"The Wire" on HBO

We've just finished the final episode. I'm just here to mark its passing, now I can finally open these threads without fear of spoilers.

*pours Jamesons on dvd*

I'm stalled out mid-season 4. Dunno if I'll finish honestly

season 4 finished on bbc2 last night. it picks up in the second half.

there are a lot more deaths ...

NI it depends if the subtitles are meant for closed captions (in which case it includes notes about audio i.e. "singing in background" "cough" etc) or not - but in both cases paraphrases are common - sentences that barely make sense written down can sound fine while spoken, so the subtitler often needs to simplify

Deaths right up to the last episode! That's THE WIRE PROMISE tm!

Interesting thing I noticed about the show's editing -- seems that no two consecutive scenes ever feature the same characters. I'm sure that's not a device the show invented, but it was interesting to realize what an integral part of the show's rhythm that is.

yeah one thing i loved about the show was never being sure which storyline it would cut to next, yet w/ all the different story arcs it never seemed to lumber or get messy

shakey the last couple of eps of s4 are really, really great, you should def. stick w/ it

I have no idea how you can be in the middle of the series and not be compelled to finish it. It took all my willpower not to take some vacation days and just power through the show, I rationed it so I only watched a few episodes a day near the end, I could have easily watched the whole series in 5 days.

I watched all of season 4 in one 24 hour period.

Season 5 was getting on my nerves, put it down for a while.

Yeah, season 5 can do that. The post-condo shooting scene w/Marlo is classic.

I watched all of season 4 in one 24 hour period.
Ha, I did that with season 2 and i honestly only barely remember it.

yea i watched season 4 in like a couple days. if you've made it to season 4 and have found the show relatively enjoyable, i have no idea how you could get bored with it halfway through s4.

Season 5 was getting on my nerves, put it down for a while.

same thing happened to me. i took a week break, which is the longest length of time i've taken between episodes since beginning the whole show back in june (excluding a week i took for family vacation).

I dunno I just don't find this show all that addictive or engaging. its good and everything but I just don't feel... enveloped(?) by it. I've gone into why I think this is on the Sopranos vs. Wire thread but most everyone seems to think I'm crazy or something. Perhaps I lack the gene to properly appreciate this show, but I wouldn't even put this show on a list of my favorite shows ever or anything like that.

Meanwhile, I lack the gene to properly appreciate The Sopranos. Diff'rent strokes.

how about MAD MEN on AMC?

That is another one I don't appreciate properly.

haha yea i've never seen it.

hahah yeah actually I think we stopped with the Wire in order to catch up on Mad Men... Weiner's obviously learned a lot from working on Sopranos and both shows have a similar kind of aesthetic attention to detail that just seems to draw me in more. Something about the Wire is too didactic, too obvious, too visually pedestrian for me, I think that's what it boils down to. I still enjoy it, but I can't say I've ever been really absorbed by it or blown away.

haha yea i've never seen it.

I would suggest you see it, because it's too good to not at least give a shot. But something about it just irks me for some reason.

What helps me enjoy the Wire much more is thinking "how much better is this show I'm watching right now than Two and a Half Men?"
Man, you will feel like the Wire is the best show on TV by like 1000x!

yea i was just making a dumb joke, i've got nothing against mad men. the show looks really interesting & well done and i actually want to see it xp

thread that should never happen tho is 'mad men' vs 'the wire'

haha

The one I got a bit bored of and took a break half way through was S3. 4 is riveting all the way through.

'Broken Britain' is like The Wire, say Tories

ugh man season 4 was hard. i have dreams about those four little kids ;__;

have you seen season 5 yet?

nope. just finished the last of s4 last night.

there is more ;___; with the kids ...

and a little bit of : )

I don't know if it's been posted here before, but this is the show's original series pitch and first episode.

everythings already been posted

picked up season 4 again, on episode 10 or 11 I think. This is definitely the best season, the kid actors are pretty much better than almost all the adults. God I hate that Carcetti actor, totally horrible.

xxpost: heh, good old Aaron Barksdale and Stringy Bell.

I like the Carcetti guy. There's a moment somewhere in the season where he's talking, the phone goes on the desk behind him, he goes to answer it but turns the wrong way for just an instant and then immediately spins round to pick it up - I don't know why he did that because it doesn't enhance anything, but I loved it, it looked really cool.

he actually gets better in season 5.

well at least I don't have to watch him bang the Chicken Lady

ugh the sex scenes in this show are all totally unnecessary and unpleasant, btw. I really, REALLY didn't need to see Daniels screwing the Lady Leprechaun Lawyer

girls. yuck.

lolz as if this show cares about/is interested in women AT ALL

are Kima and the Lady Leprechaun the only women who last the entire show? Neither of them is particularly interesting or well-written, though of the two Kima gets more screentime and a more fleshed out role. The lawyer is awful, very one note.

maybe his problem is that McNulty is always on top ... but, still, the scene with Kima and her hook-up ... pretty far from unpleasant, and I'm a straight chick.

the Kima scene actually had a point - which was that she couldn't handle fidelity/commitment and was too in love with the idea of being a badass cop to let anything else get in the way of that. The other scenes are all just there because lol "HBO: where nudity is OK!"

I hesitate to bring up the Sopranos by way of contrast, but they never had these stupid, pointless sex scenes that seemed to have been inserted in the script purely for space-filling/tittilation purposes.

umm, the countless scenes where you saw some tities in the Bada Bing when the scene could have just as easily have been played in a backroom?

Season 5 is all sex scenes, btw.

also McNulty is a tranny--FYI

I believe that there are various women in the political sphere who are not dead at the end of the show. And I imagine that, say, Namond's mom is still around.

But given that this is a show primarily about drug dealers and homicide detectives (those are the only groups that have been studied from s1 through 5), those worlds perhaps are not the most gender-balanced to begin with.

nudity /= sex scene imo. Even so, Tony "worked" at a strip club. Because strip clubs are common fronts for criminal enterprises. And since the world of the mafia is deeply sexist, what better way to play that up than to have the casual exploitation of young women as a perpetual backdrop.

do you even know how to watch television

But given that this is a show primarily about drug dealers and homicide detectives (those are the only groups that have been studied from s1 through 5), those worlds perhaps are not the most gender-balanced to begin with.

unlike the mafia, which is chockfull of chicks amirite

we've had this argument before...