For this of you that never saw it, The Wire is truly worth watching. It’s also worth turning on the subtitles, as it will make it easier to pick up on s the slang.
It felt like a non sequitur the first time, but it makes more sense when you see the show as "telling stories about people who typically don't have stories told about them," rather than a drama about the drug economy.
There's a reason teachers have a specific tax credit for unreimbursed classroom expenses -- and it's because they do things like pool money to buy clothes for the kid whose family can't and won't give him a clean pair.
Resonates with my experience growing up in schools with some kids in real poverty. So many that don’t even know that they are trapped in place that they could get out of, if they had one filament of connection to the outside world.
Comedy is different. If the first episode isn’t funny it rarely improves imho. One doesn’t build a funny character slowly; the human frailties that make them funny are obvious, typically to everyone but them.
And of course, The Wire perfected the original "make you care about people, kill them, then keep going" trick well before GoT.