posted
I watched it last night, and was more than a little bit impressed. Especially because I was prepared to really really hate it. I guess I'm on board.
Posts: 1156 | Registered: Jan 2004
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posted
I am at my folks place, and they have HBO on demand, but there is "The Wire" reup, and the "The Wire" listen in the series section. I only really caught the first two seasons in highschool- so which episode of this new masterpiece do i start with?
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
I don't have HBO. What the heck is this show, and what makes it so awesome? The Slate article doesn't really tell me much, except that the writer wants to marry the show because it's so flipping new and deep.
Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
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posted
Thanks for starting this thread. Otherwise I wouldn't have known that the new season had started. I don't really know anyone else who watches this show, even though it's pretty great. In fact, it seems to be so underappreciated that I'm surprised and delighted that it has even made it to season four.
Posts: 1855 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
By the way, I actually really do believe what a hundred critics have said. 'The Wire' really is the best show in the history of television. I highly recommend it to anybody who hasn't seen it.
Posts: 2267 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
Interesting...I've never even heard of this show before. Well... I don't have HBO either. But after looking at the article I'm intrigued. More reason for me to get Netflix.
(I still think BSG is the best show around.)
Posts: 4953 | Registered: Jan 2004
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quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: I don't have HBO. What the heck is this show, and what makes it so awesome? The Slate article doesn't really tell me much, except that the writer wants to marry the show because it's so flipping new and deep.
It's a police procedural with an omnicient viewpoint. Think Traffic with a more subdued style. It's hard to describe it's plot elements because as a visual novel it's pretty complicated, but essentially, the show is set in Baltimore. After the nephew of the leader of a major drug clan gets acquited of a murder charge, a cop by the name of Jimmy McNulty informs the judge of the case that nothing is really being done about this gang. The judge sets things in motion and a group of cops are assigned to investigate this gang crew. Survielliance is a theme of the show...hence, "The Wire."
But saying the above is like saying "'The Lord of the Rings'" is about a ring that must be destroyed."
posted
I only heard of it on the radio the other day. I'll probably try to get the first season to watch on dvd.
Posts: 3960 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
It's from the creaters of Homicide: Life on the streets, by far the greatest television drama of the nineties, and easily one of the top 2 or 3 dramas in the history of the Big 4 (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX). Season one and two were better than anything I've ever seen on television, easily, i still haven't seen season three yet. The sad thing is that nobody ever seems clued in to it. The same problem afflicted H: Lots, and by some miracle NBC held onto it for basically six years.
There's also a column from the excellent Tim Goodman (San Francisco's flagship paper) on it, but you'll need to avoid the two paragraphs where he discusses plot details of season three, they occure in the seventh paragraph of the piece so skip that if you haven't seen it before.
posted
The other really interesting thing about the show, is that it isn't really about what it seems to be about.
What it's really about is all of us, our society, our country. That's where all of the 'unbelievably ambitious' quotes come from. Baltimore is a microcosm for the United States, in this show.
Posts: 2267 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Originally posted by graywolfe: It's from the creaters of Homicide: Life on the streets, by far the greatest television drama of the nineties, and easily one of the top 2 or 3 dramas in the history of the Big 4 (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX). Season one and two were better than anything I've ever seen on television, easily, i still haven't seen season three yet. The sad thing is that nobody ever seems clued in to it. The same problem afflicted H: Lots, and by some miracle NBC held onto it for basically six years.
There's also a column from the excellent Tim Goodman (San Francisco's flagship paper) on it, but you'll need to avoid the two paragraphs where he discusses plot details of season three, they occure in the seventh paragraph of the piece so skip that if you haven't seen it before.
posted
Arrested Development is a great show, which I love, but what in the world does it have to do with anything? Did I miss the moment when The Wire and Arrested Development came to be in competition?
A lot of people are saying that The Wire may be the best tv show ever. I've never heard anyone (other than just now) make the same statement about Arrested Development.
Posts: 2267 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
Arressted Development is probably the greatest piece of comedic television I've seen alongside Seinfeld (at its peak), Blackadder (particularly Goes Forth and the Elizabethan version) and The Simpsons (as well as SNL '75-'79), but The Wire is the greatest show on television I've ever seen, end of story.
Posts: 752 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Well, I watched the first episode of season 4 of the "The Wire" on HBO this weekend. I didn't catch the entire 3rd season, but I gotta say, the production values are REMARKABLE.
The show looks like a very nicely filmed movie, moves very well, interesting characters, etc. I've never seen a TV show with such good looking camera work- somewhere between a major feature film, and Sopranos quality, with none of those SUPER-ANNOYING, CSI "cool" camera effects.
This has got to be the best looking show I've ever seen, discounting anything I could say about the show itself, which is also very very good. There is nothing worse frankly, than a cheep TV show, like CSI or Law and Order, that tries to look hip and cool, and ends up looking cheesy and annoying. This show though, it plays like a movie, I would watch it in a theatre.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by graywolfe: Arressted Development is probably the greatest piece of comedic television I've seen alongside Seinfeld (at its peak), Blackadder (particularly Goes Forth and the Elizabethan version) and The Simpsons (as well as SNL '75-'79), but The Wire is the greatest show on television I've ever seen, end of story.
No. AD is better.
Posts: 317 | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
It's a funny thing about "The Wire." I've only seen the first season. The problem is that as nice and as competent as these police people are, I think the work they are doing is misguided.
They spent the entire first season building a case against Avon, but why? Even if they catch him, the drug market was obviously such that a new distributor would move in.
Avon was a middleman between the suppliers and the addicts, he wasn't even a pusher. As engaging and well-written as the show was, the entire business left me thinking that all of that effort and those resources were misplaced. Sure, Avon was a more violent and better organized than the dealers before him, and sure, he made a mockery of the court system, but in terms of actually stopping or even slowing down the drug trade, his arrest was almost inconsequential.
You heard the drug dealers go on and on about, "The Game," but it seemed that the dealers and the cops were so thoroughly ensconced in a bigger game that they didn't see the futility of their work. It made me think that if the legal system spent less money and brainpower on enforcement, and more of both on community development, this wouldn't even be an issue.
quote:They spent the entire first season buidling a case against Avon, but why?
Cause they're the Police. As for the futility of what they're doing.... You've hit upon one of the more important messages the writers of Season 1 were trying to convey. You're *supposed* to watch the show and ask these questions. Season 3 addresses them directly. It's sort of the whole point of the show.
Posts: 2267 | Registered: May 2005
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That's good to hear. The main characters seemed to think that police work and being "real police," was so important and that Avon was such a big deal menace to society, and with all of that time and money and thought and technology was spent to catch him, and all I could think of was that misplaced pride and fear was getting to all of these people. Pride in the game. Pride in their job. Pride in the legal system, when it seemed that the only person who was doing any good at solving the drug problem was the biker drug addict from the AA meetings who almost got the snitch clean.
posted
No, that's never what I took from it. I saw them as jaded professionals who knew the system was <expletive>, and as a result spent their time doing the best job they could, at their job to accomplish whatever goal was set before them, knowing that in the end, the system would be the system and nothing on the horizon would change beyond the limited individual details. That's what I always took away from H: Lots and The Wire. It's a very jaded and cynical, but honest view of what's going on from a crime reporters perspective, simple as that.
Posts: 752 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
I'd just like to drop in and show my Baltimorean pride, and say that I know two people in that show. The black female cop (? -- I've never watched it) was the mother of a girl in my class in eighth grade, and someone else in it was my dance teacher when I was little.
Feel free to ignore me -- it's just that those of us who live in Baltimore rarely get to say things like that. Posts: 464 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong: It's a funny thing about "The Wire." I've only seen the first season. The problem is that as nice and as competent as these police people are, I think the work they are doing is misguided.
They spent the entire first season building a case against Avon, but why? Even if they catch him, the drug market was obviously such that a new distributor would move in.
Avon was a middleman between the suppliers and the addicts, he wasn't even a pusher. As engaging and well-written as the show was, the entire business left me thinking that all of that effort and those resources were misplaced. Sure, Avon was a more violent and better organized than the dealers before him, and sure, he made a mockery of the court system, but in terms of actually stopping or even slowing down the drug trade, his arrest was almost inconsequential.
You heard the drug dealers go on and on about, "The Game," but it seemed that the dealers and the cops were so thoroughly ensconced in a bigger game that they didn't see the futility of their work. It made me think that if the legal system spent less money and brainpower on enforcement, and more of both on community development, this wouldn't even be an issue.
You have touched on a theme of the show. According to creator David Simon the show is about:
"...how institutions have an effect on individuals, and how, regardless of what you are committed to, whether you're a cop, a longshoremen, a drug dealer, a politician, a judge, a lawyer, you are ultimately compromised and must contend with whatever institution you've committed to."
That sense of futility is deliberate. If you remember in season one no one really cared about Avon's Barksdale's activities until a judge pressured a few police majors, and the cop who brought the issue to light in the first place loses his rank for it by the end of the season. Time and time again central characters of the show want to move on to bigger targets but simply aren't allowed to. It is pointless, in a way, but that's sort of the point, er...
Posts: 722 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:"...how institutions have an effect on individuals, and how, regardless of what you are committed to, whether you're a cop, a longshoremen, a drug dealer, a politician, a judge, a lawyer, you are ultimately compromised and must contend with whatever institution you've committed to."
It's a profound point. Adam was struck with the same problem, and all he did was be the first man. At bottom, the problem comes with committing to institutions instead of thinking.
The trick, and this is no mean task, is to get high enough in the institution to defraud it, while at the same time, not letting it unduly corrupt you. As movie cliche as it sounds, I think it's one of the biggest problems of our time.
I don't have an easy answer, and I've spent a few years trying to wrap my head around the problem. It's often the case that the class of compromises and priorities that appeared necessary to produce something are not the same ones as those required to abide within the finished product. The result is that we import the builders priorites when living within something already built. In the Wire, this comes out in everybody so busy tryng to bust Avon that they don't think to consider why to bother, or people so busy trying to climb the ladder or maintain their prestige, they never thought about the role of their current occupation. And on those rare occasions when they did think about why they wanted to bust Avon or the true dignity of their job, they didn't do it very well for lack of practice. All of the wires, jargon, procedures, hadn't prepared them to consider this class of moral questions.
quote:Originally posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong: That's good to hear. The main characters seemed to think that police work and being "real police," was so important and that Avon was such a big deal menace to society, and with all of that time and money and thought and technology was spent to catch him, and all I could think of was that misplaced pride and fear was getting to all of these people. Pride in the game. Pride in their job. Pride in the legal system, when it seemed that the only person who was doing any good at solving the drug problem was the biker drug addict from the AA meetings who almost got the snitch clean.
By the way, that character is played by singer Steve Earl, and David Simon specifically molded the character after him. Earl will also sing season 5's renditon of the intro (Tom Waits, Way Down In The Hole.) Also, bump!
quote:A lot of people are saying that The Wire may be the best tv show ever. I've never heard anyone (other than just now) make the same statement about Arrested Development.
Well that's a surprise. I was just about to say that exact thing.
Posts: 83 | Registered: Sep 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: I'm always vaguely disappointed when I see that a thread has been resurrected out of the blue without good cause or new info-
Is the new season about to start? Do you have some details? Spill it!
No, not without good cause. Not enough people are aware of this brilliant show, hence random bumping.
Also, uh, Season 5 will center around the media, and stuff...
Posts: 722 | Registered: Jul 2004
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I liked him so much as a reformed dad working his way up. That's sad.
I watched every episode over the course of a month and can agree that it's a historically significant show.
Posts: 1314 | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Launchywiggin: [QB] I liked him so much as a reformed dad working his way up. That's sad.
I'm saddened by this too, but for the character it probably goes with the job. It was strongly suggested at the end of the fourth season that he would be returning to his old gig in the fifth season.
Posts: 722 | Registered: Jul 2004
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Why would McNulty start drinking again...
