over the next several weeks i will be reviewing the most psychologically powerful episodes of television over the last ten years.

any genre. just has to be in the last ten years.

if you you have nominees please list below and i will give the appropriate consideration.

all my favorite themes.

good vs. evil

God vs. Satan

the end of the world

the antichrist.

sounds like Millennium. but it is not. it is so not.

it started badly. it ended badly.

the dialogue was horrible and the plot was some kind of twisted mix of The O.C., Carrie, and Rose Mary's Baby - without all the good stuff from the latter 2.

watching the entire 13 episodes was like trying to choke down rancid meat. lots of vomit.

now i want to hurt Marti Noxon for her role in this travesty.

agatha christy meets g.k. chesterton meets humprhey bogart meets joss whedon.

this show brings something back to television. crime procedurals like C.S.I. try to put mystery back into television - this show succeeds where everybody else fails.

this is straigth up mystery at the best ive ever seen on tv.

plus the lead character is a brainy blonde. cant go wrong there.

go buy the first season on dvd now.

the case could be made that i have way too much time on my hands. i think the people making that case will only have more fuel for the fire as i begin a second blog to deal with all the trifling things that don't belong on the main one. all right, maybe not trifles. but matters that are more hobby related.

which brings me to the topic at hand.

television show The Shield.

last week i watched the entire first 3 seasons of the show on dvd. (i have to wait for shows to come out on dvd because the waiting weeks at a time for only an hour of show make me toe the line of murderous rage.) justin has been telling me for ages to pick it up and watch and i have put it off till now. but finally i picked up the first season at best buy and developed a sense of ownership and so the rest was inevitable.

this is not your parents police drama. im pretty sure its not even your older brothers detective show. miami vice is tea and cookies compared with The Shield. graphically violent and machiavellian, it is often difficult to distinguish good guys from the bad guys. its been promoted as morally ambiguous fading into darker shades of grey. but i would classify the show simply as a journey examining moral, ethical, and personal consequences of a group believing in the will to power. not that there are not moral dilemmas threading the show, but these are products brought on by the conflict of theoretcal good (the rules and laws of government) with practical evil (drug dealers, gangs, prostitution et cetera). from the pilot the will to wield and use power to influence and control the city of farmington is the driving force of the strike team. unable to control a member of their team with the threat of losing control vic shoots the newest member of his squad. cop takes down cop.

is it morally ambiguous? not in the beginning. only as the show moves into the second and third season as vic begins to be ground in some vague moral system does begin to be ambigous.

season 4 comes out on dvd december 26.

well written with moments of powerfully poignant pyschological moments The Shield is one of two cop shows worth watching on television.

The other is 24.