In the 2002 pilot episode of the hit FX series
The Shield, the show’s merciless and corrupt protagonist, Los Angeles Police Department detective Vic Mackey, played by Michael Chiklis, brutally beats a suspect and murders a fellow officer in cold blood and it only gets worse from there. For the rest of the show’s seven seasons, Mackey displays increasingly disturbing and illegal behavior: torturing and killing suspects, stealing evidence, embezzling money. Not only did the events of that first episode make it onto
Rolling Stone’s “The Shocking 16: TV’s Most Heart-stopping Moments,” but
Entertainment Weekly also named Mackey one of its “16 Ultimate TV Antiheroes.”