…and about to watch it all over again. I now can say that I’m happy that sports have been shut down worldwide, or else I may have never gotten around to watching it.
What a brilliant series! It deserves all the “all time” ratings it gets. The depth and complexity of the characters, the rawness and grittiness of the town, the brutality and desperation in the streets, all perfectly depicted. In terms of non-comedies, I have Northern Exposure, The Sopranos, and Game of Thrones as my top ever. Upon second watching, I think The Wire will supplant them all.
That said, I did have an issue with a couple of things:
Throughout the series, I felt that the police street surveillance Locations were way too easy to be spotted by the targets, who are already paranoid about the Po-po. But I suppose we can allow artistic license for this
Omar- considering the ruthlessness of the drug gangs, I find it hard to believe that he could go have survived that long with his stick-up game
Carcetti- Aiden Gillen is a great actor, but that was an awful job of an accent. Meanwhile the McNulty and Stringer actors, both from the UK, were spot on with their accents.
Prop Joe- I can’t believe such a powerful and careful leader would allow himself to get killed like that so easily
Also, some questions for you experts:
in the 1st season Wallace is sent to the country to hide. Before that, we are shown his home life that involves being the caretaker of a group of kids who all live in an abandoned building. Is it explained what happened to these kids when he was taken away?
is it ever explained why Avon was the kingpin, when Stringer was clearly the brains behind his organization’s success? They appeared to have grown up together.
What happened to Omar’s 2nd boyfriend? The 1st Latin one that he drove around with.
Cutty- at one point, it seemed he was evolving into a positive influence on his kids, then he brutally hits a woman on the streets, and then he’s back to being a “good guy”. What happened there?
IIRC, Omar was based on a real person. And in fact they toned down some of the true story to make it more believable. For instance, in the show he jumps out of a fourth story window and limps away. This didn’t happen. It was actually a six story jump.
Stringer was the brains but it was the more aggressive Avon that fought to get the towers that made them a powerful influence in the drug world. Stringer also seemed to be perfectly happy being the #2 guy until Avon just wouldn’t let go of the towers and the street drug trade.
Dante disappeared after the third series; no explanation was offered, but given the kind of life Omar leads you can imagine it would be hard.
I don’t recall Cutty hitting a woman, but he had basically just gotten tired of the street game and tells Avon “I ain’t got it in me no more.” He’s still trying to learn how to live a good life (hence his sleeping around with all of the single mothers whose sons come to his gym). Cutty’s story is one of the few examples of genuine redemption that didn’t end in death or being fired.
And yes, whenever I see character actor Isaiah Whitlock, Jr. in something now, my involuntary response is to whisper, “Sheeeeeeeeeeeeit” under my breath. In a show full of corruption and civil malfeasance, he was a standout.
Good observation. If you ever read behind-the-scenes accounts, the producers acknowledged the surveillance teams should have been further away in real life, but that wouldn’t worked for the purposes of filming.
It was never explained what happened to the homeless kids Wallace looked after. I assume they found other places on the street to live.
I disagree that Stringer was the brains of the operation. He was kind of dumb, and Avon call him out several times for his poor judgement. Most of his business acumen was just repeating what he just learned in his community college class, but he never showed that he knew how to apply it practically. I read a comment that Stringer is supposed to be read as dumb and kind of pathetic, but because Idris Elba is such a strong and charismatic presence, the audience sees otherwise.
Renaldo wasn’t seen with Omar when he returned to Baltimore in season 5. I assume he remained in PR with the money.
Cutty didn’t get the gym going until after he resigned from the Barksdale gang. Before that, we were shown that he carried a lot of conflict about his role in a drug gang, such as one of his conversations with the minister.
If you look at the first episode to show Cutty (season 3, episode 1), when he was still locked up, Avon and Weebay recall that a younger Cutty called the police after murdering a rival. Avon and Weebay thought that made Cutty quite the badass. But you can also interpret that as a young Cutty felt immediate remorse.
Stringer Bell saw that the drug trade was just another business, and like all business was subject to market changes and supply limitations. Stringer definitely understood how to apply the basic microeconomic principles he was learning in class (most memorably “inelastic demand” and how to rebrand an “inferior product”) to this business, and also was smart enough to realize that “dropping bodies” and fighting to hold territory brought on police attention which was a liability to their business.
Avon Barksdale was more street smart, but couldn’t see past the street-level exchange into the larger business of being a middleman for the drug trade, or converting their wealth into legitimate enterprises. Where Stringer ultimately failed is he moved into a new business enterprise (real estate speculation) without understanding the new operating principles (e.g. how many palms have to be greased in order to get permits and work done), and got fleeced for his trouble. That, combined with trying to extricate himself from the drug business without agreement led to his being doublecrossed and murdered.
Yeah, Stringer was smart and dumb at the same time- he knew staying in the drug trade was a losing proposition, but he had too much of a gangster mentality to succeed in straight business. Remember that he got scammed because he assumed that bribery was necessary, but what he actually needed was paperwork and patience. And when he realized he had been had, he starts talking about killing, instead of learning from his mistake and moving on.
I also thought this, Prop Joe had been portrayed as very street smart and he should never have let Marlow anywhere near him. The idea that he could somehow tame or educate Marlow was never going to happen and Joe would have known that full well, in fact Slim Charles even told him this point blank. I guess it was needed for the script but it was a stretch to me.
If you ever do a rewatch take some time to consider this point. Once you look deeper into the show it becomes more and more clear why Avon was always the real king.
In short, Stringer was never the brains when it came to what mattered. Avon knew the street, Stringer thought he did but there are loads of examples of him making mistakes because he really didn’t.
The obvious example again is Marlow, Avon immediately knew exactly what had to happen there and even had Marlow finished if it hadn’t been for the betrayal. But there are lots of examples of Avon knowing what was important while Stringer was getting played both in the business world and on the streets.
Yeah, thinking back about Stringer’s decisions, he did make some bad ones. I guess I fell for what appeared to be a redemption story, and his intent to use use economic theory to somehow legitimize his business. But in reality, he was moving to a playing field that was even more corrupt and unethical than the one he was trying to leave.
In fairness he was often smarter than the people around him:.
Bell: Motherfucker, what is that?
McGinty: Robert Rules say we gotta have minutes for a meeting, right? These the minutes.
Bell: , is you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy?
Great series, haven’t watched it lately but agree it’s one of the all time best.
Scene that sticks with me, much as I wish it wouldn’t…The young kid that eventually takes out Omar, Kelvin…Kelvar… whatever, is shown pouring a (presumably) flammable liquid on a cat. Ignition is not shown but assumed. Much other really tough stuff. The good hearted entrepreneurial kid that ended up in foster care with the other kids thinking he was a snitch…broke my heart.
One of my favorite lines was from Omar: “Man, money ain’t got no owners, only spenders.”
Several characters were redeemed by the end of the series: Namond, Cutty, Carver. My favorite of all of them is Bubbles. There’s a character who really went through hell. He eventually climbed out of the hole he’d dug himself into, and in the final episode appeared to be headed to a more normal life.
One of my favorite scenes is the opener to season 4, where Snoop buys a nail gun. The character had made some appearances in season 3, but this was her true introduction. She was scary even in a simple retail transaction. Steven King called her “perhaps the most terrifying female villain to ever appear in a television series”.
If you like The Wire, it’s worth checking out the mini series before it, called The Corner. What is strange is how a lot of the authority figures in The Wire are junkies in The Corner. A dramatisation of a documentary about the streets of Baltimore.
It has less of the humour of The Wire (and people forget just how funny that is), but is hard hitting…
One of the underlying themes of this show (I’m just about finished season 4 in my most recent re-watch!) is the classic “Knowledge is power”. The most successful people are almost always the ones who know just a little bit more than their rivals.
And that’s part of what makes Avon the boss. Over the course of the series, you learn in bits and pieces that he’s the guy in his organization that has “The Connect”; that is, he knows the people who are bringing the drugs into the US, and selling them to the distributors like Avon. Having the Connect gives you power, so you guard that information.
You see how important this is when Avon’s Connect dries up. Stringer is left scrambling to find a new supply, and can’t find one that matches the old quality. This is what drives him into a deal with Prop Joe, because Joe has his own Connect, via the Greeks.
You then see the same dynamic play out as Marlow tries to get in between Prop Joe and the Greeks - Marlow knows he can’t fully supplant Joe until he’s got that Connect for himself.
“Knowledge is Power” runs through the whole series. Look at how often the Police never quite get a handle on what’s really going on, because they’ve missed a key piece of evidence. Lester Freamon is pretty much the human embodiment of this; “All the pieces matter!”. Omar survives because he takes the time to learn as much as he can - and if something doesn’t add up, he takes more time. See how often his accomplices complain about how bored they are just watching the drug dealers, but Omar never jumps off too early. Prop Joe has lived far longer than most other Baltimore drug dealers because he makes it a point to know as much as possible, and control the flow of that information to his own advantage. And Marlow knows he needs to get a handle on everything Joe knows before he can take Joe out and replace him as the kingpin.
Even the season with the kids follows this theme. Randy makes a lot of money just by learning the odds at dice, which other players in the game don’t understand.
Institutional dysfunction is another theme of the series. The police, the courts, city hall, the port, the schools, the press, are all broken in some way because of venal leadership, petty personal grudges, and lack of long-term thinking. There are people in the system who see the problems and try to do something about them, only to be met with indifference, pushback, and even hostility. Some characters are led to wrongdoing in their efforts to compensate for the broken systems.
In the police, Rawls and Herc exemplify the problems. Rawls is only interested in making his numbers look good and in getting revenge on his enemies. Herc is too dumb to understand that bashing heads won’t eliminate the drug problem.
Freamon and McNulty want the system to work better than it does, but in the end their frustrations lead them into wrongdoing to try to compensate for a stupid and uncaring system.
