OT: The Wire
So after hearing really good things about this show for awhile I finally decided to give it a go since HBO is offering some free shows on their app, and wow this show is fantastic. Almost at the end of season 2 and the writing and acting performances in this show are for the most part top notch. Definitely topping Breaking Bad so far as my favorite crime drama show.
The Sopranos and The Wire are both on Hulu. Was deciding between the two and went with Sopranos. Will definitely be watching The Wire right after. Always heard great things
1a) The Wire
1b) Sopranos
2) Breaking Bad
The Wire edges out Sopranos for me just bc of the sheer amount of quotables and memorable scenes.
However, the Phil Leotardo scene at the bar w/ the Sopranos doing the christening at the Church. Unbelievable. Probably my favorite scene after the series finale ending.
Omar is one of the greatest characters of all time.
Omar is one of the most unrealistic characters of all time. That is one of my least favorite characters in any series and that's coming from someone who has one of Michael Williams' characters as my screen name and avatar.
I mean he’s based on a real person. Hard to call him unrealistic.
April 19th, 2020 at 10:23 AM ^
That link doesn't give a lot of details about a guy walking solo through the streets of his own neighborhood robbing drug dealers with a sawed off shot gun. Anybody that stupid would have been shot.
When I was in middle school, I got home from school. In front of my grandmother's house, on the street was more blood than you ever wanted to see outside of anyone's body. That was the result of an argument earlier in the day. I walked into the house to see my cousin crying on the phone.
Not long after that, one of my cousins told his mother he was going around the block for a minute. He never came home.
A year later to the day, my cousin who I said above was crying when I got home from school, was shot in a shootout on a Saturday night.
There are others I could name but the point is drug dealers get shot. If that Omar character was remotely a real person, he was probably in a large crew of people who robbed people in a neighborhood where they didn't know him at all. Robbing people in your own hood where everybody runs when they see you coming and throws their dope out the window as not to get hurt, is absurd.
If you did even a little research before spewing your baseless opinion you'd find that the character is based off of a real person.
Now that doesn't mean its even close to a biography. But it's based off a guy who used to go around robbing stash houses.
Unrealistic? You know that stick up men are/were a part of David Simon’s experience as a crime reporter in Baltimore? He’s talked about them in several interviews.
April 19th, 2020 at 11:04 AM ^
He is just raising a valid point that most stick up men were strangers to the dealers they were shaking down. That said, we all understand that a television series needs to take liberal license with some details to provide a more cohesive plot and they often put in an unrealistically small set of characters compared to the cacophony of people and noise in real life.
Believe what you want. What actually happened was nowhere near what was portrayed in that series. If a director tells you they are going to make you seem ten times tougher than reality, I'm sure you will turn that down.
The Wire is not a documentary. It's entertainment. Let's be realistic here. If The Wire portrayed everything that happened factually, how was he there to consult after the fact?
April 19th, 2020 at 11:04 AM ^
Yeah, he's so unrealistic, he was hired as a show advisor and its creator was a primary advocate for his release from prison. You know that real life city, state and civic officials from Baltimore and Maryland appeared on the show. Most of the cast appeared in The Wire as their first major work and it served as an influential springboard for their careers.
Curiously, the show was taken to HBO because the creator who worked on an NBC series set in Baltimore knew the network wouldn't greenlight a perssimistic show about that city that had no intention of changing political minds, but demonstrating real life problems afflicting a major American city.
Andre Braugher was awesome in Homicide as Frank Pembleton
I remember filming this scene like it was yesterday.
The thing I really like is there are no traditional good guys on this show. Everyone including the law enforcement side has flaws, gives the show a more authentic feel to me.
Cool Lester Smooth has no flaws.
April 19th, 2020 at 10:17 AM ^
Where is the love for Bunk Moreland?
April 19th, 2020 at 11:24 AM ^
Bunk is great, but he's also a drunk and a philanderer and shot a mouse.
April 19th, 2020 at 10:50 PM ^
True, so far Lester is the closest to a true good guy
April 19th, 2020 at 10:18 AM ^
What I tell everyone is that it legitimately felt like I was watching a documentary. The Wire is just phenomenal television. It’s is my #1 show, but Breaking Bad is a close, but still safely in 2nd place
Disagree. I thought Bunny Colvin was a legit good guy trapped in a corrupt system.
Best show ever made in my book. And there isn’t a bad season...you’re in for a lot of good tv and characters ahead of you.
Only Sopranos, Succession, and True Detective (Season 1) are even close.
Amazing show but I'll disagree with you on one point. The Amsterdam (no spoilers) season was not so good IMO. I think that's when the writer strike took place and it shows. The script was very repetitive and never really moved.
Not so good as in still watchable but just not as great as the other seasons or not good as in later seasons Dexter bad?
Still very good but not as great as the other seasons. I was wrong about the writer strike. That didn't happen until a few years later.
FWIW the near consensus among my Wire obsessed friends is that season 2 is the weakest.
Your mileage may vary but the show is always good. No bad seasons.
Agree to disagree suuuuper hard with your friends. Jamelle Bouie once said season two is The Wire's thesis statement and he's as right as you can be when making a claim like that about a work of art. And anyway it's just a great story about great characters.
Season 2 is a major shift that catches people off guard on the initial watch but people appreciate after. Season 4 is the best season though.
Also the wire is the greatest show of all time
No, season 2 is a huge shift and then shift back for season 3 in terms of characters but season 5 is pretty clearly the weakest. The plot does get ridiculous near the end. Seasons 3 and 4 are the best with 4 being the peak but hard to argue against any of 1, 3, and 4.
First watch I might agree about season 2. But after watching the whole series 4 times it’s probably tied as my 2nd favorite season.
April 19th, 2020 at 10:21 AM ^
See, I enjoyed the Amsterdam season (Libertarian here, in favor of legalization), but S5 was the weakest and had the least realistic plot (media coverage). It was necessary to tell the entire story, but it still felt forced whereas the other four seasons felt completely coherent and didn’t have to stretch for some of the plot points like S5 had to.
April 19th, 2020 at 10:57 AM ^
Season 5 was a stretch storywise but it was well written at least. I don't have a problem with Hamsterdam from a plot standpoint. I thought the dialogue was very repetitive unlike other seasons.
Season 5 was a lot of David Simon taking anger out at the Baltimore sun. Knowing him and a bunch of people who worked at the sun it was very enjoyable but get it from people not from Baltimore not getting it
April 19th, 2020 at 11:41 AM ^
Season 3 introduced some of the best characters like Bunny Colvin, Cutty, Carcetti
Wtf?! Succession sucks ass.
Disagree. Found succession to be hilarious and well done.
I disagree. Second season wasn’t great in my mind, and without spoilers season 5 has some major flaws.
I watched it for the first time last year, and I was surprised how dated the show felt. While good it comes off as a time piece, a snap shot in history.
I went in with super high expectations since I’ve heard how it’s the greatest show of all time, and while it hit a lot of high notes of being realistic, I do not put it ahead of Breaking Bad or The Sopranos.
Wow!
One of those things is not like the others!
One of those things does not belong...
Agree, The Wire killed me for a lot of such programming that followed. I've seen it compared to Shakespeare, and in the way it just draws amazing character after amazing character, really makes you see their POV, I get it. You FEEL all of those people; almost nobody is filler or an expendable cast member. You feel pretty much every damned death.
A distant second for me is the French detective series Spiral (Engrenage). Definitely worth checking out.
This just in: Pizza and Ice Cream are good too!
I watched it when it came out. The biggest surprise at that time was finding out that Stringer Bell was a British ... and a DJ. Obviously his career took off a bit since those days.
He definitely does mask his natural accent very well. I have only ever seen Idris Elba in protagonist roles, but man does he nail the cold calculating but yet charasmatic criminal role here. Interesting seeing a couple of the people on the show who later went on to be bigger stars, also had a young Michael B. Jordan in season one.
Also I can't say I have seen a show that explores both the law enforcement and criminal side of things as thoroughly as this.
I watched this show closely during its original run and I believe it to be the best show ever. David Simon relied upon his journalism experience to craft a pretty ingenious narrative.
Even today, well over a decade later, a Google search for "best TV show ever" will show that many critics feel the same way. The show isn't perfect, but wow was it good.
Wonderful show! Seasons 1-4 were divine. Season 5 was kind of dumb, but the final scene in the series was beautifully melancholy.
The Wire is a million times better than Breaking Bad.
April 19th, 2020 at 10:03 AM ^
Speaking of the last episode, the quick shot of Wee Bay Brice and Chris Partlow hanging in the corner of the prison yard was brilliant. Two old warriors. Always reminded me of the pictures of civil war reunions where blue and gray hung out and reminisced.
Speaking of Breaking Bad, I have binged it in recent weeks start to finish. It is more uneven than I thought the first time around. Character motivations vary sometimes from episode to episode inexplicably. Skyler in particular is so inconsistent that it really comes off as “short cut” writing. It is still great, but far from flawless.