The Wire

[mall walker]

streaming on prime atm

[Brownski]

A few weeks back, I got a close friend who works in law enforcement to finally watch this show after all these years. I always thought (and she agrees) that the first season is far better then the ones that followed but the whole run is pretty great. Whoever cast this show was brilliant. Every single character rings true.

[NW_SKIER]

streaming on prime atm

Thank you

[mall walker]

Thank you

no worries, it’s worth the time

[yeahman]

A few weeks back, I got a close friend who works in law enforcement to finally watch this show after all these years. I always thought (and she agrees) that the first season is far better then the ones that followed but the whole run is pretty great. Whoever cast this show was brilliant. Every single character rings true.

It's funny, a lot of people seem to disagree on which season is the best. I did not think first season was the best. But in any case, I agree that whoever did the casting deserves major accolades. Casting is kind of an overlooked art, but man, everything hinges on those casting decisions. What's amazing about The Wire is nobody overplays their role, and nobody underplays their role. They hit the mark every time. A lot of that comes back to the director as well, not trying to score cheap points, always taking the long view. It's rare to see all those things come together at once to produce quality, cerebral entertainment.

[Benny Profane]

ha I remember laughing at that Protestant whiskey line too. He's not wrong, though.

But, he drank it anyway.

[SkiBall]

I rewatched again early in quarantine. If anybody is interested, The Ringer is doing an ep by ep deep dive pod with Jemele Hill and this Van doot.
Way down in the hole is the name of it. Of course.

[Benny Profane]

It's funny, a lot of people seem to disagree on which season is the best. I did not think first season was the best. But in any case, I agree that whoever did the casting deserves major accolades. Casting is kind of an overlooked art, but man, everything hinges on those casting decisions. What's amazing about The Wire is nobody overplays their role, and nobody underplays their role. They hit the mark every time. A lot of that comes back to the director as well, not trying to score cheap points, always taking the long view. It's rare to see all those things come together at once to produce quality, cerebral entertainment.

I'm in season 4 right now, and just amazed at the quality of acting coming from all of these children and adolescents.

[iceman]

My wife's business is in Baltimore and they were looking for more space last year and I went on a ride-along. The space is in a business project called the Baltimore Food Hub on E. Oliver St. and we went into the space, climbing over and through a bunch of trash and debris and there was this on the wall:


imgur pic

It was Cutty's Gym on the show. I thought that was pretty cool. Place was a wreck, though. You can see some vegetation lower left in pic, that's inside the building. Tons of potential and tax breaks were available but nah.

[Dantheman]

Part of me thinks this show is ripe for a modern reboot. It could be amazing. Bezos should buy the rights, put it on Prime and give Simon all the budget he wants and complete creative control. On the other hand, almost nothing has fundamentally changed since the show ended in 2008. Sure, smartphones and social media have permeated society, but that's mostly window dressing, so there's no reason to redo it.

[Benny Profane]

Part of me thinks this show is ripe for a modern reboot. It could be amazing. Bezos should buy the rights, put it on Prime and give Simon all the budget he wants and complete creative control. On the other hand, almost nothing has fundamentally changed since the show ended in 2008. Sure, smartphones and social media have permeated society, but that's mostly window dressing.

I don't know. All the kids and bangers would be staring at their phones.

[ill-advised strategy]

Every single character rings true.

Wifey and I both thought Kenard (sp?) was a little off. That could well be just repulsion at the depth of heinous suffering and utter moral failure orbiting that character...it’s a lot to process.

I had an interesting existential thought once about Kenard: that the name being a homophone of canard may have been a kind of clever double entendre, as he embodies the nebulous, racist, pop-psych-conventional-wisdom-ish notion of the black “super predator”, irredeemably, preternaturally depraved even as a small child.
Like that name is a deep, elegant, nuanced way of saying here is this package of real elements of that world, but also he is a canard, a stereotypical embodiment of every racist trope about poor inner-city black kids.

[mall walker]

I'm in season 4 right now, and just amazed at the quality of acting coming from all of these children and adolescents.

there’s a plot line in season 5 that disappoints a little. it’s still by far the best show ever made in my opinion, but it could be a little better. maybe that’s for the best?

snoop is incredible, one of the many real people who show up. the jay landsman character is based on a real sgt, who appears (as another character) in some episodes. the real guy that omar is based on shows up as the deacon, he was originally supposed to be cast as avon but he was still in jail.

now I gotta watch it again...

[ill-advised strategy]

fwiw David Simon’s books are a great companion to The Wire.

[Brownski]

I don't know. All the kids and bangers would be staring at their phones.

The cops would be too

[bobz]

I don't know. All the kids and bangers would be staring at their phones.

Yeah, and they can't snap them in half at the end of every particularly tense phone call. Oh wait, that's Breaking Bad.

[Benny Profane]

Twitter thread started by Wendell Pierce, aka Detective Bunk Moreland, a reaction to this https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/li...t-well-1297134 "conversation" between two critics about fictional depictions of cops on tv.

https://mobile.twitter.com/wendellpi...79838848995328

Agree with Wendell here, the police in The Wire are far from "heroic". Not many heroes at all in this show. Stark view of urban life, from the corners to the politicians and media. And blacks are far from pandered too. I wonder if something like this show could ever be made again. The PC police would smother it in it's crib, and HBO is but a shadow of it's former self.

A recent book is mentioned in this thread, https://www.amazon.com/All-Pieces-Ma.../dp/0451498151 an oral history of the making of The Wire. Looks good.

[Dantheman]

It's hard to comprehend how dense you have to be to think that the cops in The Wire are portrayed as anything close to "heroic." It was entirely the opposite, for the most part. Bunk and Bunny Colvin came the closest, but were still far from heroes.

How prophetic is Bunny's speech to Carver in Season 3?

"Soldiering and policing, they ain't the same thing."

[mall walker]

^ yeah. There are a lot of shows that glorify the police, but The Wire sure as shit isn't one of them. In fact its refusal to paint characters as broadly good/bad but instead insisting on viewing everyone as nuanced and flawed is what sets is so far apart from every other police show. Saying The Wire glorifies police makes me suspect that the person saying it didn't watch the show... good on Wendell setting it straight.

[yeahman]

How prophetic is Bunny's speech to Carver in Season 3?

For real.

[Benny Profane]

Just finished season 5. Lots of dark jokes in this series, but the real gotcha was Omar getting killed by a little kid. All the drama of him coming back to avenge the blind man, setting us up for the big confrontation, him limping around like Clint Eastwood in a spaghetti western or Bruce Willis in a Die Hard, and, bam, buying a pack of Newports. Soft pack. Haha.

Now I'm going back to season 1-2. I forgot them.

Awesome series.

[mall walker]

Yeah... the Omar death was really well done I thought. I wasn’t a big fan of the McNulty serial killer plotline, but even so, a great ending. That Landsman speech at the end, and the Pogues song, is all time.

I’m on my I-can’t-remember-how-many rewatch and it’s still the best show I’ve ever seen.

[Benny Profane]

The final season plotline was a lot more brilliant than some give it credit for. All the layers of lying and fiction that was done to serve either institutional or personal purposes. We all know politicians do it all the time, but Simon rachets the cynicism up to 10, basically saying everybody does it. Then the intersection of McNulty's fiction and the young Sun reporter's fictions, colliding like two bank robbers in the same place at the same time. But, the kid (and the paper) won a Pulitzer for it all, if you believe the final montage.

Shades of Jayson Blair at the NYT. He even got a mention in one shouting match.

[ill-advised strategy]

It's hard to comprehend how dense you have to be to think that the cops in The Wire are portrayed as anything close to "heroic." It was entirely the opposite, for the most part. Bunk and Bunny Colvin came the closest, but were still far from heroes.

How prophetic is Bunny's speech to Carver in Season 3?

"Soldiering and policing, they ain't the same thing."

Plus, let’s not forget that whole detail squad of every other unit’s worthless fuckups they assembled. The one who gets punched and goes on disability, then his buddy decides to throw himself down the stairs.

It’s not a heroic portrayal.

[Benny Profane]

Life imitates art.

https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/cr...5n4-story.html