"The Wire" on HBO

so good & so ;_;

All 60 episodes of #TheWire, ranked from worst to best https://t.co/nZVxtO7xFa

— New York Magazine (@NYMag) February 23, 2019

This is ... not ... how you're supposed to watch this show?

All the pieces matter (but some matter more than others)

This just...yeah. I can understand better when people do this with songs.

I finished S5 Thursday night btw. Good-to-great show despite some big surface-level flaws.

rankers gonna rank

I will say this about the article - the author chose the right #1.

"US."

WmC, what did you think of S5 in comparison to the rest?

besides being a very dumb premise, the rankings themselves are insane

all the chapters of 'great expectations', ranked from worst to best

xp to Raymond
SPOILERS, assuming Dmac hasn't finished it yet --
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I think it was roughly on par with S1 & 2 in quality. I liked the series-long notion of seeing the core story through a different lens, and I liked the S5 lens of the Sun newsroom since I have a rough familiarity with daily newspapers via my wife's old career. Sydnor figuring out the picture code was just too big a deus ex machina for me and I think Simon et al knew it because they spent as little time on it as possible, but ok whatever. Omar's death shocked the hell out of me -- I thought he'd make it through. McNulty's and Templeton's parallel deceptions were a clever construction. Michael's fate as the new Omar bringing harsh moral judgment to The Game is the most satisfying story arc in the series, imo. The least satisfying was McNulty, who too-conveniently careened from hero to heel as needed over the seasons. Namond's rise and Duquan's fall were clever story constructions -- every time I try to talk myself into thinking they ring false, I think a little harder and feel the pathos.

tyvm for the thought!

I won't disagree that S5 was the weakest by far, but at that point I was so wed to the show that I didn't really care/notice

I can’t hear season five over all the axe grinding

does Seattle have a Hampsterdam now? Like, anything goes?

I feel a bit guilty for liking this show now w/all the Abolish the Police stuff

this show is frustrating because it’s almost excellent. it’s telling there seems to be almost no serious working class resistance, while maverick cops and professional types are shown bravely struggling against the constraints of the system. performances are so good they almost make up for the moments it becomes painfully obvious the show was written by middle class white dudes

mcnulty is the worst part of the show, such a tedious character/archetype (deconstruction or not), who the writers are clearly in love with

mfer went to eton https://t.co/FYMmWUiSfF

— Professor Sir Bane QC KCB MP (@BaneNook) June 12, 2020

speaking of which, he's a lousy actor as well who lives in a castle somewhere!

does the castle affect his acting ability?

yes it does, being such a privileged spoilt rich brat definitely impacts on his already negligible acting skills

it just got hot in here!

did he go to school w dave or did I imagine that

I remember reading he was friends with the pigs-head fucker

oh that dave -- was confused that you meant Dave simon

yep, he was at Eton with him. And he complains that being an Eton alumni is worse than being branded a paedophile.. boo hoo hoo!

pretty sure being branded a pedophile is worse ... even Epstein couldn't survive that

we have a history of being much more tolerant towards rich paedophiles in the UK - so I don't know what he's complaining about!

The Wire to me was always the epitome of intelligent liberals having the tools to accurately diagnose social ills but having nothing of note to say about potential solutions or alternate arrangements

I sometimes think The Shield will age better, warts and all, because it at least portrays bone deep police corruption a la Rampart and has so little love for most of its characters; even the "better" cops and detectives are deeply flawed at best

The Wire to me was always the epitome of intelligent liberals having the tools to accurately diagnose social ills but having nothing of note to say about potential solutions or alternate arrangements

bbbut hampsterdam

what can we learn from this fictional experiment in abolition of police

the usual: better things aren't possible

How can anyone watch “The Wire” and the dysfunction of the police & the war on drugs and say that we were depicted as heroic. We demonstrated moral ambiguities and the pathology that leads to the abuses. Maybe you were reacting to how good people can be corrupted to do bad things https://t.co/a69iSa66W4

— Wendell Pierce (@WendellPierce) June 7, 2020

There seems to be two types of cops in the Wire - the type who regularly dish out beatings (prez, herc etc), or the type that cover for them (everyone from Daniels upwards). Which sure, makes all of them villains, but all the characters are so lovable and quotable that police brutality just becomes background noise that the show, and therefor me as viewer, kinda ignores. It seems like the show's POV is that sure, it happens, it's a shame, but what you gonna do? It's America.

I don't remember Prez having much to do with that - Herc is the show's main Bad Apple. And I also don't remember it happening that much - the beatdown given to Kima's shooter (Wee-Bey) is presented as outside of the ordinary run of things.

my mom uses the word "burner" now

Prez reforms and then abolishes the police once he experiences police brutality.

no bricks needed

Kima is the ultimate good cop in S1 and joins in on beating up the kid with like five other cops when they first hit the projects.

In defense of one of the two absolute shit cops they hated.

Prez partially blinds a child. Later he shoots a fellow cop quite possibly because he's black.

The Shield does do a good job communicating what ulysses said on another thread: the police are indistinguishable from a gang. But it's also sensationalist trash (not nec a criticism)

I've never rewatched it, but iirc the cops in Treme are depicted far more negatively

Doesn't Kima join in beating up a handcuffed suspect in the box in like Episode 1?

That's Bird in the interrogation room midway through S1

Bubbles is beaten for no reason by a cop after Kima gets shot

I've always thought Simon and co. put it in intentionally, but they didn't really hammer it home to complicate viewers' feelings for characters (as evidenced by people not noticing the constant brutality).

Trevor Noah did a bit about cop shows the other day where he pointed out that even when the show is honest about how police actually operate, you still end up rooting for them on some level because the show presents them as Just Trying to Do Their Job.

#teamshitbird

"better things aren't possible" could be the message of this show, or generously "modest reforms on an institutional level are sometimes possible for a time through the efforts of dedicated but unorthodox high ranking public servants". no wonder obama loved it so much

since we seem to have reached a place where opinions other than total adulation can be expressed without being shouted down, this piece was a pretty damning account of one of the show's biggest failings: "In The Wire, it is boys who are at stake. Women and girls are bit parts in a compelling drama played out by men"
https://www.popmatters.com/women-and-the-wire-2496134929.html
(the assumption that the show's racial politics is obviously unproblematic, or largely separate from its gender politics, is unfortunate- its portrayal/non-portrayal of black women and girls is particularly horrible)

I seem to remember this and similar arguments receiving a pretty vicious response at the time, I assume partly because of their undeniability. the usual line that it's just depicting a patriarchal world is bullshit when it uncritically regurgitates assumptions and stereotypes from that world, like whose working and personal lives are interesting and complex, and who is just a bitch/punchline/plot device

Worrying about how sympathetic and/or complexly portrayed every single character is and whether or not that has something to do with the gender, race or cultural background of that character is a pretty terrible way to watch television, imo.

this seemed to be the general attitude when this came up at the time. shut up and consume this flawless cultural product which indicts the society we live in so brilliantly. the thinking man's south park fandom

Bubbles is beaten for no reason by a cop after Kima gets shot

Man, a sentence is a long time for you, isn't it?

that THR conversation-article is better than some other recent ones but it's still pretty thoughtless.

they go the entire time musing about what to make of 'how' certain characters and their actions are 'shown' without giving any thought at all to what it means that they would have to say the same things about characters who haven't been pre-selected by the 'police are glorified on tv mmkay' line that their reactive bending to the topic of the moment has led them to adopt.

for instance, you are certainly led by the way the show is made to feel sympathy for bodie when he's killed, but then you were feeling more sympathy for his victim wallace three seasons earlier.

pretty much the entire barksdale crew plotline poses the same problem. a lot of them, you cheer when certain things go well for them, sign when not, and you don't assign some of their morally worst actions their true weight because it's happening within a fiction and there are internal reasons for everything being the way it is and the way the fiction invokes and transforms your sympathies is not ever a straightforward reflection of the way you'd react about 'the' real world the fiction supposedly 'represents' in a way that can just be read off the screen.

(a big function of the stansfield crew plotline is to make that more evident. and the parallelisms that are set up by having the kids slide into social positions occupied by the older characters, having the co-op leadership change, etc.)

Man, a sentence is a long time for you, isn't it?

God only knows what this is supposed to mean. You quoted my reference to Bubbles... who no one else has referenced.