“fuck”
I regretfully agree with this. And it’s not just that the fake serial killer was unrealistic, it’s the way the McNulty-Freamon scam dovetailed so perfectly with Templeton’s fake stories for the paper. I know Templeton was an analog of Jayson Blair, so that wasn’t a problem. It was hard for me to buy cops faking a serial killer to make a point, but the combination of the two is where it really became unbelievable. (Even so, I was more disappointed with Lester for going along wit the plot than I was with the series for departing from reality.) Hamsterdam was somewhat plausible by comparison.
Seconded. I know some people here find Mouzzone awesome, but his appearances were jarring to me. I will admit that NOI guys are sort of caricaturiffic even in real life.
Simon only wrote the first and last episode of season five, although as always, he was the showrunner and created the stories.
I’ve seen Dopers say this a bunch of times, and I still disagree 100 percent. Gus was a very nice guy and almost any reporter would have wanted to have him as an editor, but he missed all the important stories and he didn’t even when he become suspicious of Templeton’s fraud, he didn’t say anything and didn’t act until it was too late. And for the most part he did not miss the big stories because he was incompetent. It’s because those stories that the newspaper would not look at for systemic reasons, and I think that was Simon’s real point. It’s illustrated with the debate over the education story. People here keep forgetting that Gus whiffs on the important stuff, and I don’t think that’s a failing on Simon’s part. I think it’s a testament to his skill in creating complete characters. The publisher of the paper is a complete douchebag just like a couple of minor Wire characters have no redeeming qualities, but most of the major characters are better fleshed out.
Yeah, I think we have to acknowledge that Omar’s answers in this scene are just too good. But I’m going to give this scene a free pass because it’s modern day Shakespeare. It’s that good. It’s perhaps the greatest scene of the series and the distillation of why The Wire is great.
Oh man, I so agree with this (except, as pointed out, it’s fuck). It’s a bullshit scene that would never even come close to happening, and people hold it up as some awesome TV. It’s just Hollywood fakery to me.
I’ve had conversations like that. They weren’t really talking. The scene was essentially silent. The “fucks” were just a way to externalize the thinking process for the audience.
I don’t think anyone likes the “fuck” scene because it’s realistic, and I agree it isn’t. They like it because it’s funny. To tell you the truth that scene didn’t make any impression on me the first time I saw it.
Oh yeah the fuck scene, although Bunk does say shit in it too IIRC. 
I believe I’ve read (either here or on TVTropes) that Simon put this scene in because of an interview he’d done with a detective who was dismayed at his coworkers’ language and said something along the lines of “in a couple years, you’ll have investigations where every single spoken word is the f bomb”. Simon found it funny and made it happen.
So, yeah, it’s exaggerated and caricatural, but it’s not complete fuckery. Sorry, fakery.
Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeit.
The slang. I was unable to understand anything that anyone was saying, so I never got past episode one.
I think the slang was one of the best things about it. I never had trouble understanding it except maybe for Snoop once in a while. She was kind of the Boomhauer of the show.
He said “I got the shotgun, you got the briefcase. It’s all in the game, though, right?”
That is by no means a longwinded explanation, it’s an explanation with pith and wit.
If it were Hollywood, it would go on for about 5 minutes and involve stirring music and table banging.
General point: I think we need to allow for the fact that The Wire is a TV show, and if they used no dramatic conceits at all it’d probably be very difficult to watch.
EDIT: I totally missed that Jas09 already made my point. :smack:
I thought all of season 5 was weak:
The fake serial killer, I could have bought this if they had taken longer to get to that point. If I was Jimmy, I would have gone to the press and told the world that budget cuts meant that they weren’t investigating the rowhouse murders, if that didn’t work then fake a serial killer.
The newsroom, it was clear Simon was just sticking his finger in the eye of his former bosses who were all more cartoonishly evil and stupid than any of the murderous drug dealers. Also, Gus was the only heroic and noble character in a sea of complex believable characters.
I HATED this, and it seemed to get more and more ridiculous as the series went on.
This is one of the things that makes The Wire what it is: the characters rarely step out of the scene and explain things for the benefit of the audience. You either follow along from context, or you get confused and figure it out later.
Season 5 is seriously inferior to all the other seasons:
-Mc Nulty is rebooted, he is exactly the same guy he was in season 1. All his character development over the last 4 seasons (which also made possible focusing on other characters) was thrown out, for no good reason.
-Templeton (the hack journalist guy, I believe that’s his name) has absolutely zero positive traits. It could have been interesting if he had been shown as a rather incompetent guy under pressure (either self built pressure or coming from the top) trying to cope in a very shitty way. No, he’s just an ass through and through. And brownnoses as hell as well. Even Clay Davis was likable, despite being a caricature of a corrupt politician.
Apart from that, the two worst moments of the Wire in all the other seasons:
- Mouzoune Vs Omar alley scene: Omar is great because he is a walking folk legend. Mouzoune belongs to a comic book. Having those two trying to out-awesome one another on a show that’s based on realism hurt the believability of the whole series
-Stringer Bell’s death: all that for this?
This is pretty minor but, even though the makeup artist did a pretty good job on his face, there were times when Andre Royo (Bubbles) was revealed to be way too buff to be a homeless junkie. The guy had the thighs of a speed skater.
According to Royo, a real junkie once approached him during filming and offered him a hit, saying that it looked like Royo needed it worse than he did. Royo calls that his “street Oscar.”
Yes, he looked a little too healthy to be a junkie if you examined him closely, but he sold the character enough with his acting that you didn’t really notice it (at least I didn’t).