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Bump.

Finally got myself hooked on this series and I have to say that it's impressive. I can understand how it wasn't a ratings bonanza, though. This isn't a series that thinks in terms of episodes, after all. The individual episodes don't really have a three-act structure and they kind of begin and end in media res. They don't even start with a "previously on" montage. No, this is a series that thinks in terms of seasons, which means that unless you start watching a season at the very beginning and keep until the end without missing an episode, you're kinda screwed. Hell, I'm halfway through season 2 right now and I can't even fathom what it would be like to watch it without having seen season 1.

But I wasn't moved to post about the series until season 2, episode 6. I had grown to like Omar Little, but I didn't quite see him as the suave badass I'd heard about so often. Also, one of my primary nitpicks for season 1 is that Levy more or less got away scot free. He was a slimy and completely unlikable character who enthusiastically stood up for hardened criminals and I wanted to see him get some kind of comeuppance. So when Omar got to be the one who finally handed Levy his ass... win. Epic win. That was fucking awesome.

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This is truly a madhouse. And I'm the lunatic running it. I've spent three years wondering if I should be proud or ashamed.

Yeah, Total Film came up with an idea that seasons 1 and 2 can be seen as 13-hour movies, and 3-5 as another (don't ask me how many hours!). I think that's why I liked it so much. Also I'd never previously found TV to have the depth of a great film, so perhaps that was something that was made possible by the approach.

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This is something you'll want to get used to as the series progresses. Not just with Levy but with all of the characters. The vilest characters usually get away with it where the more decent characters are regularly shat on. Just like in real life.

What do you think of Season 2 so far? I thought it was a very good season and has a strong ending. What made the season work despite the drastic change of setting and characters was how well the characters were cast and written, in particular Frank Sobotka.

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"Heard them Walthers like to jump some" "As will you, with one in your elbow."

I think it's very slowly paced, compared to season 1. Six episodes in and they only just got around to setting up the electronic surveillance. By this point in season 1, the team was dealing with the second or third attempt to shut the wire down.

Moreover, I found that watching season 1 was very much like watching an intricate and fast-paced chess game. The detail team, the Barksdales and the allies/enemies of both were moving pieces, capturing pieces, escaping check (time and time again) and maneuvering the other player into checkmate, all the while trying to figure out how the other player thinks and predicting what his next move will be.

But with season 2 (so far, anyway), it's like I'm watching the life of a community behind a brick wall while the detail team attempts to break that wall. Oh, and I'm also watching the losing team from season 1 as they lick their wounds and prepare for season 3.

All the same, season 2 is still proving fun to watch. Episode 6 alone, with the aforementioned Omar/Levy exchange and the tragic death of a prominent noble character, was more than enough to keep me watching. I'm also having fun laughing at Ziggy and waiting/hoping for his inevitable death.

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This is truly a madhouse. And I'm the lunatic running it. I've spent three years wondering if I should be proud or ashamed.

I remember thinking the same thing...


Don't you feel sorry for him at all? It might've been later in the series, but I grew quite attached to him...

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It is a slowly paced season, maybe the slowest of the series. However I think that is something you'll see with every other season of the series. It's usually not until the last two or three episodes of a season where things start to happen. As well, unlike most other shows The Wire doesn't explicitly tell you what the main focus or destination is going to be, it's something you work out yourself. The story does progress, however, through the use of dialog as opposed to actions. I think you'll probably enjoy season 3.



Although this is true of the first two or three seasons, the detail becomes less and less important throughout the series, even though it does play a part in all five. After the first three seasons it will become evident that The Wire is concerned less with the game of cat and mouse between the police and drug organizations than it is with the city of Baltimore as a whole and how it works. Season 2 is where the show began to widen its net, eventually moving onto other areas such as police bureaucracy, the mayoral race, the school system, the homeless, and finally the print media.





I think by the end of the series you'll come to the realization that you have been conditioned to expect a certain type of story telling in television, one that The Wire doesn't follow. Not all of the characters go down in the blaze of glory. Some get their comeuppance, the ones who most deserve to don't. Some see their loyalty and hard work payoff, others get shafted by the system.

But, as Omar puts it "It's all in the game, yo. It's all in the game".

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"Heard them Walthers like to jump some" "As will you, with one in your elbow."

Finished season 3. My updated thoughts:

To start with, AYB, yes. I finally feel quite sorry for Ziggy. In fact, I've come to see Ziggy as a sort of emotional trap. It's really easy to write the character off as worthless and laugh at his expense, but you'll hate yourself for doing so by the end of the season.

It's occurred to me that one of the reasons why this show is so strong and so memorable is because all of the characters truly earn what they get. In most other stories, it's like the creator points to a character and says "You shall be known as 'The Good Guy' and all your efforts will eventually be rewarded," then he points to another character and says "You shall be known as 'The Bad Guy' and you will get nothing but shame for your actions."

There are many conflicts in this show. In every conflict, the eventual winner is invariably the strongest or smartest character, regardless of where the players stand on the hero/villain spectrum. In this show, "luck" is when the other guy makes an educated guess that doesn't pan out. It's like David Simon and company created an entire city of thinking, feeling, real people and then let them go about their business with absolutely zero divine intervention. It's a wonderful illusion and it should be applauded.

As for Season 3: Yes, t3cii, Season 3 was very good. I went into it thinking about how Season 2 was slowly paced, only to find that a wiretap is up and running in the first damn episode! I don't think it went quite into Baltimore as the first two seasons did, though. It didn't delve into the bureaucracy as deeply as I expected, certainly not as deeply as the ports were explored in Season 2 or the drug trade in Season 1. Really, this season felt like an interlude. Like the entire season was setting up the chess board for Season 4, getting all the pieces where they need to be. I understand that Season 4 deals with the schools and Season 5 deals with the media. Both got heavy mention in Season 3, so it looks like both arenas are ready for quite a show.

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This is truly a madhouse. And I'm the lunatic running it. I've spent three years wondering if I should be proud or ashamed.

It does kind of feel like that. Especially with Marlo being the winner of Season 3. Now it's time for a new game.

Season 4 is one of the more popular seasons, maybe most popular amongst fans. While I don't think it's structured quite as strongly as seasons 2 and 3, (and I had much of it spoiled for me before I watched it, so that spoiled my enjoyment) as usual it's new characters are immediately well fleshed out. We know exactly who they are and what their lot in life is. The season focuses on the schools and mayoral race, with our introduction to four young students and their struggle to survive the street. This is tied directly to the drug trade. It also gives us more of Chris and Snoop, two of the most fearsome characters on television. If you enjoyed season 3, I think you'll enjoy season 4 just as well. It's probably the most heartbreaking season of the series.

If there is a downside to the show's realism it's that some characters, such as Mcnulty and Avon, have their roles drastically reduced as the story doesn't really call for their inclusion. It's a pretty bold move, to keep your established characters in the background and bring in new blood. You don't see that on too many shows these days.

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"Heard them Walthers like to jump some" "As will you, with one in your elbow."

Just ordered the first season for a bargainous £10 - can't wait to watch this show again

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Thought you guys might get a kick out of this. It's The Wire drawn Simpsons style:http://periscopestudio.com/category/the-wire/

Here's a sample:

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"Heard them Walthers like to jump some" "As will you, with one in your elbow."

Ah, the chess scene. One of my favorite scenes from the series so far.

Thanks for sharing, t3cii. That was great.

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This is truly a madhouse. And I'm the lunatic running it. I've spent three years wondering if I should be proud or ashamed.

Just one of those things I came across sort of randomly. I assume the artist drew from a photo reference as the body proportions are very tight.

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"Heard them Walthers like to jump some" "As will you, with one in your elbow."

Done with the series. My final thoughts:

While I was watching the show, I was simultaneously reading the blow-by-blows at Television Without Pity to make sure I got all the details right and to find some much-needed levity. The recap of the final episode ended with a description of the final montage and a statement that deserves to be Quoted For the MotherFucking Truth:


Here are some other statements to sum up The Wire.

1. Shit always rolls downhill.
2. You can shine a turd and call it gold, but it's still a turd.
3. Spend your entire life playing a game and you won't easily learn how to play anything else.
4. Bureaucrats rise above their level of incompetence.
5. No man is an island.

Ultimately, I think that the real genius of this series is in its pacing. Pretty much every other television show in history has been about getting to the next scene or set piece, trying to cram a movie's worth of story into an hour of screen time with a pretty bow tied on at the end. But because The Wire was focused more on seasons than on episodes, the stories were given thirteen hours apiece to breathe. This allowed for longer and therefore more detailed set-ups in plot and character development. In turn, this led to greater pay-offs on all fronts.

Of course, I'm not saying that every TV show should be done this way. In the hands of lesser showrunners, there would either be too little to carry an audience through those dozen-hour runtimes or too much material to keep from spinning out of control. I wish I knew how David Simon and company did it, but they somehow managed to take hundreds of speaking roles from all walks of life in Baltimore and steer them through so many story threads, all of which were managed and edited with precision until they dovetailed into a perfect whole.

The only major caveat, in my mind, is the newspaper storyline in season 5. In a series filled with weaving plotlines moved forward by characters who were morally ambiguous, flawed and easy to root for and/or sociopaths who were deeply enjoyable to watch, it was painful to sit through a storyline comprised of characters portrayed in such one-dimensional, black and white terms.

Still, I don't regret a minute that I spent watching this show. The ride wasn't always easy, but it was a trip worth making.

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This is truly a madhouse. And I'm the lunatic running it. I've spent three years wondering if I should be proud or ashamed.

I was impressed by how naturally they were able to express the passage of time. With the season 4 storyline we're taken through most of the school semester in only 13 episodes. This is where the child actors became an asset as they themselves begin to mature as the season and series progressed. When you see Michael and Duquan by the end of the series it's hard to believe they were once throwing piss balloons and eating popsicles only a year before.



Season 5 is generally thought to be the weakest season. I used to think that had the season been longer it might have been better but honestly the newspaper setting was the problem. Previous to season 5 we had met characters who were down on their luck and easy to relate to. With season 5 we essentially have a small group of pretty well off characters who were dealing with more ethical and morale dilemmas rather than on just trying to survive in Baltimore. At the end of the season all of the characters are pretty much in the same position they started in (with the exception of Scott).

I think it might have been better had it focused on one newspaper journalist in particular. For example maybe focus entirely on Scott trying to make it in the competitive field of journalism, struggling to find something newsworthy, eventually resorting to lying. Or re-write the character of Gus and have it focus on his struggle to stay alive in the newsroom with up and coming talent. In the end I feel these characters were not as fully developed as they should have been.

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"Heard them Walthers like to jump some" "As will you, with one in your elbow."

Personally, t3cii, I think that the newspaper storyline would have been improved if there had been a greater emphasis on why the reporters and editors were being so competitive. The buyouts and the rise of the Internet as a news medium are touched on, but they're never really fleshed out as imminent threats. The Pulitzer and the fabricated stories could have been the paper's ticket to another few months of borrowed time. As it was, they were just means of stoking egos and covering asses.

Aside from that, I think that Season 5 might have been my favorite season, second only to Season 1. The entire show was building to Season 5, and those ten episodes proved to be a worthy climax for the characters we've spent so much time coming to know and love. We saw the police characters trying to dig their way out of rock bottom and we saw Marlo Stanfield take the crown with no real idea of what to do with it. The characters were all in crises and I found it wonderful to see them find the best possible way out.

That goes for Omar, too. Without spoiling anything, I really do think that Omar's storyline had the best possible ending. Especially with Michael's involvement. Mike's story was tragic and it will most likely end tragically, but I actually felt joy while watching his last scene on the show.

I'm still not sure about McNulty, though. His ending was for the best, make no mistake, but I'm still not sure where he landed or what he ended up doing after series' end. It seems like every character in the whole damn series got an answer to that question except for our stalwart protagonist. Up for interpretation, I guess. I just hope he gets his happily ever after, if such a thing exists in Baltimore.

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This is truly a madhouse. And I'm the lunatic running it. I've spent three years wondering if I should be proud or ashamed.

[NOTE: Merged! --"Curiosity Inc."]

I don't want to derail this thread any furthur, but I had to post this, since I just came across it by coincidence. It's The Wire written in the vain of Dickens: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:OknQr5ux00gJ:hoodedutilitarian.com/2011/03/when-its-not-your-turn-the-quintessentially-victorian-vision-of-ogdens-the-wire/+hooded+utilitarian+omar+comin&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari&source=www.google.com

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"Heard them Walthers like to jump some" "As will you, with one in your elbow."

What the heeeeeeeeeeeeell ?!

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Finally started watched the last series.

I have watched each of the previous episodes again – this time with my 14 year old son. There are some great characters woven into the show. It's a joy to watch.

And I have another son growing up to watch it with.

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Heya Soup!
Get it for your birthday? Hope it was a good 'un.

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Downloading the series. Just because you people seem to like it a lot.

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Never give you up
Never gonna let you down

English not very good. Forgive me.

http://www.ghondar.blogspot.com
Because people on the internet think that I'm somewhat funny.