"The Wire" on HBO

Wrong

Having watched the show in its entirety multiple times, I think I'd rank it just below s4

i prefer it to s1. fred b otm about the reasons for its slow start, which is less frustrating on rewatch, as is the way the barksdale org stuff feels compartmentalized for the whole season while it sets up s3. (3 and 4's political stuff would also be shallower had you not surfaced into it from s2's grain pier scenes.) s1 is p much self-contained but s2, as it were, plugs the show into a thematic supply chain it will need going forward

that makes it sound dry tho and i mean: frank

s2 is one of the best, but i didn't like it the first time around

you get so into the street and its world and characters and then you are lurched out and taken into the world of these dumb fucking longshoremen

but yeah it is actually a good season. love frank sobotka 4eva

s1->s4 is a progressive (cumulative, really) improvement and s5 is not that much of a quality dip

lol the same discussion about S2 in this thread so many times

we still have some time to go before definitive answer is established

Best season of The Wire

Yup. It's usually prompted by people watching it for the first time though, and it is jarring in that context

3 is the overrated season

lol the same discussion about S2 in this thread so many times

― (•̪●) (carne asada), Tuesday, March 20, 2018 2:56 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

true

nicky sobotka looks like he smells bad

lmao at that wire poll ending presumably after human extinction

Ziggy is unforgivable. I don't mean as a character, I mean as a thing that writers thought up to make the audience suffer through. But I'll stop

5 is the worst season and, as Simon notes, it's not that much worse than the rest. And it's almost entirely due to the just...mindblowing stupidity of McNulty. I mean, seriously, what the fuck, McNutty.

Every time I think of season 5, I basically go through the same process as Bunk once he starts seeing the wheels turning on McNulty's 'amazing' plan. Oh...oh, no. Oh hell no. You have got to be fucking kidding me right now.

McNulty is not a man who was meant to keep the wheels on

5 basically sucks bcz they didn't get the spinoff AND had the order cut, so it tried to cram what would have been covered in 19 episodes into 10

the ramping up of McNutty's lunacy would have been bearable if given more room

the reporter characters were also boring

What spinoff was that? Also I thought I read somewhere (this thread??) that DS said that the decision for 10 episodes was his/the writers', not HBO.

Simon wanted to do six-episode series of The Hall in between S3/S4 and S4/S5. A lot of the Carcetti / Norman / Clay Davis type stuff would have happened in those, setting up political status quo for each following season of The Wire.

5 is the worst because it’s so hard to hear the dialogue over the sound of David simon grinding his axe

This series isn't always bad, but it is no Juliet Bravo or The Shield.

fuck you! and your window!

two episodes into S2 and I like it!

The vibes of S1 and S2 are so different and jarring.

Always liked how this person stayed true to the themes with these Breaking Bad parodies:

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhX7hvzlaGc

lmao omg

S1 is pretty underrated at this point, i feel like there's so much gold in there as we get to meet the characters. really love the slow unfolding of Lester Freamon's character throughout the first several episodes.

marcos
Posted: March 20, 2018 at 12:03:48 PM
nicky sobotka looks like he smells bad

how dare u

i always liked s2

especially the whole subplot with the stupud fuckin stained glass window

whoever is playing Ziggy feels like he took all his acting cues from the kid from T2

1. how dare you besmirch Edward Furlong
2. the guy is actually a good actor, I've seen him in other roles like Generation Kill where he's not super annoying. he was definitely directed this way

you get so into the street and its world and characters and then you are lurched out and taken into the world of these dumb fucking longshoremen

― Louis Jägermeister (jim in vancouver), Tuesday, March 20, 2018 2:52 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

s1 is great, whenever I think of it I always picture avon startling daniels wagging that finger as he glides past, one of the best wire moments

xxpost Yeah, I've been surprised to realize that Ziggy actor is Ziggy actor when I've seen him in other things.

especially the whole subplot with the stupud fuckin stained glass window

It's not just a subplot, it's how it all gets rolling!

It also sticks with me as a wholly believable catalyst for police/political action. A huge criminal investigation is initiated not by any true interest in justice but because a police commissioner is feeling butthurt over a petty rivalry.

^^ lol i was thinking exactly this yesterday (just finished up s2 e2)

I can see where a petty rivalry starts to snowball, but over that?

are you doing a full rewatch brad?

xp
don't see why it couldn't be even more trivial. I don't doubt that police commissioners have abused their power for pettier reasons irl

I don't get the chafing over S2's attention on the stevedores -- doesn't the show set up a parallel between them and the streets? At the very least, they're pretty funny.

are you doing a full rewatch brad?

― Simon H., Thursday, March 22, 2018 6:48 AM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yep! i'm doing it with someone who's never seen the series before so it's gonna take a while

yeah I did that a few years back with my roommate. the second viewing is a blast.

it's interesting, imo there's a learning curve with season one that, at least for me, is *always there*. i rewatch the first 2-3 episodes and i'm like "i know this is great, i'm aware of it being great in the fragments of narrative and context that it's gradually trying to weave together into a more centralized story, but don't feel anything pulling me into what's happening yet." i don't mean to overstate its particular excellence on this front but it's at first alienating then deeply refreshing to watch a television show that doesn't really give a shit about my expectations as a viewer

and the way it does satisfy my expectations as a viewer is largely oblique! occasionally the dialogue gets very transparent about the themes traveling through the structure of the whole series and that's as basic as it gets. but the way the individual stories braid together and then scatter and then braid together again... idk, it's awesome. i guess all of these ideas are pretty pedestrian and are probably embedded throughout this thread multiple times already but: what i love about this series is you get what you put into it. it's great art.

i rewatch the first 2-3 episodes and i'm like "i know this is great, i'm aware of it being great in the fragments of narrative and context that it's gradually trying to weave together into a more centralized story, but don't feel anything pulling me into what's happening yet."

They're the opening chapters of a novelistic story, so the metrics of evaluating individual episodes of an otherwise serialized narrative shouldn't apply IMO.

that's completely right! it's exactly like the learning curve of any novel you're trying to get into

and also, so much more interesting than the "this is actually just a very long movie" taken by so many series/producers now

favorite moment of S5 is Gus doing voiceover of Carcetti firing Burrell - "he feared and hated me, I merely wanted him dead"