I do not watch procedural shows. I don’t like CSI. I do not like Law & Order. “Show crime, list suspects, cops talk about doing cop things, and 30 minutes later, a bad guy confesses to everything.” I don’t like self-contained “wraps up in an hour” neat little dramas. I was a fan of shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer that brought in arcs that span entire seasons, with side episodes and smaller filler that made up the “meat” of the remaining episodes.
I have started watching “The Shield“, and I’m hooked. I blame this on Jeff Cannata from Totally Rad Show. I started watching The Shield after Battlestar Galactica went off the air on Fox Korea. I had made it a habit to stay up and watch BSG, and when this show called “The Shield” took it’s place, I gave it a chance because it came very highly recommended by Jeff. He and I have very similar tastes, so I was willing to watch a few episodes. It’s not like there was anything else on television, ever.
I watched most of what I found out to be the third season. For an arcing story, it didn’t seem too hard to follow the characters. Cop dramas make it easy to jump in most of the time for the sake of new watchers. Their are still “busts” from week to week, but fifteen minutes or so of each show is based around the arc for the season.
Now with MegaTV, I’ve started to catch up to what’s been broadcast so far in Korea. I’ve got the first season finished, and I’m working through the second. The back story stuff has filled in a lot of the questions I had, but it’s made me like the show even more. I still hate the same characters, and root for others like I did before, but no one is a saint on this show.
The Shield is a show that should be very predictable, but shocks and surprises me every single episode. Just when you think a character hits rock bottom, they go farther. Just when you think you’ve witnessed the worst, you get shocked by a new crime. Just when you think someone crosses the line, you worry, then see if they can make it right again. The show plays on my expectations of a cop show and does so much better than the standard procedural drama. I understand Jeff’s passion in trying to promote the show to people now that I’ve seen it. It’s a show worth spreading the word about.
Jeff Cananta’s recommend a few other things I like, like Super Mario Galaxy (he defended it while the other two hosts trashed it), some comic books (Preacher), and a few movies that I ended up enjoying. It’s incredibly cool to watch TotallyRadShow, as it feels like I have a kindred spirit working to sort out the good stuff for me and save my time. Now that I found out that they have a Cowon D2 friendly video podcast (!), I can even watch their show easily when I don’t have time to watch the feed in Miro. So awesome.
