The Wire -- all seasons discussion thread with OPEN SPOILERS

Cafe Society
81

I hope nobody minds me bringing back this slight zombie, but nothing I have to say is worthy of a new thread.

When this thread started I was just beginning season one. I took a long break between watching season two and three because I didn’t have time to get invested in it, and in the last two weeks ripped through the final three seasons (I honest to God watched all of season five yesterday, there was no way I could remove myself from the TV).

There are no words for how stunned I am - this is automatically the best TV drama I have ever seen. I’m gobsmacked that television like this exists. I always thought someone naming The Wire as one of the “best TV shows ever” was for a bit of underground cred, praising an underappreciated show because it seems cool to do so - I was so, so wrong. This truly is one of the best TV shows ever.

I loved the attention to detail - like in season one, two of the drug trade characters are driving in a car listening to Jay-Z’s ‘Izzo (H.O.V.A.)’, then they turn off the song and step out of the car. Immediately another car drives past… blasting Jay-Z’s ‘Izzo (H.O.V.A.)’ out the speakers, a little nod to how popular his 2001 album The Blueprint was at the time season one was made. I love little asides like D’Angelo, Bodie and Poot discussing very briefly whether the couch near the towers would look better moved or if it should stay where it is.

My favourite season is the first, closely followed by the fourth. “SHEEEEEEIT” has already entered my everyday vocabulary. I loved the characters (if not their actions), I loved the honesty, the brutality… I had to remind myself constantly that I wasn’t watching a documentary. I love that the show started in the year after 9/11 and finished a few months before Obama was elected - a time capsule of those years, a perfect representation of all sorts of issues and problems and questions relevant to that period in history - but still completely timeless.

I don’t know if she was my favourite character but Snoop was perhaps the most memorable. Her speech, the way she was funny and likable (buying the nail gun was absolutely classic) yet a complete monster, how she was always slightly out of place being one of the only female characters directly involved in the game (were there any others apart from Omar’s two girls? I wouldn’t say Brianna and Namond’s mother count). Also I didn’t know until after I finished watching that the actress who plays the character, who has the exact same name in real life, led a troubled life herself and did time for murder, which makes the portrayal all the more effective. And she was directly involved in what might be the most amazing scene of the entire series:

“How my hair look, Mike?”

“You look good, girl.”

Fuck. Just… that scene is awe-inspiring. I had to pause the DVD right after it happened and process it for a while, both the actual in-story event and also how well the writers and actors had brought it to life.

I’m one of those people who always cries at movies and TV, but with this show I was often concentrating too hard and trying to keep up that there was just no chance to get all emotional, but in the final montage, when Bubbles walks up to dinner, after all the shit he’d been through - for God’s sake I’m tearing up right now just remembering it - that got me good.

I feel like I could write a book about how amazing it all was but that’s enough gushing for now.

(After all that I didn’t even mention Omar - in summary: amazing, amazing, amazing)

82

That’s pretty much my take on it. One bit of evidence: in a show all about wiretapping and being careful to cover your tracks when using the phone, Koutris regularly calls the Greek from the phone on his desk at FBI headquarters. He’s clearly not worried that some higher-up in the Bureau will find out about the calls

A recurring theme of the season was that the kinds of crimes the Baltimore guys were working on weren’t a priority to the feds any more; they were all about terrorism and “homeland security.” Koutris certainly, and by extension I presume the entire hierarchy, were willing to let the Greek get away with almost anything, as long as it furthered their actions against the higher priority stuff. Or, if at least they believed that was what was happening.

Fitzhugh was out of the loop on that, which isn’t really surprising. “Need to know basis” and all that. If he wasn’t working on the specific cases involved (and as I recall, he wasn’t assigned by the Bureau to actually do anything on the docks case, he was just helping out a friend) on either side of the coin, he wouldn’t be being briefed on any of it.

83

multimediac17, you’re so right about the little details. I’m not familiar with the music so I didn’t catch that, about the Izzo song.

I just started watching again from the beginning. I’ve lost count, how many times, but I’m reciting the dialogue along with the characters.

I rewatched all five seasons over the summer, and caught something else I didn’t notice, about Kima. In S1, after she’s shot, she refuses to identify one of the shooters – the one she didn’t see – even though Bunk was standing there with his finger on the photo of the man he knew was involved. Kima had to play it straight. That fit with what she did at the end of season five, telling Daniels about what McNulty and Freamon were doing, with the illegal wiretap and the faked murders.

bleibtreu, yeah, what the feds were doing focusing on terrorism was like what the Baltimore higher-ups were doing focusing on stats, and how a murder didn’t count if it happened under last year’s count. Nobody was looking at the big picture, and politics was all that mattered. It’s kinda scary.

The Wire is one of those shows that make me thankful for technology. Can you imagine having to wait for a rerun? Or only being able to see it once?

84

Sometimes, shit just gotta play hard

85

He appears in every episode, in fact. 8 characters appear, at least briefly, in every one of the 60 episodes:

Jimmy McNulty
Kima Greggs
Cedric Daniels
Bunk Moreland
Rhonda Pearlman
Ellis Carver
Herc Hauk
William Rawls

Lester Freamon misses just one (not sure which.)

86

I’ve watched all five seasons four times through and it’s as good as TV can get. That said, my gripes: For some reason Brother Mouzone never seemed as real to me as the other characters. It was interesting to see him for the first time after he got the build up as the coldest killer to ever walk the earth, but overall the character didn’t do a thing for me.

Another gripe was car surveillance. There was too many times when the cops were watching someone, or Omar was sitting in the borrowed cab watching over Cheese, when all the observed had to do was take a hard look across the street, and the surveillance would have been blown.

One thing I noticed on rewatching was the character of Omar getting an early new lease on life. When we first meet him holding up a stashhouse, his boyfriend says his name and you could see Omar had a problem with that. The next time we see him, he plays it down as no big thing, because the name Omar rings out, but no one knew they were being held up by anything more than another desperate gangster in the first meeting. I read somewhere later that Omar was just supposed to be in one or two episodes, but the heat that was brought to the role moved him center stage.

The show was amazing in making characters deep enough that their sins were not forgotten, but you could see enough more about them than just the bad that you were able to care. Bodie shot Wallace. Yet in spite of that, I still ended up caring greatly for Bodie.

So many great characters. I’ll say my favorite was Prop Joe.

87

As I was working my way through the series I would regularly have the episode’s page on Wikipedia up so I could read along if need be, and there was often a bit near the cast that listed all the series regulars who were credited for that episode (in the opening sequence) but didn’t appear. All of the actors who play the characters you listed appeared in that section at least a few times.

For example (to pick a random episode):

88

1.1 – I just watched it yesterday and there’s no Lester. Daniels is just getting the team together.

Something else I just noticed (and how long will it go on, “just noticing” things), Avon’s all huggy-muggy with Dee after Dee beats the murder rap, and Dee tells Avon how he’s going to come down on the tower boys, ride 'em hard, and Avon just smiles. He leaves it to Stringer the next day to tell Dee he’s demoted, he doesn’t have the towers anymore.

Dee deserved to be demoted and he knew it, but I think it hurt him that he didn’t hear it from Avon. That was cold, and I think Avon knew it would sting. It put Dee in his place, made him realize that even though he’s family, he’s not getting a free ride.

Purd Werfect, I have a soft spot for Bodie too. If only he’d had some different mentors. :slight_smile:

89

My favorite scene from the last season was when Bunk dragged McNulty to Lester, thinking Lester would talk him out of the fake serial killer scheme. And instead Lester goes like, Wow!, let’s make this story even sexier. And then they come up with the biting thing.

90

Oh, yeah, and I was happy to see Bubbles doing so well. I think he’s the only character in the whole series who ended up better off than he started.

91

Don’t forget Naimond and Cutty. But yeah, Bubb’s story arc was amazing.

92

bump – for those with new interest in the show.

93

Okay, I am watching it all over again after watching it the first time only a couple of weeks ago. I cannot believe how much I missed the first time. Probably 60%.

So I have a question and a “Holy shit!”

First, the “Holy Shit!” which just ends up funny and cool because I don’t think they ever come back to it…although considering how much I missed the first time, maybe they do:

Season 3, when Brother’s man is sent into the gay bars to look for Omar, in one scene one guy is lying on a pool table face down, naked, blowing another guy standing next to the table (totally missed that, but that’s not what I’m referring to). The camera pans to the bar, where Brother’s man is talking to the bartender. He leaves, the camera stays, a couple of guys move and who is sitting at the bar? RAWLS!!! Fucking RAWLS!!!

Very amusing.

The question, which is probably hard to answer if you haven’t watched recently, it’s such a small thing, but I listened and watched 3-4 times and never understood it: in the setup to sell phones to the drug dealers, Bubbles lures the bitchy chick and her boyfriend to talk to Lester. They are standing outside and Lester says stuff (no real idea what) then the drug dealer makes a call, Lester seems to be talking to some woman but has no phone or anything, and a minute later says a string of numbers, too long for a phone number by my calculation, but even if it was…what the hell? What was supposedly happening in that scene?? (I understand how it all shook out once they were in the shop with the female cop and he explained that he was putting numbers on cell phones, whatever. I’m just curious about the performance outside that captured their interest initially.)

94

Stoid, I remember being confused by that phone scene too. Which episode was it? I’m thinking maybe it was explained in a TWOP recap or in Alan Sepinwall’s blog, where discussion was often very detailed. If you know the episode number, we could look it up.

It’s almost as confusing as a scene in Deadwood, where Al is explaining to Ms. Isringhausen his plan for how she’ll leave town and how much money she’ll take with her. :slight_smile:

95

Does this fill in some of it?