‘The Wire’ – Game Day
theundefeated.com
theundefeated.com
And my apartment is across the street from stringers copy shop :)
It sadly has begun to show its age.
As each season expands in scope and by the end you feel like you've watched the story of a city you really appreciate it much more.
Stringer talking about inferior product in an aggressive marketplace to his teacher, talking about WorldCom, then rebranding... just brilliant.
My favorite part of the series is when String realizes he's been conned by Clay Davis, and tries to put a hit out on him. Avon intervenes and scolds String, saying "what I tell you about playin' them fuckin' away games?" Avon (and later, Marlo) understood that they could never go legit, because going legit is just another unfair game with a different set of rules.
The only character that escaped their fate was Bubbles.
The Wire definitely took attention to detail seriously.
Well, except for Daniels, lol. But he was promoted way too fast.
So a "good guy" detective like McNulty fabricating evidence seems like an extreme twist, but not so much the idea that a good guy detective feels that some homicides aren't given enough attention. And McNulty, by this point in the show, feels like a character who is tired of all this shit but also has seen how he's gotten away with being a self-righteous dick who bucks the bureaucracy (from the very first episode). And the difference in opinion between the medical examiner and the police can be very problematic, since the former's designation is what ultimately makes a case a homicide or not.
IMO, the 5th season is the worst because of the newspaper setting. As a journalist, it wasn't particularly compelling to me. I mean, it may be the most realistic depiction of a newspaper on TV, and maybe familiarity breeds contempt, but the core problem is that it's not well-developed. The key flaw is that the "villains" of the newspaper setting, Scott Templeton (the reporter) and his enabling editors, are given no qualities beyond being caricatures of bad/evil journalists. This is the same reason why I feel Lieutenant Marimow (named after a Baltimore Sun whom Simon despised) is also a very weak character.
Compare the shallowness of the 5th season bad-guy journalists to the 3rd-season bad guy politicians, like Clay Davis. Davis is most definitely a corrupt character, but besides having an amazing catchphrase ("Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-iiiit!"), he's still got some moral complexity behind him. I think this is best shown in the hilarious scene in the 5th season in which he takes the stand in his corruption trial with such dramatic finesse that he gets acquitted. Davis may be corrupt, but you can see why his community loves him. [0]
I'm not sure how you could make the 5th season journalists interesting, and I'm not sure Simon could either. His rants against the real-life Marimow and the Sun are lengthy and legendary [1], and this was after he was famous for The Wire. Simon is a die-hard defender of the sanctity of journalism and I think he let that overtake his sensibilities when writing the 5th season.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAQv6KTfQow
[1] http://jimromenesko.com/2012/04/05/david-simon-bill-marimow-...
Then within S3 and S4 he learns that a cop needs to be part of the community; he needs to know the people he's policing, and they need to know him. There's a great scene where he starts to chase down a group of hooligans and stops short, realizing "I don't need to chase these kids. I know their parents. I know where they hang."
Theres even the parallel with his former partner Herc who sticks to his soldierly ways and is eventually disgraced.
"You need to learn a little something about the expense account."
Seems equally perfect character development.
People always ask me if my old job was like the show 24 or Homeland. I always tell them it was more like The Wire.
The Homicide book is an excellent start to his writing about Baltimore, and led to the series Homicide: Life on the Street, which paved the way for The Wire. Apart from the research, he has such a fantastic ear for dialogue - I can hear real voices when his characters talk, not least because many of them are based on real people (for example, both Jay Landsman [The Wire] and John Munch [Homicide] are based on the same real-life person).
It's so good in so many ways, but ultimately for me it shows its characters as rational and understandable, whichever side of the law they are on. Series 4 and 5 are not as strong as the first three, but still head-and-shoulders above most other shows. I know some people will prefer Breaking Bad and The Sopranos, but (good as those shows are) The Wire is peak TV imo.
> I know some people will prefer Breaking Bad and The Sopranos, but (good as those shows are) The Wire is peak TV imo
I watched The Wire, Breaking Bad and Mad Men in the first 6 months into my first job. It was the most stressful time of my life, but I don't regret it at all.
This joy of language combines with the fact that surveillance and eavesdropping play such central and indeed titular roles in the show. You then mix in the racial element for example having the black office secretary translating street hood lingo to the white cops listening in. It just all fits together beautifully.
greatest show ever created, his books awesome too. i also loved Treme.
> It seemed kind of strange to me, but David Simon said he had heard about something like that before when he was [at] The Baltimore Sun. I mostly was excited that I was having an episode that I had more than two scenes in. Me and Domenick Lombardozzi referred to it as my Taxi Driver episode, because it’s my favorite movie.
I've read just about every book excerpt/oral history/etc I've been able to find about The Wire, and I've read about Gilliam's and Lombardozzi's and others' recollections on how they were frustrated at times about their scene/line counts. No matter how much I read these behind-the-scenes anecdotes I still have a moment of fourth-wall-breaking-wtf, because the thought of The Wire having the characteristics common to any other kind of entertainment, with writers' rooms and cut scenes and actors demanding more minutes, feels so alien. Of course it's that way, but my mild confusion/shock is a testament to how seamless and real the show and its content and its pacing feel.
I don't think you can really compare the two. The wire was literary and so authentic, Game of Thrones cinematic and epic. They are the two best television shows made - but in different spaces.
Breaking bad was good but sat in the middle and not as good as either.
But usually the literary honest film holds up better over time than the epic special effects one.
To be honest, I'm not impressed with people who are contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. Like yourself, it triggers some circuitry in the brains of many HNers that cause them to enjoy it, even if the actual content of the post is not as high as an equivalent, non-contrarian post. If you understand this circuitry is being fired, you can see the contrarianism for what it really is.
In all seriousness though, the constant contrarianness on display here is tiring. Not sure how else to put it.
Baltimore has a very distinct, but evolving sound and vocabulary. Cinema usually can't seem to escape the 1960s "hon" cliche. I was certain that Idris Elba had to be from Baltimore until I learned otherwise.
Discussion of his accent here from a dialect coach, "This is amazing":
Compared to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdbWsX6h4eo
Phenomenal book that served as an inspiration for The Wire.
https://www.amazon.com/Homicide-Killing-Streets-David-Simon/...
https://www.si.com/nba/2017/04/17/the-wire-oral-history-balt...
Yes, this is a personal comment, and probably as such, OT.
But, it's time. As another commenter says, "the cycle repeats."
I got on the wrong side of that cycle. As a quippy quote on Facebook just reminded me again, yesterday, "The fears we don't face become our limits."
When Trump was elected, I started rewatching "The West Wing."
(By the way, many of the issues we currently face -- issues, not personalities -- the writers of that show addressed in interesting and informative fashion.)
It's time for the counter-point.
Not quite out there, yet. Still watching a show. But, closer to the world we live in.
Sorry for the personal comment, here, in a way.
Today's little quote from the same source, on FB: "Be very careful what you think. Your thoughts run your life."
A reason I held off on watching "The Wire."
But it's time, now.
Badass gay character, humanized gangsters, contra-Reaganesque attitude to drugs, aim at corruption and money, etc. were pretty great for its time, but now that a lot of media has caught up, the lackluster areas stick out a lot more.
It's got liberal sensibilities, not leftist ones.
For example, S2 is about the shipping container women. McNulty swears she won't treat them like a mere blip or statistic, but will remember their humanity. At the end of S2, they have a gag scene where McNulty goes "undercover" at a whorehouse, and gets serviced by some prostitutes, while everyone at base overhearing the mike goes "ooooh youuu McNulty".
I think this shallow and circumscribed commitment to nominal values, not fully comprehending the extent to which they require a fundamental shift in approach, is pretty liberal.
There's also plenty of blaming of teacher's unions for shutting down "innovative" approaches. All the issues chalked up to "capitalism" have to do with individual corruption and not the regular brutal application of market logic to human problems (eg: corrupt construction agencies wanting bribes vs. regular white citizens protecting their interests).
but perhaps the most anti-leftist aspect of them all is how the show is utterly grim and hopeless and nothing ever changes. all radical initiatives are shut down and ruin lives, and it works more as a cautionary tale than an inspiration. if all media is propaganda, The Wire works as propaganda for obedient incrementalism, and decidedly against anything revolutionary.
The Season 2 example you provide I think is a good example of this: McNulty is a flawed human (just as we—and all the characters on the Wire—are) and is fully capable of wanting to do right and sometimes not behaving perfectly, just as the people at the station. I think these reactions were quite realistic. Would McNulty have stopped the prostitutes? Would people hearing of the station had other reactions? I'm interested to know how you would have had it play out differently.
Good art can allow us to reflect on the state of our humanity, just as you have here. Some art can be inspirational, but not all of it needs to be. I think the Wire does an exceptional job of illustrating how difficult it can be to fix real problems in some American cities.
This stuff aside, it's a well developed drama with compelling characters and high production values. Even the politics themselves are better than the harrowing status quo in many places.
I just think that people to easily bestow upon it the "best ever" distinction.
edit: As for how it could have played out differently, I'm not sure. Maybe the madame scenes would have been cut altogether? I think The Shield does a way better job with its "McNulty" equivalent.
Do you have other contenders? I personally avoid superlatives in general, so I would hesitate before using "best ever" in any context, but I can't think of other examples of American television that I personally would rate higher. Many I've talked to about the show feel similarly. While many tend to use superlatives more casually that I would, I don't think in this case it's necessarily a case of hyperbole.
Also, not american, but Ping-Pong: The Animation. Maybe throw in Utopia there too. Thick of It also.
you must be pretty young to think these themes were revolutionary in the early 00's, and that the "media has caught up" to those concepts.
you are correct that this show doesnt care about either leftist or liberal ideologies, but that doesnt mean its propaganda either way. its about depicting an arguably valid interpretation of reality wherein the individual cannot "win" vs. the system, no matter what system or institution or ideology that may be.
I don't think I know the Baltimore education landscape of the last 20-30 years as well as you do, how did it actually happen?
I think the Hamsterdam concept would be pretty easily implemented at the federal level, which was where it was ultimately shut down from in the show.
It's unfortunate that our federal drug policy is now moving in the exact opposite direction.
One thing still true, the game still the game yo.
Ironically, one of the big criticisms of the Wire is its lack of interesting or compelling female characters. I think I read in one of the behind-the-scenes books that David Simon's wife, Laura Lippmann, who was also a writer on the show, criticized/made fun of his use of the super-lesbian archetype (Detective Greggs).
Ok.
During the final season McNulty flipped the script and began behaving in the same way that the city/department behaved.
It was purely to illustrate that if a human behaved the way that the Baltimore Police Department behaved you would view it as a self-destructive deranged person surrounded by a cast of enabling supporters with questionable morals.
I, personally, thought it was brilliant.
then, consider what the writers of the Wire did throughout the entire series, especially in the previous season's story arc about the "Nailgun" serial killings of Marlo's enforcers Chris and Snoop in the city's vacant buildings.
Season 5 loses that feeling. While it was completely enjoyable, I think it was missing something.