"The Wire" on HBO

http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/2013/02/life.gif

And psychologically incurious compared to The Sopranos.

Who even knows what's going on in their heads?

After Treme, Simon had a number of projects on the board at HBO, each and every one given a deeply reported, fully realized treatment, with scripts written for multiple episodes and multiseason show bibles assembled. It’s work that can take years to complete.

“We’re not the people who go around with a trunkful of pilot scripts,” Simon says. “‘It’s a medical show! You don’t want a medical show? It’s a legal show! He’s gotta have a dog? OK, he’s got a dog! His partner’s an alien? OK, his partner’s an alien!’”

There was a partial adaptation of Taylor Branch’s massive civil-rights trilogy America in the King Years. A collaboration with George Pelecanos on Times Square in the ’70s and ’80s. A “very careful treatment” of the CIA from 1945 to 2001, written with his Wire buddy Ed Burns. And a telling of the Lincoln assassination with “crackling” scripts that “avoided the marble men of Lincoln and Booth who have been written to death” and functioned “as a sort of post-9/11 allegory.” He describes it as a “traumatizing act of terror” followed by “paranoia and military trials with indefinite detention … the smell of rendition in Guantanamo and overreach and wartime fear.”

I wanna see the CIA one

They all sound pretty good, esp. the one where his partner's an alien.

haggis is the double worst, why the fuck is he involved

crackling paranoid lincoln assassination scripts!!

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GewvuNcC81I/T0fbPqluwEI/AAAAAAAAAKg/kMV9DI0ETtI/s1600/homicides1b.jpg

FINISHED.

http://i.imgur.com/f9AqxPX.gif

I say there's no more nostalgia anymore, but it did feel like I was watching a period piece as I caught up. Going from Nick Sobotka asking Ziggy, "So you just type in some words into the computer and it finds it for you?" to McNutty dropping his jaw at the sight of Spiros texting on his cellphone to Season 5's Lester going "What the?" at the ability of Marlo to send PICTURES through his MOBILE DEVICE.

I watched this solo and didn't check any threads or wikipedia out of fear of spoilers.

Not much more to add. Maybe when my wife and I change into our color-coordinated tank tops and eat dinner tonight like Cedric and Ronnie, I'll think of something.

I really liked the first few episodes of Treme. Is it worth the effort for the long haul?

I enjoy it, but it is much more soap opera-y than The Wire

the dialogue is generally up to typical simon & co. standards - storytelling, not so much. acting is good w/the marked exception of steve zahn (although maybe its just that he's really good at playing one of the most grating characters ever, making ziggy look restrained and introspective by comparison). the music is pretty wonderful.

i could never stick with it other than a few episodes each season, always lost interest. in a nutshell, the criticisms of being excessively didactic or more interested in message than storytelling that some applied to the wire or generation kill are actually true of treme.

I really enjoyed The Wire, but the build-up of it being supreme over Sopranos or Breaking Bad was overkill. There were plenty of moments where it seemed just like any other cop show, except with actual profanity and headshots.

Maybe it was my "what the?" apprehension when I began the second season and saw the boats and ChefTech POS graphics of cargo in the opening credits, but the whole intro scene of the dockworkers on their own ground inside the bar, raising a glass to the union and to the City of Ballamare, that I first groaned a little.

Even that opening where Valchek gets in a huff about the stained glass window treaded close to that awful Sopranos Columbus Day episode where Silvio all of a sudden gets a burr in his ass about the Native Americans.

And the newspaper scenes… Good grief. "He's right. 'Evacuate' is an action done to something, not by an object or person…" Those were some of the most hackneyed of them all.

But The Wire was worth the time and effort. I'd put any of those characters up against any Soprano or meth maker. Seeing Chris and Weebay standing together at the end almost gave me a lump.

Breaking Bad isn't even in the conversation pplains

xp you're crazy the evacuate line is hilarious - well, the one that prompts the alma guiterrez reaction you quoted, not her line

(i see your general point tho)

i love Sopranos and Breaking Bad and, for me, the Wire makes those shows seem like Scooby-Doo.

http://i.imgur.com/ROE59nS.jpg

On some days I prefer sopranos. But breaking bad is def a tier below the others

plains - you blew my mind. wow.

Did not catch this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KRQ72iHV40

pp did you watch this yet? it's a must:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX1Du7d4gTU

I did! Saw it upthread.

very curious that just after some renewed conversation about the wire and remembering how deeply people hated the journalism aspects of s5 for their supposed implausibility (and, to be fair, other more understandable reasons), brian williams has been revealed as a less egregious version of scott templeton

haha yup

so season 5 is a pretty big letdown from season 4. Just a couple episodes into my re-watch and it's clear that there was a pretty steep fall off in quality.

yep

Breaking Bad isn't even in the conversation pplains

― Number None, Thursday, February 5, 2015 12:09 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haven't seen sopranos but tbh i enjoyed breaking bad more than the wire. i had more fun watching it. part of it could be that i watched the wire by myself and didn't have too many people to talk to about it. breaking bad i watched with my wife and most people i know had seen it already, so it could've just been down to that

and let's be clear the wire is very good but as pplains otm that there were PLENTY of moments that were just typical cop procedural garbage

plenty of cringeworthy moments too. i was so tired of seeing drunk cops singing "im a free born man in the usa" yet again

breaking bad had fewer lows imo

dude you gotta get on the sopranos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97PxJ-_6JwM

if you think the dropoff from S4 to S5 was bad in The Wire, i pre-emptively lol at taking on The Sopranos which was wildly inconsistent from episode to episode

i agree that BB was more enjoyable than The Wire too. don't see the great chasm of quality difference between the two, tbh, BB was just as masterful at what it was doing

Sopranos has the virtue of having great characters/character acting and zero police procedural crap

xxpost

well, sure, S5 of The Wire is at least watchable as compared to the long stretches in The Sopranos later seasons that were utter crap

arrest shakey

You be bad cop, I'll be good cop.

it's dark out there on that backlot. western district boys mistook him for a pinata.

we don't have PC, plant something

Don't bother, just write up a warrant for Shakey bin Laden.

in every cop show ever

count how many of those the Wire does

Season 5 spent the first few episodes showing stagnation, building up to McNulty and the reporter's breaches, but it really drags us deliberately through some tedium to get there.

xp prob around 40-50 out of the 180 or so, one could easily do the same with italian-american life and/or mobster cliches in the sopranos

and i grew up in northern jersey, a fair amount are accurate but some are absurdly "come onnnnn" just the same way the wire has a few.

the worst wire episodes are still better than most of seasons 4 and 6 of the sopranos (5 is pretty solid throughout)

I will grant that 4 is the low point of the Sopranos but 6 is incredible

the first serialized TV drama to actually have a definitive, iconic, well-thought out ending

BB is the only other one that even comes close so far

tbf when i say 6 i mean "the first 12 or 13 episodes," i have no prob with the finale and the few hours leading up to it

even 4 has eps like "whitecaps" and "whoever did this"...it also has literally every other episode that season