Never having seen The Wire before I decided to give this a real go. Cleared off all the tv shows I had so only films are left on the DVR, and there’s plenty of room to hold 60 hours of HD with lots of room to spare. I’m thinking I’ll watch around three episodes a day.
Six episodes into season 1, my first reaction is that I like it. It’s interesting, and has a unique perspective. I definitely want to keep watching, so that’s a good sign.
But it’s not great. The acting has ubiquitous hints of stiffness and woodenness. This is true for almost every character, except maybe the Lieutenant (the guy who played the boss on Fringe). But even he isn’t giving a particularly great performance. Omar (Chalky from Boardwalk Empire) is the only one hitting it out of the park, but he’s only really been in one or two episodes so far.
I’m used to these “great shows” – and by all accounts The Wire is supposed to be one of them – overflowing with acting greatness. Sure they all have a “killer app” of one standout genious, like Tony Soprano, Al Swearengen, and Walter White, but in those examples and others the supporting actors also tend to act the shit out of their parts. Each show usually has a weak link, like Timothy Olyphant in Deadwood (who in fairness is spectacular on Justified), but for the most part it’s a bunch of great actors giving great performances with one standout, otherworldly performance at the center of it.
For the first six episodes of The Wire, I’m not seeing any great acting outside of Omar and a few of the Lieutenant scenes. This next bit is hyperbole; I’m just trying to convey the feeling: It feels a little like I’m watching a production from a college drama department that just got their first Go-Pro. The set design isn’t very impressive either. You can have great production values in scenes of squalor. I’m thinking back to that episode on Breaking Bad when Jesse was in a crackhouse trying to open an ATM the crackheads had dragged in. The production values of that episode were head and shoulders above what I’m seeing on The Wire.
The dated slang doesn’t help, and I bet it felt dated the day it was written. The pagers and pay phones and antediluvian cell phones are fine. But the dated slang really pulls me out of it.
To be honest the idea of pagers was pretty out of date from the get go. The issue was the articles (book?) the show was based on had been written in the 90s when pagers were the way to go.
Just started the third season and I’m really liking the show overall. The binge is starting to set in, and my three episodes per day has grown to four or five. After two full seasons I’d probably classify it as a high-end second tier show, alongside Justified and ahead of The Americans.
One fun aspect for me is the reverse “Where are they now?” effect, seeing where the actors I already know came from. People like Amy Ryan and Idris Elba. But even more fun now that I’ve started season 3 is seeing which actors HBO keeps in their stable. So far, season by season, it looks like one major cast member gets another major part on a different show per season:
Season 1: Dominic West goes from Jimmy McNulty to Noah Solloway on The Affair.
Season 2: Chris Bauer goes from Frank Sobotka to Andy Bellefleur on True Blood.
Season 3: Aidan Gillen goes from Tommy Carcetti to Littlefinger Baelish on Game of Thrones.
Having only seen the first episode of season 3, I’m just assuming Aidan Gillen plays a big part in the season pretty much solely because the actor goes on to play Littlefinger.
Finished all five seasons. A great show, for sure. I don’t consider it to even be in the conversation of best show ever, though.
(It does have an all-time great nude scene, at least.)
Having remembered this comment the whole time I was watching all five seasons, I’m still unsure of who you mean. My guess is either the guy who was banished in the evidence room that we see in the penultimate episode, where Daniels says he’s glad he landed on his feet, or Ziggy’s cousin (who quickly left witness protection to go back to work on the docks) yelling at the mayor during the ribbon cutting ceremony on a harbor project.
Or maybe it was neither. The suspense is killing me; which character and what scene?
Which reminds me: I rate The Sopranos as the very best television series closely followed by The Wire.
But I don’t speak Noo Jooisey so at various moments had no idea what the characters were saying. Never thought to look for subtitles - thanks.
Instead there was a fan site called Sopranoland which has sadly now vanished. The creator had faithfully set out the script of every episode so it was possible to find mumbled passages of dialog and understand what was being said. Paulie was an appalling chewer of woids.
Funnily enough with The Wire, despite being 8000 geographic miles and culturally light years away from african-american street argot, I had no problem interpreting The Wire. Good acting, good scripting, good enunciation until we the audience got it.
