Interrogating The Shield

4. Fitting the Profile

65 Fitting the Profile Dutch Wagenbach, Realism, and the Ensemble Lorna Jowett Watching The Shield (FX, 2002–2008) for the first time, I was immediately struck by the parallels between one of its key characters, Detective Holland “Dutch” Wagenbach, and Agent Fox Mulder of The X-Files (Fox, 1993–2002). Both characters are interested in psychology and skilled in profiling; both are presented as marginal to their professional organization ; and both have a strong individual relationship with a female partner. Both seem to be dedicated to their job to the point of having no private life, but what we know about their personal history suggests that they have been damaged psychologically; and their romantic or sexual lives are also problematic. But whereas attractive and successful Mulder is a hero in a two-character show that blends genres and has a fantastic premise, Wagenbach is part of an ensemble of characters in a much more firmly rooted genre show with an aesthetic of gritty realism. In the parallel televerse of The Shield, the intellectual with an interest in psychological profiling is not a clean-cut FBI hotshot who resists from the inside; he is rumpled, ageing, and part of a police team whose other members often ridicule him. This chapter examines how the differences between these two characters can be in part ascribed to the development of television drama over the past thirty years. The Shield sits among a plethora of “quality” television shows that seek to attract educated, affluent viewers who appreciate complex serial narratives and deep characterization, backed up by high production values and distinctive visual style. The X-Files was a significant 4 66 | Lorna Jowett forerunner of this type of television. Both genre and notions of “quality” in television affect the aesthetic and the treatment of character in these shows, and The Shield, in common with many other US drama serials, has a large ensemble cast that inevitably positions Wagenbach in different ways than Mulder. The ensemble, however, arguably adds complexity to rather than limits the scope of Wagenbach’s character development. Mulder ’s vulnerability and emotional openness, for instance, are part of his attraction as an apparently different type of hero; Wagenbach’s vulnerability derives from the human weaknesses displayed by every character on The Shield. Although Mulder’s heroism is often reinforced through his approach to solving cases, through his devotion to his work and seeking “the truth,” and through his relatively egalitarian relationship with his female partner, this chapter explores how these same characteristics in Wagenbach are contrasted with the ensemble and thus mobilized to interrogate multiple constructions of masculinity relating to public, professional , and private life. Genre and the Realist Aesthetic The X-Files was deliberately constructed as cult television, drawing on fantastic modes. What is often called “quality” television reaches back further and was frequently formulated via more traditionally “realistic” genres such as the cop show or detective drama—for example, Hill Street Blues (NBC, 1981–87) and Cagney and Lacey (CBS, 1982–88). The Shield, starting in 2002 and situated in a different television landscape, has markers of quality television and is clearly influenced by preceding shows. Quality television, like cult television, announces itself in various ways, and style is perhaps one of the most immediate. The X-Files found a niche by presenting a mixture of genres and a concomitant fusion of imagery deriving from film noir, science fiction, and horror. The Shield eschews genre hybridity, although since the 1980s police drama has taken on board elements from both soap and melodrama. Yet style is important here, too, and the show develops stylistic features from previous generations of police drama that promote a particular version of realism. It can be argued that in both shows spectacle is a key element. In its use of tropes from science fiction and horror, The X-Files leans on genres Fitting the Profile | 67 readily associated with spectacle, although somewhat paradoxically, perhaps , the series offers glimpses rather than explicit views of the alien or the horrific. As Catherine Johnson has observed, the visuals of The X-Files play with revelation, obfuscation, and discovery (2005, 104). The Shield provides spectacle through action, offering more action pieces than other “quality” police dramas do and “amping up” the cinema verité style of earlier shows such as NYPD Blue (ABC, 1993–2005). Like NYPD Blue, episodes of The Shield begin in medias res, but here each...