FX
This was a cop show like no other. It centered around a team of cops in the mythical town of Farmington, California. They are called a "strike team" and they are called in on much of the gang and drug violence in the city. The team is headed up by Detective Vic Mackey who is played by Michael Chiklis. This team is a bunch of dirty low-down scoundrels - a gang in their own right. And that is what separates it from other cop shows. Nothing like a bunch of money grubbing, stealing, crooked cops to shake up a genre.
The seasons do blend in, one to another, but one can never forget that in the very first episode, Vic Mackey shot one of his own strike team members. So our "hero" or rather 'anti-hero" is a cop-killer from the beginning. And no matter how much good he does from then on, I, as a fan, could never get that out of my mind.
The seasons took many twists and turns, but it always seemed to center around the corruption from the strike team and the lengths they would go to making the sick seem reasonable.
Let me introduce the strike team members besides the aforementioned Vic Mackey: Det. Shane Vendrell played by Walton Goggins (the only guy who could ever do the "Jack Nicholson Story" and the reason I started watching "Justified"). Then there is Kenneth Johnson as Det. Curtis Lemansky more commonly known as "Lemonhead" or mostly just "Lem". Lem was one of the boys but he at times displayed something the others never did: a conscience. The remaining Det. was Ronnie Gardocki (David Rees Snell). Oh, occasionally others were sent in to attempt to spy on the team, but they never lasted long.
The strike team is truly a brotherhood of corruption, but none more passionate in his loyalty to it and its members than Vic Mackey. He would kill for these guys and in fact does. The fact that these guys love living way over the line is apparent to the rest of the department, and there was more than one Captain sent in to try and catch the strike team wrong. But the team thrives on management's hair-splitting last second near misses. Glenn Close was a Captain for a season. Forrest Whittaker was very memorable as a cop sent from Internal Affairs to get them. He nearly does but then is outsmarted in how to play on the field of lies, cheating, and corruption. The most notable Captain was David Aceveda played impeccably by Benito Martinez. Captain Aceveda gets caught up in a twisted storyline of his own.
And there are other great cast members and other interesting storylines too. CCW Pounder as Det. Claudette Wynns and her partner Det. Holland "Dutch" Wagenbach. Catherine Dent and Michael Jace as Officers Danni Sofer and Julian Lowe respectively are wonderful. These were the good cops. And there were a slew of bad guys, even worse than the cop bad guys.
This show won a Golden Globe in 2002 for Best TV Series Drama, and Chiklis won a Golden Globe that year for Best Lead Actor in a Drama. So it was getting it's share of respect. And I think that the show just got better from that point. Some might say the writer Kurt Sutter was a part of that. He went on to create "Sons of Anarchy."
Occasionally there were references to Chiklis and Vic Mackey in the TV show "Weeds" (see my #11). There was a problem and Silas suggested to his younger brother "WWVMD?" Mother Nancy asks, "WWVMD?" and young Shane answers "What would Vic Mackey do?"
Whatever he would do, take it from me, it would be corrupt, underhanded, but oh so interesting.
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