than even Tony Soprano. While Tony has been indirectly responsible for the deaths of innocents, the murders he handles directly are those of people who all have blood on their hands. Mackey has killed (and will, so it is implied, kill again) just to better his own station in life, and that gives the show's attitudes towards him a problematic strain." John Doyle for The Globe and Mail summarizes Mackey as a "bullet-headed goon who is manipulative, corrupt and amoral" and "the embodiment of an America corrupted by greed." On the other hand, Allan Johnson writing for the Chicago Tribune describes Mackey as "a pugnacious brute who wants to keep the peace and protect the innocenthe just seems to relish being loutish about it." He writes that "It's [Mackey's] complexity that makes The Shield a fascinating, if sometimes uncomfortable, series. [...] It is the line that Mackey crosses in the name of justice that gives The Shield its fire, a world that will test viewers who may like their heroes with fewer shades of gray. References The Shield characters Fictional Los Angeles Police Department detectives Fictional murderers Fictional government agents Fictional characters from Boston Television characters introduced in 2002 Police misconduct in fiction