Come and join me in praise of 'The Wire'

Cafe Society
1

Over the past 8 weeks I have watched the first 4 series of this show. I started watching season 1 on FX channel but after 3 weeks bought the DVD boxset. I’ve never bought a boxset of anything before. By episode 7 I’d bought the boxset of season 2 - and so on. (can we skip how i saw s4? But I will buy the dvd)

I dont know where to start in describing my love and admiration for this programme; but I’m going to try. The thing that really does it for me is TIME. It takes it’s time with the story/characters/relationships etc. in a way I can’t remember seeing in a TV show before. The nearest I can think was the 1st season of Six Feet Under but it lost it for me thereafter.

For my money it makes the Sopranos look 2D; and I liked the Sopranos. IMHO it just didnt have the depth that The Wire has.

This thread is intended to invite people to say what it is that they enjoy about the wire - and then I’ll jump back in.

Before I go though, I think it’s also really funny, and nails the pomposity of institutions perfectly.

I searched for a similarly themed thread but couldn’t find one - if there is could someone point me there - I’d like to join in. If not, what do you like about it?

You got to love Bunk, and Omar, and Prop Joe, and Slim Charles and Stringer etc etc etc etc (moves into obsession mode) :wink:

MiM

2

Open spoilers here for the first three seasons!

I just watched the S4 DVD this past week and thought of starting a thread like this. I don’t think we’ve had many Wire threads, but the show does come up in TV discussions.

I’ve never known a TV show to reward viewers like The Wire does. Like in S3 when Avon’s crew are talking about how to deal with Marlo, and Avon says “Put DeVaun on it”. There’s no long pause, no significant glance, nothing – it’s a throwaway line that you’re likely to forget.

Several scenes later, Marlo has sex (in his SUV, the cheapskate) with a woman he met in a club. She says she wants to see him again but it has to be soon, because she’s visiting relatives down south. She wants something nice to think about on that long bus ride. She puts her number in Marlo’s cell. He asks for her name. It’s DeVaun. If you’re like me, you forgot about that first mention of the name, so you’re totally shocked when Marlo’s next meet with DeVaun goes bad. Nothing more about DeVaun for two or three episodes, until you see a woman walk out of her house and get shot by Marlo. You still might not even remember who she is, until Slim Charles tells Avon that DeVaun is dead, which strengthens Avon’s resolve to keep the war going with Marlo, and results in Stringer Bell doing what he did.

And it all started with “Put DeVaun on it.”

Like David Simon and Ed Burns say, all the pieces matter. It doesn’t mean that you have to take notes while you’re watching. It means that each season is crafted, not just written. Everything is connected. It all means something.

Not to mention the fine acting, some of it by street kids and ex-cons, and former politicians.

I think my favorite character is Bodie. His growth, from the chicken McNugget talk and the chess lesson with Dee in the first season, to ranting to McNulty about the senseless violence in S4 – incredible. Bodie showed his heart to a cop!

Favorite scene is the Omar-Brother Mouzone showdown in S3. That’s about as “dramatic” as the show ever got, but I can forgive them.

We should be careful not to give away any of the major deaths, who goes to jail, who hooks up with who, who gets elected, etc. All of it was a surprise to me and it does make a difference.

(Edited to delete a spoiler.)

3

I’ve seen exactly five minutes of the show, but it made an impression on me. It was a scene of two detectives in a kitchen, putting together the sequence of events behind a shooting. I figured this out from their actions and body language, even though every line in the scene was a variation on “fuck”.

Something like:

(Frustrated.)
“Fuck!”

(Baffled.)
“[What the] fuck?”

(Figuring it out.)
“Fuck fuck fuckity fuck.”

Sounds ridiculous, but it really worked. I’ve got the first season on order from Netflix. I guess I avoided the show at first because it sounded depressing. Now I’m just glad they could get it on tv; people probably don’t like being reminded that in the 21st century, in American cities like Baltimore, there are big areas that are godforsaken lawless wastelands of poverty, crime, addiction and hopelessness.

4

Oh hell yes.

Best show ever.

5

I’m taking a vacation day next Friday so I can get several episodes of season 4 under my belt. The Wire is probably the best thing produced for television I’ve ever seen; it’s definitely the best series.

One of the things I love most about it: It has a clear-eyed view of how people function within systems. People rebel, people have big ideas, people try to buck the system, people try to milk the system. But the system is the system for a reason: Because it works. Everyone on the show is shaped by it – even the people most successful at working on its outskirts.

It’s all the game. But at the same time, every single character is unique, every one of them is interesting, every one of them has personality and spark and drive. There aren’t really heroes and villains; there are people who do what they gotta do, and sometimes you can sympathize, and sometimes you just shake your head.

6

Tap, tap, tap.

Anyway, if there are any fans of the show who haven’t read co-creator David Simon’s book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, do yourselves a favor and pick it up ASAP.

7

Another Doper found this, but I’m plugging it anyway in anticipation of S5. I’m sure the script in the link will not be the final scene.

8

Concur.

I envy those who haven’t watched S4 yet, because it’s the best TV I’ve ever seen by a mile. I can’t wait for 5 to start this January.

They have done some filming right behind my house. We went down the see it one day, and walked right by McNulty, saw a few of the other guys.

The open scene from S4 (buying the nail gun) is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen on TV.

9

Amazon is having a one day only sale on the DVDs.

Trunk, let us know which scenes are in your neighborhood, if you’re able to tell when you watch this season.

10

I just started watching this series too. Just started S3 last night.

I think my favorite character is Omar. I did really like Wallace before that.

And I agree with Interrobang?! that sometimes you like characters and sometimes they piss you off. I find that really interesting.

Did anyone see Lt. Daniels in the new Cadillac commercial? I saw it during a football game this weekend. It was really odd to see him in a commercial!

11

I already THINK I know.

On Season 4, they (marlo’s people, I think) were target shooting at cans on a log sort of under a bridge. It was a quick scene but later on, the cops were listening to a tape recording of a phone call made from there. That was filmed a couple years ago (obviously before S4).

Anyway, they were filming in the same location this time, and they were making fake gun shots, so they’re either doing another scene there, or adding to the old one for some reason.

There didn’t really seem to be a reason to revisit that scene, but they are.

I don’t know why McNulty would even have been there.

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It’s the nest TV show I’ve seen in all aspects. The part that impresses me the most is that they never take the easy cop out way in their plotting. Even the random events seem legitimately random, not just convenient for the writers. There’s plenty of tragedy and hope, but nothing is ever overdone. That guy you’re rooting for might not redeem himself or that bad guy you’re hoping will fall might not get caught, but in the end, you don’t feel cheated or manipulated.

13

Half way through S2, McNulty takes Beadie (BD?) home and looks at the photos on her fridge. He says nothing and after some time puts on his coat and says ‘long day’ to her as she returns. No mention of this is made until the very last episode of the whole next series when this scene is revisited.
Similarly Steve Earle saying to Bubbles that a guy has to hit bottom before he wants to quit - when was that - S1? and the subsequent scene in the finale of S4 when bottom is hit hard.
TIME is the key.

When schoolboy Randy tries to stop the teacher ringing his foster mum in S4 I cried like a little boy who has lost his mum in the supermarket only to find her again and have her shot by security guards as a child thief. I never thought TV could hit that hard.

In S4 , the whole deal is in the police’s hands; - Homocide; Westside and Major Crimes have all the info they need to break the case open - AND THEY DONT TALK TO EACH OTHER. In other tv they would have a deadline and at the last minute Bunk would say to McNulty - ‘you need to get this to the courthouse in the next 8 minutes or that kid dies’ blah blah blah. But they don’t and the story passes that point and moves on like a huge tanker crushing a saiboat unnoticed.

I do have a problem though. As a Brit, there are many scenes, especially with Snoop, that I simply can’t understand. I knew what was going on in the scene TRUNK mentioned but could not follow it. I don’t think that they should tailor the show to me, I just wish I could get every nuance. However, like the ‘Wiggers’ that Nick Sobatka calls out in S2 -I am starting to ask my cricket team if they ‘feel me?’

Relatively speaking, almost no-one in the UK has seen this thing of beauty. I’m trying to fight it, but it’s taking longer than I thought.

MiM

14

Its also one of the more accurate shows when they talk about the laws of criminal procedure. Maybe not 100%, but on another plane from every other legal show out there, which is 90% dead wrong.

My favorite is the little debate they have before they bust in on “McNulty and the Hos” in the prostitution ring. No one ever uses the terms “knock and announce” or “exigency” but they are having a legitimate legal argument about how to correctly execute their warrant.

15

Man, I laugh out loud at this prog every episode, and there are loads of comedy shows in the UK where I do not. Carver and Herc (?) talking about if they had to, which man they’d fuck was comedy gold!
What makes you laugh in this show?

16

I heard that scene on “Fresh Air” on the radio; even with just the audio I thought, “I’ve never seen tv like this.”

17

Herc and Carver crack me up, and Bubbles, especially when something goes wrong in his work. Walking down the street in his tightie-whities: “We gotta go by K-Mart.”

Bernard the Burner Buyer and his girlfriend in S3 were fun. That guy was henPECKED.

I hated to laugh at Ziggy in S2, but sometimes I couldn’t help it. The duck, the paternity suit, that godawful coat he was so proud of, and his penis, which he was also quite proud of.

Lots of times I’d smile at something, and then be sad a minute later. Like in S1 when Wallace tells Bodie that Benjamin Franklin (or Alexander Hamilton, I forget) was never president, and Bodie argues with Wallace, because “you don’t get your face on money unless you’re a president, yo”. [smile] And Wallace just gives up. He doesn’t go get a history book, or Google Ben Franklin, or ask his mom or dad, because he has access to none of those things, and even if he did, being smart in the projects doesn’t mean a damn thing. [no smile]

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[QUOTE=Baldwin I figured this out from their actions and body language, even though every line in the scene was a variation on “fuck”.[/qUOTE]

I know the exact scene you mean, I think it was the 3rd or 4th ep of S1. I’ve rewatched it several times. Best scene in a TV show. Ever. Brilliant. But then again, The Wire is the finest cop/robbers show in TV history, and there aren’t enough superlatives for it. I like how the format shows the humanity of both sides of the law, and specifically the drug trade. Hard to believe how much I gave a damn about criminals, but I really did, because they are portrayed with such humanity-- even the monstrous ones.

Omar is in my top 2 favorite TV characters of all time (tied with Al Swearengen). I also thought the Hamsterdam plotline made some very cogent and timely points about the War on Drugs that ought to be discussed more often in the public forum. S4 is the most heart-breaking, though. Damn near killed me.

Can’t wait for S5. I hope I can convince my husband to rewatch S1-4 with me before then.

19

“The Wire” was my first introduction to Idris Elba (Stringer Bell). It was his character that got me hooked on the show.

I also love the diversity of the characters and cast. And while the cast has got some lookers, no one is a supermodel.

20

Not to mention the original Homicide TV series (at least the first three seasons or so, though if you watch it all the way through, then you can watch the movie which is similarly awesome.)

The Wire being, supposedly, something of a sequel to Homicide really makes me want to watch it, but I haven’t had a chance to yet… grumble grumble