any doubt that their schemes were to enrich themselves and continue terrorizing L.A.'s criminals with impunity)." While Finberg adds, "with somebody like The Shield's Vic Mackey, it's supposed to be a push and pull for viewers as to whether we're willing to accept an ends-justifies-the-means approach; is Vic's success in stopping killers, wife-beaters and pedophiles enough to excuse the things he does to get there? Even if the end of The Shield leaves absolutely no ambiguity at all that Vic is a character doomed to, at the very least, a metaphorical hell for his actions, you can't stop viewers from having their own interpretations." In an article on "why he likes nightmarish policemen despite misgivings", Andrew Billen of the New Statesman writes, "Mackey is a thug on the take, not Dixon of Dock Green meets The Enforcer. He's a different type of cop, all right, a maniac cop, and it is his deranged soul that fascinates our writer. At a time when forensic procedure has come to dominate the most successful American crime shows, spawning in the US multiple spin-offs from Law and Order and CSI, The Shield, despite its sensationalist, over-schematic premise, pushes character back into the limelight." Vic Mackey was seen as a pattern of more violent anti-heroes on television. For example, Tim Goodman for the San Francisco Chronicle writes that Mackey "doesn't just cross the ethical line, [he] stomps on it. Forget good cop-bad cop. Mackey is a vicious cop." Ginia Bellafante of The New York Times writes that Mackey "jury-rigged the rules so aggressively, and so often based on nothing more than his own self-interest, that he left the Jack Bauers and Dirty Harrys to seem like hospital gift shop volunteers." Ben Sherlock of Screen Rant adds, "Arriving between the trendsetting reign of Tony Soprano and the game-changing transformation of Walter White, Vic Mackey enjoyed a fascinating arc on The Shield. [...] It's not easy to make a crooked cop work as the protagonist of a police procedural, but Michael Chiklis made for a riveting lead and series creator Shawn Ryan used this atypical hero to put a fun twist on a well-worn genre." James Poniewozik for Time describes him as "Tony Soprano with a badge, the stresses and contradictions of his life betrayed by his tensed jaw and cornered-animal eyes." Similarly, Emily St. James, writing for Slant Magazine adds "In many ways, Mackey is worse