I have to wonder how the real Mayor, city council and PD of Baltimore feel about the show.
I was planning on posting something like this. I still haven’t gotten around to seeing The Wire, but plan to.
For those who’ve seen both: Is The Wire better than Homicide (pretending that the last horrible season didn’t happen), worse or about the same?
This is really difficult to answer, because I loved Homicide, but I haven’t seen it in quite a while, as opposed to The Wire which is very fresh in my mind. One thing that stands out is that I think The Wire’s season-long (and in many cases, multi-season) plot arcs are much better crafted. Homicide was all right at this, it’s as if The Wire is taking it to the next level. Not only in terms of the actual stuff that happens in the plot, but the emotional impact as well. It’s really very clever how they do it – the writers are excellent at giving you enough steady information to keep you up to speed, but not so much that it seems like exposition. On some shows, sometimes a plot point seems to have less emotional impact because some of the story elements happened so long ago. The Wire manages to turn this around, they’ve been feeding you enough subtle reminders so that the emotional effect is heightened when the show revisits something from 'way back.
The other thing – and again this could be impacted by how long it’s been since I’ve seen Homicide – is that overall, the performances in The Wire are at a consistently higher level. If memory serves, Homicide featured quite a few really stand out performances, and then plenty of more forgettable ones, especially with minor characters. In The Wire, I feel like most everyone is operating at “very good” just about all of the time, which I prefer to having some be “excellent” while others are “eh.”
Oddly enough, the one guy who I’m not that crazy about, acting-wise, is Dominic West, who plays one of the main cop guys. I have this theory that if West were stronger, the show might have gone in a somewhat different direction. He’s clearly a main character, but I think there was potential for that character to have been even more of a driver on the show (the first season has that feel to it), and I’m glad it didn’t go that way because I like it better as more of an ensemble show.
They’ve used real Baltimoreans on the show – not just cops and criminals, but former politicians, including a former mayor – the one who considered decriminalizing drugs and was called “the most dangerous man in America”. I’ve forgotten his name.
Haven’t they also had some real city council people on the show too?
Monstro, I love this aspect too. They look like normal people.
delphica, Dominic West was one of the reasons I initially passed on this show. I caught bits and pieces and looked at West and thought “He’s not so much.”
As much as I rail against gorgeous people everywhere on TV, West was the focus of the first two seasons, and he doesn’t have standard “star quality”. It’s not just his looks – those horsey teeth and that bushy hair – he’s not a scene stealer. He’s not the one you automatically look at in any shot that he’s in – not like Idris Elba or Michael Williams.
I think Simon and Burns did this deliberately, casting an “ordinary” guy. It’s not until you get to know him that you get interested in him. Terri D’Agostino missed out, didn’t she? Not looking past his lack of education and terrible table manners.
If someone else was in that role, somebody like – I’m trying to think of an incredibly hot white man but I can’t – it’d be a whole other show. The rest of the ensemble wouldn’t shine like they do.
I’ve been thinking about starting a thread like this for a while, because, like the OP, I’ve been re-watching the first four seasons (with a friend) in preparation for the start of Season 5. So thanks, MIM.
The Wire is, without the slightest doubt, the best show that has ever been on television, and IMHO has a place among the greatest artistic accomplishments of mankind. (Seriously!)
I’ve been a big fan since Season 1, when I started watching mainly because it was set in my home town. But the complexity of the storylines, the great acting, and the realism of it all just sucked me in. It’s also a brilliant depiction of how the “War on Drugs” is, and must be, a complete failure.
I can’t say enough about how much more realistic The Wire is than virtually any other primetime drama. There are no supercops or supervillains, just ordinary shlubs on both sides, some a little better than average at what they do, most average or worse. The Wire just spoils you for ordinary shows where the good guys are all good, the bad guys are really bad, and everything is neatly tied up at the end of every hour. Other shows just seem trite and silly.
In The Wire, some of the most interesting and sympathetic guys are drug dealers (or other underworld characters), like D’Angelo, Bodie, and Bubbs, and some of the most evil and slimey are supposedly on the right side of the law. (I’m looking at you, Erv Burrell and Clay Davis!)
I was so pissed off that Stringer didn’t manage to bump off Clay Davis before he was killed!
And the organizations (the police department, the illicit drug business, the longshoreman’s union, the city government, the school system) are palpable presences, exerting their control over everything and everyone.
In every season, at least one character tries to make a difference, tries to make things better. It’s McNulty in S1, Frank Sobotka in S2, Bunny Colvin and Stringer Bell in S3, Prez and Bunny again in S4. Each meets a tragic fate, in some cases even losing their lives, as the inertia of The System refuses to be shifted and heartlessly crushes anything and anyone in its way. Their struggles are aptly compared to those in the classic Greek tragedies. I will argue that Frank Sobotka is every bit as complex, subtle, and fascinating a character as Oedipus Rex.
Here’s one of the little things I just love about The Wire: In the middle of S3 there was a quick shot of Deputy Commissioner Rawls in sitting in a gay bar. We were there for a completely different reason, and if you had looked away for a second you might have missed it.
In any conventional TV show, that would have been a foreshadowing for some big scandal to break (and be resolved) within the next 20 minutes of the show. In The Wire, we’ve been patiently waiting for a season and a half! for some payoff on the news that Rawls is gay. It may come in S5, or it may just be an aspect of Rawls’ character that the creators have decided to share, without making a big deal about it. (Take that, J.K. Rowling!)
And I don’t know about you, but I’ve pretty much resigned myself to never finding out about that skeleton in Daniels’ closet, the “couple hundred thousand more in liquid assets than any police lieutenant should ever have” that FBI agent Fitzhugh mentioned back in S1.
Auntie Pam: it was former Mayor Kurt Schmoke. And then-governor Robert Ehrlich played a Maryland State Trooper in the State House in S4.
Thank you!
I’ve been curious about Daniels’ past too. It’s been alluded to in every season. I read over at TWOP that David Simon said in an interview that everything will be resolved in season five. The thing with Daniels is the only thing I care about. Rawls can stay in the closet.
I’m tickled that there are so many Wire fans here. I’m looking forward to the weekly threads. 
In addition to Homicide, any fan should read The Corner, the book that came between Simons’ TV shows. (I haven’t seen the HBO miniseries.) Bunny Colvin’s speech about how the drug war needs its “paper bag” comes straight from The Corner, and I’m pretty sure Bubbles is based heavily on one of the book’s major characters.
The world of “Homicide” and the world of “The Wire” are quite different. The detectives in “Homicide” work in an old building with antiquated equipment. In “The Wire”, the homicide detectives have cubicles and computers.
“Homicide” plots often came down to interrogations, some of which were brilliantly handled. In “The Wire”, the police are chasing down bad guys through a variety of means. None of the interrogations seem to last that long.
In “Homicide”, the police almost always refer to themselves as “cops.” But in “The Wire,” the term is “police.” As in “Freamon is good police.” Accent on the “po.”
The ‘Wire’ folks have released some vignettes in anticipation of the 5th season:
A young Proposition Joe
A young Omar
McNulty and Bunk meet for the first time.
There’s also five promos for the latest season.
Sheeee-it! You know you would’ve missed him in S4.
Bunk is at a bar in S4(?) with someone. Can’t remember who, but they’re much more grown up than he is. Bunk is drunk, and he ogles two chicks who walk by him. He says to his companion,
“You know what the plural of pussy is?”
(pause)
“puss-i”
(pause)
“McNulty taught me that.”
The Wire reminds me of a dense, thick novel. Everything doesn’t make complete sense at first but you have faith that the author is taking you down a particular path for a reason, so you sit back and just enjoy the ride.
Can somebody explain the prank pulled on Griggs when she joins the detective squad in S4? Lester and Bunk get her to make a call that is a pun - like Bart ringing Moe’s tavern asking for Amanda Huggenkiss - but I couldnt figure it out.
Another thing that made me laugh was the interview of Method Man for shooting his dawg. But while funny it screwed the wire tap - as AuntiePam said, bittersweet humour.
MiM
Not that I would presume to speak for Baltimore, but. . .
I think people just think that it is “accurate”, but not complete. Keep in mind, characters on the shows are often based on real people (or amalgams of real people), and sometimes not very loosely at all. The former police commissioner Ed Norris has been on it (a lot), a former mayor, a former governor.
David Simon was a writer for the Baltimore Sun for a time.
He’s spent time with the police. If you ever read “The Corner” (read it, seriously!), he basically spent every day for a year in one of the shitty open-air drug markets in Baltimore, getting to know the families, guys like D’Angelo, guys like Bubbles, moms, pregnant teens. He’s a ballsy, honest writer who gets a lot of respect.
I don’t think there’s a person in the city who can legitimately stand up and claim, “that’s not how it is” because Simon knows better than whoever would be saying it. He’s not Stephen Bochco (theater background, artist family) writing NYPD Blue.
Oddly, I don’t think that people here really feel like it portrays the city all that negatively. For one, everyone knows that that all is just ONE aspect of the city. It’s a story about the drug culture of the city, not a story about the entire city. For two, we also assume that it is pretty universal, not restricted to Baltimore. If people don’t think that the institutions of Detroit, Atlanta, Houston, etc. operate similarly, then they just haven’t dug deep enough.
Or at least, that’s what I get from my circle.
Thanks **delphica ** and BobT
The phone number they gave Kima was for the zoo, and the message was from a Mr. Lyon.
BobT, I wonder why they were “cops” in Homicide and “police” in The Wire, since both shows are set in Baltimore. It sounds odd the first few times you hear it. “I’m a murder police.”
Do you think TPTB figured that Homicide viewers wouldn’t accept the new (to them) term? Heck, some Amazon reviewers complained about it, in reviews for one of Laura Lippman’s Baltimore crime novels. They thought she made it up.
Another Herc funny was playing the theme from S.W.A.T. when they were taking down a corner. And then Rawls blares the theme from Apocalypse Now at the end of S3.
Wow Gyan - thanks for those links, young Omar’s a confident kid alright.
MiM
As Kima (who is a lesbian) walks on past,
Jay: You know, I would if she wasn’t…
Bunk: Fussy?
MiM
I think the Wire does a great job of showing how very little anyone ever really knows what’s going on, and to what a great degree coincidence and chance shape lives. Other threads (I watched all four seasons recently and went back and read all those threads) talked about how odd it was that no one
jumped Bubbles for being a snitch, but I find it perfectly plausible that for all that he seems like a big deal to us, he’s just a little part of a huge world–he’s not someone everyone knows, he’s just that guy. And his knowledge reflects that–it’s often scanty. He knows, at most, who the players are, but not what they do. He doesn’t know about the empties.
In the same way, I thought it plausible that no one would find out about
Hamsterdam for several weeks, simply because while it seemed like a big deal to the people there, in reality it’s just one district–maybe 5-10% of the drug trade in the city. Very big deal to the people there, nothing to the rest of the world. I also thought Hamsterdam was a great treatment of the problems and the possiblilites of legalizing drugs, because while it did clean up the corners, it also really did create a hell–the kids all over the place, people ODing the the houses, and while you can argue that stuff was happening other places too, concentrating things does make it all the more intense.
I loved the treatment of the schools–I teach in a large urban district, and everything rang true to me–how the kids behaved, how the teachers had widely varying success dealing with the same kids, the problem with kids that need to be socialized but the anxiety about then writing off actually educating them, even the wandering into the bookroom and finding more recent books and a computer in the box. The fact that the teachers were both dedicated AND cynical–most depictions of TV teachers seem to show either idealism or cynicism, and most good teachers I know are both.
It’s not a 100% split. I haven’t seen all the Homicide shows, but I do remember the characters saying things like “I’m a good police” or I’m a homicide police". It is jarring.
So do the books have the same “feel” as the shows? I’d assume they do, but just wondering.