The Wire -- all seasons discussion thread with OPEN SPOILERS

[AuntiePam]

@davidw

One thing I’ll throw out here (and I’m pretty sure I’ve said this on SDMB before), but I think that Avon was much smarter than Stringer. Stringer was enamored by his own cleverness, and that led him to make stupid mistakes. After Avon went to jail, Stringer was absolutely played by Prop Joe (and of course by Clay Davis). That never would have happened to Avon. It goes back to that story they told of Stringer stealing a badminton set, and Avon asking “why did you steal a badminton set? you don’t have a yard?” Avon never let his dreams overshadow his reality.

Stringer was played by his developing partners too, wasn’t he? He should have had Saul from Breaking Bad to help him with some stuff.

Your comment about dreams and reality raises an interesting question: Was Stringer’s dream of taking the violence out of the drug trade realistic?

[GrandWino]

@Jas09

I thought that Levy convinced Marlo that Michael must have snitched, but Michael caught on before Snoop could kill him and turned the tables on her (very effective moment IMO - “how do I look?”).

“You look good, girl.”

BANG

[myskepticsight]

I need to rewatch this show so I probably won’t join the discussion, but I did have the following link bookmarked, which may help some remind them of some of the major/notable characters:

http://fansided.com/2009/09/02/the-50-greatest-characters-from-the-wire/

[AllShookDown]

Also, the cut-off ties on the bulletin board. We saw the board in the background early in S1, but we didn’t see anyone get their tie cut until when, S5?

I’ve been re-watching season 3 today. Bunk cuts off some detective’s tie in that season.

[Marley23]

@Bob Ducca

@Jas09

I thought that Levy convinced Marlo that Michael must have snitched, but Michael caught on before Snoop could kill him and turned the tables on her (very effective moment IMO - “how do I look?”).

“You look good, girl.”

BANG

That moment really stuck with me. It’s maybe the strangest, creepiest death in the entire series because Snoop is so nonchalant about it. I think second place goes to Old Face Andre. Of all the players who get killed, he’s really the only one who goes out begging and pleading. (“But my people won’t know what happened to me… don’t leave me in there with the rats!” Partlow: “What difference does it make?”) I guess there are a lot of others that stand out in different ways - Marlo’s sadistic cool when he tells Prop Joe to get ready, and the shock you get when Stringer and Omar go. Stringer was completely trapped and I still couldn’t believe they killed him. I was still wondering if he might’ve survived (which was pretty ridiculous) when I saw the preview for the following week, which began in big bold yellow letters “Stringer Bell is gone.” I think that’s about as surprised as I’ve been by a character getting offed on TV.

A different strange moment I keep flashing back to: Kima’s take on Goodnight Moon for her ex’s son. It was kind of cute but managed to say a lot about the rather hopeless situation they’re in, or the city is in, even after five seasons of the cops busting their asses.

@davidw

One thing I’ll throw out here (and I’m pretty sure I’ve said this on SDMB before), but I think that Avon was much smarter than Stringer. Stringer was enamored by his own cleverness, and that led him to make stupid mistakes. After Avon went to jail, Stringer was absolutely played by Prop Joe (and of course by Clay Davis). That never would have happened to Avon.

I wouldn’t say he’s smarter - Avon is no idiot but he definitely prefers blunt force solutions where Stringer sees alternatives. Stringer knows what to do to hide his income; Avon never seems to. But he’s not as ambitious as Stringer is. But you’re right that Stringer overestimated himself, so he overreaches. Maybe he had the intelligence to make a go of it in the legitimate business world but he was not able to see that he was at a huge disadvantage to people like Davis. He was lost there. His immediate response to getting robbed by Davis was to call for a hit on him. And it sounded like he was going to go for it even after Avon told him not to. I think it made him realize he was badly out of place in the legitimate world and it wounded him.

[Cyberhwk]

I don’t think Cutty gets the love he deserves. Held in high esteem by Avon, even after coming clean that he no longer has the stomach for the game. Man who used to be this legendary enforcer ends up so hesitant and unsure of himself trying to lead other youth on the correct path he himself didn’t take. I loved Cutty.

[Marley23]

You’re right about that. And he was maybe the closest thing to an unambiguously likable character on the show- if only because we don’t see him when he’s a killer for the Barksdales. If not for the events of season five I would’ve said Lester was an admirable character. I spent the whole season being very disappointed with him.

[madmonk28]

My favorite character is Bunk. He is every bit as dedicated to his work as McNutty, but is able to navigate the system and play the game in a way McNutty can’t. In the end, he is a better police officer than McNutty.

@Zeldar

Here’s a two-part question that I hope makes sense to be posted in this thread:

1. How do Dopers who are residents of Baltimore, Maryland, the DC area, and Southeastern Pennsylvania feel about the accuracy of The Wire’s depiction of the situation in that part of the country?

2. How do Dopers in other large US cities feel the situation in their own city differs substantially from The Wire’s depictions?

1. My cousin had a rowhouse in DC across from some projects near the freeway. There def. was a lot of suburban traffic coming through to buy drugs on the corners. When we first moved in to DC our neighborhood had some pockets of drug markets, but that has really changed. You did have streets where someone would come up to your car on the corner trying to sell drugs to you. When we first moved in, our house had been empty a couple of weeks between owners and we had dealers sitting oun our granite wall selling weed, but they moved on when I asked them to. I love the achitecture of DC, B’more: the mid 20s-30s rowhouses, I think they are beautiful.
2. The thing about DC and B’more, is that they aren’t really big cites and each neighborhood is really just a small town where everyone knows everyone’s business, the Wire captures that, IMHO.

[madmonk28]

Sorry for the double post, but this was going around a couple of years ago:

[Baboonanza]

I generally agree with people’s series ranking, though I have a very hard time calling it between 1 & 4 and 2 & 3. I actually haven’t watched the whole of 5 yet, I watched some and then lost a disc and it been so long that I want to watch all 5 seasons in sequence again now (having already seen 1-4 twice).

I find it interesting that many people aren’t so keen on series 2, I thought it was pretty amazing. It doesn’t have the violence and ‘glamour’ that the series about the drug trade do but it tells a truly sad story about the end of a community. It’s also very self-contained, though it never would have been made without being part of The Wire. You could strip out all of the side-plot about B&B and still have one of the best TV shows ever made IMO.

The Wire is one of those shows/films that you wish you could wipe from your memory so that it could be experienced fresh. Like ‘The Life of Brian’. I trully envy people who haven’t seen it yet

[Dinsdale]

Not gonna post, just because I only started watching this with S4 and don’t want everything spoilered. But I’m a BIG fan, and eager to get S1-3.

[madmonk28]

I think the reason S2 is low on people’s list is that it seems disjointed from the rest of the series.

There is also a scene early in S2 that kind of inhibits my suspension of disbelief: Frank is approached by the police major to withdraw the window that the union donated to the Catholic Church. At this point, the police have already found 11 dead women in a container on his dock and Frank knows he is complicit in their deaths (unintentionally). What does Frank do? He tells the police major to go to hell. There is nobody on earth in his situation who would have done that. All they had to do was move the scene with the window so that it occurs before they find the bodies on the dock.

[Marley23]

The dock parts of season two do feel pretty separate from the rest of the show. We don’t see many of the characters after the season ends and compared to some other stories it might not add that much to our understanding of what is happening in Baltimore. We do see that ultimately yet another part of the docks gets sold off to make condos, we learn where the dealers’ drugs come from, and we see the Greeks again when Marlo takes over for Prop Joe. But compared to what happened in season four, where the lives of the four kids had a major effect on season five, it was kind of disconnected. I will say that Frank Sobotka won me over during the season. He was crooked as the day is long but he was passionate about preserving a way of life for the guys in the union.

[PrettyVacant]

Bunk was a wanker - a bullshit company man thriving in dysfunctional hierarchy and always playing it safe.

Loved S2, a sonnet to a proud working class culture fading quickly into history, as well as offering up a truly Shakespearian tragic-heroic figure.

S3: the climax of Avon and Stringer - culminating in the balcony scene - was the finest thing I can ever recall seeing in visual entertainment.

S5 was brave as fuck.

[Zeldar]

@AllShookDown

Also, the cut-off ties on the bulletin board. We saw the board in the background early in S1, but we didn’t see anyone get their tie cut until when, S5?

I’ve been re-watching season 3 today. Bunk cuts off some detective’s tie in that season.

This just goes to show how poorly I remembered that tie thing. It also points out (to me) how I have fused the events of S3 with S1.

AuntiePam has about convinced me I need to own the DVD set of the show. At the rate I’m forgetting details (which I really thought were seared into my mind) it will be no problem to make it through the 60 episodes and be ready to see S1E1 as though for the first time.

I know that rewatching The Sopranos for the umpteenth time always provides new insights and missed details from earlier viewings.

Aside from these HBO shows (and maybe Deadwood), are there any others that repay rewatchings so well?

We watched some marathon reruns of House not long ago and felt it was worth the trouble. But I can’t get excited about many other shows off the top of my head.

[joebuck20]

@madmonk28

I think the reason S2 is low on people’s list is that it seems disjointed from the rest of the series.

There is also a scene early in S2 that kind of inhibits my suspension of disbelief: Frank is approached by the police major to withdraw the window that the union donated to the Catholic Church. At this point, the police have already found 11 dead women in a container on his dock and Frank knows he is complicit in their deaths (unintentionally). What does Frank do? He tells the police major to go to hell. There is nobody on earth in his situation who would have done that. All they had to do was move the scene with the window so that it occurs before they find the bodies on the dock.

What makes it believable for me is that Valcheck was acting like a complete ass when he went to Frank about the church window, literally demanding that he take it down. Frank, not one to take these things lightly, just lost his cool.
Also I seem to remember that this confrontation happened before the Baltimore PD got involved in the case (IIRC it was originally handled by the county, but then McNulty discovered that the woman in river was probably dumped just across the city line).

[JohnT]

@Marley23

The dock parts of season two do feel pretty separate from the rest of the show. We don’t see many of the characters after the season ends and compared to some other stories it might not add that much to our understanding of what is happening in Baltimore. We do see that ultimately yet another part of the docks gets sold off to make condos, we learn where the dealers’ drugs come from, and we see the Greeks again when Marlo takes over for Prop Joe. But compared to what happened in season four, where the lives of the four kids had a major effect on season five, it was kind of disconnected. I will say that Frank Sobotka won me over during the season. He was crooked as the day is long but he was passionate about preserving a way of life for the guys in the union.

There’s not only that, but I took to watching the retrospectives (or whatever you call the shorts that explain what happened before) on the DVD and season 2 is largely glossed over in them.

[PrettyVacant]

What do you need to know about S2, you saw what happened to Frank, you saw what happened to his son, his nephew, what happened to the dredging plan, and so it goes on?

S2 tells us The Wire isn’t about colour, it’s about class. It also tells us why urban areas decay and why others are gentrified. And then about what happens to the working poor as well as the working class. Also the self-serving nature of the Catholic Church. Above all else, it knits Baltimore together.

These are fundamentals, stuff vital and not done elsewhere.

[Marley23]

@PrettyVacant

What do you need to know about S2, you saw what happened to Frank, you saw what happened to his son, his nephew, what happened to the dredging plan, and so it goes on?

We don’t need to know anything else. That’s the point: the story starts at the beginning of the season and at the end it’s done. That wasn’t usually how it worked on this show, so this storyline feels a little different a little cut off from the rest of the series. It doesn’t make it bad but it does remove it somewhat.

[Zeldar]

For those who would like to review what’s been said in the past here at SDMB about The Wire please check out Old SDMB Threads Dealing With “The Wire” TV Show or go directly to this post.