The Wire

[T_S_A_R]

i really liked the wire but i think people go overboard with it. the depth of characterisation in the sopranos, mad men and the shield blows the wire out of the water. tony, vic and don are three of the greatest characters ever created, looking at the wire the only rounded characters imo were carcetti, stringer, avon and bodie. bubbles was annoying, omar was ridiculous and their attempts at making mcnulty a leading man were shambolic, it's not a co-incidence that the best episodes were in the 4th season when he was marginalised. the wire had loads of guys like bunk, landsman, prop joe and slim charles that were quality banter but they weren't exactly fleshed out.

i think boxset viewing has altered people's perceptions of shows. watching something over 6 or 7 years at the pace of one episode a week for a few months every year is a totally different experience to rattling through boxsets in 4 or 5 weeks. the wire moves along in along in a fairly linear fashion which is probably better for heavy viewing than the sopranos or mad men which are more character based and have a lot of episodes that aren't part of some overarching plotline.

[banterman86]

i really liked the wire but i think people go overboard with it. the depth of characterisation in the sopranos, mad men and the shield blows the wire out of the water. tony, vic and don are three of the greatest characters ever created, looking at the wire the only rounded characters imo were carcetti, stringer, avon and bodie. bubbles was annoying, omar was ridiculous and their attempts at making mcnulty a leading man were shambolic, it's not a co-incidence that the best episodes were in the 4th season when he was marginalised. the wire had loads of guys like bunk, landsman, prop joe and slim charles that were quality banter but they weren't exactly fleshed out.

It's all subjective but I completely disagree with this in terms of the other two shows I have seen - The Soprano's and Mad Men.

Tony was a well fleshed out charcater for sure, but he dominated the show, much as Don does Mad Men, which marginalises the other characters. Too often both shows fall into a formula of "This weeks story is Don/Tony Main Plot + generic supporting character sub plot" what makes The Wire different is that it juggles all these characters not letting any single character dominate. Liek, for example, Kenny in Mad Men or Paulie in the Sopranos? Cool, expect an episode which gives there character room to grow perhaps once or twice a season. The principle cast of the Wire is so large and juggled so effectively taht this rarely, if ever, becomes an issue.

Bunk was arguably a comedic character until season 3 and the "bench scene" to say he wasn;t fleshed out after that is well...i don;t want to say wring, but it;s an odd view to take.

Prop joe and Slim Charles both increased in profile, and depth, as the seasons went on - Joe going from a one note rival of the Barksdales to a much more intelligent character.

Landsmann is a slightly more tricky one - the occasional serious turn does not take away from the fact taht he was, by and large, a comedic character. it's interesting taht he was based on a real poh-lice.

[The OP]

I must admit, I never really got into Mad Men, but my abiding impression of it was that Don Draper is a big dod of wood in a suit.

[T_S_A_R]

i'd say that bench scene was about the only time bunk was ever really given some depth. you'd see him getting pished, you'd see him with his sons and jimmy and you see him doing his fast talking police thing but that was about it. i thought the two best things in the wire were bodie, poot and wallace then the stringer and avon dynamic in season 3 and the kids in season 4 because it was about people interacting with each other rather than the functioning of the city.

looking at sopranos tony is obviously huge and dominant but carmela, aj, meadow, janice, junior, livia, chris, adriana, paulie, jonny sack, melfi, rosalie, artie and bobby are all more rounded, complex characters than anyone in the wire. to me it's much more difficult to develop characters than it is to drive things along with a fast moving narrative.

for me the wire was too much of a party political broadcast on behalf on david simon which was ok until the final season but the newspaper storyline was dire, it was like being hit over the head. it's show versus tell, the wire always seemed to being telling you what was right or wrong whereas there were a lot more ambiguities on the sopranos.

[banterman86]

i'd say that bench scene was about the only time bunk was ever really given some depth. you'd see him getting pished, you'd see him with his sons and jimmy and you see him doing his fast talking police thing but that was about it. i thought the two best things in the wire were bodie, poot and wallace then the stringer and avon dynamic in season 3 and the kids in season 4 because it was about people interacting with each other rather than the functioning of the city.

Without getting into spoilers, you're disregarding Bunk's character arc in the final season, which was one fo the better ones of that series

looking at sopranos tony is obviously huge and dominant but carmela, aj, meadow, janice, junior, livia, chris, adriana, paulie, jonny sack, melfi, rosalie, artie and bobby are all more rounded, complex characters than anyone in the wire. to me it's much more difficult to develop characters than it is to drive things along with a fast moving narrative.

The Wire doesn't really have a fast moving narrative though does it?

I think it may just come down to personal preference really, i prefer the Wire's "7 minutes of everybody, every week" approach to "The Soprano's with Special Guest Star Meadow!" approach. What allows for better charctersation is up for question - do you get deeper into a character by seeing a lot of them intermitantly, or a moderate amount of them regulalrly?

for me the wire was too much of a party political broadcast on behalf on david simon which was ok until the final season but the newspaper storyline was dire, it was like being hit over the head. it's show versus tell, the wire always seemed to being telling you what was right or wrong whereas there were a lot more ambiguities on the sopranos.

That's questionable as well, for example

hamsterdam, could upon first inspection, seem like a pretty big pro-legalisation theme...and then you seem Bubbles walking through it at night, and it appears horroific.

it's hard to compare that sort of Stuff to The Soprano's however, because the Soprano's doesnt lend itself to those kind of questions - if The Wire is about the Society, then the Soprano's is arguably about the Human Condition.

mmm, feel a bit poncey now.

[JamboMikey]

Its better the second time you watch it

[Benjamin_Nevis]

So what are the opinions on other David Simon TV fayre, Homicide, The Corner, Generation Kill and Tremé?

Homicide I can take or leave, though Detective John Munch is worth the admission price on it's own. The Corner I thought was incredibly depressing and it was a real slog getting through that series. Generation Kill was absolutely fantastic, no heavy handedness with the rights or wrongs just a great depiction of soldiers doing their job.

Tremé though is by far my favourite, and I think I might even prefer it to The Wire. It was just perfect, from start to finish. It's also probably got the finest soundtrack ever assembled for a TV series.

I've just started watching this, and it's fucking excellent.

[Northsea80]

They were selling the complete 5 seasons for £49 in HMV recently, next trip with work i'll start to make a dent in them.

[deadasdillinger]

Only just seeing this thread for the first time.

I watched 'The Wire' having just finished my then-favourite TV show, The Sopranos. Having spent years binging on the likes of 24 and Prison Break (still undoubtedly good TV entertainment), The Sopranos was just such a fresh style of drama for me. So rich, brilliantly written, deeply detailed with fantastic characterisation and a subtle genius to it - the ending is still my favourite to any show.

So going into The Wire with its billing as the greatest show of all time, I was sceptical. The first four or five episodes, which I watched back to back, did nothing to convince me that I was watching the best thing ever broadcast on the small screen. I was enjoying them as very good television, but it was slow - even coming off the back of The Sopranos, it was slow - and I just wasn't in the "way" of watching it yet. I have since read a quote from David Simon where he essentially said he was teaching viewers a new way of watching TV in that first season. That might sound arsey, but I completely understand what he meant.

Everything that I loved about TV in a show like 24 (my first TV love which I now see as nothing but dumb entertainment) - the dramatic cliffhangers, the fast pacing, good guys winning and bad guys ultimately losing, and the simplicity - I slowly came to loathe, and began to love the opposite in The Wire. A glacial pacing but with real depth and quality, a realism that defied cliffhangers, and good guys letting themselves down or getting fucked, and bad guys preying on society to succeed amidst corruption. The simplicity (cops v baddies for instance) just wasn't there - you had awful junkies and you had Bubs, you had loathsome drug dealers and you had Omar, and for every Bunk, Carcetti, or Freamon, there was a Rawls, Clay Davis or Herc.

Needless to say, it slowly became my favourite show of all time. Omar my favourite character, Tom Waits' season 2 version of 'Down In The Hole' my favourite TV theme, pretty much everything about it, I fell in love with. It also became home to my favourite single episode of all time, season 4's Final Grades. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Grades - if there's a finer hour of television, I'd fucking love to see it.

I'm often away from home with work, so I decided last year that there was no better way to spend my lonesome nights in a B&B than rewatching The Wire. By this point, I had also delved into as much of David Simon's work as I could lay my hands on, so I had read Homicide and The Corner. It's probably something you've heard before, but if you've rewatched it then you'll know it's true - The Wire is so much better the second time round, and you pick up so much that you missed.

David Simon in the last episode, in front of a 'Save our Sun' banner in the news copy room.

In the very first episode, a throwaway comment from Jimmy about his hypothetical nightmare job being working on the boat instantly jumped out. A whole season later, I knew where he ended up...

There was a conversation just a couple of episodes before Brandon's brutal death where Avon and his crew discuss killing a deer then displaying it on the front of your car as a warning...

Little throwaway things too that you might not even notice. One of the guys who worked down the dock in season 2 is under the bridge, living homeless in season 5. It's not mentioned or commented on, it's just there if you notice it. Same with Rawls being spotted in the gay bar. It's little things like that which make the universe of The Wire so believable.

I think scenes like Frank Sobotka's last, the 14 year old boy who gets killed as Slim and Cutty go after Fruit, the security guard who gets offed over stolen lollipops, or Prez shooting the cop, somehow just resonate so much more when you know what's coming.

I was also noticing so much stuff from the non-fiction books he had written. True stories from his time spent in the Baltimore homicide division, cropping up as fiction - some so unbelievable that I remember thinking on first viewing that they were perhaps a little unrealistic. The opening scene with the 'Snot Boogie' story; Bunk's story of shooting the mouse with his service revolver; the photocopier as a polygraph machine; Omar's jump from the fifth story balcony, and indeed loads of his stories; Bubs' stories, too, were often based on real life characters and events.

Something else I noticed on my rewatch was Herc's unintentionalinvolvement in every major plot. Afterwards I kept turning over this theory about Herc being absolutely central to just about every major plot in the show. I got reflecting on it after noticing that it was not only he who gave Carver the mobile number of Marlo (which kickstarts the wiretap in Season 5), but he who suggested to Levy in the finale that they had used an illegal wiretap, ultimately bundling the prosecution. I had noticed in other seasons how he always seems to have a great impact on the plot, often unintentionally in the likes of Randy being outed as an informant and getting a beating.

I went on Google to see if anyone was discussing such a theory and found this article, which brings together his involvement in all the major plots quite nicely - http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2009/ ... vironment/ - I could do without the conclusion, where the author compares him to a tennis ball, but it's a pretty good summary of my point.

Anyway, the second viewing of the whole shebang just had me fall so much more heavily in love with this wonderful, magnificent show. There isn't a show on television that better wraps up every single character's story.

There's still loads of David Simon stuff I need to watch - finish season 1 of Homicide (which to be fair, he wasn't that involved in), finish The Corner adaptation, watch Generation Kill and Treme - but after that, I'm definitely going to watch The Wire AGAIN. That may seem excessive, but I suppose anyone who has seen this show will completely understand.

Absolute unrivalled genius.

[SodjesSixteenIncher]

Tony was a well fleshed out charcater for sure, but he dominated the show, much as Don does Mad Men, which marginalises the other characters. Too often both shows fall into a formula of "This weeks story is Don/Tony Main Plot + generic supporting character sub plot" what makes The Wire different is that it juggles all these characters not letting any single character dominate. Liek, for example, Kenny in Mad Men or Paulie in the Sopranos?

With the Sopranos, the supporting characters all have depth and backstory, but they are only glimpsed into mostly from Tony's POV. I don't see it as some kind of afterthought but a clever way to deliver what is essentially a character piece. Tony's complex relationships with everyone makes the show, and it's all the more interesting that we don't see the full picture. We get to see Tony change and be a different man to the different people in his life based on his perception of what they need from him. Chris M was a character who was particularly fascinating for us not knowing everything. Consequently his relation with Tony was one of my favourite ever commited to screen, large or small.

The Wire is total genius but completely different to Sopranos. You really get the sense of a living, breathing city with everyone and everything interweaving masterfully, (a more realistic Simpsons? ).

Must re-watch The Wire. At the moment, it sits a tiny percent behind The Sopranos as my favourite show. Lightyears ahead of anything else. If it improves at all on second viewing then it goes up to 1st.

I see The Shield getting a lot of praise. Maybe I'm like the posters who gave up on The Wire

too soon, but I found it very average. The big maverick cop v non white career sarge, "God dammit, he busts my balls but he's the best goddamn cop we got!", "what would you know about fighting crime Pedro, pay the bills and get that bathroom fixed!" patter seemed really unoriginal and one-dimensional. Did I miss something or perhaps not show enough patience? (watched first series).

I really urge people who aren"t gripped by the wire to persevere. Hundreds of TV hours and not a second wasted. It took me ages to get hooked, but when I was my life was on halt for about a month

Edited March 12, 2012 by SodjesSixteenIncher

[banterman86]

With the Sopranos, the supporting characters all have depth and backstory, but they are only glimpsed into mostly from Tony's POV. I don't see it as some kind of afterthought but a clever way to deliver what is essentially a character piece. Tony's complex relationships with everyone makes the show, and it's all the more interesting that we don't see the full picture. We get to see Tony change and be a different man to the different people in his life based on his perception of what they need from him. Chris M was a character who was particularly fascinating for us not knowing everything. Consequently his relation with Tony was one of my favourite ever commited to screen, large or small.

That's an interesting take on it...may be time to rewatch The Sopranos.....

[The Moonster]

Only just seeing this thread for the first time.

I watched 'The Wire' having just finished my then-favourite TV show, The Sopranos. Having spent years binging on the likes of 24 and Prison Break (still undoubtedly good TV entertainment), The Sopranos was just such a fresh style of drama for me. So rich, brilliantly written, deeply detailed with fantastic characterisation and a subtle genius to it - the ending is still my favourite to any show.

So going into The Wire with its billing as the greatest show of all time, I was sceptical. The first four or five episodes, which I watched back to back, did nothing to convince me that I was watching the best thing ever broadcast on the small screen. I was enjoying them as very good television, but it was slow - even coming off the back of The Sopranos, it was slow - and I just wasn't in the "way" of watching it yet. I have since read a quote from David Simon where he essentially said he was teaching viewers a new way of watching TV in that first season. That might sound arsey, but I completely understand what he meant.

Everything that I loved about TV in a show like 24 (my first TV love which I now see as nothing but dumb entertainment) - the dramatic cliffhangers, the fast pacing, good guys winning and bad guys ultimately losing, and the simplicity - I slowly came to loathe, and began to love the opposite in The Wire. A glacial pacing but with real depth and quality, a realism that defied cliffhangers, and good guys letting themselves down or getting fucked, and bad guys preying on society to succeed amidst corruption. The simplicity (cops v baddies for instance) just wasn't there - you had awful junkies and you had Bubs, you had loathsome drug dealers and you had Omar, and for every Bunk, Carcetti, or Freamon, there was a Rawls, Clay Davis or Herc.

Needless to say, it slowly became my favourite show of all time. Omar my favourite character, Tom Waits' season 2 version of 'Down In The Hole' my favourite TV theme, pretty much everything about it, I fell in love with. It also became home to my favourite single episode of all time, season 4's Final Grades. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Grades - if there's a finer hour of television, I'd fucking love to see it.

I'm often away from home with work, so I decided last year that there was no better way to spend my lonesome nights in a B&B than rewatching The Wire. By this point, I had also delved into as much of David Simon's work as I could lay my hands on, so I had read Homicide and The Corner. It's probably something you've heard before, but if you've rewatched it then you'll know it's true - The Wire is so much better the second time round, and you pick up so much that you missed.

David Simon in the last episode, in front of a 'Save our Sun' banner in the news copy room.

In the very first episode, a throwaway comment from Jimmy about his hypothetical nightmare job being working on the boat instantly jumped out. A whole season later, I knew where he ended up...

There was a conversation just a couple of episodes before Brandon's brutal death where Avon and his crew discuss killing a deer then displaying it on the front of your car as a warning...

Little throwaway things too that you might not even notice. One of the guys who worked down the dock in season 2 is under the bridge, living homeless in season 5. It's not mentioned or commented on, it's just there if you notice it. Same with Rawls being spotted in the gay bar. It's little things like that which make the universe of The Wire so believable.

I think scenes like Frank Sobotka's last, the 14 year old boy who gets killed as Slim and Cutty go after Fruit, the security guard who gets offed over stolen lollipops, or Prez shooting the cop, somehow just resonate so much more when you know what's coming.

I was also noticing so much stuff from the non-fiction books he had written. True stories from his time spent in the Baltimore homicide division, cropping up as fiction - some so unbelievable that I remember thinking on first viewing that they were perhaps a little unrealistic. The opening scene with the 'Snot Boogie' story; Bunk's story of shooting the mouse with his service revolver; the photocopier as a polygraph machine; Omar's jump from the fifth story balcony, and indeed loads of his stories; Bubs' stories, too, were often based on real life characters and events.

Something else I noticed on my rewatch was Herc's unintentionalinvolvement in every major plot. Afterwards I kept turning over this theory about Herc being absolutely central to just about every major plot in the show. I got reflecting on it after noticing that it was not only he who gave Carver the mobile number of Marlo (which kickstarts the wiretap in Season 5), but he who suggested to Levy in the finale that they had used an illegal wiretap, ultimately bundling the prosecution. I had noticed in other seasons how he always seems to have a great impact on the plot, often unintentionally in the likes of Randy being outed as an informant and getting a beating.

I went on Google to see if anyone was discussing such a theory and found this article, which brings together his involvement in all the major plots quite nicely - http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2009/ ... vironment/ - I could do without the conclusion, where the author compares him to a tennis ball, but it's a pretty good summary of my point.

Anyway, the second viewing of the whole shebang just had me fall so much more heavily in love with this wonderful, magnificent show. There isn't a show on television that better wraps up every single character's story.

There's still loads of David Simon stuff I need to watch - finish season 1 of Homicide (which to be fair, he wasn't that involved in), finish The Corner adaptation, watch Generation Kill and Treme - but after that, I'm definitely going to watch The Wire AGAIN. That may seem excessive, but I suppose anyone who has seen this show will completely understand.

Absolute unrivalled genius.

I've said pretty much all these things in debates with friends about the Wire, great post. The point about watching it again and picking up things you missed is very true. Like when Bodie is in the car with String and String says something along the lines of "you ready to be a soldier son?" and then

you realise that was him giving Bodie the go ahead to take out Wallace.

The point someone made earlier about Rawls being spotted in the gay club as well, it's these small things that some folk will notice and some folk won't which makes it so great.

I'm currently on season 3 for the 3rd time, it's just too damn good. "Down in the Hole" is a fucking excellent song as well.

[woodside]

Got the boxset for christmas and after rewatching some of the little details are truly excellent, rawls casually picking up landsmans titty mag or making an overtly hetero comment. Bodie and d'angelo playing chess in s1 becomes the reality of bodies life as he struggles to become anything more than a pawn.

Started watching the corner last night, made the mistake of putting it on at 1130, ended up watching all 3 episodes on the disk, just as well im off today!

[The Moonster]

Omar testifying

That's a fantastic scene that, I've been telling pretty much anyone who will listen to watch The Wire since I discovered it and I showed my pal a clip of Omar testifying and squaring up against Brother Mouzone and he's since watching it after refusing to for a good while.

I am that pal and the above clip was what made me get the finger out and watch this. When Levy says "So you rob drug dealers, this is what you do?", Omars nod is excellent, I laugh every time.

Speaking of laughs, this is a favourite clip of mine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhkndQ3LML8

[KnightswoodBear]

I'm watching a "Man vs Food" just now and Adam is in Baltimore and sporting a "Carcetti for Mayor" T shirt, which made me smile.

[T_S_A_R]

Every character, and I mean every character, has their own superbly-written back story from the two-bit gangsters to the politicians & police chiefs. The Sopranos showed one character to perfection - The Wire has a whole bunch of them!

i don't get this at all.

the sopranos had far more characters with true depth than the wire. other than tony you had chris, carmela, aj, meadow, livia, junior, janice, melfi, adrianna, paulie and johnny sack.

the best thing in the wire was the stringer and avon dynamic and d'angelo was a well drawn character. the wire was far more about how society functions than a study of individual personalities. everyone in the wire is doing a job, they are players in the game more than people.

for me the wire was a very traditional, realist, 19th century form of storytelling which appears to be more groundbreaking than it is because it presents an enviroment that is alien to most people, even in cultural terms, and combines that with trendy politics and a witty script. it's a great show but it's A to B.

[jm1]

The Wire: The Musical

[Mr. Brightside]

The Wire: The Musical

That is superb!

[THE KING]

I watched the wire for about 8 episodes. Really couldn't get into it. Does it get better after that?

Me too I've tried to get into a few times cos everyone raves about it ,but I don't rate it as anything special ,il stick to Braquo just far superior IMO.

[dane-don]

I'm about to start episode 8 of season 1. I have the attention span of a biscuit though, so I would be grateful if someone could answer a few questions.

Why is Rawls so desperate to get rid of McNulty? He's been doing a pretty good job as detective, no?

He(Rawls) speaks about changing McNulty's rotation to nightshift or something in order to do the above; how is this such a bad thing?

Also, Omar is a BOSS.