For anyone who’s just finished Breaking Bad and plans to watch The Wire (or vice versa): I’d advice you to consider resting your brains first, and taking a break with some Looney Tunes before starting on the other show (I know I would need to). Both are very complex stories, that suck you in and demand your attention, and both deserve being watched with a fresh mind.
Also, if you’ve watched one, don’t expect the other one to be more of the same. They’re very different shows.
The Wire is more complicated, way more quotable, has a wider array of interesting characters, and imo more effective use of pathos and depictions of human suffering. The last part makes it harder to rewatch though. If I was on a desert island I’d probably take BB just because it wouldn’t depress me so much.
Not like the Wire is perfect though. A lot of people don’t like s2 and s5, the changing POVs for each season, and I lost a lot of interest after
Stringer kicked the bucket. I didn’t find Marlo that interesting.
That humor disappears pretty quickly by the end of the first season and doesn’t return
That’s not quite true- I think it has a certain sick sense of humor throughout. But as time goes on it does morph more and more from dark comedy to black irony.
I didn’t care for either.
No way, it’s always been a comedy. 
Breaking Bad, by a mile.
Breaking Bad. There were long stretches of The Wire that were boring.
I liked Breaking Bad a LOT more than The Wire, which I just thought was pretty good.
Breaking Bad is lame with how it jerks you around with cliffhangers all the time, changes directions every season, relies heavily on luck and people acting weird to resolve (or create) drama.
It was a fun show, but The Wire is better written in basically every way.
The Wire. I had a blast with Breaking Bad, but I was sick of watching the characters stare off into the middle distace while their wife/partner/spouse/family member/friend tried to get through to them. That trope (and it’s brother, the silent treatment) was so damn played out by the end of the show that it made me want to throw a brick at the screen, among other things.
Cool story, bro.
Breaking Bad is still in its honeymoon period, ask this question in a few years and I have little doubt that more people would pick The Wire as the better show.
And it is better, no real doubt about it.
For me the best part of BB is Walt and Jesse’s relationship. They went away from this for the last season and threw Jesse into a catatonic state and/or a hole. They spent all of two minutes together in the finale. I’d rather see a Jesse/Walt faceoff than the anonymous Nazis. Still better than The Wire’s ham handed final season and the writer avatar stand in character though.
BB had some plot/character problems too. From what I remember, Gus choosing Jesse over Walt made no sense given previous characterization and events. Hank not suspecting Walt even a little bit before the last season did some serious damage to my suspension of disbelief. I mean the gambling story, honestly? And the fridge logic of the Brock poisoning has already spilled enough internet ink.
For The Wire, given American politics, Hamsterdam was pretty high on the “yeah right” scale. So was McNulty’s one man media conspiracy.
Speaking of boring, how about the BB family scenes and how much of a grating time sink Skyler is until they finally stop dragging out whether she’ll find out about Walt or not. Or Walt Jr. mostly being good for bad breakfast meme jokes. Or how Marie is…what is she for? Complaining to Skyler? Being a hypocritical nag? Stealing spoons?
I agree with many of these…except how can you complain about BB changing directions between seasons compared to The Wire?
Yeah, I said phrased that very poorly compared to what I meant. I meant the characters changing direction or personalities between seasons. Skylar and Gus being two the immediately stick out in my mind. Walt too, I think.
I think these two are both true and go together. I think the Wire is a “better” show largely because it does something unique, which is manage to make the city of Baltimore the actual “main character” while still developing a huge cast of pretty decently fleshed out individual actors whose worlds occasionally run into one another.
I think Breaking Bad is probably a little more enjoyable simply because I think it’s easier to do good storytelling about a single man’s journey than it is to do what Simon was doing with the city of Baltimore. I voted the Wire just because it was a bit more impressive to me and I think it’s the better/deeper show on a lot of levels. But in terms of “enjoyment” I think Breaking Bad is better, Breaking Bad is more enjoyable but in the way a roller coaster is more “enjoyable” than seeing a famous work of art. It isn’t to say the roller coaster is better, but it’s a different, more high blood pressure type of fun.
That’s an apt comparison. I’ve always felt that Breaking Bad is like the best kind of junk food and The Wire is like eating haute cuisine, where you aren’t certain which fork you’re supposed to be using or if that green leafy thing is a garnish.
I’ve never seen The Wire, but I thought Breaking Bad was the best show I had ever seen (thus far, out of every show I’ve seen all of and even of those I haven’t).
I plan to start The Wire soon, though. I might start a topic about it documenting my thoughts and stuff as I go.
“Hamsterdam” was a great plotline, and so was Pryzbylewski becoming a teacher, but in a lot of ways The Wire never completely transcended its genre in my mind. It was plotted exactly like a series of very good police novels, although the “School” season came closest to being something different (and was the best season IMO). It’s rare to see anything with such a strongly novelistic feel done on screen, and it definitely expanded the medium in that regard, but I could never get past the sense that if had been a series of novels it would have been considered good but not great.
I quite liked the newsroom scenes in the final season, but I thought the conclusion to the serial killer plot - and specifically the end of McNulty’s arc - was a major copout that undermined much of what the series had accomplished up to that point.
Breaking Bad isn’t high art, either: It has very much the feel of a sophisticated graphic novel IMO. But what it sets out to do, it does with absolute perfection. In the entire six years, there was barely an off note. It very well may turn out to age badly, as a lot of self-consciously pop-cultural phenomena do, but at this moment, while it’s still fresh, I think it’s legitimately the best thing that’s ever been done on television. It’s certainly the most polished, the most precisely done piece of visual storytelling I can think of, especially over such a long timeframe. As an example of television auteur-ship, if nothing else, I think it will be remembered for a long time. Vince Gilligan is Hitchcock-like in his ability to absolutely master the visual medium and make it - and the audience - do exactly what he wants it to.
ETA: I know it wasn’t the question asked, but if anything so far ends up eclipsing BB in the long run, I think it will be The Sopranos.
The Wire wasn’t even the best show on HBO let alone all of TV.