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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

The Wire

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Strange Machine Vs The Virus with Shoes

01:29 / 08.05.05

One of the most complex and intriguing shows on TV, some of the best characters and storylines depicted on TV! The two most ‘moral’ characters are gay, what more do you want. Omar, the gay, shotgun wielding, Robin Hood like criminal, may be the best TV character since Tony Soprano! Watch this show and report back on your findings.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

17:27 / 08.05.05

Oh, yes. The Wire is so awesome. David Simon coralled like the best crime writers on Earth and somehow coralled them into a room to write for TELEVISION.

Much as I love Omar, my softest spot is for Freamon. Just good police.

And that Season Three finale was so spectacular.

Strange Machine Vs The Virus with Shoes

00:17 / 15.05.05

Still waiting for season 2 dvd to arrive, so no spoilers please. This show is so far removed from CSI and Law and Order. Always thought that Freamon was let down by his attachment to a witness/informant. Think Omar’s last scene in season 1 is the best part of the series, fantastic ending!

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

01:16 / 15.05.05

Oh the last episode of Season One nails it on so many levels. I reecently went through the whole box and the way the beginning dovetails into the end between McNulty and Stringer Bell is just masterful.

There's a whole lot of quality Freamon on the way, Fin.

05:07 / 16.08.05

holy sweet jesus.

i just rented season one and it blew my mind.

i can't believe how good this show is. i never thought i could get so exctited about beurocratic minutia. somehow they've made an entire season out of one detailed, surveillance-oriented police case that is compelling and exciting at every turn. i kept waiting for it to get dry and obtuse, but it never fucking happened.

favorite scene: mcnulty and bunk break down a cold crime scene while only saying "fuck" . . . and you follow the whole thing perfectly.

it's kind of like combining the sopranos and 24 and a blowjob. . . unbelievable.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

12:41 / 16.08.05

Best description of the show I've ever heard.

13:11 / 16.08.05

I have heard many good things about the wire from my TV-downloading friends - anyone know of any plans for UK broadcasts?

Mysterious Transfer Student

13:24 / 16.08.05

Sleazenation, if you or someone you know have satellite TV, you may already be able to view FX (formerly FX289), the Fox spinoff that came to the UK a while back and also boasts the fantastic Carnivale. Series two of The Wire is currently being shown on Wednesdays at 10pm, with a late-night repeat the same night and (I think) on Saturdays.

Have been intending to post on this thread for donkey's now, but haven't time just at the moment to formulate a coherent justification for how much I love this series. Every character and plotline is so damn compelling I can hardly believe it. More frothings later.

14:19 / 16.08.05

I've always wanted to check it out, as one of my favourite crime writers, the excellent George P. Pelecanos, is involved in the writing. Unfortunately I don't have cable, so will have to wait until it is shown, probably on channel 5.

15:15 / 16.08.05

"Every character and plotline is so damn compelling I can hardly believe it."

that's it exactly. a combination of brilliant casting, acting and writing leaves you with no boring characters. it's so easy to love the characters, especially for all their to-human flaws.

another favorite moment: mcnulty and ikea.

13:50 / 24.08.05

get out of the game

I just read this article in the new york times. fascinating after just watching season one. pretty sobering to be reminded just how real all the horrible things you see on tv can be. but it also gives me a real appreciation for how much hard work and intelligence it takes to get things done in a place like that.

00:57 / 20.02.06

I'm several episodes into Season Two (have been renting the DVDs). The show is anything but formulaic... they took a big turn in Season 2 and it took me five or six episodes to even begin to understand what was going on - bunch of new characters, new settings, new plot lines. Is anyone else watching this?

BTW I find it odd that someone would call Omar one of the (two) "most moral" characters on the show. I have trouble calling anyone who murders scores of people for cash "most moral"... most morally complex, or most morally interesting, I'll give you.

Regrettable Juvenilia

08:26 / 20.02.06

Omar never pulled a gun on a working man, somebody who wasn't in the game. And he didn't start stacking up bodies in a serious way until they did for his boy Brandon. Because they didn't have to do Brandon like that, you know?

I've been wanting to start or get into a thread about The Wire but I'm very wary of spoilers - could we agree to make this thread, say, about seasons 1 and 2 only (thus covering what anyone in the UK without FX could have watched, 'cos the DVDs are out)?

I thought I knew what love was with Season 1, but Season 2 just blows my mind. It's on some Arthur Miller shit.

10:08 / 20.02.06

The Wire really is one of the best TV shows I've ever seen. Evar ever evah! But I've been trying to torrent season three for fucking months now. Does anyone know where I can get it?

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

11:34 / 20.02.06

God damn it. Season Three being unavailable to you guys is like War & Peace being out of print. Or whatever novel you guys would judge as just the most essential thing on Earth.

But es, let us talk about 1 and 2, at least. I just saw the Sease Finale of 2 recently and I was struck by that incredible last shot. All the tension of that tail of Lil Sobotka in the montage and then at the end it's gone. Do they not give a shit? Most likely not. That's one of the best things about The Wire, the bald faced honesty. "Look, none of these guys really give that much of a shit. If their shift is over or if something else goes down, they're not going to go out of their way to make sure this guy doesn't skip."

Very effective closing note.

m

14:46 / 20.02.06

I was a big fan of Robert Price's novel, Clockers, and was really disappointed by Spike Lee's ham-fisted movie adaptation. Then I saw the first season of the Wire, and realized that it was everything that the Clockers movie could and should have been. Complex morally conflicted characters on both sides of the drug game all struggling to squeeze a little happiness out of their day to day lives in any way they can. I think that Price actually started writing for the show during the second season, and I'm anxious to see third season when focus is put back on the Barksdale crew. When is it gonna hit DVD?!

14:51 / 20.02.06

Does the focus go back firmly on the Barksdale crew, then? I would've thought that would be a step back for the show in that I'm expecting/hoping to see the corrupt politician angle more thoroughly explored.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

15:06 / 20.02.06

Yes it does, no it isn't, and you will see plenty of political goings on. It actually manages to highlight all the things that make the show amazing in terms of Barksdale, Omar, and the FK (Freamon Krew) and adds an entirely new and remarkable level to everything with one simple decision by a previously minor character. One of the best seasons of anything ever.

15:35 / 20.02.06

Incredible. I finished watching season 3 yesterday in a weekend long marathon and was all ready to see what everyone had to say and we're only talking about seasons 1 & 2.

Oh well.

What an amazing show, I used to watch Homicide and marvelled at how the show focused on the minutia of day to day police work and with the Wire, they've taken that to a whole new level whilst simultaneously maintaining strong, interesting stories with characters you care about.
It's so nice to see a cop show that focuses on both the 'good guys' and the 'bad guys' and blurs the line so realistically between right and wrong on both sides that it becomes hard to distinguish between them. As people on the show so often say, it's all about playing the game, there is no right or wrong, there's just people trying to achieve their own objectives and often by employing any means necessary.

And all of that says nothing to the incredible quality of the writing, performances, direction etc etc which could be an essay in itself.

18:18 / 20.02.06

Um, don't know if anyone would find this interesting. I recently finished David Simon's true crime novel "Homicide: a year on the killing streets". This was, of course, the basis of the TV Homicide. Haven't seen that show in years, but noticed tons of similarities, between (what I remember of) the first season and the book.

Anyway, some of the stuff in the book, appears almost verbatim in the Wire. In particular, the scene in which (is it Jimmy?), the homicide cop whom everyone loves and hates, tells Bunk that he appreciates how gentle he was the first time he fucked him (season 1?). That is, like, transcribed, from the book.

Also some of the characters themselves, appear to be at least partly based off of the cops in Simons excellent book.

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:10 / 01.03.06

All the tension of that tail of Lil Sobotka in the montage and then at the end it's gone. Do they not give a shit? Most likely not.

Agreed, and I think in part this is meant to reflect the fact that in the end, nobody with any power gives a shit about the docks one way or another. I love the very last few shots in that montage, all those shots of abandonned, rusting industry piled up one after another, speeding up, all the subtlety cut out for a moment so the show can give you both barrels of the deep burning core of class politics that really fuels it. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up - one of this real "I cannot believe a TV show I can love like this exists" moments.

Another thing I love about this show is the way the first two seasons both follow a vaguely similar structure - they're about cases, but they're really about showing you a particular world and then showing you how it comes apart. Entropy. Springer and Avon's story may continue after the end of season one, but really, their empire falls as soon as Avon goes in for that stretch. Arguably it falls when D'Angelo asks "Where's Wallace?"... And in both seasons, one of the things they hammer home at the end is that the criminal industries keep ticking over regardless. Dope keeps flowing. New shipments of girls keep coming in. Things may be quiet for a week or so, but then they'll pick up. Players change, but the game remains the same.

And I love the way that season 2 in particular has the inevitability of... classical tragedy, or something. In the first episode, everything about Frank Sobotka is laid out for you - who he is, what he's done, what his morals are, why he's compromised them, how he feels about that. And you can also take a pretty good guess that Ziggy is going to end up dead or in jail from the first time you lay eyes on him. It's just a matter of watching it all play out, inexorably.

Shiny: Well Over Thirty

06:00 / 26.05.07

I’ve just gotten turned on to the Wire, in my hunger to download stuff on my new broadband connection, and I most definitely agree with everything said here. This show is absolutely marvellous, and really should be watched by everyone. The thing I find most disturbing about the show is how much the behaviour of the corrupt, stupid, bigoted cops puts me in mind of Life on Mars – I horrifies me, but I really don’t see much of a difference between the presumably exaggerated parody of dirty British cops in the 70s served up in Life on Mars and the apparently fairly realistic portrayal of American cops in the present day that The Wire provides. Chilling stuff really.

10:43 / 26.05.07

Shiny, I'm not sure our focus should be on the bad behaviour and stupidity of individuals. It seems to me that this show attacks entrenched power structures - the force behind the stupidity - and that's what's so bloody good about it.

That and the script and the plot and the acting and the verisimilitude...

14:07 / 26.05.07

he behaviour of the corrupt, stupid, bigoted cops

I don't really think they are shown like this. Or rather they are, but simultaneously they are shown as a lot of other things as well. The show isn't a heavy handed condemnation of police brutality, rather the brutality is an aspect of the characters behavior, an unpleasant side of the job and their characters but it isn't condemned as such. On one one hand, one could argue it adds depth and realism, which I think it does, on t'other I think you could argue that it doesn't deal with these issues brought up fully. I'm sort of glad of this in a way though because some rubbish moralising - see every other cop show ever - would ruin the show. It's the fact that it doesn't do so, that the characters are all clearly shown to have this brutal side, is one of the things that makes the show so interesting.

I'm thinking of two moments in particular (both in Series 1?). The first is where Herc and Carver screw up the good cop/bad cop routine and just stomp Bodie instead. It's actually played for laughs pretty much. The second is when Bodie is arrested for punching the old alcoholic cop (can't recall his name) and Kima really lays into him with her baton, saying "You hit a COP?!". A really shocking moment but I think it takes it's power from the fact that it plays against what we've come to expect from Kima - we see as a "good" character: competent, skilled at her job etc. Her sexuality feeds into this posiitve construction as well. And it's kind of .. broken, quite powerfully by this moment, but then she slips back into the "good character" narrative role again. Hmm.

14:47 / 26.05.07

Watching series 1 after series 2, I was actually quite shocked by how much more heavy-handed the cops were in the first one; possibly the producers decided to drop the levels of police violence as something of a cliche when they came to plan the second series, or perhaps more likely in what's such a well-crafted show, they felt that having made the point they didn't really need to repeat it.

A related issue might be that the turf war in series 3 almost seems to happen off-camera - violence on either side, while clearly a fact of its world, is arguably something 'The Wire' just isn't that interested in, at least certainly not to the extent that it could be.

Shiny: Well Over Thirty

14:50 / 26.05.07

Oh I absolutely agree that the show doesn't moralise in a traditional wayand that's a good thing. Its very much clear that the cops negative behaviour is mostly a product of a dirty, inhuman system that causes people to act in a dirty inhuman way, and that's a big, big part of why the show is enjoyable - ultimately everyone is part of the system in one way or another, and everyone is the worse for it. It's just that even though it's a given that the dirtiness of the cops comes from the system rather than from them being intrinsically awful people it still leaves their behaviour and the way it sometimes impacts on others truely terrifying. And the fact they are locked into a system which does not moralise or judge, and in fact often encourages the more awful extremes of behaviour makes it the more chilling

I think what gets me is that there is that there isn't really one character who isn't horribly wounded by the system, and thus occassionally monstrous because of it - McNulty for instance is probably the closest thing to a traditional cop show hero - in that he realy does seem to give shit, but even he has awful moments of sexism, homophobia, and the like - despite being relatively a good guy in terms of the world of the Wire he's probably still someone most of us would go to great lengths to avoid meeting in real life. And he's one of the best of them.

15:33 / 26.05.07

He's also very, very vain.

Shiny: Well Over Thirty

15:44 / 26.05.07

True that. But then that's one of the things that doesn't really affect me - probably because it's an acceptable enough flaw for an actual hero in more traditional show. Also that probably is just a consequence of the guy's character rather than a product of the system.

On another note thinking about my last post I'm reminded of something else I meant to say, which is how I felt th show lost something with the loss of D'Angelo, and to an extent Wallace. Mainly because they were the characters who seemed to most clearly realize they were trapped in a system which made monsters of everyone, and who actually tried to buck it a little and get out. Most of the others don't seem to realize it quite as clearly - D'Angelo especially seemed to really understand the world the characters live in far more clearly than most of the characters.

15:54 / 26.05.07

Where have you got to with the show?

Shiny: Well Over Thirty

15:58 / 26.05.07

Just started watching episode 4 of series 3 right now. Actually I want to slightly revise what I said above - I guess the guys at city hall, as well as guys like Stringer and the Greek understand the world well enough - the difference is that they just don't care.

16:53 / 26.05.07

You'll come across others who care. It's all quite tragic, really.

Shiny: Well Over Thirty

17:07 / 26.05.07

Oh others definitely care, but no-one seems to get it quite as clearly as D. I'm thinking mainly of his chess game metaphor scene - which was the moment I fell in love with the show - but all of his scenes, especially those with Wallace were priceless. I'd like to see more of that kind of thing happening.

I guess one could make the argument that that stuff isn't as necessary later on, since it's already been layed out fairly clearly in those early episodes, and there'd be some truth in that - but even though it's not necessary from an exposition standpoint I found the drama of a character so clearly trapped in the monstrous system and unlike the others so painfully aware of it one of the most compelling elements of the show.

I suppose Frank Sebotka verged on being in that kind of situation as well, but right up to the end he still thought there was some hope to play the system just well enough to actually do a bit of good for his people, and ultimately that's what destroyed him, so I don't think he quite fitted into that mould, at least not completely.

17:13 / 26.05.07

I think D is the only character to spell things out clearly, but I also think a lot of the other characters get it, particular Omar. In fact Omar almost certainly gets it more than just about anyone else.

Just talking about "The Game" suggests that folk know the (groan) score.

Shiny: Well Over Thirty

18:52 / 26.05.07

Yeah - Omar's a funny one. I reckon you're probably right - he understand the game bloody well. He also cheays like a bastard - Omar knows all the rules and he breaks most of them and thus far seems to get away with it to a shocking degree. Whilst he is still trapped in the game Omar strikes me as just about the freest man in the whole show in a lot of ways. Mainly coz he's always 'king' of his own crew I guess.

20:14 / 26.05.07

Yes, I think you're right. There is something weirdly free about Omar. Need to think about that some more.

Fly, got an opinion?

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