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The Wire

thepop

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henrygandorf
henrygandorf
Buzzrock
Buzzrock

Po-lice did Bernard a favor. So long season 3. You were kickass. Got DAMN this show is good. Better than GoT or Sopranos or any other big show you want to put it up against. I’ll always love Deadw

threesheets
threesheets

Safe to say this is one of the better pieces of mail I've ever received. In response to a comment I made on Twitter. 

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WhatTheBuck

WhatTheBuck 28705

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26 minutes ago, South Austin said:

I don’t obsess over Steve Zahn like you do. I just think he’s a really bad actor.

You obsess over him because you said you can’t watch Treme because you hate him so much. You’re projecting. I don’t care about him but there’s nothing wrong with his performance in Treme. And the show had a large cast. To be so turned off by one actor that you can’t watch the show? That’s a sign of obsession. 

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TommyGufano

TommyGufano 6021

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On 5/19/2022 at 8:57 AM, Seasick Sailor said:

Season 2 is my favorite season. 

My list changes depending on which way the wind is blowing that day, but the only opinion I'd ever argue with anyone on is having Season 5 ranked anywhere other than 5th. S2 lives somewhere in the top-3 for me

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South Austin

South Austin 52122

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32 minutes ago, TommyGufano said:

My list changes depending on which way the wind is blowing that day, but the only opinion I'd ever argue with anyone on is having Season 5 ranked anywhere other than 5th. S2 lives somewhere in the top-3 for me

I agree. Season 5 had promise with including the press into the storylines, and I really liked the character of the Baltimore Sun editor. But McNulty becoming unhinged and manufacturing homicides was too much for me.

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WhatTheBuck

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10 hours ago, TommyGufano said:

My list changes depending on which way the wind is blowing that day, but the only opinion I'd ever argue with anyone on is having Season 5 ranked anywhere other than 5th. S2 lives somewhere in the top-3 for me

I’m rigid on 2, 1, 3, 4, 5.

But the fact that season 5 is the least of the seasons in the best series ever isn’t a huge indictment. It’s obvious that they were running out of material. They knew it was the last season and they set some things up. Some of it was hokey but some of it was as powerful as anything they ever did.

Spoiler

Bubbles’ redemption and going upstairs to have breakfast with his sister and her kid might have been the most righteous moment in the show.

 

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Buzzrock

Buzzrock 14870

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Hot damn this show is good. It’s incredible how much work they put into character development just in season 1. Kima’s relationship. Prez the fuckup who cracks the code. McNulty’s fractured home life and alcoholism. Lester the stealth badass. Every character has depth. I haven’t watched a show with this many favorite characters since Deadwood.

Why can’t new shows do this?

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Buzzrock

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I would definitely watch it with a guide of some sort as it is so thick. Alan Sepinwall did a whole episode by episode recap for new watchers (and veterans) a while back. If you just search Alan Sepinwall The Wire it should come up. It has no spoilers, but with all the characters and relationships, I’m sure it’s helpful.

Treme was really great too. I think it took off after season one, after they dialed in the Steve Zahn and Michiel Huisman characters. They were pretty bad in season one, IMO.

I started to look into this but I barely have time to just watch the show much less read the show. I’m just gonna let it wash over me.
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TwiceHorn

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Back when Game of Thrones was good, some pundit of the higher brow variety proposed that good GoT was a sociological, rather than character-driven drama and that The Wire was among the first such sociological dramas and probably the best.

There are a lot of great characters, and more than a few go away one way or another without the show losing its compelling nature.  And the characters ebb and flow in terms of importance and "likeability."

Because it's all of it, the milieu, the city, that makes it a great show.

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shadow_operative

shadow_operative 15932

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On 5/21/2022 at 11:33 PM, Buzzrock said:

Hot damn this show is good. It’s incredible how much work they put into character development just in season 1. Kima’s relationship. Prez the fuckup who cracks the code. McNulty’s fractured home life and alcoholism. Lester the stealth badass. Every character has depth. I haven’t watched a show with this many favorite characters since Deadwood.

Why can’t new shows do this?

Cool Lester Smooth. 

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Augustus

Augustus 3061

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48 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Back when Game of Thrones was good, some pundit of the higher brow variety proposed that good GoT was a sociological, rather than character-driven drama and that The Wire was among the first such sociological dramas and probably the best.

There are a lot of great characters, and more than a few go away one way or another without the show losing its compelling nature.  And the characters ebb and flow in terms of importance and "likeability."

Because it's all of it, the milieu, the city, that makes it a great show.

That was an incredible analysis of what made Game of Thrones so compelling.

The world they lived in was the main character, and its rules didn't bend for any of the characters we were following.  Bad things, including death, happened to good guys as often as bad guys.  In that sense, GOT was the most realistic tv series (or movie) I'd ever seen.

But then the later seasons happened and the protagonists got outfitted in invincible plot armor and everything went to hell.

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WhatTheBuck

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On 5/22/2022 at 12:33 AM, Buzzrock said:

Why can’t new shows do this?

Because it’s hard. And shows like The Sopranos developed big fanbases despite no character development and massive plot holes. In The Sopranos, Chris and Paulie can let a Russian mobster get away in the woods and nothing ever comes of it. In The Wire, the stain on Kima’s couch means something. 

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Buzzrock

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On to season 2.


Interesting how they went for a “kinda” satisfactory ending to season 1. Every time I see a bunch of cops in a photo op with a table full of drugs on the news I think, “Well they did it: no one can get drugs any more. I bet that was really worth all the time and money.” Same vibe with “dope on the table.”

Daniels is a gangster. 

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South Austin

South Austin 52122

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58 minutes ago, Buzzrock said:

Interesting how they went for a “kinda” satisfactory ending to season 1. Every time I see a bunch of cops in a photo op with a table full of drugs on the news I think, “Well they did it: no one can get drugs any more. I bet that was really worth all the time and money.” Same vibe with “dope on the table.”

I'm pretty sure the writers and produces expected the audience to react to that scene with something along the lines of, "Yeah right, they haven't stopped shit."

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Jerry Callo

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11 hours ago, Augustus said:

The world they lived in was the main character

Michael K. Williams said the same thing in an interview with Marc Maron on the WTF podcast - Do you want to know what the best character on that show was? Hands down. Yeah, it was the city of Baltimore.

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The Original Greaser Bob

The Original Greaser Bob 2785

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On 5/21/2022 at 7:34 PM, WhatTheBuck said:

But the fact that season 5 is the least of the seasons in the best series ever isn’t a huge indictment. It’s obvious that they were running out of material.

I disagree.  The final scene of the Wire is in Season 3, when Bunny is looking over the rubble.  This was an epic -- and they had to include schools and the old media in the story of the destruction of the American City. 

Seasons 1 2 and 3 were about the failure of law enforcement and corruption.  Seasons 4 and 5 show the failure of education and the media - and those latter two portend the end of American society.  Not as fun, but just as necessary to the series.

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South Austin

South Austin 52122

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8 minutes ago, The Original Greaser Bob said:

 Seasons 4 and 5 show the failure of education and the media - and those latter two portend the end of American society.  Not as fun, but just as necessary to the series.

I don't know if Season 4 was unnecessary, but I thought it was great, and absolutely gut-wrenching. 

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WhatTheBuck

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12 minutes ago, The Original Greaser Bob said:

I disagree.  The final scene of the Wire is in Season 3, when Bunny is looking over the rubble.  This was an epic -- and they had to include schools and the old media in the story of the destruction of the American City. 

Seasons 1 2 and 3 were about the failure of law enforcement and corruption.  Seasons 4 and 5 show the failure of education and the media - and those latter two portend the end of American society.  Not as fun, but just as necessary to the series.

Seasons 1 and 2 could have been documentaries. Season 3 introduced the hypothetical with the Hamsterdam storyline. Something that never actually happened but was postulated by someone in the police force.

Spoiler alert: we still haven’t solved the drug problem. We could study how the Dutch have tried to tackle it. And Sonny in Treme was a Dutch immigrant who had a drug problem. Crazy, isn’t it?

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Augustus

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9 hours ago, WhatTheBuck said:

Seasons 1 and 2 could have been documentaries. Season 3 introduced the hypothetical with the Hamsterdam storyline. Something that never actually happened but was postulated by someone in the police force.

Spoiler alert: we still haven’t solved the drug problem. We could study how the Dutch have tried to tackle it. And Sonny in Treme was a Dutch immigrant who had a drug problem. Crazy, isn’t it?

I think Portugal would serve as a good example to study.

Personally, I'm a believer in decriminalization and harm reduction, and if that means safe zones for dope deals and drug usage, and handing out clean needles, etc.  We're starving for some practical solutions to improve the situation, however slightly.  

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Augustus

Augustus 3061

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17 hours ago, HornPhD said:

This thread inspired me to get HBOMAX just so I can re-watch The Wire and other series. 

“Sometimes things gotta play hard.”

Great call.

The Sopranos, Deadwood and Rome are all fantastic re-watches, among a bunch of other great stuff on HBO

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WhatTheBuck

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14 minutes ago, Augustus said:

Great call.

The Sopranos, Deadwood and Rome are all fantastic re-watches, among a bunch of other great stuff on HBO

If it has The Larry Sanders Show then every subscriber should watch that. It’s up there with The Wire among the greatest series of all time. Comedies don’t get the same respect as dramas but that show was brilliant and totally original. It might help if you’re old enough to have grown up watching Johnny Carson. But replays of Carson are aired on Antenna TV so it would be easy to catch up on that, where you can watch the development of comedians like Garry Shandling and Jerry Seinfeld. Larry Sanders and Seinfeld ran at the same time. Jerry Seinfeld appeared on Larry Sanders.

The show was genius and the writing and cast were amazing. The musical guests were great too. The first time I saw T Bone Burnett, who brilliantly scored the soundtrack of the first season of True Detective, was when his band was a guest on The Larry Sanders Show. And the scene with Hank Kingsley interacting with the Wu-Tang Clan is as funny as it gets. Jeffrey Tambor was amazing. Just hysterical. And Rip Torn? Come on. 

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Vic Mackey

Vic Mackey 46932

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One more episode to go for Season 4. I love this season. And it shows how the school system fails so many kids in this environment. It's basically useless for them and everyone knows it. And how everyone hates the state testing mandate. When I was in school in Texas, it was the TAAS test. Fucking hated it. I aced it with ease and it was boring as hell to learn that shit. Teachers hate it. And to see the progression of Namond, Dookie, Michael and Randy. Namond being Wee Bay's son and being expected to follow in his dad's footsteps (yeah, great steps to follow huh, he's in prison for life). And he is not like his dad at all. But his mom treats him like shit because of that. This show really dives into how their home life really puts them behind the 8ball in life along with the area they grow up in. The whole "well just go to school and find a good job to get out the hood" is not an option for so many for a variety of reasons. And even if they do finish school, they still have no real options after school.

A great scene to end episode 12 season 4 was Carver telling Randy he would get Social Services to take care of him and Randy is yelling "you going to look after me? Take care of me" as Carver just walks out the hospital. He promised to take care of him but they burned his house down still and his foster mom died. I thought it was a powerful scene. And it was good to see Prez get on his feet at the school after the shooting incident cost him his job in the police dept.

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