But, that's sorta the point. He kills and fucks random prostitutes and beats women and pay for hit jobs, and he thinks being a thinly veiled family man absolves him of that. It's no different than any of the cartel hitmen or mobsters who wear crosses and go to church every week. Hell, there's even a scene where Paulie explains how they'll all go to heaven after 3000 years in purgatory for all their sins (murder, abuse, cheating, stealing, lying, etc.). The "nice guy" is the irony of it.

At what point is crime portrayed as "cool" in the show? They're paranoid of the FBI every second of the day, all their friends die or snitch, his mob life ruins his family life, and Tony is a fat and depressed murderer who gets a heart attack for seeing a box of rice with a black man on it. The only time it seemed "cool" was when they visited Italy for the mob meeting, and it was the Italians who were portrayed as sophisticated while Tony and his crew were baboons

The Shield is trash because there was no message. The only nuance was "Julian was abused because he's gay, but blue lives matter so he keeps his head down, and that angle stops being explored after season 2 because the actor is a psychopathic christian and didn't want to play a gay character" and "Mackey will murder a man for no reason but he loves his autistic son who never makes an appearance except 1 episode a season and is only used as a prop to advance Mackey's story". And The Shield always portrayed crime as cool. The corrupt cops always got the bad guy despite their brutality, the good guys gave in to the corruption because the world calls for wet work and we answer. Fucking Mackey somehow bags a bunch of attractive young women. The only time it portrayed it as an actual problem was when their own corrupt guys get caught, and even then it's about how they don't want to be arrested and not because it's, you know, bad.