It’s incredible how much academic attention The Wire garnered. There were entire academic based conferences dedicated to discussing the show in the Uk. I was never really sure how much of this was warranted vs. just fandom for the show dressed up as productive work
We have hundreds of years of scholarship based on ancient Greek theater plays. They were created as entertainment. I wonder which 20th/21st century TV series will be written about in the year 4000. I think The Wire is likely to be one of them.
i'd love a glimpse of the analysis of the "fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck..." scene
Might be one of those "unfortunately we lost context necessary to know exactly what that meant"
IMO The Wire is really the greatest thing that humanity has produced for the small screen. It is the epic cultural artifact of our generation.
I think it's entirely warranted. It's not just because of the show itself, but the impact it had at the time. If you watch it today for the first time, it's probably harder to see what exactly made it so important. But being old enough to have seen it when it came out (well, a year later on DVD), at least to me, I had never seen anything like it. At that time, you had the "HBO trifecta" of shows: Sopranos, Six Feet Under, and The Wire. I watched each of those slavishly. No other thing came even close at the time. It was the most revolutionary TV since Twin Peaks.
The Wire was special in several ways: First was the dialogue, especially the Baltimore accent and slang. I never even heard anything close to that. I'm in Europe, BTW, and even with subtitles I had a hard time following (that was before urbandictionary, mind you). It was actually years later that I learned Idris Elba is British, which still blows my mind.
The characters and casting are impeccable. Idris Elba, Dominic West, Lance Reddick, Wendell Pierce, Wood Harris, all absolutely incredible and pitch perfect in their roles. Probably most memorable is Michael Williams as Omar Little, a side character in the show which is impossible to forget.
It's not a perfect series, but I'd say the first season is damn near it. I would even go as far to say that it's probably enough to watch the first season to get most of what this series wants to say, mainly to watch the tragedy of the war on drugs from the deeply humanist perspective of David Simon. IMHO the later seasons never matched the first one. On the contrary: the later seasons usually have one central theme which is explored (like journalism, education, etc.) and get a bit preachy at times. Also, the series lacks character development. Yes, people become more cynical and burnt out, but they are already very cynical and burnt out to begin with, so there's really not that much to build upon...
> Also, the series lacks character development. Yes, people become more cynical and burnt out, but they are already very cynical and burnt out to begin with, so there's really not that much to build upon...
Bodie, Carver, Daniels, Cutty, and those are only the ones I can remember on the spot now...
And Bubs! Bubs has clearly the best character arc ever
So many incredible and rich, nuanced side characters. mentioned Bubs in the comments, and as soon as I read his name his memory came back as if I knew him personally. Snoop was a Baltimore native, did a stint in prison and had really lived the life they portrayed.
Less surprising that Dominic West is British, given his roaming American accent.
> IMHO the later seasons never matched the first one. On the contrary: the later seasons usually have one central theme which is explored
Each season added a theme to the show - the first was the streets, the second was blue collar workers, etc. This was very much on purpose, I thought, and well-executed.
I actually took a class in it myself a decade ago at university, so it’s funny you mentioned this, as it was something never quite discussed or debated in the class itself. It was assumed to be a masterpiece, no doubts allowed.
It’s a good show and absolutely worth watching, but there is definitely some over-hype at play every time it’s mentioned. It is also constructed in such a way that makes it easy to chop up pieces that are memorable and suited for media consumption: catchy one-liners, interesting nicknames, and some frankly implausible characters that are borderline superheroes but treated as being hyper realistic.
They would seem less implausible if you spent some time in Baltimore. Fond memories of a guy dressed as a hedgehog threatening to blow up a TV station until the police shot him with a beanbag and the bomb robot discovered his explosives were foil-wrapped chocolate. For a while there was an anti-gang gang. Omar Little and Avon Barksdale were based on real people. There is very little bullshit in the show.
People always say this when you criticize the show. At the end of the day it’s a television show; I’m sure much of it is based on truth, but ultimately it’s a written piece of art, not a documentary.
But it is based, ultimately, on a doorstep sized book of hard hitting journalism about the participants and victims of the drug war by one of the writers and the real life experience of a journalist, a cop and a teacher. And it shows.
I wonder why, when people from Baltimore "always say this," your instinct is to assume they're also lying. I wonder if there might be other reasons people from Baltimore "always say this"?
I didn’t say people from Baltimore always say this. I said people always say this when the show is criticized. Even then, I’m pretty skeptical of the possibility that people commenting on random Reddit or HN topics were personally involved in the drug trade in Baltimore twenty years ago.
As I wrote in my initial comment, the show is great but has an irritating fan base that is hostile to anyone suggesting that it isn’t a documentary. It’s a television show that uses fairly standard narrative techniques to tell a story. That doesn’t mean it’s made up; but it does mean that it isn’t a unquestionably factual story, as its fan base would like you to believe.
It’s a very similar situation to people that insist New York is the greatest city in the world. Yeah, it’s an awesome place, and probably in the top ten. But this obsession with “being the best city/best TV show of all time” clouds judgement and becomes a cultish attitude after awhile.
Well, it is the best American television show ever produced, the only shows that are on the same level are The Sopranos and Six Feet Under.