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Comment by OminousWeapons | Hacker News Reader

The Wire is the greatest show that has ever been made in my opinion. It features thoughtful examinations of schools, corruption, media bias, policing policy, labor, drug legalization, addiction, politics, drug organizations, what it is like to be poor, and much more. The Wire also features the single most accurate portrayal of what it is like to exist in a large organization and how individuals within those organizations drive organizational momentum, policy, and culture at all levels. People complain about it being a little slow because real life is slow and the Wire is emulating real life. The ending of the show is also perfect in that it's absolutely not spectacular in any way. Season 1 is my favorite season.

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It’s easy to sound hyperbolic calling anything the “best” thing of its category, but no TV has even come close to The Wire for me.

Season four broke my heart with the adolescent kids. I can’t believe how good they all were in their roles, phenomenal performances.

The one minor scene that always wrecks me is where Bodie is talking to McNulty near the end of the series and says, “I feel old...”

The character is supposed to be a late teenager in that scene, and is already feeling worn out of life he has almost no chance of escaping.

That to me was the big takeaway. Too many things are stuck where they are: people, systems, etc.

As Marlo says, “You want it to be one way, but it’s the other way.”

Okay I’m done fan-boying. Yes, I’m this annoying when I tell my irl friends about the show as well.

I'll never forget that scene with Marlo, with the lollipop in his mouth. It strangely makes him seem extra ruthless. My wife finds it odd that I remember such trivia, but that is one of the most prominent details of the whole series for me.

Yes, thank you! That scene with the lollipop is vicious and the way he is in such control of the moment, unforgettable.

The Wire really is a remarkable show in that, unlike a most of TV before it, it literally springs from who the characters are. The closest thing to an imposed narrative is the decision to focus on a specific segment of the phenomenon that is Baltimore, the police bureaucracy in S1, the white+ working class (well before DJT) in S2, etc. Literally everything else derives from the who the characters are, not the arc imposed by the writers. The scripts are as much channeled as written.

My issue with such a statement is that it most likely inevitably picks from a very specific subset of shows: that is, american and british shows (although the latter may even be quite a small subset of all british shows, if you are american), maybe with one or two other-anglospheric-country shows mixed in (probably a couple canadian shows, and maybe if we're lucky, one or two australian), and ignores the huge swathes of international tv production. That's without even going into the problem of age (most likely, your subset is composed mostly of shows of the > 1980s at best, probably a significant subset would be > 2000s). I don't mean to say that this is a "bad" subset, that is, I concede that it's inevitable that it contains great, and in some cases, sublime shows: we've gotten better at media production over the decades, and the financial and talent pools of the americans are nearly unparalleled. Yet I can't help but feel like the americano-centrism of the "Best shows of all times" list is worthy of criticism (I have similar criticisms for most "best album / songs of all time" lists), given that I've seen shows of extremely high quality from both european and russian media. (Of course, I myself am guilty of this, with respect to shows from asia and the middle east, for instance, which I've seen nothing of. It seems as though most westerners will consume media of the following categories: either american, or from their country, with at most a handful of what could be considered for them, a "foreign" show.) as I feel like tv in general seems to be a medium in which americans don't tend to really stray beyond looking at what's produced by their country, unlike say, films, where, perhaps because of the more "high-class" sentiment that comes with being a cinephile, there's a stronger push to look beyond the borders in an effort to stay informed and "cultured" about films around the world.

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