The Shield/Recap
Season One
The series opens with Vic and Shane carrying out the murder of Terry Crowley, a new member of the Strike Team that Aceveda convinced to gather evidence on Vic's corrupt antics in order to rid himself of Mackey and the Strike Team. Though he gets away with the murder, Vic's life starts falling apart: Shane has a nervous breakdown due to the guilt over what they did (a breakdown largely brought about by Vic's refusal to let Shane vent his feelings over what they did with him), his son has been diagnosed with autism and requires expert treatment, and he frames an innocent man of trying to kill Lem after Lem accidentally fires on the man (leading to Vic, Lem, and Ronnie having to rob a police vehicle to steal back the gun Vic planted on the man). These things pale in comparison to the revelation that Vic's mentor/patron within the LAPD, Assistant Chief Gilroy, is even more corrupt than he previously imagined. Gilroy triggers a full-scale riot as a result of his manipulation of department resources in areas of the city, leading to multiple deaths in the name of lowering property values within the city as part of a real estate scheme that Gilroy has cooked up. Meanwhile, Dutch and Claudette investigate a serial killer who (upon being caught) tries his best to destroy Dutch emotionally during a lengthy interrogation, while rookie patrol officer Julian Lowe struggles with his homosexuality, which is used against him by Vic as leverage to silence him after he sees Vic pocketing evidence from a crime scene. In the end, Vic brings down his mentor and talks Shane down from the proverbial edge when he finally snaps over the guilt of Terry's death -- but the damage is already done. Vic's wife leaves in the middle of the night with the couple's kids after an encounter with Gilroy makes her realize that her husband is involved in something not on the up and up.
Season Two
This season is roughly divided into two arcs. The first arc pits Vic (having arranged for a truce between himself and Aceveda) against Claudette as the two try to take down ruthless drug dealer/rapist/murderer Armadillo, who disfigures Ronnie in retaliation for Vic doing the same to him. Shane and Lem arrange for Armadillo to be killed as payback for what he did to Ronnie, but it's too little, too late -- Claudette goes from turning a blind eye to Vic's antics to wanting to bring him to down for his corrupt antics.
This is followed by a one-off flashback episode, "Co-Pilot"; this is a Continuity Snarl of an episode that reveals how Vic and Shane formed the Strike Team, Aceveda's first encounter with Vic, and how Dutch and Claudette became partners.
The second half of the season focuses on the growing tension between Claudette and Vic as the Strike Team starts planning to covertly take down a money-laundering exchange (a "money train") being run by the Armenian mob and keep its contents for themselves. Dutch and Sofer deal with professional problems due to a series of screw-ups both individually suffered during the first half of the season, and Julian (having "cured" himself of his homosexuality) marries a single mother, only to later be outed by an ex-lover. The Strike Team also takes on a new member -- a black detective named Tavon -- who is oblivious to the Strike Team's corrupt nature. At the end of the season, Vic is able to work out a cease-fire from Claudette once Vic and Tavon help catch the man who murdered Claudette's estranged ex-husband -- but the cease fire might turn out to be temporary when Claudette reveals that she's been selected to replace Aceveda as the Barn's Captain (since Aceveda has won the primary in order to be his political party's candidate for an opening on the Los Angeles city council). The Strike Team carries out the Money Train heist, though their moment of triumph is quickly replaced by growing dread and fear: stealing the money was the easy part, but keeping possession of the money a secret -- let alone surviving the incoming shitstorm of the Armenians looking for those who stole it -- is the hard part.
Season Three
The aftermath of the Money Train Heist starts to tear the Strike Team apart as the group tries to stay on the straight-and-narrow to avoid suspicion for the robbery. Dutch and Claudette stumble upon the aftermath of the robbery, and the Feds on the group's heels as well. Vic's stranglehold over the Strike Team begins to slip when Shane's relationship with a real estate agent named Mara. Mara and Vic instantly take a disliking to each other, creating tension between Vic and Shane -- especially when Mara discovers their involvement in the Money Train Heist. Making things worse is Mara's unexpected pregnancy, leading to Mara and Shane eloping and creating a schism between Vic and Shane (as Shane's new family leads to him seeking independence from Vic and the Strike Team). Things go further sideways with the revelation that the Money Train's loot is at least partially comprised of marked bills (as the Feds were investigating the Armenian mob), which renders half of the money essentially radioactive -- and things take a bigger turn for the worst when the Armenians send a ruthless hitman into the city to find the men responsible for the robbery. Lem (suffering from ulcers and guilt-stricken after being forced to cover up Shane assaulting Tavon because Vic took a liking to the new guy, which led to Tavon being removed from the team due to his injuries) burns the remaining money; in a fit of madness, he proclaims it to be the only way they'll ever be able to stop any further inquiries into who stole the money. Shane's greed, however, refuses to let him go along with Vic and Ronnie's attempt to move on with Lem; this leads to Lem putting in for a transfer to a new precinct and Shane proclaiming that he doesn't need Vic. After putting in for reassignment, Shane and Vic finally have it out with each other.
Outside of the Strike Team drama, Aceveda is sexually assaulted at gunpoint as a side-effect of one of Vic's attempts to cover up his involvement with the Money Train Heist. Aceveda takes dramatic steps to get revenge on his attackers; he kills one and blackmails the other with threats against his family if he ever talks about what he did. Claudette and Dutch separate as Claudette prepares to take over as Captain, leading to both detectives falling apart; Claudette becomes drunk with power, while Dutch ends up killing a cat after being goaded by a rapist/murderer he spent the bulk of the season chasing after (who said that Dutch doesn't truly know how the criminal mind works). The duo ends up working together again -- just in time for Claudette to commit political suicide by blowing the whistle on corruption within the city's public defender's office and causing several dozen convictions to be overturned as a result.
Julian (separated at work from Sofer) finds himself being torn between the forces of evil (Vic and Julian's new amoral partner Tommy) and good (Danny) as he becomes more aggressive in his job in order to compensate for being outed. Things turn bad when Tommy is implicated in the murder of his ex-wife and son; Vic wants to get Julian to help him kill the guy who did the actual murders so that Tommy can claim deniability, while Danny wants to keep Julian from being drawn into Vic's world of corruption and nihilism. In the end, Julian refuses to kill the man (a decision that, to his shock, ends up gaining Vic's respect), Tommy ends up killing himself rather than go to prison, and Danny and Julian get paired up again.
Season Four
The Strike Team has disbanded and Aceveda has been elected to the city council, and in the wake of Claudette's whistle-blowing, new arrival Monica Rawlings (Glenn Close) takes over the Barn's Captain slot; she immediately begins implementing the controversial policy of asset forfeiture towards criminals. Her belief that seizing property bought with drug money will scare the masses away from the drug trade as a viable means of making money doesn't win her much favor with the public or her superiors.
Rawlings' arrival coincides with the return of drug baron Antwon Mitchell to Farmington; his goal this time is to unite all of the gangs in the city under his control. Mitchell has brokered an alliance with Shane, putting him at odds with Vic and Ronnie, who reunite with Lem to find a way to neutralize Shane; the trio fears that when Shane inevitably screws up, he will rat out the Strike Team in order to save himself. When Shane is unable to warn Mitchell of a raid on one of his major drug labs, Mitchell murders a young girl with Shane's police firearm in order to frame him for her murder (and permanently bind Shane to his employment) as punishment. Vic is eventually able to free Shane from his predicament, though he unknowingly sets into motion a series of events which ends with Lem being caught stealing drugs from a drug dealer by a police informant. As the informant's handler alerts IAD that they finally have one of the Strike Team members dead to rights for police corruption, Mitchell orders the murder of two patrol officers and ultimately sells out his new allies -- the El Salvadorian drug cartel -- to get immunity for ordering the killings. Rawlings is able to get Mitchell's immunity revoked and arrests him for the murders...but she does so at the cost of her job.
Season Five
Internal Affairs Lt. Jon Kavanaugh (Forest Whitaker) attempts to get Lem to turn against the Strike Team after Lem is caught red-handed for police corruption. Kavanaugh and Vic engage in a brutal game of psychological warfare over the course of the season; the games begin as Kavanaugh drives Vic's ex-wife Corrine to seek help from Dutch to deal with the possibility of Kavanaugh arresting her as her husband's accomplice. When Vic figures out Kavanaugh's weakness (his mentally ill ex-wife), Kavanaugh snaps and arrests Lem, who is eventually forced to go on the run. At the end of the season, Lem is killed by Shane; the catalyst for the murder is Aceveda, who after being jerked around by Kavanaugh all season, agrees to trick Vic into thinking Lem has cut a deal to testify against him. Vic vows brutal revenge against Lem's murderer, not knowing that the killer is his closest ally.
Slacker detective Steve Billings' disastrous tenure as Captain forces TPTB to finally promote Claudette (who is revealed to have lupus after taking a massive fall down a flight of stairs) to the job. Rookie Tina Hanlon joins the precinct and attracts the attention of Dutch, who while attracted to her, seeks to mold her into a proper police officer. The most important revelation of the season, however, is when Vic finds out that in two months -- when he reaches his 15th year as a police officer -- he will be forcibly retired from his job, as his sins have finally come home to roost within the LAPD.
Season Six
Vic captures, tortures, and ultimately murders El Salvadorian gangster Guardo Lima (who he believes killed Lem). When Vic finally learns the truth about Shane killing Lem, the Strike Team implodes, and Shane begins taking drastic action to ensure that Vic and Ronnie are unable to hurt him or his family. This includes informing the Armenians that Vic was involved in the Money Train Heist, which forces Shane deeper into trouble as he realizes that Vic's family will be killed as part of the Armenians mob's revenge against Vic. Shane saves Vic's family by kidnapping Corrine and Vic's oldest child, Cassidy, at gunpoint in order to move them to a safe place; in the process, he becomes bound to the Armenian mob as a virtual slave.
Julian is promoted to the Strike Team alongside squeaky-clean new leader Kevin Hyatt; the latter is ultimately fired from the team when Claudette realizes that she'd rather have a corrupt Vic Mackey bringing in the arrest numbers she needs to placate her bosses instead of a by-the-books officer who doesn't produce the instant results needed to keep the Barn from being shut down. Dutch's investigation of a house filled with dismembered body parts leads to the revelation that a major Mexican drug cartel has begun infiltrating Los Angeles, which ties into Vic's discovery that Aceveda's new ally in his mayoral ambitions is part of the stealth invasion. Aceveda's new benefactor offers Vic photographic proof of Aceveda being sexually assaulted, hoping that Vic will use it to bribe Aceveda to save his job in exchange for Vic keeping his mouth shut about what he knows about the cartel's plot. This gambit backfires when Vic and Aceveda decide to put aside their rivalry to stop the cartel; at the end of the season, the duo obtains a box that contain the cartel's blackmail files -- files that implicate countless prominent businessmen and political figures in Southern California as part of the corruption that's allowing the cartel to run rampant -- and begin to set their plan into motion.
Season Seven
Vic makes one last play to wipe the slate clean by arranging a gang war between the Mexican drug cartel and the Armenians; Shane's death is tossed into the mix as well. Shane survives the attempt on his life, which leading to him trying (and failing) to kill Ronnie and Vic. Shane becomes a wanted fugitive, and Vic gives up his badge to try and get revenge while trying to simultaneously bring down the Mexican cartel. Vic eventually switches gears and attempts to convince a naive federal agent to provide him a job within ICE as a "thank you" for his help bringing down the cartel, all while forcing Ronnie to stay by his side even as Ronnie attempts to salvage his own career and find a way to avoid jail time. Outside of Vic's story, Dutch befriends a woman whose teenage son pulls off a seemingly perfect murder; fearing that the teen is a sociopath who could one day become a serial killer, Dutch attempts to get the mother to help him arrest her child for the crime. The season's main storyline converges with Vic driving Shane to kill himself and his family while pulling off a Karma Houdini: unable to get a deal for immunity for both Ronnie and himself, he sacrifices Ronnie to save himself and confesses every single crime he and the Strike Team committed over the course of the show's events. Vic ends up making the arrests he needs to bring down the Cartel and ensure his immunity, but the victory is hollow -- his crimes are now exposed to everyone, his ex-wife has filed for a restraining order against him (after taking Vic's children with her into Witness Protection), and the ICE agent Vic thought he bamboozled forces him to work desk duty for the duration of his three-year "probation" period to fully ensure his immunity from prosecution. At the end of the show, Vic ends up without a family, without a real career, without the power and influence he held while he worked the streets...and without a chance of ever getting any of those things back.
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