"The Wire" on HBO

I haven't seen 5 but my favorite is still 2.
Timon of Athens yo

There are also so many amazing speeches that came out of the season:

Bunny Colvin's paper bag
40 degree day
The whole Sunday morning fiasco
Stringer trying to get Slim Charles to kill Senator Davis
Any and all scenes featuring Stringer and Avon
Slim Charle's "If it's a lie, then we fight on that lie, but we gotta fight"

dont forget everyones favorite cartoon gangsters omar and mouzone wild west style showdown

i like season 3 because more than any other season its about spending 10 episodes watching decent people build rickety little lives on rationalizations and justifications and then having them all crash down in the final two episodes

Isn't that every Wire season?

the season 1+2 punch still gives me waking nightmares of the there-but-for-the-grace-of-god variety; three and four don't seem as strong on the quiet desperation front, to me: cutty and namond want out, they get out, there's a lot of other terrible things happening but the simple suggestion of that as a viable choice (finally) dulls the edge a bit. 1+2 are 100% tragic america

Frank Sobotka's "we used to make things in this country" speech at the end of season 2 is one of the saddest things ever.

I am not playing your silly ranking games. I came here to say I finally caught up completely; finished season 5 at 4 am. The McNulty wake scene was amazingly successful in preserving that character for me a little, which I never would have thought possible.

Namond being the only one of the kids that gets out in season 4 is a heartbreaker, though! I actually don't know if I'm ever going to be able to rewatch 4; I had the most intense nightmares while I was watching that season. fucking show.

finished s5 last night, too. we were kind of trying to ration it out, but after watching the 2nd to last ep we had to see the finale. between the two, i cried 3 times (i'm a sap). i agree; seeing what happens to most of the kids is a complete heartbreaker, even if you could spot what was coming a mile off.

i cried at the finale, too, including when Landsman tells McNulty he'd want him to investigate his own murder. which seems weird when i type it out. but the scenes that really killed me: Duquan shooting up in the finale and Michael saying goodbye to Bug and his aunt closing the door on Michael in the second-to-last episode. season 4 kids! will you never cease to haunt me??

btw is that any kind of real thing, a (99% non-Irish) police department having wakes for officers and singing Pogues songs?

the bit when dukie looks back and the car is gone really tore me up.

i thought that prezbo might have tried to intervene more with dukie...? i know - it's not like everything was going to have a happy ending (and they only had 90 minutes), but based on how protective he was of d in s4 i thought that perhaps he might do more than look sad and drive away.

xpost - ha, i've wondered that.

i know. i think what we see of Prez in season 5 is sort of what Marcia Donnelly advised him about coming true. when she asks him in season 4 if he intends to adopt Dukie, I feel like that's directed at the viewer, too: as much as we want to see that, Prez's (impossible) job is to let go of his students each year so he can serve the new ones. it's totally unsatisfying and i think it's meant to be.

HAVE ONLY WATCHED TWO SEASONS, CANNOT READ THIS THREAD. FUCK U AND UR SPOILERS

hon, every wire thread is one gigantic spoiler.

I'm sorry, management cannot be held responsible. See the sign.

I haven't read any threads up til now but I thought having just finished seas 2 maybe I could dip in. No.

don't worry, nothing big happens in the next 35 episodes

the bit when dukie looks back and the car is gone really tore me up.

Freal. It also reminds me of the parallel scene in season four where Dukie walks Michael up to Marlo's spot right before he sells his soul.

michael as angel of death at the end of s4 was fucking amazing.

I really did think s3 was the best b/c of avon/string.. I agree with alex in baltimore if I was going to rank them.

yeah s3 awes

argh just reading this thread is giving me major withdrawl!

major xpost, but I never considered The Wire to be character-driven at all. It's a completely story-driven show which happens to have some great characters.

silly

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VOTE SOBOTKA

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i'm not gonna read all this cz i'm in the middle of it, but the commentary on s2e6 is fkn great!!

That's McNulty & Omar talking shop, isn't it?

After season 5, I went and bought two, three, and four. I've been watching it straight through with small pauses between seasons to let them settle.

One thing that struck me about season four is how unglamorous Marlo is compared to B & B. With those guys we saw a lot of the money and girls, where as Marlo is kind of asexual and less glitzy. B&B owned clubs, brushed shoulders with senators, had super nice homes (which we allowed to see), but Marlo is more of a gritty mystery. So, with the focus on the neighborhood kids, the school, Cutty's gym, and Bodie's empty corner, season 4 reminds me more of The Corner with its unrelenting depressing environment. That's good, I think. Re-watching seasons 1 & 3 especially, Stringer and Avon almost seen cartoonish and lovable going backwards from Marlo. God the stuff with the kids is sad, too. Knowing how they all turn out just kills me going back and watching how their stories started out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bR3T1eThJU

Great sight and sound article: http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/49447

that kermode quote, still sucking.

or more the reverence w. which KJ treats it.

I like that quote! (Although I think I prefer Simon's version of it "Fuck the average reader")

simon's quote sucks even harder.

The article is very over-written for such a declarative show, but he's pretty much OTM throughout.

xp, why?

it falsifies the show anyway -- it wouldn't be any good if it wasn't entertaining.

i said elsewhere that i think in context kermode's quote may mean something different -- ie the groundlings watching 'hamlet' were not the early jacobean equivalents of hbo subscribers.

xp: Of course, but assuming the audience is intelligent (and having 60 hours to play with) allows you to a different kind of entertaining, which is what they're getting at.

Has this article been discussed on another Wire thread?

"they're getting at" = "Simon is getting at"

it's a bit like arguments about dance music in rock mags where it's like such-and-such TRANSCENDS the genre... anyway i think that kind of discourse is a way of not actually talking about 'the wire', but slamming other shows; and i don't have faith that KJ has much knowledge of other shows really.

it is differently entertaining (though not by *that much*) from 'the shield', but he's saying it's different-as-in-for-better-people.

I do get the impression that Simon is an asshole (and not just from that quote), so I agree that that's probably his interpretation of his own quote. It's not mine though, which is why I really like it.

I still need to watch Homicide and The Shield.

ta-da. i have a theory KJ hasn't -- most film dudes are kind of resistant to TV, *especially* when it's touted as being 'as good as' the movies. they feel the need to defend their home medium or some shit. that's probably the first major s&s article on a tv show -- they did one on 'berlin alexanderplatz' but sort of treated it as a film. except that since the early 70s tv has funded loads of "films" -- derek jarman's, fassbinder's -- and tv has arguably been where most people have seen "british cinema".

so in terms of highbrow film mags' relation with TV, this was Kind Of A Big Deal.

the shield is good but also kind of impossible to take seriously

yeah it's pretty mental