Search - The Shield - The Complete Fourth Season on DVD

A glass half empty, glass half full season

Mike | San Jose, CA | 04/14/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Glass Half Empty Review: From the moment her character is introduced, it is obvious that Glenn Close's Captain Monica Rawling is positioned for a fall, and a big one. For those who have followed the Strike Team for 3 seasons, it's splintered. Suspension of disbelief is required as some elements are introduced into the season's plot. During the first few episodes, Anthony Anderson's bad guy Antwon Mitchell seems like another textbook "drug dealer hiding behind his fake community leader" facade. Glass Half Full Review: Glenn Close is good in her role...very, very good, and it showed no small amount of risk taking for creator Sean Ryan to "cleanse the palate" after Benito Martinez's Captain Aceveda's ascension to city council by introducing a strong female lead. The strength of The Shield lies in the fact that every character, from the most noble to the most evil, is flawed in some way (just like real life). Rawling is no exception. By splintering the Strike Team, Ryan has plenty of free space to peel back the layers of each character. Everyone evolves, including the Dutch-Claudette dynamic, Dutch's awkward blind date with Claudette's friend (caught on a surveillance cam and savored in the Clubhouse by Vic & friends), Dutch asking Corinne out on a date, Julian's refusal to break down the doors of a church stocked to the rafters with black tar heroin, and Aceveda's visit to...OK, that's enough teasers. The events of Season 5, particularly the Lem-Shane dynamic, pack a MUCH greater punch when you allow Season 4 to set them in motion for you. And Antwon? You'll find out that the hype surrounding this character is no hype when you hit Disc 2. Glass half empty, glass half full...a transitional season with no apologies, and still one of the best...if not THE best...shows on television."

Anderson and Close great additions for season four!

Eddie Lancekick | Pacific Northwest | 07/09/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"By now the quasi-criminal multi storied series "The Shield" has garnered enough fan support to trek on at a blistering pace. With season four, plotlines explode and more major changes that had built up from season three are laid out on the table with safeties off and the barrels pointing in all directions. The ricochet effect is fun to follow as we never know what is going to happen next, whether it is within a drug cartel storyline, the personal trauma outside of "The Barn" (the HQ of the Farmington police) or the character developments themselves.

The latter really was a jolt as we saw some supreme changes. Forget the linear path of the ricocheting bullet, can you say, "He did a complete 360??" You'll be saying that when you witness the choices some of the characters make. Aceveda, Vic Mackey, Shane, as well as some loopy loops with a man recently let loose from prison who is trying to act like a saint for the community (Anthony Anderson as Antwon Mitchell) while building up his drug trade at the same time. Farmington will also experience death, which makes the show come across even more "realistically" than past seasons. This climatic action will couple with the actions of Shane trying to go his own with another unit only to find himself, as we saw at the end of season three, begin to backfire on him. As mentioned in the title, perhaps the greatest part of season four is the introductions of the already mentioned Antwon Mitchell and superstar actress Glenn Close! Glenn plays the new police captain Monica Rawling and her no nonsense attitude and passionate micro management style rubs elbows with many at the beginning. In the show, her past has a connection with Mitchell as she had worked with a partner who ultimately played dirty cop to put Mitchell in prison for over a dozen years. Mitchell was no saint though; don't think he was one of those guys that were "wronged". Anderson, who's played in a ton of movies and television shows, really brings out the bad side of his character in great ways. I used to love watching his funny antics and mannerisms in "Me myself, and Irene". You won't find a fun loving pudgy kid here; Mitchell is all business, dirty, down, and ready to cross any line. He's also a leader and that is what scares the department as he holds meetings with community members in telling them to take back their streets from dirty cops.

Season four again shows Shane married, and now with a baby, but no longer in the department. He's now on his own with another department and quickly uses the trades of the craft of "dirty" cop he learned while working with the strike team to get close to Mitchell. Before he knows it, him and his partner "Army" (so named because he's an Iraqi war vet from the army) soon find themselves in deeper than they ever want to be. Before Shane knows what is happening, Mitchell has him wrapped around his finger, and the body of former strike team member officer Lemansky's CI (Confidential Informant) with Shane and Army's bullets in her as collateral. This plotline is superb as we see and more importantly, FEEL Shane's agony as he realizes he's in over his head. Mitchell offers him a way out that doesn't help matters: Vic Mackey's body for the girl's body. A body for a body. Little does Shane know that the Dodge Durango issued to him still has the video camera in it while he's doing some work with Farmington, and the conversation is later seen by the former strike team members. Close does a stupendous job as the new captain and at the same time she's battling her own demons on the surface. Aceveda, who formerly held the job, is now on the city council and doing everything he can to undermine her power. Her new "seizure" policy is working, but it's rustling up the natives to the point of an all out war. The policy is part of a federal law that allows the department to seize and auction off any item known to be bought with drug money. Before they know it, people are without cars and homes in many of the outlying neighborhoods, and the moral question comes into play. She sticks to her guns despite eventually finding that, like Shane, when you go down that path so long, even if you feel right about it, you can reach the point of no return.

This ultimately leads up to one of the biggest and most traumatic stories of the entire series history. One-night officers Scooby and Carl don't check in with dispatch after responding to a 9-11 call. After they don't turn up, and all out search is done throughout the area the next day. Eventually their bodies are found inside a seizure house. They have both been bound and stabbed to death. The loss of these two officers enrages the police force while at the same time leaving the community reaction as "we told you so". Meanwhile, back at "The Barn", Shane has now come clean and teamed up with his old strike team so that they can make a clean sweep of the "collateral body" and find Antwon Mitchell guilty of the cop killings. Things seem to come together but then fall apart. A misunderstanding about what "horses" the body is at (the strike team think stables, when it actually means in the same park area, a carnival carousel ride) leaves the team out of time before Antwon reveals where the body is. Now they have to tell the captain what is going on and hopefully not have Shane and Army lose their careers. Mitchell is eventually found guilty of killing the girl when he needed to squeeze Shane of power, but they soon tag the hit on the dead cops on him as well.

Things again take a turn for the worse: This is where Aceveda comes in. He was the former police chief now on the city council. During an altercation in a house bust in season three, Aceveda found himself outnumbered by a couple of hoods and in order to save his life he had to do something of sexual nature that was very disturbing and humiliating. The act was caught on cell phone. Jump forward to season four, now the guy is in jail and telling Aceveda that unless he gets him off that he'll tell the world AND show the picture. Aceveda turns to Antwon and lets him strike a deal with the DA to turn in the higher ups on the El Salvador arms deals that are pumping AK's into the streets. On the side Aceveda asks him to make sure for the guy who made aceveda do dirty deeds in the home to "miss the court date". Ultimately the man ends up a little worse for wear than Aceveda imagines, and Antwon goes with a plea bargain. When word of all this gets back the barn, Monica Rawlings as well as Vick Mackey (Michael Chiklis) are outraged. Oh I forgot to mention that the ordeal Aceveda went through seemingly unlocked some weird sexual fantasies of his own as he starts seeing a high-class prostitute. Yeah, like I said, he did a complete 360. I can only wonder who in season five is going to have their characters habits and actions get turned upside down!

Several of my friends felt that seasons three and four were not as good as the first two, but I disagree. If we had everything like the first two, we would be done. It would become a spinning wheel in the mud and eventually bog down to an end. Instead this wheel is always moving, always finding traction, and turning at any given time, even doing a "360" now and again! Great character twists, plots that have purpose and direction with surprising outcomes, and tight writing that doesn't leave a stone, or new leaf unturned, makes season four a season to remember. I only hope that we see more of Close and Anderson in the future, even though their fates were both pretty much sealed by seasons end."