The darkness sneaks up on you. The people who start out seeming like James Bond characters end up carrying the full intolerable weight of their lies and destructive actions. People who looked like side characters are followed up with entire life stories in the shadows.
As a fellow The Shield-lover, I highly recommend you try to finish The Americans.
Two short seasons down, it's tight, it's sharp, it could go far.
Btw, funny enough, on rewatches, I actually focus more on the one big Stan question that isn't answered (and, in fact, is actually asked to him for the first time). I'm happy it was never resolved, though I keep wondering if there's some clue that they are hiding in there that will resolve it for real one of these days :)
That last part is the miracle. So many shows start out strong, and are just dogshit for the finale. Does anyone really believe that Severance will manage this trick? Would love to be surprised and mistaken, but they're just throwing crap at the wall to see what will stick, and that only lasts so long.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Americans_episodes...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Prison_Break_episodes#...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Lost_episodes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Game_of_Thrones_episod...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_of_Us_(TV_series)#Rat...
^ compare the viewership. The Americans was getting fewer than a million viewers in its final seasons, Lost regularly got over ten million. You can't easily chalk it up to just the fact that Lost was on network; The Last of Us was getting more than 10x the viewership of The Americans and it was on HBO. While The Americans is very critically acclaimed, it is not as widely watched as it really should be.