crowley team-up to bring down the Strike Team. Meanwhile, detectives, Dutch Wagenbach and Claudette Wyms, investigate a murder wherein a young girl was kidnapped by the victim's addict husband.
Write a Recap »An introduction to Vic Mackey and the world of dirty cops *Spoilers* hide show
This, the pilot episode of the shield, was a great start for an amazing series. We are introduced to an original story of drug dealers, gangs and dirty cops. There is alot going on in this episode...
The Strike Team is constructed of 4 people: Shane Vendrell, Curtis Lemanksy, Ronnie Gardocki and the leader Vic Mackey. Aceveda, who is head of the Farmington police department for 4 months, doesn't trust Vic. He adds one new member to the Strike Team, Terry Crowley who acts as an informant. The Dutch and Claudette plot deal with a women found dead in her house with her daughter missing. The suspect of the murder, who is a drug addict and husband of the dead women admits to killing his wife, and also stating that he sold his own daughter. The Strike Team bust a drug dealers house in the last minutes of the episode, they take out the men. Vic turns to Terry and shoots him dead.
Shocking ending to an amazing pilot. This instantly hooked me to the series.
received dvd season 1 for xmas hide show
Been watching this human failure for 6 years. Since the time season 2 started. I only caught a few of the first season episodes. Now that its done I'm ready to start from the beginning. This is great, I will be enjoying watching this drama from the get go. I did not realize that Vic went and killed Terry in the very first episode. What a way to hook, line and sinker an audience. Everyone on the show looks so young and naive except Vic and his crew. The character changes in the cast over 7 years is nothing short of incredible. This show was blessed with a great plot and even better acting. Well done by all. KC
Pushes the envelope further than any basic cable TV network show of its time. hide show
I've been watching The Shield since the day it aired in March 2002, however I have never reviewed it online. Everyone else that has reviewed it (favorably) has summed it up for me so there's not much left for me to say..
Except the my first viewing of this episode left me absolutely speechless. This show, at the time, pushed the envelope further than any other show on the air at the time. After Mackey and the Strike team chases down their suspect and pulls down his pants...exposing his arse on national TV I KNEW instantly that this show would be one of my favorites TV dramas of all time!
Rarely do I side with the "bad guys" (except in the movie "Heat" and some others), but not once did I ever want any of the Strike Team members to get caught. From episode one, this show has kept me on the edge of my seating impatiently waiting for more!
I have heard for many years that The Shield was worth watching. Now, with The Sopranos gone, I was looking for something to fill the void. I may have found it. hide show
Don't get me wrong- I'm not ready to declare this series on a par with The Sopranos. I don't know if that level of quality will ever exist on the small screen (or anywhere else, for that matter) again. But this is a very good show in its own right.
The pilot episode wastes no time in sucking the viewer right in to the gritty, violent world of Vic Mackey and his Strike Team task force cops. Vic does whatever it takes to get the job done, and his superiors have turned a blind eye to his questionable methods as long as he produces. That is, until now. A new Captain is after Vic's badge, and he is willing to use his own extreme methods to take this dirty cop down.
This is a series that, like The Sopranos, couldn't be realistically done anywhere other than cable. There is plenty of cursing, violence and general bad behavior, though not the nudity and gore of an HBO or Showtime series. It's enough to get the job done with a credible sense of realism, though. The pilot and its gut punch of an ending made me want to follow more of this story, and that's all you could ask for. We'll see how it turns out. I still miss ole Ton' on Sunday nights, though *sigh*
I thought this was a very intense pilot episode, with a huge shock at the end that left me speechless at what I had just seen. I knew the cops in this devision were bad, but I didnt think he wouldnt outright murder the guy at the end of the episode like that. the only think I didn't like about the episode was the inability to really gather information about all of the characters. The characters didn't get too much of a chance to fully deveolop, with many characters being introduced in such a short time. Names were hard to follow, but that will become easier as the show continues on. The sidestory of the man who was raping young girls was interesting and I liked the interogation tactic used by the main guy of the show (as you can see none of the names really stuck with me) The ending was mindblowing, which is good from a pilot because it makes you want to watch ever more.
Gino24
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