The thing is the show doesn't break any of the cliches I expected to be there. There is the crazy cop going over the edge, the captain with a stick up his ass, the anti vic (Dutch) etc. but the show manages to pull it off.
It does what it does very well. Each season is its own thing, too. The characters all start out relatively simple, but there is significant development throughout the seasons. It doesn't particulalry have much ambition beyond being the Bestest Cop Show Evar, but that's really enough. It's as shallow or as deep as you want it to be. You can watch it as a hardline cop show, or you can look at the nuances of the different captains between seasons, like Glenn Close's tragic pragmatism vs. Aceveda's ulterior political motives for everything.
It's really difficult to talk about without spoilering things. There are points where there's a megaton development every other episode, and I don't want to give away a thing. Season 1, though, it only gets better from there.
My favorite is probably season 5, though, with Forest Whitaker.
