"The Wire" on HBO

yes. yes i do know. even though I missed most of this last season :[[[[ After not catching a bunch of eps in a row I basically gave up and decided to wait for the reruns, but the beginning of the third run wasn't quite as arresting as what came before, one had the sense that the show had found a groove and was settling into it (i think by tackling so many Big Ideas™ in the second season they ended up neutering themselves in terms of how far they could expand the scope of the story) (not necessarily a bad thing) but there was still quite a bit of interesting stuff going on. and I had no idea that Stringer bell was one of those rappin' limeys!! They should get Dizzee on there.

Here's my review of Season One in City Pages:

THE WIRE: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON
HBO Home Video

Only some of The Wire's greatness can be measured by how thoroughly it demolishes the "realism" of other TV public dick shows and gangsta soaps. Every trick of television verisimilitude has a freshness date, and makes way for a new set of clichés (think of the shaky camerawork in the now rote Law & Order franchise). Even FX's The Shield, once the cutting edge of morally ambiguous cop heroes, demonstrates the diminishing returns of constantly defying viewer expectations. In the end, its extremism is about nothing but other cop shows.

HBO's The Wire, however, is about work. And the genre it subverts isn't just the crime one, but the nameless category of TV and film that might be labeled "people who are great at their jobs and work like maniacs." Most characters in this emergent genre of the overworked '90s and '00s are judged by how well they serve their institutions. Yet in The Wire, it's the institutions that are the problem--including the illegal ones. Running a housing project in West Baltimore like a death squad might run a food court, local gang members adhere to a demeaning organizational hierarchy. There's no Bonnie and Clyde fantasy of freedom to this murderous pecking order, which exists only to perpetuate itself. (In one poetic touch, the kingpin's right-hand man takes macroeconomics at the community college. At the core, he's a company man.)

The narcotics detectives have their own parts to play, and it doesn't seem remotely heroic when they buck authority. McNulty, the romantic lead among cops (he carries a liquor bottle and spits when he talks), admits at one point that he's pursuing the gang as an ego trip. If characters find dignity anywhere in the Sisyphean drug war, it's in their duties to each other, and in their craft.

Created by a former Baltimore Sun reporter (David Simon, who also gave us Homicide: Life on the Streets) and a former Baltimore Police detective (Ed Burns), The Wire is clearly a work of journalism. But it never pretends that the truth can set you free. --Peter S. Scholtes

http://www.citypages.com/databank/25/1253/article12754.asp

Amateurist, The Wire is the most naturalistic show I've ever seen on television. Yeah, some shaky camera etc but only when it suits the scene. It's not very stylized, most of the technical filmmaking stuff is pretty subtle.

It allows itself occasional flashy touches (like Bunk and McNulty's great "Fuck" scene, where the dialogue consists entirely of "Fuck" said with a dozen or more different inflections), but those come as sort of welcome bonuses -- easter eggs for dedicated viewers or something.

Agreed. After I devoured the season one DVD set I picked up a stack of Pelecanos novels and fell in love with his work pretty much immediately. A Firing Offense, his first one, is pretty stiff, but King Suckerman and The Sweet Forever are genius -- lots of great music references and layered characters and observations about race. His work on The Wire is starting to inform his writing pretty obviously; I just finished an advance of his next book, Drama City, and it has a very Wire-y structure. There's less music stuff, but it's still good stuff. (Comes out in March.)

but what makes the wire so great is that it never gauchely strikes out at the status quo (see: everything bad about michael moore); instead it accepts that it is reality and shows how people work within it: what they bend, what they break, how they cope, how they don't. and so all of the action that we are presented with are people bristling and bumping up against the limitations of life itself. that's where you get the hyper-realism. there are no master criminals or puppetmasters or cops. i mean, jimmy mcnulty is don quixote with a drinking problem and that's that. he's not special; he's smart and he's well trained.

and nick i'm with you that frank sobotka (he's currently on the espn poker show tilt) was a great character. i really can't think of a character that i didn't like. even prez gets his moments!

I don't know, regardless of the societal reasons that lead people to do awful things, I have a hard time forgiving extreme cruelty, violence, and murder. It's easier for me to feel bad for guys like D'Angelo Barksdale, but not so much for powerful puppet masters like Stringer and Avon.

and matthew i'm psyched to hear that! that's great.

if anyone's interested in a cheap copy of s2 ($60!), i may end up having two copies of it on dvd shortly. i bought it when it came out but i think i'm getting another copy from hbo cuz i reviewed it for blender. if it does arrive (i never count on these things) i'll post notice here.

I think one of the many things that's great about the series is that it shows rather than tells in making its case. We hear about dumb Pollocks, then notice some of them being smarter than the characters using that phrase. Stringer and his boys call Omar a cocksucker and a faggot, but we see him having more heart (in every sense) than any of them. In season two, one of the young dock workers talks about project niggers, but ends up doing essentially the same business as them, but with less smarts.

Now, you could make the argument that there is "honor" in Stringer's taking an Econ class and attempting to invest drug money in "legitimate" stocks and other businesses, schooling his employees in the realities of capitalism that have to be faced before a gun is drawn. You can definitely make the argument that he's a great character, and the show's writers love him.

But to me, he's the essence of a soulless rational maximizer. He takes what he can get. He kills characters I like, because they might hurt him down the road as informants. Once you extend the idea of "honor" to self-preservation at all costs, you have adopted Michael Corleone's morality, my friend.

Plus, he doesn't like go-go music!

Life itself? I think if you don't see a radical critique of the various systems on display in front of us, you're trying not to see it. Check out this interview with the show's creator:

http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=3336

At a review of crime statistics last week at the police headquarters, computerized maps flashed onto screens as ranking officers sharply questioned precinct commanders on crime trends. Forests of blue icons pinpointed drug-dealing hot spots, many accompanied by red X's to denote homicides.

Yet as the maps showed killings increasing in some places, they also showed that other reported crimes, including rape, robbery, aggravated assault and burglary, were down in most precincts.

"As I ride down the street, I'd have to say the city is safer," Acting Police Commissioner Leonard D. Hamm said.

Not everyone is so sure. Some criminologists have questioned the statistics, arguing that some precinct commanders may be downgrading serious crimes to lesser categories to make their districts look better.

And then there's this, which Simon's gotta be kicking himself for not thinking of first:

"Baltimore is actually a very safe city if you are not involved in the drug trade," Health Commissioner Peter Beilenson said.

And look at the photo -- it's Carcetti and Burrell!

I've been telling lots of people that Season 1 was the best season of TV I have ever seen, and after giving that a lot of thought, I'm pretty sure I agree with myself. I think it's aided somewhat by being only 12 episodes, so there are no duds, but still. If you love THE NOVEL, you'll love The Wire. Season 1 is not only the best TV shows ever, it's also one of the best novels I've ever, uh, witnessed.

But do we really need any more of these evil, conspiratorial, slimy, and yes, JEWISH defense lawyers who seem to LOOOOOOOVE crime and misery? This "Maury Levy" (UGH) is the only real full on caruacature on the show. Give me a fucking break already with the smirking and the evil-ness.

Still the best show ever, though.

Lance Reddick originally read for the part of Bubbles on the show, which I’m sure he would have nailed, no mean feat since he completely embodied the Lt. Daniels relationship role.

I think he would have been really mediocre to bad as a homeless drug addict character and the correct casting decision was made. It's fair to say he wasn't a rangy actor, but excelled in one particular type of role. Without any disrespect.

Didn't he pay a drug fiend on The Corner?

he did yeah, but I'll keep my bad opinions on David Simon off this thread cos I think everything he touches is unbearable garbage

the latest Great Read on the NYT really feels like it could've been a great NY Wire jumping off point

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/09/nyregion/heroin-flow-rutland-vermont-bronx.html

Monster Bluesky thread here from David Simon just now building off some comments below a Jamelle Bouie post about a Wire rewatch he's doing. The commenters brought up We Own This City and wonder (without saying the word 'copaganda' but close) if it was Simon readjusting views in the wake of BLM and all. Simon says it's an 'interesting' chat but still 'calls bullshit' in his first post in response, then goes much further into his view on both series, its settings and times, what's changed etc. Worth a readthrough, I figure:

https://bsky.app/profile/audacityofdespair.bsky.social/post/3mhstnutbec2p

Re: both series, it was really impressive how easily Jamie Hector disappeared into the role of the conflicted cop in the latter. After watching the former, I was convinced that I'd never be able to see him as anyone other than Marlo Stanfield, nor did I think I wanted to.

he was v chill and light as the partner in bosch!

I watched 10 or whatever seasons of Bosch and I never stopped seeing Marlo.

Simon seems to be as much of a crank as ever. The Rampart scandal broke a decade before Wire Year Zero. Cop drug corruption wasn’t some uncharted territory that didn’t exist until the 2010s (in Baltimore or elsewhere), he just liked the cops he had relationships with as a reporter.