Yeah it's my favourite for sure. I guess depending on how game of thrones ends, it may be a high contender. Breaking bad was amazing too, but the wire just felt so real.
> I guess depending on how game of thrones ends, it may be a high contender.
I don't think you can really compare the two. The wire was literary and so authentic, Game of Thrones cinematic and epic. They are the two best television shows made - but in different spaces.
Breaking bad was good but sat in the middle and not as good as either.
But usually the literary honest film holds up better over time than the epic special effects one.
I think The Wire was okay, and that Game of Thrones is really bad, so I'm just gonna weigh in and emphatically disagree with your assessment that "they are the two best television shows made".
Yeah, letting other people know that it's okay not to like those shows. I enjoy and upvote when people voice dissenting opinions, so I like to do it too.
This is Hacker News, my friend. Anyone who has a negative opinion is showered with praise and upvotes for being a contrarian and a bold ideologue. (Unless that opinion is about Rust, or, apparently, TV.) Don't just take my word on it- go see any product launch here, from the small leagues all the way to Musk's latest work, and watch as people crap on it. (And get upvotes.)
To be honest, I'm not impressed with people who are contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. Like yourself, it triggers some circuitry in the brains of many HNers that cause them to enjoy it, even if the actual content of the post is not as high as an equivalent, non-contrarian post. If you understand this circuitry is being fired, you can see the contrarianism for what it really is.
I enjoy GoT too, but it's not close to being in the same league as The Wire. GoT is ultimately nothing other than escapism. The Wire is so much more than that.
I actually met a retired Baltimore cop a few years ago in Orlando and asked him about the show. He said The Wire very accurately portrayed his job & the city.
Ed Burns, the series "script consultant" (if that's the right term) was a Baltimore cop, and David Simon spent many, many hours hanging out on street corners with Baltimore corner boys, first convincing them he wasn't a cop, then getting them to talk to him.
The Homicide book is an excellent start to his writing about Baltimore, and led to the series Homicide: Life on the Street, which paved the way for The Wire. Apart from the research, he has such a fantastic ear for dialogue - I can hear real voices when his characters talk, not least because many of them are based on real people (for example, both Jay Landsman [The Wire] and John Munch [Homicide] are based on the same real-life person).
It's so good in so many ways, but ultimately for me it shows its characters as rational and understandable, whichever side of the law they are on. Series 4 and 5 are not as strong as the first three, but still head-and-shoulders above most other shows. I know some people will prefer Breaking Bad and The Sopranos, but (good as those shows are) The Wire is peak TV imo.
Actually the real life Jay Landsman shows up in The Wire, as Dennis Mello. He takes over after Bunny Colvin is fired for Hamsterdam.
> I know some people will prefer Breaking Bad and The Sopranos, but (good as those shows are) The Wire is peak TV imo
I watched The Wire, Breaking Bad and Mad Men in the first 6 months into my first job. It was the most stressful time of my life, but I don't regret it at all.
During the final season McNulty flipped the script and began behaving in the same way that the city/department behaved.
It was purely to illustrate that if a human behaved the way that the Baltimore Police Department behaved you would view it as a self-destructive deranged person surrounded by a cast of enabling supporters with questionable morals.
mcnulty was a bit more understandable, but Freamon was pretty straight cut, it just felt so out of character. I think part of the problem too is that season 4 was so amazing.
Part of what made the show great is that it always managed to feel grounded and real. It had an almost documentary quality to it, while still remaining a work of fiction.
Season 5 loses that feeling. While it was completely enjoyable, I think it was missing something.
i thought it was brilliant at an even more meta level: McNulty made up a fictional but fact-based story about a series of killings, with a dramatic flourish of "the Red Ribbon Killer", in order to get resources and attention on what was happening in his city, even if it was at the cost of exploiting real individual suffering.
then, consider what the writers of the Wire did throughout the entire series, especially in the previous season's story arc about the "Nailgun" serial killings of Marlo's enforcers Chris and Snoop in the city's vacant buildings.
Most people I know hated it because it was just out of character for everyone involved. Just a modern hollywood plot (full of holes and forced story line to make it more exciting).
In my opinion this is the greatest, television series of all time. The way every loose end is tied up and they show that really nothing has changed, the cycle just repeats itself... it's a master stroke. I moved to Baltimore years after the series ended, but it could still have been made here today. Just with smartphones and encryption. The players are stil the same and the city is pretty much unchanged in terms of the underlying issues.
And my apartment is across the street from stringers copy shop :)
After he forced the lieutenants to read Robert's Rules of Order.
My favorite part of the series is when String realizes he's been conned by Clay Davis, and tries to put a hit out on him. Avon intervenes and scolds String, saying "what I tell you about playin' them fuckin' away games?" Avon (and later, Marlo) understood that they could never go legit, because going legit is just another unfair game with a different set of rules.
The only character that escaped their fate was Bubbles.
One of my favorite moments in that scene is hearing Avon say "You'd need a day of the jackal motherfucker for that" and Googling that phrase and discovering and watching the amazing movie of the same name. Thus realizing even more just how perfect that line was in context.
The Wire definitely took attention to detail seriously.
I agree that its the greatest TV show of all time. I used to watch the entire thing once a year and always saw something new that I had missed before. I initially didn't like season 2, and its still my least favorite season, but after finishing the series you realize how important the season was to the overall story in fleshing out the world.
It's got some clumsy moments, but yeah absolutely essential to show the interconnectedness. Just one example: If you lose those livable-wage blue-collar jobs, you're absolutely gonna have yourself some thriving criminal enterprises including the drug trade. Does Wee-Bey go to work as a Barksdale soldier if he can easily get a good-paying job at the port or in some kind of manufacturing? It's been the story of every "de-industrializing" US city for the past 50 years.
Agreed, I really didn't enjoy Season 5 and it was a disappointing end to what was otherwise an epic TV series. McNulty was always an edgy character, but planting evidence and feeding it to the media just felt a little too contrived.
season 5 made sense given that everyone was getting what they wanted. Policemen who would otherwise question the weak case were happy to get paid. Everyone knew it was bullshit, they made that clear.
Well, except for Daniels, lol. But he was promoted way too fast.
I actually didn't have a huge problem with McNulty's arc or twist. It was outlandish but it feels organic not just from a character perspective, but from the rift between homicide detectives and the medical examiners office. In Simon's book, "Homicide", there's a chapter focusing on a death that the coroner declines to classify as a homicide. The detective, however, keeps pursuing the case, which is problematic because there are plenty of active homicide cases to spend time on. He eventually cracks the case but it's presented as the detective going above and beyond given the politics/concerns of the department.
So a "good guy" detective like McNulty fabricating evidence seems like an extreme twist, but not so much the idea that a good guy detective feels that some homicides aren't given enough attention. And McNulty, by this point in the show, feels like a character who is tired of all this shit but also has seen how he's gotten away with being a self-righteous dick who bucks the bureaucracy (from the very first episode). And the difference in opinion between the medical examiner and the police can be very problematic, since the former's designation is what ultimately makes a case a homicide or not.
IMO, the 5th season is the worst because of the newspaper setting. As a journalist, it wasn't particularly compelling to me. I mean, it may be the most realistic depiction of a newspaper on TV, and maybe familiarity breeds contempt, but the core problem is that it's not well-developed. The key flaw is that the "villains" of the newspaper setting, Scott Templeton (the reporter) and his enabling editors, are given no qualities beyond being caricatures of bad/evil journalists. This is the same reason why I feel Lieutenant Marimow (named after a Baltimore Sun whom Simon despised) is also a very weak character.
Compare the shallowness of the 5th season bad-guy journalists to the 3rd-season bad guy politicians, like Clay Davis. Davis is most definitely a corrupt character, but besides having an amazing catchphrase ("Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-iiiit!"), he's still got some moral complexity behind him. I think this is best shown in the hilarious scene in the 5th season in which he takes the stand in his corruption trial with such dramatic finesse that he gets acquitted. Davis may be corrupt, but you can see why his community loves him. [0]
I'm not sure how you could make the 5th season journalists interesting, and I'm not sure Simon could either. His rants against the real-life Marimow and the Sun are lengthy and legendary [1], and this was after he was famous for The Wire. Simon is a die-hard defender of the sanctity of journalism and I think he let that overtake his sensibilities when writing the 5th season.
The Wire was a good show for its time but it's already showing a lot of age.
Badass gay character, humanized gangsters, contra-Reaganesque attitude to drugs, aim at corruption and money, etc. were pretty great for its time, but now that a lot of media has caught up, the lackluster areas stick out a lot more.
It's got liberal sensibilities, not leftist ones.
For example, S2 is about the shipping container women. McNulty swears she won't treat them like a mere blip or statistic, but will remember their humanity. At the end of S2, they have a gag scene where McNulty goes "undercover" at a whorehouse, and gets serviced by some prostitutes, while everyone at base overhearing the mike goes "ooooh youuu McNulty".
I think this shallow and circumscribed commitment to nominal values, not fully comprehending the extent to which they require a fundamental shift in approach, is pretty liberal.
There's also plenty of blaming of teacher's unions for shutting down "innovative" approaches. All the issues chalked up to "capitalism" have to do with individual corruption and not the regular brutal application of market logic to human problems (eg: corrupt construction agencies wanting bribes vs. regular white citizens protecting their interests).
but perhaps the most anti-leftist aspect of them all is how the show is utterly grim and hopeless and nothing ever changes. all radical initiatives are shut down and ruin lives, and it works more as a cautionary tale than an inspiration. if all media is propaganda, The Wire works as propaganda for obedient incrementalism, and decidedly against anything revolutionary.
> Badass gay character, humanized gangsters, contra-Reaganesque attitude to drugs, aim at corruption and money, etc.
you must be pretty young to think these themes were revolutionary in the early 00's, and that the "media has caught up" to those concepts.
you are correct that this show doesnt care about either leftist or liberal ideologies, but that doesnt mean its propaganda either way. its about depicting an arguably valid interpretation of reality wherein the individual cannot "win" vs. the system, no matter what system or institution or ideology that may be.
Interesting comment. I certainly don't think an inspiring portrayal of leftist politics would make for a realistic urban crime drama. I agree some little touches that you mentioned age, but the heart of the story could still be written today and it doesn't depend on the success of small comic scenes or flourishes of Omar.
> but perhaps the most anti-leftist aspect of them all is how the show is utterly grim and hopeless and nothing ever changes. all radical initiatives are shut down and ruin lives, and it works more as a cautionary tale than an inspiration.
I think the Hamsterdam concept would be pretty easily implemented at the federal level, which was where it was ultimately shut down from in the show.
It's unfortunate that our federal drug policy is now moving in the exact opposite direction.
I'd encourage you to view the show through a less ideological lens. One of the compelling aspects of the show for me is that the characters are written as human, rather than some tropes. While you may not always agree with the actions they take, you can understand their motivations. And for the most part, they're not simple, by-the-book, characters.
The Season 2 example you provide I think is a good example of this: McNulty is a flawed human (just as we—and all the characters on the Wire—are) and is fully capable of wanting to do right and sometimes not behaving perfectly, just as the people at the station. I think these reactions were quite realistic. Would McNulty have stopped the prostitutes? Would people hearing of the station had other reactions? I'm interested to know how you would have had it play out differently.
Good art can allow us to reflect on the state of our humanity, just as you have here. Some art can be inspirational, but not all of it needs to be. I think the Wire does an exceptional job of illustrating how difficult it can be to fix real problems in some American cities.
This stuff aside, it's a well developed drama with compelling characters and high production values. Even the politics themselves are better than the harrowing status quo in many places.
I just think that people to easily bestow upon it the "best ever" distinction.
edit: As for how it could have played out differently, I'm not sure. Maybe the madame scenes would have been cut altogether? I think The Shield does a way better job with its "McNulty" equivalent.
> I just think that people to easily bestow upon it the "best ever" distinction.
Do you have other contenders? I personally avoid superlatives in general, so I would hesitate before using "best ever" in any context, but I can't think of other examples of American television that I personally would rate higher. Many I've talked to about the show feel similarly. While many tend to use superlatives more casually that I would, I don't think in this case it's necessarily a case of hyperbole.
IMHO "The Shield" is the only possible rival to "The Wire". Who is the McNulty equivalent in that, though? Surely not Vic? McNulty was never truly that cynical; his cynicism was an act. Perhaps you're thinking of Shane?
Ironically, one of the big criticisms of the Wire is its lack of interesting or compelling female characters. I think I read in one of the behind-the-scenes books that David Simon's wife, Laura Lippmann, who was also a writer on the show, criticized/made fun of his use of the super-lesbian archetype (Detective Greggs).
I think my favorite (hard to choose, there are so many) story line in The Wire is that of Ellis Carver. You have a character who, at the start, views the community as a war zone and himself as a soldier.
Then within S3 and S4 he learns that a cop needs to be part of the community; he needs to know the people he's policing, and they need to know him. There's a great scene where he starts to chase down a group of hooligans and stops short, realizing "I don't need to chase these kids. I know their parents. I know where they hang."
Theres even the parallel with his former partner Herc who sticks to his soldierly ways and is eventually disgraced.
In the same vain, I love how Herc (the disgrace police officer) ends up working for Levy, the defense lawyer, because of all his contacts and knowledge about the police force.
"You need to learn a little something about the expense account."
Don't forget Herc is the one who eventually gave the phone number of Marlo Stanfield to Carver from Levy's desk. That number was crucial in the final season.
I think it's actually Herc who lectures them which is kind of ironic as he is one of the more...simple police men ("I say we f__k them up - the western district way"), but even he learned a thing or two about making big cases intelligently during the detail.
Lots of people have already commented on the accuracy of the content, but, as a life long resident of Baltimore, what struck me was the dead on accents.
Baltimore has a very distinct, but evolving sound and vocabulary. Cinema usually can't seem to escape the 1960s "hon" cliche. I was certain that Idris Elba had to be from Baltimore until I learned otherwise.
Idris Elba and Dominic West both caught me by surprise, given that I'm English and I was convinced they were both American. Then I heard Idris in another production talking proper London ...
Discussion of his accent here from a dialect coach, "This is amazing":
Having never seen either actor in anything else before The Wire, I too was convinced that they were American. While watching the scene where McNulty went undercover to play an English visitor to Baltimore, I thought his accent was laughably bad – and that it was intentionally bad to add even more humour to that scene. I was doubly impressed when I later found out Dominic West actually is English and had even studied in Trinity College, Dublin (my adopted home).
I'm sure you're already aware, but the way they got some of the characters helped with authenticity. Felicia Pearson ("Snoop") was found in a club by Michael Williams ("Omar") and her life to date was rather close to those portrayed in the show. Crack baby, killing someone as a kid, prison time etc.
My favorite part of the show is the Baltimore dialect. If you are casually watching an episode or two for the first time, there is no way you can grok all the nuances of the local diction. Over time, you start to re-hear words, phrases, pronunciations, and slang and you feel like you are in on it. Then you realize, the diction is different across the regional characters. Sometimes, even the characters can't understand one another.
This joy of language combines with the fact that surveillance and eavesdropping play such central and indeed titular roles in the show. You then mix in the racial element for example having the black office secretary translating street hood lingo to the white cops listening in. It just all fits together beautifully.
I've been putting off watching "The Wire" -- I stopped shortly into season 1 -- because I just couldn't take any more depressing scenarios in my life.
Yes, this is a personal comment, and probably as such, OT.
But, it's time. As another commenter says, "the cycle repeats."
I got on the wrong side of that cycle. As a quippy quote on Facebook just reminded me again, yesterday, "The fears we don't face become our limits."
When Trump was elected, I started rewatching "The West Wing."
(By the way, many of the issues we currently face -- issues, not personalities -- the writers of that show addressed in interesting and informative fashion.)
It's time for the counter-point.
Not quite out there, yet. Still watching a show. But, closer to the world we live in.
Sorry for the personal comment, here, in a way.
Today's little quote from the same source, on FB: "Be very careful what you think. Your thoughts run your life."
The exchange between Seth Gilliam and David Simon on the use of the n-word was interesting to read in retrospect of the kefluffle Simon got into on Twitter when he used it (as a form of satire): https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/w...
Simon -
I would prefer to be living in [a] country where The Wire was less relevant 15 years later. I would have much preferred to think of the show as being anachronistic.
> It seemed kind of strange to me, but David Simon said he had heard about something like that before when he was [at] The Baltimore Sun. I mostly was excited that I was having an episode that I had more than two scenes in. Me and Domenick Lombardozzi referred to it as my Taxi Driver episode, because it’s my favorite movie.
I've read just about every book excerpt/oral history/etc I've been able to find about The Wire, and I've read about Gilliam's and Lombardozzi's and others' recollections on how they were frustrated at times about their scene/line counts. No matter how much I read these behind-the-scenes anecdotes I still have a moment of fourth-wall-breaking-wtf, because the thought of The Wire having the characteristics common to any other kind of entertainment, with writers' rooms and cut scenes and actors demanding more minutes, feels so alien. Of course it's that way, but my mild confusion/shock is a testament to how seamless and real the show and its content and its pacing feel.
Great show with great scripts, characters, and actors who portrayed them. I'd didn't care for season 2 when I was watching it but came around to really liking it when I'd finished the series. My favorite part, though, was the Hampsterdam scenes. It was as close as we get to actually legalizing drugs. I just can't call it best show ever when comparing against The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and Mad Men. They're all in the top 4.
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