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Outstanding season As the third season of The Shield unfolds Mackey's (Michael Chiklis) family falls apart and his team continues to face pressure regarding the stolen drug money earmarked for their "retirement" fund. Clashes abound between teammates, lovers and family members making tackling criminals even more complex than ususal. The "Armenian money train" case continues to worry the team forcing Lemon (Kenneth Johnson) to solve their problem and, in the process, creating more problems for the strike team. More bodies show up with their feet missing as the bad guys get closer to the discovering who took their money. Meanwhile Wyms (CCH Pounder) works undercover to bust a child porn film ring. The Shield continues to be one of the best written, directed and acted series on basic cable. The series' ultra realistic look with the use of handheld cameras, grainy film stock and gritty locations continues to create an environment full of powerful drama. Usually a series will begin to drop in quality over the course of its run but the fact that the series runs only fifteen episodes helps keep the writing and directing quality high. There's also a number of high profile guest star turns particularly in the David Mamet directed episode where Mamet's "regulars" Rebecca Pidgeon and Clark Gregg appear turning in outstanding performances. While the Mamet episode is definitely good it's not the best episode from the third season and that's saying quite a bit about this terrific show. In addition to a number of deleted scenes with optional commentary we also get a terrific documentary on the third season. Breaking Episode #315 gives us a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the production and collaborative method of writing the series. To access the documentary you have to select the episode On Tilt and select Special Features which is a bit odd for a boxed set. We're taken through all parts of the process for an episode of the series from pitching ideas for the multiple storylines to the actual shooting on location and the set. On the production side of things we see the difficulty in creating a stunt involving a wolf for a particular sequence. The 60 minute documentary spends the bulk of its time in the writer's room watching them come up with the various ideas that will might show up in a particular episode. Additionally, there's a preview of what's to come with Glenn Close playing Det. Ronnie Gardocki during the fourth season of the series. You do have the option of playing the episode without the recap of each episode which is a nice touch. The commentary tracks are all recorded with various cast and crew members together. It works much better doing it this way as the banter and synergy created by the "team" creates a much more interesting commentary track. There's few performers, writers or directors that can provide a commentary track that will keep your interest beyond 10 minutes so this team approach will keep viewers much more involved with interesting behind-the-scenes observations about performances, the writing and how it changes from page to screen and the production touches that continues to keep this show cutting edge. Once again Fox comes up with a winner with The Shield. 15 high quality episodes with strong performances, a great documentary on the creation of an episode and deleted scenes with optional commentaries makes this one of the best values out there. We also get deleted scenes with optional commentary. The packaging is nicely done with each disc housed in a Thinpak DVD case. I'm definitely looking forward to season four.