Characters / The Shield - The Strike Team

In General

• The Bad Guys Are Cops: Their job in theory is to curb gang activity and diminish trafficking of all kinds; in practice, however, the Strike Team reframe their utility as mediators in the crime underworld of the district of Farmington, all the better to control the violence and illegal business flow to maintain a "supposed" acceptable level, lining their pockets with blood money. Being part of the LAPD also allows them to get away with deeds such as assault, torture, threats and, in rare but prominent occasions, murder.
• Divided We Fall: On a regular basis, they're able to keep their web of crimes afloat but it doesn't take long for each team member's different agendas and priorities to start nibbling away at the foundation. Starting with Lem's discomfort about playing ball with the group's amoral actions which becomes clearer during the Armenian Money Train robbery in season 2, as well as having to "disappear" the body of the criminal they framed as the culprit in season 3, as well as Shane branching out to find a real family outside of the rest which leads him to place them as a bigger priority, it all comes crashing down when Lem's drug charges cause Shane to take matters into his own hands, leading to the team splitting and looking to protect themselves in the fallout.
• Found Family via Work: The Strike Team enforces with gusto the idea of "family", with the guys showing themselves as a tightly knit-group. In fact, most of the original quartet are hinted to come from broken families with no close relatives, making this bond even stronger. However, the practicality of this is also explored: since they're criminals, staying together is the best way to avoid any possible division or betrayal with no attachments beyond those in the know. This plot point becomes prominent twice: once in season 1 when Vic's secrecy leads to his family ending in a bad position which alienates them and later when Shane gets a family whose safety trumps his loyalty to the Strike Team, with fatal consequences.
• High Turnover Rate: Within the group, it's a given any candidate for the fifth member will never last.
• Keeping Secrets Sucks: As their illegal activities often involve pacts under the table with gangs and mafiosi, the uniting factor for the Strike Team is standing together in the lie that they're upstanding police. However, this also means everyone has to be accomplice through each step of the way, even with actions that they might strongly disagree on a moral basis (Lem), others they might decide are too risky and irrational (Ronnie) or just the ones that threaten their implied bond of trust and camaraderie, as well as their loved ones (Vic/Shane). Complicating this is how often each member decides in the moment to diverge from the plan or take matters into their own hands, keeping others out of the loop.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Deconstructed. Amorality besides, the Strike Team is portrayed in the early seasons as being Necessarily Evil who, despite their illicit activities, succeed in limiting organized crime. As their misdeeds eventually require them to compromise with more delinquents, the amount of collateral damage caused to criminals and citizens alike, as well as the disintegration of any principle and objetive other than self-interest and preservation lead the Strike Team to become just as bad, if not worse, than the gangs they fight.
• Villain Protagonist: The Strike Team is a highly corrupt anti-gang group who seeks to gain leverage and power through enforcing their pecking order on all of the grand players in Farmington while maintaing a quota of arrests based on any intel gathered to keep the facade of competence to the high brass.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Especially at the beginning. The team's high success rate, alongside Vic's commanding presence, not only earn them favoritism with the chiefs above their respective captain's position, but also the unspoken loyalty of the staff in the Barn. As the series goes on, this chain of silence in their favor gradually becomes shakier as the bonds between the Strike Team and the rest of the detectives fray due to the risk of becoming collateral damage to the team's exploits.

Main Group

Vic Mackey

Detective Victor Samuel "Vic" Mackey

"I don't do desks!"

Played By: Michael Chiklis

The main character and leader of the Strike Team. Certainly not your typical cop show protagonist; he shot and killed a fellow police detective in the pilot episode of the series, without any remorse or regret. Despite this (and more), Vic attempts to do right by his family, the officers under his command, and the people in the community he is sworn to protect.

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• Ambiguous Situation: Where does he go at the end? Does he decide to go rogue and spite his immunity deal? Or does he decide to serve his three years and attempt to piece together what's left of his shattered life? Ultimately, it's up to the viewer to decide.
• The Ace: Especially in seasons 1 (in which his friendship with Assistant Chief Gillroy effectively insulates him from nearly any sort of legal repercussions to his extralegal actions) and 5 (in which Captain Billings has almost zero ability or desire to rein him in). Vic's ability to charm people and to talk his way out of difficult situations is unmatched, and he not only fools nearly everybody that he comes across throughout the series, but also bed multiple women as well. He also shows a genuine talent for investigation, if only he had used his skills for the good of the community and not for his own selfish aims.
• Anti-Hero: Of the nominal variety whenever he isn't verging into Anti-Villain or full-on villain territory. Vic is violent, racist, sadistic, and as corrupt as they come, but he's often going after genuinely bad people and trying to bring drug dealers and murderers to justice. At least, the ones that won't work for him.
• Anti-Villain: In the first four seasons. He's a violent Dirty Cop who is nonetheless genuinely committed to ridding Farmington of bloodthirsty drug lords, pedophiles, and serial killers (albeit while lining his own pockets and regularly breaking the law himself). He veers into being a Nominal Hero some of the time if only because he's either genuinely trying to see justice done or up against people far worse than him. However, as the series progresses, he increasingly prioritizes his own livelihood and desires at the expense of those around him thereby becoming a full-blown Villain Protagonist.
• Attention Whore: A major part of Vic's motivation is his desperate craving for the respect and admiration of his fellow detectives. He clearly loves being celebrated for his stellar arrest rate, and he doesn't care that a good majority of his coworkers think he's an asshole so long as they respect him for his detective work.
• Bad Boss: Downplayed. He's often genial towards the rest of the Strike Team and generally fair to them, but he's very prone to lashing out whenever they screw up and often fails to take their opinions and advice into account.
• Balance Between Good and Evil: An In-Universe deconstruction of this mindset. For Vic, whatever despicable course of action can be justified as long as some good may come out of it. In fact, he uses this to propel his crookedness: anything he does for extra power, money or respect are meant to secure his retirement home, protect the everyday man or to pay the admittedly expensive accomidations for his children. Unfortunately, this blinds him to the fact that whatever the ends, the repercussions of such amoral decision-making can affect or even nullify any well-intentioned result. Not to say of anything of how Vic tries to often buy himself out of any residual psychological guilt due to his long rap sheet by attempting large-scale redemption acts (e.g. attempting to help Connie by all means in seasons 1 and 2, enforcing Rawlings's policy in season 4, hobnobbing with ICE to stop a large scale drug operation in Farmington in season 7), which rarely last due to Vic's pathological need to indulge in dark moral territory.
• Bald of Authority: He's bald and the leader of the Strike Team. And for all Vic's corruption, he's legitimately good at his job and rallying his men, which helps make him into a Villain with Good Publicity.
• Bald of Evil: He's a Cop Killer and overall corrupt human being, plus he's bald as Kojak.
• Being Evil Sucks: By the time he realizes this, it's far too late for him to do anything about it.
• Berserk Button: Hurting children and those closest to him, let alone any form of betrayal (as Terry found out), will cause you to suffer the full force of Vic's wrath.
• Bigot with a Badge: Not as much as Shane, but he's still prone to making racist and xenophobic jokes.
• Boisterous Bruiser: Vic is built like a tank and holds his own very easily in a fight. He's also a jovial braggart who frequently comes off as the life of the party, which helps make him well-liked by most of his colleagues.
• The Chessmaster: Played straight but ultimately deconstructed. Vic has a genuine talent for manipulation and thinking on his feet in order to get him out of spots. But his shortsightedness and his arrogance eventually does him in by the end of the series. Sure, he might have escaped justice, but he's lost everything that he cared about.
• Consummate Liar: Here's Aceveda explaining to Kavanaugh why knowing enough about Vic to successfully hunt him down is nigh impossible without getting caught up in his corruption in the process:
  "You’ve never looked Mackey in the eye, had him lie straight to your face, and made you doubt yourself even though you know he was full of shit."
• Cool Shades: Vic frequently uses sunglasses during his most "hand-on" approaches to policing like gang raids, perp searching and team meetings.
• Control Freak: As demonstrated repeatedly throughout the series, particularly in regards to his relationships with women. Vic is someone who tends to always believe that he's capable of acting on behalf of other people's best interests, regardless of their actual wants; and he tends to become infuriated when challenged. This tendency also ends up coming back to bite him at several points throughout the series, as he arrogantly presumes that he can control anybody that he allies with or does business with, regardless of who they are or how their specific interests might diverge from his own.
• Corrupted Character Copy: Of Popeye Doyle. They're both somewhat overweight, abrasive and brutish middle-aged Cowboy Cops prone to Police Brutality. However, Doyle never intentionally broke the law, whereas Vic actively does so for his own ends.
• The Corrupter: He's the one who draws the other Strike Team members into the cesspool of crime, and also the one who convinces Aceveda to take most of his really immoral actions during the course of the show.
• Deadpan Snarker: Oh, yeah. One example upon seeing a dead body at a crime scene, "Hey, who's the dead guy?"
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Vic is an utterly vicious deconstruction of the Cowboy Cop by showing how maladjusted and amoral someone who regularly breaks the law in the name of enforcing it would be. As it turns out, such a person wouldn't be a heroic badass but a ruthless Dirty Cop who spends just as much time covering his own ass and exploiting his position as he does battling crime, and is ultimately just as much of a threat as the people he catches. Tellingly, his arc through the series also works as the logical conclusion to such character: Beginning as a somewhat well-intentioned dirty cop taking something extra for going the extra mile in his job, with his actions considered a necessary evil at the precinct, he grows more and more corrupt and amoral, to the point that he becomes a liability for the police force and he starts making so many deals with crooks he can no longer do his job.
• Didn't Think This Through: One of his core flaws through the series. At the end, he manages to gain full immunity for himself and is able escape justice for his crimes. Yet he fails to consider that ICE would be completely disgusted by him and would never work with somebody such as him, his handler even going as far as to make his 3 years working with ICE be as unpleasant as possible. He also loses his family and destroys all of his credibility and friendships in the process.
• Dirty Cop: "And how!" doesn't even begin to cover it. He takes bribes, commits murder directly and indirectly several times over, and forms alliances with various drug dealers and criminals.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He loves his kids, and partially commits his crimes to acquire the money he needs to get treatment for his two autistic ones.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • During seasons one and two, he demands a "no selling drugs to children" pledge from the drug dealers who he's in bed with.
  • Vic absolutely loathes rapists and child molesters.
  • At the end of Season 1, he is absolutely aghast that Gilroy deliberately endangered innocent civilians to make a buck.
  • He's genuinely uncomfortable, and even shocked when Rawlings begins to lay into Antwon about his past in order to get him to confess to his involvement with the murders of the police officers. Vic even softly tells Antwon to just tell them what they want to know.
  • In the series finale, he is completely willing to murder Shane's pregnant wife and sadistically threatened Shane and his family, but at the police station, right before Ronnie was arrested, Claudette called him in to show him how Shane had murdered his wife and son, them committed suicide with an unfinished suicide note Claudette read to Vic. He was angered and shocked, and realizing that Claudette was watching him through the security feed made him feel even worse.
  • Vic detests any form of violence against women and children. In Season 1, he goes out of his way to save a baby's life while he's off duty.
  • Although he's willing to brutalize suspects in order to get information or results, pointless sadism, like when his old partner Joe and his coworker Lester attempt to superglue a man's mouth shut and force a man to drink up his buddy's piss from a toilet, disgusts him. In both instances he intervenes to stop the torture from occurring further.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: Unlike many of the other cops, Vic has no issue with homosexuality.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: He actually seems surprised that ICE is no longer willing to let him operate on the street after he confesses his crimes to Olivia.
• Evil Is Easy: During one of his few moments of honest self-reflection, Vic admits the reason he became a Dirty Cop isn't because of justice or a desire to protect his family. It was simply because it was easy and he could.
• Evil Is Petty: Theft, drug dealing, lying and murder are a day's work. Being a complete jerk to Dutch? That's just for his amusement.
• Establishing Character Moment: His killing of Terry in the first episode makes it clear very early on that he is a guy who won't hesitate to kill anyone, not even fellow cops, in order to save his own skin.
• Failure Hero: For all his plans, brutality, and short-term victories, Vic never succeeds at stopping the drug trade in Farmington. The only point where the crime rate actually lowers is when he's hewdimg the One-Niners' drug ring and thus covering it up, and for each crime lord he puts down a new one rises right back up.
• Fallen Hero: By the end, Vic is isolated to a desk job and ostracized by his colleagues with his sins laid bare for all to see.
• Fat Bastard: Zig-Zagged as Vic goes back and forth from Stout Strength to straight up tubby and/or fat. But he is fat, and very much a bastard.
• Fatal Flaw: Hubris. As some critics have so astutely pointed out, Vic self-righteously believes that he can make due as a violent cop that flouts laws for his own benefit while still being the fundamentally noble family man and defender of innocents that he presents himself as. The fact that his uncanny ability to improvise and manipulate people get him out of many bad situations throughout the series only feeds his delusion that he's the good guy. Unfortunately, this tendency leads him to repeatedly compromise his morality throughout the series, culminating in him betraying his only remaining friend in a desperate attempt to both protect himself and to maintain a degree of control over his family life.
• A Father to His Men: Deconstructed. Vic is fiercely protective of his team, but at the cost of total subordination. Him playing leader also makes them desperately fight for his approval, which is essentially what kicks off much of the series' drama.
  • Subverted in the Grand Finale: Vic may like his men, but ultimately, if he has to sacrifice them to save himself, he will.
• Faux Affably Evil: He often presents a likable and friendly front in order to win over people, even characters who are well aware of his nature as a crooked cop (such as Claudette, Aceveda, and even Dutch in those instances where Vic isn't antagonizing him). To Vic's credit, the facade is an effective one, and the only characters to consistently see through it are Mara and Kavanaugh.
• Fighting Irish: He's Irish-American and very proud of his heritage, frequently wearing a Shamrock's t-shirt. He's also never one to pass up a good fight and takes a sadistic amount of joy in beating people up.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Choleric. A capable leader, but also bossy and aggressive.
• Friend to All Children: Vic is surprisingly gentle around children and is very protective of them. Hurting a child is the best way to get on his bad side.
• Friendly Rivalry: Zig-zagged with Dutch. They are outright hostile to each other at the beginning of the series, but later develop into this after Dutch shows absurdly big balls while cracking a serial killer and even finds the guts to punch Vic. However, they return to hostilities after Dutch starts snooping around Vic's corruption case and begins a relationship with his ex-wife.
• Genius Bruiser: Built like a rhinoceros, and a highly skilled strategist with a knack for thinking on his feet.
• Guns Akimbo: Once or twice he's gone in a bust carrying two guns.
• Heaven Seeker: A mayority of his altruism/grand heroics is just as motivated by a grand messiah complex (with a monetary bonus) as it is by the desire to escape any moral reckoning for his terrible actions.
  Ronnie: He's doing what it takes to protect his family.
  Shane: That's one part of the equation. The other math goes like this - Vic takes down someone who's done worse deeds than him, it balances accounts for Terry in that big, old box of sins God keeps on all of us. [...] Vic still thinks the world's worth fixing, and he's the only one that can do it.
• Health Care Motivation: A twofer: when the show begins, Vic has dipped his toes on a protection racket for the One Niners, in particular dealer Rondell Robinson, as a means to accumulate additional cash for his pension, then, as the first season progresses, his son Matthew begins showing signs of being in the autism spectrum, which requires special treatment and education, Vic decides to pile on the "extra hours" he's been doing to provide the necessary funding.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: Throughout the series, Vic tends to alternate between being a Nominal Hero and an Anti-Villain depending on what his current goal is. He can be genuinely doing his job and going after the scum of the earth, or off committing crimes to score a better paycheck. As the series goes on, he settles more on the latter end of the scale before finally becoming a full-blown villain.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: He's almost never seen without his signature leather jacket.
• Heroic Sacrifice: When he realizes Armadillo has enough leverage on him to either blackmail him into letting him escape or to convict Vic for police brutality if he doesn't, Vic decides to turn himself in because he refuses to deny Ronnie justice for Armadillo's scarring of him. He's stopped when Shane and Lem orchestrate Armadillo's death.
• Ignored Epiphany: In "Scar Tissue", he realizes he's been a terrible father and decides to start being there for his kids… only to immediately start cheating on Corinne again with Emma the second he gets back to his hotel room.
• Humiliation Conga / Ironic Hell: His final fate. He was able to get immunity for his crimes, but it came with a steep price tag. His family's been relocated by Witness Protection. His reputation at The Barn is in cinders with Ronnie's arrest. His job is a tedious desk job and not the street work he wanted. His superior hates his guts and will try as much as possible to void his immunity deal. Also, the job is just for 3 years, after which there is next to NO chance he'll be able to get work even related to law enforcement (where he spent most of his career).
• Hypocrite:
  • Vic tends to stick to his word and his rules regarding the team, but betrays his last loyal member to "save" his ex-wife when put to the ultimate test. He's also very big on the "brothers in blue" aspect of police work, getting particularly enraged when fellow officers are targeted or murdered, and holding contempt for anyone he sees as betraying that despite the fact that the very first episode has him murder a fellow cop.
  • Vic is horrified at Shane and Joe's sadistic tendencies and penchant for pointless brutality, but he's just as prone to it as they are. Memorable instances include his gleeful taunting of a dying Terry, disfiguring Armadillo, and torturing and ultimately murdering a defenseless Guardo Lima.
  • He abhors harming children, but he illegally uses a teenager as a CI against Armadillo despite knowing there's a good chance he could be killed. The teenager is unharmed, but forced to go into witness protection because Vic's actions had exposed him as an informant to Armadillo's men. This principle also doesn't extend to youngsters in the game as during season 3, he "promotes" a gangbanger, Diagur, to leader of the Byz Lats through coercion, setting the previous one to be busted. This strategy leads to Diagur being killed later on.
  • He gets jealous at Corrine for getting with one of his son Matthew's teachers and later Dutch, when he sleeps around with women all the time. He even gets Danny pregnant with his son.
• Indy Ploy: He comes up with most of his plans entirely on the fly, sometimes within mere minutes. He doesn't always pull it off entirely successfully, but he's good enough that he remains a Villain with Good Publicity and keeps most of his crimes in the dark.
• It's All About Me: Initially had this a bit. By the end, it has mutated to the point he doesn't give a damn about anyone but himself. Even his family just seem to be a way of him keeping control over his life.
• Jerkass: Vic is not a pleasant guy even on the best of days. Outside of being a Dirty Cop, he's overly aggressive, sadistic, arrogant, self-righteous, and a bully, especially to Dutch. However, he's very good at turning up the charm when he needs to, which helps make him so popular at the Barn.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Despite his harsh attitude, he appears to genuinely care for his colleagues and honestly wants to keep the city safe. This trait slowly disappears during the final three seasons, as his desire to protect his career overrides his desire for justice.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: During Kavanaugh's investigation and directly after it, due to Lem's death.
• Karma Houdini: Played with, but ultimately subverted. He doesn't formally pay for his crimes, but loses his family, his friends, and his reputation and — perhaps worst of all for a Control Freak and Attention Whore like him — gets Kicked Upstairs to a desk job... for three years, after which he will be kicked out of it.
• Kavorka Man: Vic's pushing into his 40s and still has a knack for bedding beauties. It is justified, as Vic is charismatic, charming, and by all accounts comes across as The Ace to those who haven't been on his bad side.
• Kick the Dog:
  • His murder of Terry, particularly how he chooses to tauntingly wave at Terry as he dies. Vic tries to spin it as an act of necessity afterwards to Shane and something he didn't enjoy, but he clearly loved it and feels Terry deserved what he got.
  • He threatens to out Julian as gay if he doesn't recant his statement, knowing it would result in him being subject to homophobic bullying and quite possibly put an end to his career.
  • When Shane calls Vic, telling them how they're in trouble (not knowing Vic signed a deal with ICE), Vic cruelly tells him that he cut the deal, then goes even further by telling him that he'll visit his children while he and Mara are in jail and become a father figure to them, which breaks Shane completely and causes him to kill Mara, his children, then himself.
• Killer Cop: Established at the end of the pilot episode when he murders Terry Crowley. For the rest of the series, Vic shows a reckless disregard for human life and proves to be entirely willing to kill others for his own sake.
• Lack of Empathy: Zig-Zagged. Vic can be coldly detached, such as when Kavanaugh brings in Terry's brother to see Vic's reaction, he is totally unfazed. That said, Vic can feel empathy and shows a surprisingly caring side at times, but he suppresses it through numerous double standards and rationalizations so he doesn't have to feel guilt over his crimes.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Ultimately what happens to Vic. He may have escaped justice and jail time. But his crimes have been exposed, he's lost the respect of his colleagues, his family wants nothing to do with him, and his ICE handlers are itching for him to break his deal so they can put him in jail for good.
• Manipulative Bastard: While he's rarely completely successful, he can manipulate most Farmington cops enough to keep his Batman Gambit and Indy Ploy maneuvers rolling.
• Meaningful Name: Mackey as in Machiavelli. Vic is a cunning planner who excels at playing Xanatos Speed Chess and manipulating people, and ultimately sees everyone around him as pawns he can control.
• Moral Myopia: He can't stand his team or family being hurt, but is perfectly willing to manipulate, brutalize, or outright murder anyone if it suits his needs. He also can't stand any form of betrayal but is happy to betray anyone to suit his own needs.
• Motive Decay: At the beginning, while Vic is motivated primarily by selfishness he makes it a policy to never hurt innocent civilians and genuinely wants to see justice done and Farmington protected. As the series goes on, Vic's nobler intentions fall to the wayside as he becomes increasingly focused on protecting his career and saving himself from seeing jail time.
• The Napoleon: Vic comes across as a downplayed example of this due to Michael Chiklis' height of 5'9 (1,75 meters). In many scenes, Vic appears slightly, but still notably shorter than most of his male peers in the police, but he is also easily the loudest and most aggressive person amongst them.
• Necessarily Evil: He views himself as such. He finances the drug trade in Farmington and often tortures information out of suspects, but as he notes he keeps crime down and makes sure that his dealers don't target children (although part of the former is that a majority of crime in Farmington is carried out under his orders and thus kept unreported). The second Armadillo takes over, things almost immediately go to hell since he lacks any of Vic or his dealer's standards.
• Never My Fault: Vic refuses to take responsibility for his crimes and poor choices. He'll always find a way to turn himself into a martyr, or frame it as an unfortunate necessity rather than his own greed and selfishness.
• Noble Demon: For as ruthless as Vic is, he has a genuine moral code; he's protective of women and children, believes strongly in loyalty towards his team, and genuinely believes he's the best option for Farmington. It's increasingly deconstructed as time goes on and it becomes apparent that most of Vic's standards are things he's willing to disregard at a moment's notice. His pretensions are more to reassure himself that he's a good person rather than genuine ethics.
• Nominal Hero: Vic is a horrible person by any account, but he's often opposed to people who are far worse than he is and thus winds up being the lesser of two evils. He can be motivated by wanting justice done and often is, but just as often he's motivated by greed and covering his own ass and just so happens to go up against people far worse than him because of it.
• Not Me This Time: He really had nothing to do with Armadillo's murder, but Danny blames him for it anyway. It's the same situation when Lem is murdered. Kavanaugh accuses Vic, who is completely outraged by the accusation as he really had no involvement in it.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Zig-zagged. Vic talks big about protecting Farmingtom, but it's clear that his corruption is mostly motivated by his own greed and self-serving nature. That said, during the first few seasons he does admittedly tend to place a high priority on helping victims of violent crime, though this fades as he increasingly slips into full-on villainy.
• Papa Wolf: Vic is extremely protective of children, and flips out whenever he sees them harmed in a case. He frequently winds up inflicting beatings on anyone responsible, and much of his hatred with Armadillo is motivated by the drug dealer's targeting of children as both customers for his drugs and potential rape victims.
• Pet the Dog:
  • His kind treatment of drug addicted prostitute Connie. He gives her money to so she can buy food and support her baby and even tries to help her detoxify herself when she's high.
  • Despite his antagonism with Dutch, he actually tries to make him feel better when he fails to apprehend a Serial Killer and later congratulates him when he does find said killer.
  • After Julian is outed as gay, Vic tries to comfort him by telling him the guys who are bullying him are assholes and that most don't judge him for it. He later encourages Julian to take revenge on the cops who assaulted him because he wants Julian to regain the respect of the other officers.
  • He comforts a young child prostitute after rescuing her from a child porn ring and even plays blackjack with her to help put her at ease.
  • A twisted example occurs when, after he blackmails Julian into backing down from testifying against him by threatening to expose his homosexuality, Vic sincerely thanks Julian for it and advises him to embrace his sexuality, telling him that he shouldn't be ashamed of who he is.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: While he's not as openly racist as Shane, he makes a few racist quips here and there, such as throwing a racist insult at Aceveda in the pilot, putting on a blaccent to move a black CI, and making xenophobic jokes about the Armenian Mob. And while not homophobic himself, he has no issue exploiting such bigotry for his own benefit, threatening to out Julian if he doesn't play ball.
• Politically Correct Villain: While Vic is undeniably racist, unlike most other officers he's not homophobic and is genuinely supportive of Julian's sexuality. When he isn't using it to blackmail him, that is.
• Pyrrhic Victory: By the finale, he successfully obtained full immunity for his past crimes along with a 3-year job at ICE. At the cost of losing his family, his best friends, being branded a traitor and despised by literally everybody around him, and getting stuck on a desk job. His bigger crimes tend to cause more problems for the team than they solve, although he usually manages to work through it.
  • Killing Terry, while necessary at the time, only attracts more suspicion to Vic, and gets Internal Affairs looking more closely at him.
  • Robbing the Armenian Money Train gets the team more money than they imagined, but they spend most of the third season hiding it to avoid retribution from the Armenians. Then, the money gets burned.
  • He gets Lem to go on the run to avoid getting killed in prison, which gives Kavanaugh the opportunity to resume his investigation into the team. To make matters worse, Shane murders Lem under the mistaken impression he was going to sell out the others.
  • He arranges Shane's assassination, only for Shane to escape and start plotting to kill him and Ronnie.
  • In the finale, just about all of Vic's crimes are exposed to the public. While he can't be charged with anything, his success at evading justice costs him everything and everyone he ever loved.
• Really Gets Around: Especially started doing this after the Strike Team formed.
• The Rival: To Dutch, who he constantly bullies and serves as the main obstacle to his efforts to hookup with Danny. However, Vic does genuinely respect Dutch as an investigator. He simply feels he has to bully Dutch because of his arrogance and tendency to act like he's above the rest of the Barn.
• Sadist: Vic takes a lot of joy in watching people squirm. He frequently takes great pleasure in tormenting suspects or witnesses through what can range from petty acts of bullying to Cold-Blooded Torture. He does draw the line at pointless cruelty, with much of Joe and Shane's unnecessary brutality disgusting him.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: In Season 1, he uses the protection given to him by Chief Gilroy to openly flout his authority and insult Aceveda with abandon. He grows out out of it to a degree in he following season once he no longer has Gilroy to rely on, taking great pains to make sure his unsanctioned activities stay quiet.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: His standard M.O. Vic happily uses his authority as a cop to casually break the law if it benefits him.
• The Sociopath: Played with. Vic showcases sociopathic tendencies and will screw over anyone who gets in his way. By the end, he has become willing to sell his team down the river to save himself, only cares about having his family as way to control his life, and spurs Shane into killing himself with little feeling. But this is subverted as he is shown to be capable of genuine feelings, such as his love for his family, his genuine devastation at Lem's death and the fact Shane did it, and when he finds out Shane had also killed his wife, son and unborn child, and reacts with anger and shock. The thing is that no matter the bond or closeness, he will first and foremost try to save himself before anyone else.
• Soul-Crushing Desk Job: In the Grand Finale, this is how he sees being a Desk Jockey.
• Stout Strength: He's got quite a gut, but is very strong nevertheless.
• Technician vs. Performer: He has this dynamic with Dutch. Vic is a braggart who makes much of his successful cases as showy as possible, and ensures the entire Barn sees how amazing he is at it while frequently cutting corners and using torture to get what he wants. Dutch, meanwhile, uses exhaustive, boring hours of research and a trial-and-error process for his investigations, and as a result rarely gets the respect Vic receives.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: When he finally confesses all of his crimes to Olivia, he finally faces what he truly is and somberly accepts that he's the villain of this story.
• Too Clever by Half: Vic manages to outmaneuver Shane, get a full immunity deal with ICE, and most importantly: survive. But he failed to realize that his reputation would be in tatters by him confessing, and he earns the scorn of his ICE handlers. He also loses his family Shane kills his family, then commits suicide, he betrays his only friend Ronnie, and becomes a pariah by the end of the series.
• Toxic Friend Influence: To his entire team, especially Shane. Lem is corrupted because of his influence which Kavanaugh calls him out on.
• Tragic Hero: His Pride and need for control ultimately lead to him losing everything he has, although he gets what he was after.
• The Unfettered: There is nothing Vic won't resort to if he feels it's necessary. Blackmail, robbery, police brutality, and murder are all in a day's work for him. He does draw the line in some areas, though; he refuses to hurt children, and he draws the line at pointless brutality for the most part.
• Villain Has a Point:
  • Vic is undeniably a bad guy, but as he bluntly points out to Aceveda, Vic's brutality and tendency to cut corners are right in line with Aceveda's newly adopted "tough on crime" policies and will undeniably help him with his city council campaign.
  • He also accurately points out that the reason his sons aren't being accepted into a special needs school is because the school board is only accepting the children of wealthy parents in the hopes of getting donors.
• Villain Protagonist: He's a self-serving, violent, racist corrupt cop who spends most of his time inflicting police brutality on anyone who so much as annoys him and indulges in the same crimes he's supposed to stop.
• Villain with Good Publicity: To most of the Barn and the public after he's shot in the line of duty, Vic is an exemplary cop and a local hero keeping Farmington safe. To everyone who is either aware of his corruption or has been at the brunt of his cruelty knows he is very much not that.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Zig-zagged. While Vic is primarily motivated by his own greed, he does genuinely believe in keeping Farmington safe and does factor the well-being of its population into his decisions. However, as the series progresses, he becomes increasingly self-serving and ultimately discards all pretense of morality altogether.
• What You Are in the Dark: Memorably fails this test. When he and Shane find the Armenian Money Train, Vic knows that no one in the LAPD other than them know about it or that it's even real. Rather than tell Aceveda, Vic decides to keep it a secret so he can rob the money himself.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: One of Vic's most consistent standards is his protectiveness of children, and he refuses to have them harmed. One of the ground rules he sets with the drug dealers he works with is to avoid selling to children, and his biggest grievance with Armadillo is that he not only ignores this rule but rapes a young girl who was going to testify against him. Anyone who does hurt a child and finds themself at Vic's mercy are in for a beating or worse.
• Why Don't Ya Just Shoot Him?: While Vic is normally willing to shoot people who get in his way, there are several times where he lets Shane walk away when the smart thing to do would be to just kill him.

Shane Vendrell

Detective Shane Vendrell

"So we close a triple murder before breakfast, start a race war before dinner. That's a pretty good day."

Played By: Walton Goggins

Vic's best friend and protégé. Impulsive, reckless, and at times racist, Shane drives much of the conflict in the series as his desire to move out of Vic's shadow causes much chaos and conflict.

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• Alas, Poor Villain: It's hard not to feel sorry for him after reading his suicide note.
• All for Nothing: He murdered his best friend Lem to protect himself and the rest of the Strike Team from prosecution, only to learn after the fact that Lem had no intention of selling them out.
  • Shane's entire arc over the show ends up being this, from helping Vic murder Terry onward. By the end of the show, Shane and his family are dead, and his reputation as a cop is completely tarnished.
• Angry White Man: Even putting his blatant racism aside, Shane gives off this vibe. Notably, his main grievance with adding a minority member to the Strike Team isn't that it's a publicity stunt or that one of the current members could be booted off, but that he feels like it's a blatant example of White Guilt and affirmative action
  Shane: It's a quota thing. The brass wanna put color on the team so they don't have to feel bad about underpaying their Mexican gardeners.
• Anti-Villain: Shane is a racist Jerkass, but he still remains somewhat sympathetic due to his guilt over the horrible things he does. He shifts into being a downright Tragic Villain in the final season as things become increasingly worse for him.
• At Least I Admit It: What keeps Shane sympathetic, even as he starts doing more terrible things, is the fact that he has no illusions that the things he does are wrong, and that he's not a good person. The major difference between Vic and Shane is that Vic genuinely believes that he's a misunderstood, yet decent man who cuts corners to get the job done. Shane is under no illusion that he's a good man, and his guilt over his actions eventually leads him to his eventual fate.
• Ax-Crazy: Shane is prone to fits of violent rage and is the most likely of the Strike Team to physically assault someone regardless of the situation. It's during one of these incidents that he inflicts Tavon with severe brain damage.
• Beta Test Baddie: A majority of Shane's irrational decision-making usually arises from a place of deep insecurity in himself, his abilities and his place in the hierarchy of the Strike Team (and Farmington, in general). Whenever someone threatens his position as Vic's Number Two, makes him feel unsure of his masculinity or just proves themselves better at something than he is, expect shouting, belligerent remarks or violence.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Steps up to fulfill this position in the later half of season 7 alongside Beltran and Lloyd Denton.
• Bigot with a Badge: Shane is a police officer and a virulent racist to boot. He frequently drops racial slurs and reacts with violence whenever he's called out on his bigotry.
• Bros Before Hoes: Subverted. While the Strike Team enforces the concept of loyalty to each other first and foremost and Shane agrees to a fault, his priorities begin to shift as he marries Mara and forms a family in season 3, with plenty of instances showing how he holds her -and their family by extension- as a bigger priority than the patchwork bond with the guys. This plays a huge part on his ultimate decision to kill Lem in season 5, as his refusal to accept the (admittedly unappealing) choice of being smuggled to a small farm in Mexico only leaves the possibility of taking a risky deal of 5 years in prison before parole, all while the others doubt he'll make it without turning informant due to its weight; Shane, realizing this, chooses to slay him with a grenade since him flipping would send him to prison and break up his family.
• Bumbling Sidekick: To Vic. Shane is frequently prone to screw-ups that often blow up in his face and result in Vic needing to clean up his mess and bail Shane out.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Despite being an overt bigot who is often ribbed by his fellow officers as a "dumb hick", he is nonetheless a highly resourceful detective whose skills and decisiveness sufficiently qualify him to be Vic's right-hand man.
• Butt-Monkey: Pretty much everything Shane does blows up in his face. It's Played for Laughs at first, as Shane's impulsiveness and poor decisions result in him receiving some sort of humiliation, but as his mistakes have bigger and bigger consequences it becomes increasingly Played for Drama.
• Casanova Wannabe: Shane is always flirting with whatever women catch his eye, but he frequently winds up putting them off with his boorish attitude. Until he meets Mara, the only women he actually succeeds in getting a date with are either prostitutes or just leading him on for their own ends.
• Cowboy Cop: Deconstructed even further than with Vic. Shane is even more willing to break the law than he is and use force, but it's clear that this is because Shane's a pathetic, racist screw-up who enjoys abusing people, particularly minorities who can't hurt him back.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: One minute you're talking to a boorish buffoon, the next you're watching him successfully getting a suspect to confess to a murder he committed over a year ago, as Dutch found out in Season 1.
• Deep South: Hails from Atlanta, Georgia, and has "Dixie" for his cell phone ring tone.
• Despair Event Horizon: After he learns Vic has beaten him to an immunity deal, he realizes he has run out of options to save himself and his family, and kills them and then himself.
• Deuteragonist: Effectively occupies this position in the story from the third season onward. Although Vic is billed at the main character, Shane's actions have just as big of an impact on the progression of the overall narrative, and the development of his relationship with Mara deliberately contrasts the disintegration of Vic's relationship with Corrine.
• Didn't Think This Through: One of Shane's core flaws throughout the series is that he often takes actions without fully considering all of the consequences of his actions, with Vic uses to his advantage when he uses Shane's blackmail journal to gain himself full immunity from ICE.
• Dirty Cop: He's even worse than Vic in this regard. He often abuses his authority for the pettiest of reasons and is the quickest of the Strike Team to dish out police brutality. Even Vic is disgusted at times with Shane's rampant violence.
• Dirty Old Man: By virtue of being lenient on the age department when it comes to hook-ups.
• Dislikes the New Guy: Shane dislikes Tavon when the latter joins the Strike Team. This is due to both Shane's racism and his jealousy that team leader Vic is shifting trust and responsibility away from him to Tavon. The others all get along fine with Tavon.
• Disproportionate Retribution: In "Pay in Pain", after a suspect mildly snarks at him, Shane loses his temper and beats the man within an inch of his life before urinating on him.
• Driven to Suicide: Eats his gun in "Family Meeting".
• Ephebophile: Befitting his commitment even to his basic appetites, Shane isn't too picky about his conquests barely reaching legal age. Of note is his involvement with a One Niner girl named Tilli during the first half of season 6, who's only out of her teens (while he's married) as well as checking out a cashier girl who's 16 in the series finale.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • He's horrified when Vic murders a fellow cop in the pilot, and is plagued by guilt in his role in it after the fact.
  • He reacts with horror and outrage when Antwon Mitchell murders Angie (a teenager) in front of him.
• Evil Mentor: For Army during season 4, as he sees that he learns the ropes of Shane's time with Vic to establish a new food chain in Vices.
• Fatal Flaw: Impulsiveness and never fully considering the consequences of his actions. While he's hardly stupid, Shane's extreme emotional volatility and inability to rationalize away his guilt over the consequences of his actions leads him to take several stupid actions throughout the series that end up not only leading to his own death, but those of his family and Lem as well.
• Final Speech: He shoots himself before finishing his suicide letter, but upon Claudette getting it and then reading it to Vic under the pretense of questioning him, what he ends up writing down summarizes his last realization pretty well:
  "I guess enough painkillers can make even the worst kind of hurt go away. The thing you need to know is that Mara was innocent, and Jackson was innocent. They didn't know what they were drinking, and their last moments together were happy ones. They left the way I first found them: perfect and innocent. They were innocent, and they're in heaven now, and we'll always be a family. The guilty ones are me and Vic. Vic led, but I kept following. I don't think one's worse than the other, but we made each other into something worse than our individual selves. I wish I'd never met him. I see it all now. There's no apologies I can make, no explanations I can give. I was who I was, and I can't be that person anymore. I can't let myself..."
• Foil: To Vic. Both are violent crooked cops with a propensity for vulgar humor, both tend to have nasty tempers, and both end up killing a fellow cop in acts of self-preservation. However, whereas Vic has a successful track recording of scheming and is able to consistently delude himself into believing he's acting for the great good, Shane's schemes constantly blow up in his face and the guilt that he feels over his worst actions stems from the fact that he harbors no illusions about the fact that he's a criminal. Furthermore, Mackey's relationship with his wife is markedly contrasted to the one that Vendrell has with his: Vic consistently lies to Corrine and attempts to hide the truth about the extent of his crimes to her, which eventually leads to her turning against him whereas Shane is totally open with Mara about the darker aspects of who he is, and he ends up dying alongside her in the most tragic and horrifying way possible.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Sanguine. Exuberant and sociable, but also the most volatile and impulsive member of the Strike Team.
• Friendship Denial: By the end, Shane has throughly come to regret his association with Vic's illicit activities, disavowing their life-long friendship with his final written words.
• Freudian Excuse: Downplayed, but a line that Shane delivers in the third season heavily implies that his relationship with his father was an abusive one. Though it isn't explicitly mentioned, one can infer that both Shane's bond with Vic (who effectively functions as a fraternal authoritative figure), and his attraction to Mara (who herself grew up with an abusive parent) are partially informed by his upbringing.
• Happily Married: For all their faults, Shane and Mara are consistently portrayed as being utterly loyal to one another, so much so that Mara not only forgives him when he cheats on her, but is also willing to give up her entire life when he becomes a fugitive; even refusing to abandon him when he asks her to turn herself in order to protect herself from his crimes.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Shows shades of this. Despite displaying a good sense of humor in the company of his colleagues, he often flies into a blind rage at the slightest provocation while working in the field.
• Heel Realization: His final character arc sees his guilt over killing Lem slowly bringing him to the realization he and Vic are both terrible, monstrous human beings. Shane concludes in his suicide note that they brought their own worst sides out in each other, and that his greatest regret in life was meeting Vic.
• Ignored Epiphany: He's horrified when Vic kills Terry and is genuinely guilt-ridden over it, to the point he nearly confesses during an interrogation. However, Vic interrupts, and Shane immediately backtracks. By the time the investigation into Terry's death is finished, all of Shane's newfound doubts about the Strike Team and Vic vanish.
• Jerkass: Generally an unpleasant and foul-tempered bigot to everyone exempting his family, the other members of the Strike Team, and a select number of police officers at the Barn.
• Kick the Dog: At one point he gets information out of a female witness by threatening her with rape.
• The Kindnapper: After his relationship with the Kesakhian-led part of the Armenian mob collapses, his attempts to mend it cause a hit to be put out for Vic and his family for the Armenian Money Train robbery. Finding out his family is first, Shane races to the house and, in a frenzy, abducts Corrine and Cassidy at gun-point without giving them a valid explanation to later lock them in an abandoned storage unit while he looks for the assassin sent by the Armenians.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: He's in the middle of writing his suicide note when the police arrive to arrest him, killing himself before he can finish.
• Killer Cop: Responsible for the murders of Dead-Eye, Lem, and finally, his own wife, son, and unborn child.
• The Millstone: His attempts to imitate Vic's style of 'policing' continually blow up in his face, putting the rest of the Strike Team in jeopardy and forcing Vic to save him from himself. His killing Lem is what finally destroys the team for good.
• Morality Pet: As he plunges into full-on criminal deeds in the latter seasons, Mara and Jackson remain the sole two people who can still bring out the humanity in Shane.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Spends several episodes after murdering Lem in a state of shock and guilt, and it gets worse when he learns that Lem never intended to betray the team, meaning he killed him for nothing.
• My Greatest Failure: He is this to Vic, as far as the level of failure from Vic with the way he took Shane and turned him into a monster.
• Never My Fault: Shane has a bad tendency of blaming his mistakes on other people. Averted in the finale, as he acknowledges in his suicide note that although Vic led him on, it was still his own decision to keep following him.
• Noble Bigot with a Badge: Evolved into this, largely due to Walt Goggins being uncomfortable with the casual racism of the character.
• Nominal Hero: Even more than Vic. Whereas Vic sometimes does the right thing, Shane for the most part is a selfish bigot who just so happens to be going after people far worse than he is.
• Number Two: Vic's right-hand man. This eventually disintegrates after tensions between the two come to a head and Shane kills Lem. It ends on a tragic note after Shane kills himself and his whole family to prevent them from being torn apart by the system. Even Vic is shocked and horrified.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Shane points this out to Vic after Vic realizes he killed Lem, that he would have done the same if the roles were reversed. Vic vehemently denies this, but if Vic's murder of Terry wasn't already enough proof that Shane had a point, Vic then sells out Ronnie in order to gain his immunity deal.
• Pater Familicide: Kills Mara, her unborn child and Jackson before killing himself in "Family Meeting".
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Shane is casually racist and very prone to spouting racial slurs at the drop of a hat. As well, he's the most openly violent and villainous member of the Strike Team.
• Pet the Dog:
  • While he has many flaws he's a loyal friend to Vic and offers to kill Gilroy to spare him from having to kill his old friend.
  • When Dutch scores with a girl Shane was interested in you may expect him to be angry but he's actually quite impressed with and happy for Dutch.
  • Despite his racism he gets along with Armie and only comes back to the team on the condition Armie is also given a spot in their unit.
  • Even When Vic offers him a chance to kill him and save himself from Antwon Shane refuses as he honestly sees Vic as his friend. In the following episode Shane decides to kill Antwon to protect the team. It would be a better option for Shane to confess his crimes but he refuses because that would mean taking his friends down with him.
  • He "kidnaps" Vic's family in order to protect them from an Armenian mob hit. He does this despite Vic hating his guts at this point and turning his Armenian allies against him by doing so.
• Psychopathic Manchild: He's extremely immature and behaves a lot like a teenager. He's impulsive, horny, prone to cracking crass jokes, and becomes almost instantly attached to a chicken he had bought to use in a cockfighting ring in a childlike manner. He's also prone to bursts of extreme violence and clearly mentally unstable.
• Rabid Cop: He's easily the most violent and unstable member of the Strike Team.
• Really Gets Around: Prior to marrying Mara in Season 3.
• The Rival: To Tavon in Season 3.
• Shoot the Dog: Subverted. Shane thinks that his murder of Lem will help protect his family, as well as Vic and Ronnie, from Kavanaugh's investigation into The Strike Team. When he learns that Lemansky was never going to flip however, he doesn't take it well.
• Suspicious Spending: He buys an expensive new house and renovates it, but makes sure to get receipts showing that his and Mara's combined salaries are enough to pay for it. Unfortunately, that's all they're enough to pay for, leaving the couple no actual money to live on, making it obvious he's getting more money somewhere else. Kavanaugh sarcastically asks him if he's moonlighting as a security guard.
• Too Clever by Half: Deconstructed. Shane has the right idea by keeping a journal of all of the horrible things he and the rest of The Strike Team did. But he failed to consider that Vic would beat him to it and gains full immunity for himself. He then proceeds to rub it in to Shane's face, breaking him completely.
• Tragic Villain: Eventually becomes one during the final two seasons, following his murder of Lem. Although he's doubtlessly a major liability to Vic, and attempts to murder him and arranges for Ronnie to get killed, most of the more drastic actions he takes are either in response to provocations on Vic's part or out of a want to protect his family. His incredibly tragic end only reinforces this.

Curtis "Lem" Lemansky

"I've always gone along with everything you ever wanted, and all it's done is get us deeper and deeper into shit."

Played By: Kenny Johnson

The muscle of the Strike Team, as well as its conscience. Will often remind Vic and the rest of the Strike Team that they are supposed to be cops and try and rein in Vic's more corrupt notions (with various degrees of success). Unfortunately for him, he ultimately becomes a liability for the team and is killed off by Shane, to keep IAD from sending him to jail, where he would inevitably break.

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• Affably Evil: For as friendly as Lem is, he's just as willing to engage in police brutality as the rest of the Strike Team and will kill people if he deems it as necessary and them as Asshole Victims. He admittedly is the only one who will actually try to atone when he screws over someone innocent, and he's generally averse to their more criminal actions.
• Anti-Villain: Type IV. Lem is a kind and at times heroic man who does his best to do the right thing, but the fraternal attachments he feels for the other members of the The Strike Team lead to him getting dragged into their various misdeeds.
• Ascended Extra: Starts off as one of the background characters in the Strike Team, eventually becomes one of the most important characters on the show, likely due to his popularity with the cast, crew and fans.
• The Atoner: "Throwaway" centers around him attempting to atone for accidentally (non-fatally) shooting an innocent man and being pressured into letting Vic frame the man for possessing a weapon. He ultimately proves the man innocent, while keeping Vic's actions quiet.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Lem is generally kept in the dark about the Strike Team's more unsavory activities and tends to balk at Vic's more amoral plans, but he winds up bluntly telling Vic that he'd rather kill Armadillo then see him testify against them. As Lem coldly notes, he's not going to prioritize the well-being of a child rapist above his own.
• The Big Guy: Class 2. He's The Heart of the team, and takes point during busts with a shotgun.
• Break the Cutie: In Season 5.
• The Conscience: It's kind of necessary when you have the more Hot-Blooded Shane and Control Freak Vic on your team. Ultimately deconstructed when the guilt of what he does catches up to him, and he considers turning himself in so that it can all end. But Shane kills him before he can get to it.
• Cowboy Cop: To a much lesser extent than Vic and Shane, but Lem is very willing to break protocol and help rough up suspects.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: He gets a grenade tossed in his lap, which doesn't kill him right way.
• A Day In The Lime Light: "Throwaway." He is shown comforting the sister of a former gang-banger he accidentally shot.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the Morality Pet, Token Good Teammate, and The Conscience tropes. Despite being a crooked cop, Lem is generally a decent guy who genuinely wants to help others, and serves as The Heart to Vic and Shane. But the guilt of his actions and helping the Strike Team with their corrupt actions begins to eat away at Lem, but he is unable to turn himself in and betray his beloved Strike Team members. He is then killed by Shane when he thinks that Lem would rat them out, and to twist the knife, he learns that Lem had no intention of doing so.
• Dirty Cop: On principle, he's the least corrupt member of the Strike Team; however, he's often complicit in their crimes, inasmuch as he's frequently the one who tries to stop them from going too far or resorting to violence. Predictably, Vic and Shane tend to leave him out of their more illicit activities most of the time.
• Everyone Has Standards: While he's definitely done his share of shady actions, Lem has his limits.
  • He is disgusted by Vic using Lem and Tavon's friendship so Lem could convince Tavon that he attacked Mara after he woke up from his coma.
  • He actually feels sympathy for Kavanaugh's situation, even though he has every reason to hate the man. He's completely disgusted at Vic for simply noting that it's a weakness they could exploit.
  • Lem's generally disgusted with Shane's more recklessly amoral actions as the story moves along, which ultimately leads to the friction between the two men.
• Extreme Doormat: Downplayed. When push comes to shove, Lem can definitely stand up for himself and the rest of the team know better than to push him to his breaking point, given his strength and size advantage over them. However, short of crossing a line, Lem is easily coerced into going along with the team's large scale corrupt exploits out of a desire to avoid friction between the group and mantain their quasi-familiar ties.
• Fatal Flaw: His Undying Loyalty and inability to stand up to the other Strike Team members and his guilt from their actions ultimately leads to his undoing, as Shane kills him so he won't have the chance to rat them out. To twist the knife further, he wasn't even going to do it.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Phlegmatic. The most easygoing and friendly member of the team, but also the weakest willed one as well.
• Friend to All Children: Lem has a deep sympathy toward children, and is generally very kind and gentle with them.
• Gentle Giant: He's the tallest and most bulky member of the Strike Team, as well as the most morally sound member. He's also the only one who isn't culpable in or supportive of their worst crimes, since Vic keeps him out of the loop because he knows Lem would turn on them if he knew the entirety of their crimes.
• Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: He can't bring himself to believe that Vic killed Terry, considering Vic is always preaching about brotherhood and sticking together. It's justified, considering that Vic kept Lem out of the loop, knowing that he wouldn't have possibly stood for Terry's murder and would have turned on him had he learned the truth.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Relatively speaking. Lem is undeniably complicit in the Strike Team's actions, but he's much more moral than the rest of the team and tends to be the only one pushing for taking the moral option.
• He Knows Too Much: Shane kills him so he can't testify against the rest of the Strike Team, only learning later that Lem never intended to sell them out.
• The Heart: Of The Strike Team. Vic, Shane, and Ronnie are all clearly quite close with him, and his death functions as the moment in which the rest of the team truly begins to break apart.
• Hidden Depths: Given that he's The Heart of the crew, it can't be understated how important Lem was to keeping the Strike Team together. Shane and Vic had their issues with each other, and Ronnie was...well Ronnie, but all of them loved Lem and would have done anything for them. It's quite telling that the Strike Team falls apart after Shane kills Lem.
• Killer Cop: Actually averted. He's the only member of the Strike Team who never commits an actual murder during the course of the show.
• Morality Pet: For Vic.
• Nice Guy: For all of his faults, Lem is a genuine sweetheart, and is beloved by the rest of the Barn.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Sadly, his attempts to help others in Season 5 end up biting him in the ass, big time.
  • In "Kavanaugh", he saves Lt. Kavanaugh from a stray grenade during a raid on Guardo Lima's factory. At the end of the episode, after Lem and Vic eavesdrop on a conversation between Jon and his mentally ill wife, Kavanaugh formally arrests him and has him thrown in the cage.
  • While hiding out in a trailer park in "Postpartum", Lem goes to investigate a crying child in a neighboring trailer. However, he gets caught by the locals, who promptly call the cops on him, sending him on the run once again.
  • In the same episode, Lem tries to negotiate his surrender to the authorities and take the heat for all the Strike Team's crimes, only for Kavanaugh and Aceveda to spin it so that it looks like Lem's trying to save himself at the expense of the team, in a last-ditch attempt to ensnare Vic. Vic doesn't fall for it, but Shane does, and takes matters into his own hands by murdering Lem.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: He's almost always referred to as "Lem" (itself shortform for "Lemonhead", referring to his blonde mop), not Curtis.
• Only Sane Man: Will often interrupt Vic and Shane during various schemes to remind them that they are supposed to be on the side of law and order.
• Peer Pressure Makes You Evil: A lot of Lem's worst actions, such as aiding in the Armenian Money Train robbery, are motivated by his desire to fit in with the rest of the Strike Team and earn their affection.
• Sacrificial Lion: Courtesy of Shane.
• Token Good Teammate: Of the Strike Team. Lem is a good-natured, friendly man who often balks at the Strike Team's more brazenly illegal acts and is thus often kept out of the loop by Vic.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Downplayed as Lem was complicit at best in the Strike Team's sordid activities, but he was a genuinely decent person who wanted to help others and was beloved in The Barn. His loss is a huge blow to The Barn, where even Kavanaugh can't help but admit that he thought Lem was a decent man and he didn't deserve to die in the way he did.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Although their friendship temporarily breaks apart during the end of Season 3 and remains strained for much of season 4, Shane and Lem are repeatedly shown to have a strong, practically brotherly bond defined by good-natured teasing between the two. Which makes it particularly tragic when Shane kills him.
• Wife-Basher Basher: He assaults a Los Mags gangbanger who had branded his ex-girlfriend.

Ronald "Ronnie" Gardocki

"Oh, I want the rest of the day off!"

Played By: David Rees Snell

With his facial hair and tech skills, Ronnie is the resident nerd of the Strike Team.

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• Affably Evil: Ronnie's generally relaxed, affable, and good humored, but he also proves himself to be the most ruthless and pragmatic member of the Strike Team as well.
• Ascended Extra: The fourth member of the Strike Team had no plotlines and wasn't even a full cast member until season 5.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Ronnie was a bad guy for sure, and he stood by Vic even after learning that he did indeed kill Terry. But it's hard not to feel bad for him when he gets arrested after Vic sells him out. He has to face the consequences of all of the Strike Team's actions alone.
• Badass Bookworm: Resident Techno Wizard, check. See Character Development for the rest.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: Beneath the seemingly tranquil and unassuming exterior is a dangerously efficient cop who has zero contrition about doing what it takes to survive.
• Consummate Professional: Rational, efficient, and lacking of any emotional reservations or attachments.
• Character Development: Despite being in nearly every episode, his only role in the first few seasons was to get teased by the other Strike Team members. When he got promoted to regular cast member, the show revealed there was a reason he made so little impression: He was the only member of the team smart enough to avoid suspicion by keeping his head down, and doing only what he deemed necessary to his self-preservation.
• Characterization Marches On: The more meek, bland, and awkward Ronnie that we see in the first season is markedly different from the more sardonic, pragmatic and detached characterization that he grows into over the course of the show.
• A Day In The Lime Light: "Back to One" showcases Ronnie, and specifically how good a cop he is when just doing his job.
• Deadpan Snarker: Possibly moreso than anyone in the show save for Dutch and Billings.
• Dirty Cop: Despite his quiet demeanor, he's just as corrupt and ruthless as Vic and Shane. He's just much more pragmatic about his corruption and doesn't make as many screw-ups.
• Even Evil Has Standards: While he was quite vocal about wanting to kill Shane, Vic's proclamation that he was going to kill Shane and his pregnant wife Mara (in front of their two year old son, no less) freaked even Ronnie out.
• Fake Guest Star: Appeared in almost every episode, but didn't get his Promotion to Opening Titles until Season 5.
• Flat "What": Gives this out after being informed that Vic sold him out in order to get an immunity deal for himself.
• Fatal Flaw: his Undying Loyalty to Vic, which screws him over big time when Vic sells him out as part of his immunity deal with ICE.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Melancholic. Ronnie's nearly unflappable demeanor and quiet nature set him apart from the other 3 more extroverted members of the Strike Team.
• It's Personal: He does not take Shane murdering Lem well at all.
• Killer Cop: It takes nearly the entire run of the show, but he eventually pulls the trigger on a defenseless target in the Season 7 premiere.
• Not So Stoic: By far the calmest and most detached member of the Strike Team, he hardly ever raises his voice or betrays any extreme amount of emotion. Until the finale, when he explodes in a violent display of rage and indignation as he's being arrested and he realizes just how badly Vic betrayed him.
  • Despite how strongly he advocated killing Shane, Ronnie is shown to be shocked and saddened to the point of tears when he learns about how his erstwhile friend killed both himself and his own family.
• Only Sane Employee: The only member of the Strike Team who never creates problems that the others have to solve. In fact, he's often Locked Out of the Loop on their plans.
  • Best exemplified during the fifth season, in regards to Kavanaugh's investigation of the Strike Team. Although he quickly nails Lem on possession of heroin, and manages to put pressure on Vic and Shane by looking into the financial transactions that both made on behalf of their families, Kavanaugh admits that he's unable to find anything to incriminate Gardocki on due to how judiciously he has covered his tracks. Furthermore, whereas Vic is dead-set on using only one attorney to represent the Strike Team, Ronnie wisely suggests that it's more expedient to hire four separate attorneys to poke holes in Kavanaugh's case.
  • In the Grand Finale, he's told of the charges he's facing thanks to Vic. And he lets him have it with all barrels.
• Only Sane Man: The only member of the Strike Team who realizes that Shane is a threat that should be neutralized. He's easily the most normal and grounded of the Strike Team, considering Vic's an Attention Whore Control Freak, Shane's an erratic bigot, and Lem is the most moral member of the crew.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: "Back to One" shows that he could have been a great cop, if Vic and the Strike Team hadn't gotten their hooks into him.
• Porn Stache: His mustache in Seasons 1 and 2.
• The Quiet One: Barely even had any dialogue in the first few seasons.
• The Scapegoat: His final fate.
• Scars Are Forever: Gets burned by a grill by Armadillo to taunt Vic. He later covers this up by growing a full beard.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: Dresses in a stylish suit and tie during the last few episodes of the series.
• Senseless Sacrifice: Vic betrays Ronnie in order to gain immunity for his wife, who Vic did not know (but the viewers did) had already gained immunity in order to help Claudette bring Vic to justice.
• The Smart Guy: Works bugs, electronics, computers, and stuff. Kavanagh even commends him for covering his tracks as thoroughly as he did.
• Tempting Fate: He specifically tells Vic that he considers going to prison to be a Fate Worse than Death. He ends up being the only member of the Strike Team to be arrested for his crimes.
• Too Clever by Half: He's easily the smartest one in the Strike Team that isn't Vic, and it's even noted by Kavanaugh to be the one who's covered his tracks too well and even tells him to stay away from Vic and Shane, as their flaws will eventually do them in. Ronnie doesn't listen and makes the mistake of trusting Vic, who promptly betrays him so he can have full immunity from ICE.
• Villainous Breakdown: Has a pretty epic one when he learns he's been scapegoated for the team's crimes. He flies off the handle, screaming and struggling against the officers dragging him away.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Is subjected to one of these by Dutch, who plainly out spells out all of the crimes that Gardocki is being arrested for. Shortly after this, Ronnie himself, after learning that Vic sold him out as part of his immunity deal delivers a particularly pointed one to his friend, cutting through Mackey's self-justifying apologies and lambasting him for putting himself before the Strike Team.

Other Strike Team Members

Terry Crowley

"I'm gonna need moving expenses. Plus a car and a big fruit basket. I'm giving up my life, you gotta give me something back."

Played By: Reed Diamond

"Driver" for the Strike Team, Terry Crowley was placed on the Strike Team by then-Captain Aceveda as a means to keep an eye out on the antics of Vic and his crew. Unfortunately for him, when Aceveda approached him about gathering evidence about Strike Team corruption, Terry agreed, only to get a bullet in the face for his trouble.

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• Boom, Headshot!: Courtesy of Vic Mackey.
• Decoy Protagonist: Ads depicted him as the true star of The Shield. Vic kills him in the first episode, establishing himself as the Villain Protagonist of the show.
• The Driver: Of the Strike Team.
• Expy: Of Reed Diamond's Homicide: Life on the Street character, Mike Kellerman.
• Good Is Not Nice: He's technically working for the good guys, but he's motivated only by his own ambition.
• He Knows Too Much: In an Establishing Character Moment, Vic murders him by shooting him in the head with a drug dealer's gun to prevent him from reporting back to his superiors about Vic and the rest of the Strike Team's corruption.
• Hero Antagonist: While Terry is doing it for selfish reasons, he's still working to bring down corrupt cops at great risk to himself.
• Jerkass: He only seems to be looking out for himself, and bluntly runs his mouth about wanting a very cushy job with the Justice Department in exchange for testimony against the Strike Team.
• Jerkass Has a Point: While he's an asshole about it, as he points out to Aceveda it's unreasonable to expect him to infiltrate the Strike Team without compensation. The police despise anyone who turns on their own regardless of the circumstances, and ratting out another cop would almost certainly ruin Terry's career in the LAPD.
• The Mole: He's assigned by Aceveda to infiltrate the Strike Team to find evidence of their corruption. Vic catches wind of this and murders him during a drug bust, framing a drug dealer for the murder.
• Nominal Hero: He's working to take down the Strike Team, but he's doing it for his own ambition and is fairly cynical about Aceveda's motivations or chances of causing any meaningful reform.
• Posthumous Character: He turns up for a cameo at the end of "Co-Pilot."
• Small Role, Big Impact: One of the most famous examples in television history. Vic's murder of Terry in the pilot hangs over the Strike Team for the rest of the series and comes back to bite them in the ass more than once.

Tavon Garris

"Ain't got nobody here to get your back. But now I know who you really are. And so do you."

Played By: Brian White

A young black detective who is placed on the team due to orders from the brass, who want to include one Token Minority onto the all-white Strike Team. Unaware of Vic Mackey's corrupt nature, the skilled rookie detective made a big mistake when he went and told Shane that he was hoping that Vic would take him under his wing as a mentor. One massive brawl later and a car wreck, Tavon was written out of the series.

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• Berserk Button: Racial slurs.
• The Bus Came Back: For one episode in season 7.
• Cowboy Cop: He wins Vic's respect by holding a (secretly unloaded) gun to a suspects head and pretending to play Russian Roulette to extract information.
• Hannibal Lecture: Delivers the mother of all speeches to Shane, when he comes back in season seven, about why he sucks as a human being.
• Nice Guy: While he isn't afraid to bend the rules as a cop, and is quick tempered. He's generally an amiable guy who gets along well with the other Strike Team members.
• The Rival: To Shane, albeit unintentionally.
• The Sixth Ranger: Technically fifth. The first of several though.
• Token Minority: On the team because the higher-ups didn't like the optics of an all-white Cowboy Cop force marauding through minority neighborhoods. The Strike Team actually anticipates and appreciates how a black member could open up new avenues for them, they're just nervous about having to keep secrets from him.
• Trauma Conga Line: He goes from being beaten badly, to almost dying in a car crash leading to months of recovery, to being told he struck a woman and it's all his fault...which he tearfully believes because the accident impacted his memory.

Armando "Army" Renta

Played By: Michael Peña

Army sniper who, after a tour of duty in Iraq, returned home and landed a job with the LAPD, where he was partnered with Shane Vendrell. The two got along well, but Shane's corrupt cop ways ended up getting the two in hot legal water. Rather than risk his luck, he instead resigned from the LAPD and returned to the military.

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• The Apprentice: To Shane, God help him.
• Friendly Sniper: He served as one during his time in the military, and it comes into handy once he joins along with the Strike Team.
• Put on a Bus: Reenlists in the military to avoid getting into more trouble with the Strike Team and their exploits.

Kevin Hiatt

"Detective Hiatt. But you can call me Detective Hiatt."

Played By: Alex O'Loughlin

A capable officer introduced as the one who will succeed Vic in leading the Strike Team. His arrival is initially met with some tension but Vic and co eventually warm up to him.

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• Be Careful What You Wish For: Cpt. Rawling brought Hiatt in as a more reliable, law-abiding replacement for Vic Mackey as Strike Team leader, in the hopes of salvaging the team's reputation. Unfortunately, while Hiatt was indeed a straight shooter compared to Vic, he also proved himself incapable of getting the same results as Vic's more "morally grey" style of policing.
• By-the-Book Cop: More than most other Strike Team members, at least.
• The Casanova: He has a one night stand with Tina in fairly short order. When Claudette mentions that as her superior, his behavior was inappropriate, he shrugs it off as something that's handled "with a wink and a look the other way every other place I've been."
• Fair Cop: Dude's handsome.

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