MovieFreak.com - "The Shield - Season 2" DVD Review

Starring: Michael Chiklis, CCH Pounder, Benito Martinez, Jay Karnes, Michael Jace, Catherine Dent, Walton Goggins, Kenneth Johnson

As leader of the elite Strike Team unit, the pitbull Detective Mackey (Chiklis) administers his own brand of justice as he tries to maintain balance in the criminal ecosystem of L.A.'s seedy Farmington division. Mackey and his team write the rules as they go along.

I could really use a smack across the head, because I missed the first season of The Shield. I heard about it and knew about it, yet I never tuned in. I guess I was busy watching another "great" show on TV, namely 24. But I'm okay now, because I just watched Season 2 on glorious Fox DVD. I got my first fix of this show, and it was an incredible 13-episode marathon in two days, so now I can't wait for the Season 3 to premiere March 9 on FX at 10pm. Mark your calendars. What makes this show so entertaining and gritty, you ask? Here are a 13 reasons.

Well, okay, I'll go into a little more detail, but I won't spoil anything. You need to see Season 2 for yourself and discover the coolness of The Shield.

First of all, the stories are fun to follow. Each episode begins a new investigation for our characters, but there is a bigger story that affects the characters mutually and continues through all 13 Season 2 episodes. Second, the characters are interesting. Season 2 gives almost all of them a certain edge and personality; something that affects and changes them, makes them realistic. At the end of the season, each character experiences a payoff, but they're all different. Some of the characters face harsh reality, while others get it all for themselves.

Now that you know everything you need to know about characterization, let me introduce the major players. There's the Strike Team that goes out on the street, including Mackey, and Detectives Shane Vendrell (Goggins) and Curtis Lemansky (Johnson). Then there are Detectives Claudette Wyms (Pounder) and Holland "Dutch" Wagenbach (Karnes) who investigate crime scenes, and Officers Julien Lowe (Jace) and Danielle "Danny" Sofer (Dent) who patrol the Farmington area. Last but not least, there is Captain David Aceveda (Martinez), a stubborn and determined man. He plans to run for office, but to succeed in that he needs victories for his precinct, which brings him to form an alliance with Mackey, a man he knows is dirty one way or another. The rest of the stories are better left to speak for themselves by watching the show; it's much more effective that way.

The Shield is also terrific in terms of acting, cinematography, set design, and most important, the writing. Each episode displays a sense of toughness and grittiness. Dialogue is usually pretty realistic, except for one or two clichéd one-liners. The show does a great job of putting a lot of story and plot threads into only 13 episodes, like The Sopranos and Six Feet Under for example. However, a part of me wants The Shield to run longer than that so it doesn't come to an end as quickly, yet the show is designed for 13 episodes specifically. In the end I have no complaints about it.

Additionally, every episode moves at a fast pace, which makes the show very watchable. Also, like CSI, the show compresses time for purposes of drama, excitement and narrative flow. This approach works great for CSI, but it works even better for the The Shield. Like I said, the acting is great all around, lead by the Emmy-award winning Chiklis. Another cool aspect about the show is its use of actual locations, fueled by the always hand-held camera that adds to the show's grittiness.

In short, The Shield is an addictive show. It just gets to you. Despite showcasing police officers who aren't all that clean, the show is still very appealing. Its gritty atmosphere makes it entertaining. Before I end my discussion, I should mention The Shield is often quite violent and makes use of many curse words, most of which you would only think to hear on HBO, not on FX. According to the show's tagline, "the road to justice is twisted." Indeed it is.

Fox presents The Shield in its original 1.33:1 full frame aspect ratio. The show is shot on video to give it a more visceral and gritty atmosphere. However, this causes a problem; too many grainy images. While this doesn't really bother me, it still sticks out. Colors look bright and vivid. Detail is fine. Also, I didn't notice any compression artifacts. Overall, a pretty decent transfer!

Fox presents The Shield in English Dolby Surround Sound. While this may not be a 5.1 soundtrack, it still sounds loud and crisp. Surrounds are used sparingly, but the sound effects come across with great punches. Dialogue is clear and easy to understand. The short music cues also sound pretty good. Overall, this is a pretty good soundtrack presentation.

This time there are only four commentary tracks. The season 1 set featured commentaries for all 13 episodes. Also, here we have 37 deleted scenes as opposed to only 17 from the season 1 set. Comparing both sets in terms of extras, I'd say the quality is the same.

Series creator Shawn Ryan moderates all four audio commentary tracks. Track One is for the first episode of the new season, The Quick Fix, featuring Ryan, and actors Michael Chiklis and Benito Martinez. They talk about preparation, acting, their favorite episode, and answer a few fan questions. Overall, it's a good track. Track Two features Ryan, and writers Kurt Sutter, Scott Rosenbaum and Kim Clements on Homewrecker. They go into more detail about the show, characters, the writing process, spec scripts, changes, etc. A pretty good track. Track Three is on Breakpoint by Ryan, Barbara Fiorentino and Rebecca Mangieri. The main topics of discussion are casting, the casting process, and some advice to actors. Some background information can be gleaned from this also. Lastly, Track Four features Ryan, Shawn Kelly, and Eric Shrier on the last episode Dominoes Falling. They discuss the show in general and give some insightful background; all three are talkative, which makes this track pretty good.

The special features menu begins with the 37 deleted scenes. A few of them include a brief audio introductions by Ryan. On the whole, these scenes are nice to see, but they got cut due to time. In fact, Ryan admits somewhere on this set that they shot much more stuff for the second season compared to the first, which explains the number 37.

Next is Wrap Day (26:59), a behind-the-scenes documentary on the last days of shooting the last episode. This one comes from Marc Ostrick, who also edited and directed the insightful 24 documentary. There are some on-set interviews with Chiklis, Walton Goggins, and CCH Pounder. Shawn Ryan also pops up a lot in this one. One particular scene I thought was kind of neat had Chiklis reading an article about the show from the USA Today newspaper. Things learned from this documentary, among others: rehearsals are important and shooting scenes is figured out on the set. Overall, the documentary provides cool footage and is quite insightful as to the process of shooting the show, but like the 24 documentary it doesn't focus on the show as a whole.

Sound Surgery is next. Co-producer Dean White and supervising sound editor Albert Ibbotson introduce this segment. Use your remote to switch audio on various layers of sound design for the "Collin Greens" sequence (1:46) from episode 211, Inferno. Available audio layers are production sound, sound effects, ADR, music, and the composite. It's a neat extra, but only interesting once.

The Editing Room is kind of a draw. Choose between two cuts of the "Connie Gets Shot" sequence, one being the editor's cut and the other the final air version. Despite insightful commentary by Shawn Ryan, who discusses the editing process and a few other things, over both cuts of the sequence, this extra isn't very exciting. This is mainly because the cuts are not much different, the difference is only 15 seconds, and because it's just not a good enough example of showing viewers how a show is edited.

Next is Director's Roundtable (48:23), the second best extra next to the Wrap Day docu. Participating in the Q&A discussion is, of course, creator Ryan, and directors Paris Barklay (NYPD Blue), Scott Brazil (via satellite from Toronto) and Peter Horton. It starts off a little slow, but as it gets more and more interesting along the way. Ryan moderates the discussions, including thoughts from all three directors about directing and improvisation, and a few other things. Most entertaining are the discussions following the showing of a short clip from a specific episode. I appreciated this discussion a lot, especially because Ryan came in very prepared with a list of topics and questions. It was also very nice of the directors to stop by for the chat, though during some parts of the roundtable it seemed they were a bit uncomfortable or unsure what to really say.

In Raising the Barn (9:19), Kitty Doris-Bates gives viewers a brief walk-through of the set. James Newport, Jr. originally adapted a church in East LA into the barn, but later the production recreated the set on a soundstage, making it a little smaller but keeping the two-story set intact. Interestingly, most TV and film sets are only one-story, but for The Shield the second story serves as an interesting vantage point.

Last but not least is the 1-minute "hype" Season 3 teaser that's mostly all dialogue without any actual footage of the show. Some sort of DVD-ROM Game is also included.

You can select to view the film with optional English and Spanish subtitles. The average episode length is 45 minutes and is organized into sixteen chapters. An 8-page booklet lists episode listings and synopsis, cast list, and special features.

Wow, The Shield is seriously addicting. Its grittiness is appealing, the stories are involving, and the characters are interesting. That's all the reason you should need to make an effort and catch up on the show before Season 3 premieres on FX. Fox's video/audio quality is just fine, and the extras are pretty good. This 4-disc set comes highly recommended, well, actually, it makes for a DVD Collector Series item.

THE SEASON/SHOW	10
THE VIDEO	7
THE AUDIO	7
THE EXTRAS	8
OVERALL (not an average)	8