The Wire

[PsychoBlack]

I am about to begin watching all of the seasons of The Wire over again from start to finish. I want to share my thoughts on it with WZ as it is one of my favorite shows ever. Ill give a little background on it here first. Each season focuses on a different aspect of the city of Baltimore, the drug trade, the port system, the city government , the youth, and the news media. Most of the actors in the series got their first major roles here which also helped because you could imagine that they were real people not like if it were say Will Smith and Denzel Washington.

I'll introduce the characters when i start reviewing the episodes.

 

[Y 2 Jake]

The Wire is very rewarding after you've watched every single episode. However on the basis of an individual episode I'd much rather watch any other crime show. The Shield, for example, has enough in each episode that you could watch one random episode and you'd still find entertainment in it. If you did that with The Wire then it wouldn't make any sense.

It's not like you can just dip into The Wire, it really is an endurance test.

 

[Uncle Sam]

I just watched the first season of The Wire and, on the back of what I saw, ordered the second. It could take a fair few days to arrive; I'm currently in the middle of a dispute with Amazon over the revoking of my Prime privileges. Expect to see that on the evening news: "Mr. Bean-esque Englishman in legal challenge over Amazon Prime."

Anyway, yeah, quite good, isn't it? It blew my fucking mind when they had Jimmy McNulty - well, the actor who plays him - on Have I Got News For You (comedy panel show over here in the UK, if you were wondering) and he was quite possibly the most well-spoken Englishman I've ever heard. And Ian Hislop had obviously never seen The Wire, the cunt.

The Wire was a lot easier to get into than I originally thought:

"The first few episodes are really hard to watch."

"Oh, yeah - it's really hard to understand the dialogue."

"It's really, like, intellectually challenging."

"It only makes sense in the final three seconds of the last episode."

None of them true. As long as you watch the episodes in the right order, it's probably one of the most satisfying TV shows out there. Still think the opening scene's shit, mind.

 

[Coco]

It's currently my favorite television show. Three seasons in and it shows no signs of slowing down. The kids call it the story of a city disguised as a gritty cop drama. I buy that but would say it's also about what happens when people disrupt the established way of life in the system. Whether it's McNulty breaking the chain of command, Stringer fighting the natural order of things represented by Avon, D'Angelo trying to better himself at one point, or Colvin's experiment in the third season, these and other examples definitely point in that direction. Having not finished the series yet, I haven't looked for a bunch of interviews or reviews about the show, lest I be spoiled. So someone may well have said that already. I'm sure I'll find out eventually.

Jake's right in that you shouldn't jump into the show part way through. One the other hand, it's far more rewarding than your run of the mill network cop drama with hour long cookie-cutter arcs. It's ambitious stuff. Me likey.

I heard once that the second season is in some way the worst season. I don't see that. They've all been gems so far.

I need to see all of it before giving it the "Best Show I've Ever Seen" stamp, but it's headed in the right direction. Hopefully Baltimore isn't purgatory. I've got good money on it being hell.

For those who have seen up to season three, here's a sweet memory for y'all:

Spoiler

[youtube]BPS9YKGaKQE[/youtube]

It gets me every time.

 

[PsychoBlack]

It's currently my favorite television show. Three seasons in and it shows no signs of slowing down. The kids call it the story of a city disguised as a gritty cop drama. I buy that but would say it's also about what happens when people disrupt the established way of life in the system. Whether it's McNulty breaking the chain of command, Stringer fighting the natural order of things represented by Avon, D'Angelo trying to better himself at one point, or Colvin's experiment in the third season, these and other examples definitely point in that direction. Having not finished the series yet, I haven't looked for a bunch of interviews or reviews about the show, lest I be spoiled. So someone may well have said that already. I'm sure I'll find out eventually.

Jake's right in that you shouldn't jump into the show part way through. One the other hand, it's far more rewarding than your run of the mill network cop drama with hour long cookie-cutter arcs. It's ambitious stuff. Me likey.

I heard once that the second season is in some way the worst season. I don't see that. They've all been gems so far.

I need to see all of it before giving it the "Best Show I've Ever Seen" stamp, but it's headed in the right direction. Hopefully Baltimore isn't purgatory. I've got good money on it being hell.

For those who have seen up to season three, here's a sweet memory for y'all:

Spoiler

[youtube]BPS9YKGaKQE[/youtube]

It gets me every time.

The second season is the worst by far it's not bad but compared to the others its just average. Since your only on Season 3 I wont spoil anything for you but to me season 4 was the best

 

[Cena's Little Helper]

This is the second greatest television show ever, and my personal favorite. Like Jake said (or hinted at), this is a show that requires the utmost patience from its viewer. If you can get past what seems like a plodding first few episodes, then you'll be greatly rewarded with some of the best drama to have ever been scripted.

While this show is my personal favorite (probably because I live so close to Baltimore and these characters are literally just like the people that live there), I can't consider it the best precisely because of the plodding that I mentioned earlier. Unfortunately for The Wire, The Sopranos had just as much character development and profundity without the somewhat excessive setup. For this reason, I still say that The Sopranos is the greatest television show ever made.