Many new turns during an overall great season 3! . The Shield is one of those shows I think that will attain even more pop culture status as time goes on, even long after it leaves the airwaves. The show is centered on cops who do corrupt things in order to ultimately put a major smash into the drug and arms trades in Los Angeles. I've spent my reviews of season one and two going in depth on how the camera's angles are unique and how each character has a ton to contribute to the show. This time I'm simply going to tell you little bits and pieces of what is going on with season three, and it will probably not make any difference because if you have already seen one and two, you know you have to go back for more!    Season three tends to get deep in two areas. The one area is the character development. Mackey's ongoing separation from his wife, coupled with finding out his second child is also autistic is a big downer, but besides that he's also laying pipe everywhere east of L.A. so it apparently isn't bothering him as much as he'd like to let on. Things between him and Shane Vendrell start to go south quickly. Shane and Vic were always good friends but as the pressure for the team to produce results as well as keep secrets and stay within boundaries mounts, Vic starts pulling back, starts easing off. This action does a boomerang effect for Shane Vendrell, who launches forward with more reckless abandon on cases than never before!    Despite all the drama in their personal lives (Yes, Julian the African American cop, is still gay, still a devout Christian to the point of fanatically, and still married to a women he's trying to have a child with) the street lives are alive more than ever. Rival Gangs, horrible hit squads, CI's (Confidential Informer) and sting operations happen in a one two three punch combination throughout the series.    Kicking off-season three, we have two gangs who are bad, mad and territorial. They are the Byz Latz and the One-Niners. Oh and did I mention they both acquire massive amounts of MP-5 submachine guns to try and further their struggles?    The Armenian mob of course, is still in the ongoing storyline from season 2, and its not getting pretty. People are still showing up with they're feet cut off, and it looks like they are not going to stop. Where did their money go, and who shot two of their men when it was taken? Oh well, excuse us, we're the Armenian mob, and our money train is gone, so its time to hack off more feet! Speaking of the money train, Vic decided to use some of it in an undercover operation, only to accidentally circulate it back into the drug trade. What Vic doesn't know is that there was someone else watching the Armenians, and slipped in ten thousand dollars worth of MARKED BILLS.    The Strike team is in hot water as well as the "Decoy Squad" is now implemented to ultimately take over their job after a trial run. This is how great this series is, you take a bunch of newbies and chuck them into an ongoing plot and all they do is ADD their talent in acting and screen presence to the table. Some interesting heat will come down on the decoy squad, as well as something terrible happening to Juliens former partner Tommy.    The corruption and mystery within the crime community runs deep, but doesn't ever lose us much. On the surface we still are able to keep up with the Strike team walking the line between good cop/bad cop, and gangs galore continue to wreak havoc in the streets. The drama and problems with EACH character continues to mount to the point you think it will crash before winning. Wrong again, these stories are tightly written and really do a good job to keep us intrigued because lets face it, like life, in the Shield you never know what is going to happen next.    The last few episodes are pretty intense. The strike team gets dissolved and Shane gets partnered up with a new guy named "Army" (he's an Iraq war veteran). Shane and Vic have a showdown of sorts, which really comes from all of the money issues and changed tactics involved in the money train. Season four will surprise you as well as please you, as it will see the roles of these 2 friends change quickly enough.    Season three starts off a little slow but considering the buildup to the ongoing storylines that are really turning into quite the dramatic and suspenseful mini-epics we hoped they would be, it's well worth the weight. Claudette and Dutch are still there cracking cases every day. Aceveda also appears to be going over the edge and it will be interesting to see if he can ever come back in the future
Output: POS