The Wire

[Eliseu Gouveia]

ACHTUNG!

There be SPOILERS in this here post!



I am trying to collect my thoughts.

It will take me days, maybe weeks before I can fully process everything I went through, watching those 5 seasons from beginning to end.

The characters, the stories, the plot twists, the dialogues, everything just oozed quality.
There was not a single character I didn´t establish a connection with, from Bubbles to Daniels to Greggs to Rawls to Jay to Duquan to Stringer Bell to McNulty to Beadie to Prez to Omar to Proposition Joe .... GOD, there were SO MANY memorable characters and moments!

Jimmy and Bunk craking a case of a girl killed in her kitchen without exchanging more than a couple "Fuck.", "Fuck me!" "Oh, fuck!" "Motherfucker!"

D´Angelo Barksdale teaching his gang down at the pit how to play chess.

The two stevedor guys trying to bait Ziggy Sobotka into picking a fight with a guy twice his size

Ziggy Sobotka and his cousin´s first meeting with the greeks:" Why everybody calls me Boris?"

Bunk and Jay getting a confession outta some dumb perp by making him undergo a lie detector test... on a photocopy machine!

Snoop going to a hardware store to purchase a nail gun. An apparently perfectly normal everyday scenne that suddenly gets a horrendously macabre twist.

Coop´s change of heart at the end, after what happened to Bodie.


There were characters I liked:
Jimmy McNulty
Preston
Kima
Daniels
Prysbylewsky
Sydnor
Carver
Beadie
Bunny Colvin

And then there were character who lit the screen with awesomeness:
Bunk Moreland
Jay Landsman, the fat cop under Rawls at Homicides
Stringer Bell
Vondas, The Greek´s right hand man.
Proposition Joe
Omar
etc...


Characters I didn´t like or care for:
Avon Barksdale. I never got the mastermind/crimelord vibe from him like II got from Stringer, I was always like "Man, whatever did you do to deserve your crown? Stringer is the one carrying the water for you!"
Herc. His turn on the final season and siding with the lawyer... God, what a hateful prick! I HATE HIM!
Marimow, the supervisor Rawls put in charge of the Major Crimes unit to sabotage it.
Marlo.Kid was smart and had his head upon his shoulders but something about him just screamed "he´s not human, boy´s a cylon": Even Chris and Snoop, his lieutenants had a certain connect, you could see a person underneath that brutality.
The reporter who exagerated his stories (didn´t even bother learning his name!) and the newspaper suits who played along to score a Pulitzer
Officer Colicchio, the hotheaded mohawk haired cop. Good riddance!
Levy, the sleazy drug lawyer.
Senator Clay Davis. The less I say about him, the better.

I loved the fact that the show made a point in ressurrecting characters you last saw 3 or 4 seasons ago like Bubbles´mentor figure-biker-fat-guy or Preston´s girl Shardene.
I have rarely ever seen that outside of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
And even when you thought a character was finished, they´d bring him/her back.
It felt like real life, where nobody is truly finished until they´r edead.
You saw that first with Detective Santangelo, who lost his stripes and went to street cop and then later with Prez who I could almost swear I thought he was finished, done with, never to be seen in this show again. Wrong!
And then there were the little details they´d sprinkle here and there, like "Vote for Sobotka" posters on the walls in season 4 or 5, referring to events in season 2.

There was a touching, human, almost endearing feel to the characters I don´t see often.

Omar and Kima deserve a special footnote because they´re the first time I´ve seen gay and lesbian characters depicted in such light in a tv show. They weren´t written as weird alien creatures, they were written as people.

About Omar in particular... I spent the whole series with a little doubt about this character. I could never truly buy the fact that such a character could exist, a modern day Robin Hood that preys on drugdealers (only character more unbelievable than him, to me, was bowtie NY guy Brother Mousone) .
And then the show proceeded to show me at the very end exactly how someone like Omar is "built" by Michael "inheriting" his shoes and it just felt like what I had been watching the whole time was a built up to that transition/sucession, so natural and fitting and well done... dayum!

No complaints, aside from the way the whole legalising drugs affair was dismissed and swept under the rug by the other characters like Carcetti.
The series did leave me SO sad about Duquan.... what a waste.

IWatching the end, I kept thinking that a more fitting end than the music keying to the images of Baltimore landscapes and characters would have been a pan of a cemetary with all the characters who died throughout the series.

This was easily the best series I´ve EVER seen, period.

[7thangel]

most def. it was robbed of emmy's and noms.

shiiiiiiiiiit, how could you not like clay davis, j/k

[Crowley]

It's my absolute most favorite show... I love the way characters are used to tell the stories of other characters.

[40footwolf]

"Oh, I apologize, you must have me confused with a man who repeats himself."

Omar is one of the greatest characters in fiction. No hyperbole.

[Eliseu Gouveia]

Originally Posted by 7thangel

most def. it was robbed of emmy's and noms.

shiiiiiiiiiit, how could you not like clay davis, j/k

I liked the scenne where Nerese is talking with him and urging him to take a fall like Burrel did and he starts "- Sheeey--"
She just cuts him right there, no patience for his crap.

Originally Posted by Crowley

It's my absolute most favorite show... I love the way characters are used to tell the stories of other characters.

I liked how multilayered everybody was. They all had flaws and weaknesses but also moments of greatness.
Like when Cutty goes to Avon Barksdale, a drug dealer, to beg for some money for a gym and it´s like:
"- How much money are we talking about here?"
"- 10,000."
"- All this for 10,000? Shit. Hey, man, throw this man 15,000."

Originally Posted by 40footwolf

"Oh, I apologize, you must have me confused with a man who repeats himself."

Omar is one of the greatest characters in fiction. No hyperbole.

The part where he goes out to get some corn flakes in his pajamas, stops next to a building for a smoke and the dealers hiding inside drop their stash in fear really made me laugh.
He didn´t even need a gun, just his reputation was enough.

[Calvin Government]

Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeit, El, I have to agree - The Wire is one of the best shows I've seen. I just finished the show, and it definitely did blow me away. Cool Lester Smooth, Carver, Prez, Bubbles, Omar, and the Sobotkas were probably my favorite characters... though I loved the ruthless, horrible nature of Marlo's crew, and the Stringer/Prop Joe Co-op.

That was actually the only thing I got for my birthday a couple days back - the complete series.

If you ever go watch it again, you might enjoy reading sepinwall.blogspot.com. The guy recently did season 1 and 2 'reviews', and there's a different version for newbies to the show and people who've seen all of it. The veterans edition looks a lot at how each episode changes everything that happens down the road, and the level of interconnectivity can get a little mindblowing.

Definitely one of the densest, most enjoyable shows I've ever seen.

Even if (/because) season 4 was so absolutely, totally heartbreaking.

[4PointOh]

The Wire is, in my opinion, the best show television has ever produced. That's confirmed by the fact that it has won absolutely no Emmys. Only the shows that piss in the face of Hollywoood hold such distinction.

[Charles RB]

I need to pick up the DVDs at some point.

[Ryan Day]

The show is great for re-watching, too, and you can learn a lot from the commentarires. For example, there's an actress who appears in three episodes, over seasons 3-5: In Season 3, she's just a girl buying some drugs in Hamsterdam; in Season 4, she's a prostitute; and in Season 5 (the only particularly memorable performance), she's in Bubble's NA meeting, telling her story. It's a really nice touch.

The real-life crossovers are nice, too, such as the real Jay Landsman appearing as Lt. Mello; then, in one of the last episodes, Richard Belzer appears - his character on Homicide was based on Landsman, as described in Simon's book.

And in Season 3, one of the Mayor's advisors on the Hamsterdam situation is former Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke, who advocated legalizing drugs. (And I believe his line "They'll call you the most dangerous man in America" is similar to accusations levelled against him)

The Deacon (Whose line "A good churchgoing man is always up in everybody's shit" is one of my favourites) was played by Melvin Williams, a former notorious drug dealer who was arrested by Ed Burns, Simon's writing partner.