Nothin' but love for the West Side crews
Fuck. The Wire just slips past like a good, cold beer slips down. It does not grab you by the throat, or wag its finger at you (like BBC2's Burn Up last week), or force you to view it in a series of "acts" or "arcs", it just happens, for under an hour, every week, before your very eyes. The writers, and the actors, make no concessions so that it's easier for you to follow; the players just talk, the way people in Baltimore talk, and you must tune in and listen. The episodes, such as tonight's, Season 5 Ep 2, Unconfirmed Reports, just scroll past. They do not end on resolutions, or climaxes, they just end. And the next one will just start. How can you not fall in love with this enormously unpopular show, with its 38,000 viewers? (Less than other shows on FX, I'm told. So Dexter, which is OK but nothing more, is more popular?) [Once again, here only be "spoilers" if discussing the ebb and flow of Baltimore "spoils"] Lester and Sydnor get on with chasing Clay Davis but yearn for Marlo; Gus continues to establish himself as a fully-rounded lead character at the Sun, with his old-fashioned newspaper morals; McNulty, a bottle of whisky in his pocket, decides to rearrange a corpse (not sure why, yet); Marlo visits Barkdale in prison (what a treat to see him again); Carcetti talks test scores (shouldn't be interesting; is); Bubs is encouraged by Steve Earle to open up at NA; and that's about it. There's a shooting. And we have to wait another week.
posted by Andrew Collins @ 12:21 AM
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Best thing on tv by a country mile. Leaves everything in its effortless wake, especially worthy one-dimensional drivel like Burn Up.
Presumably McNulty rearranged the corpse and exclaimed that "Baltimore has a serial killer" because he thinks the headlines that will bring will force the hand of the people in charge of funding the police. Storywise it'll also tie up homicide more directly with the already fascinating new characters over at The Sun.
I want the Box Set and I want it now! Amazon America are releasing it on August 12th so I'm hoping to receive it with half the series still to go.
OK, I give in. It's must be three or four years since Jim Shelley started going on about The Wire in "The Guide" and I ignored it then and have done ever since, not through ignorance, just lack of bloody time and an ever shrinking available memory on the old Sky+.
I have a birthday next week and shall be requesting box sets, from season 1. Thanks.
Timbo
You won't regret it anonymous.
You'll be one of the gang then. We kick sand into the faces of those who have never seen The Wire.
...or something.
Having just watched the trailer for that my one question is:
Harvey Dent? What is it with americans and baddie names.
Dont they know to consult us? When I hear the name ‘Harvey Dent’ I just picture Arthur Dent’s younger dimmer toff brother, probably fatter and wearing a dressing gown and carrying a pot of earl grey tea.
Not very menacing. Unless youre allergic to caffeine. Or coarse natural fibres.
Crap baddie names almost ruined my first viewing of one of my favourite films of all time, Blade Runner.
Naming the coolest android ever, 'Roy Batty', meant that for the first 30 minutes of the movie whenever I saw him I just pictured him as Nora Batty’s slightly backward son, 19, wearing grey school shorts and shit-thick-bottle glasses ( Blue Remembered Hills style) and being chased down the cobbles by his mum with a broom.
I doubt such a scene ever appeared in any of Philip K Dick’s work.
Well, certainly not the early stuff. I know he went a bit mental toward the end.
Maybe it was the 'Last of the Summer Wine' reruns that did it.
It's a theory.
oops! that last post should have gone into the batman column Andrew.
I'm all fingers and thumbs in the presence of greatness.
Having watched the first six episodes, I do like it, but I just don't really...sort of...enjoy watching it as much as 'Waking the Dead' for example.
I know there's a million ways you could tell me how I don't 'get it' - and I wouldn't argue, but I guess I just don't get-it as much as I should.
Andrew, were you as much a fan of Homicide:Life on the Street as you are the Wire?
Machine Levine
There's no point anyone insisting that you 'get it' Matt. You either do or you don't (wise words eh?).
All I'll say is that six episodes in I was hooked but didn't quite understand why anyone would be prepared or able to justify the 'best programme ever' tag. But something happened later in that series that not only got my emotions into overdrive but also completely turned my view upside down of one character in particular. I won't ruin it by saying who or what but let's just say it was a cop who I thought was almost a stereotypical bad guy up to that point. Just a foil for the main characters. I kept thinking, "how did he get that job if he is so useless and just pisses everybody off. Surely he must have been good at something".
Suddenly, without changing his personality just for plot development at all, events occur and he comes into his own and you think to yourself “ah that’s why he’s there. He is actually bloody good at being a cop”. I know it doesn’t seem a lot but that was when I realised just how clever the writing was. It never does the obvious. Surprisingly I’ve never been a Baltimore drug dealer so obviously I’m on thin ice here but it appears to strive for truth more than any TV programme or film or book that I’ve ever come across.
One other thing before I go, TW has a terrific ensemble of regulars but it wouldn’t win any awards for acting I don’t think. And that’s how it should be. Don’t get me wrong they are all really good but TW doesn’t do ‘showy’. And thank God for that. As I said on last week’s thread there was one actor in Series 2 that stretched my patience with his ‘I’m a gangster I am’ mannerisms but the rest appear to under no illusion that’s all about the show. It’s all in the game.
Thank you for providing this (I hope) weekly ‘The Apprentice’ style outlet for our TW habit AC.
A friend gave me the first two series as a wedding present - I shall forever be in his debt. I'm not a big TV watcher and probably would have dismissed it as 'another hyped US cop show'. I left it on a shelf for a couple of months until his harrassing me to watch it became too much. It clicked round about EP 4 and has probably been my major cultural experience of the last decade. A staggering piece of work on so many levels. Though I am concerned that all future tv & film will seem rather anaemic in comparison.
Slightly off topic but my wife recently saw Dominic West (Mc Nulty) AND Lance Reddick (Daniels), and some youngsters she took to be Mr Reddick's children, lunching at an organic cafe round the corner from our house in NW London. Fair wet herself with excitement she did.
Mr T
And Clarke Peters, who plays Lester Freamon, also apparently lives in London, when he's not working in Baltimore!
For me, in Season One, it was Bodie's explanation of how chess works that did it for me. Can't remember which episode that's in, but I knew I had fallen in love with the writing at that point.
I remember, years ago, starting to read Bonfire Of The Vanities by Tom Wolfe, as everybody was talking about it. I got a bit bored a third of the way in, and put it aside. Then a friend insisted - and I mean insisted - that I pick it up again, as I would not be disappointed. I was moved by her passion and did as she suggested. I never looked back. It's good when friends do that.
It was recommendations on this very blog that caused me to take a chance and borrow Season One of The Wire on DVD from my friend Simon Day. I watched eps one and two on a laptop, but was still intrigued. Then I shifted to a proper sized telly and watched both eps again. It was a revelation. I bought my own copy, and all the others. I knew this was one I'd need to own.
It's not mandatory to like it. It either happens or it doesn't. If it was for everybody, it would get more than 38,000 viewers, and Channel 4 would have paid money for it, or BBC2, and they've had enough fucking chances!
Never saw Homicide, by the way.
FX started showing the Wire from Season One about three weeks after I got Sky+ so I have been watching an episode a week for over a year now. It is without question the best tv show ever.
I had doubts that the show could withstand the departures at the end of Season 3 but Season 4 I thik reigns supreme as the best season.
The point at which I got hooked was when Kima got shot and Rawls took Jimmy aside and gave him his pep talk.
I am looking forward to Omar's return in this season and after missing Jimmy in Season 4 I am back to being irritated by him again now. I also hope Pres and Cutty will be back at some point to.
Andrew
You have so much to look forward to ! I wish I hadn't seen series 5 yet, it's so very good!
All will be revealed in the fullness of time.
Steve, this is the great thing about The Wire: we're all retroactively jealous of people who have more to see of it than we have. I'm jealous of those who are just starting out and watching Season One. You're jealous of me because I've only just started Season Five. Not many TV programmes have this effect: making you wish you hadn't seen it!
"Bodie's explanation of how chess works that did it for me."
Same here, and it's episode three where that happens.
For those who have not seen season 4 look away now.
Bodie's departure was the most shocking single occurrence in the series. I just figured he would be there till the end.
you all should be jealous of me, because I've seen the Wire season 5 (don't worry - I won't spoil it), and I am in the middle of watching Generaton Kill. I can't say if it is as good as The Wire, and I can't say if it's true to the book (as I'm only 50 pages in), but it is pretty darn good.
machine levine
Oh, and Andrew, you are seriously missing out by not watching Homicide. Pembleton and Bayliss -best on-screen pairing ever!
have also seen up to end of season 5. sad to say goodbye to all the gang. like children I wanted to know theyd be okay before I said goodbye.
The beauty of that chess scene was made even more poignant when Bodie revisited it in that park with McNulty, just before you know what happened (I know TMP already mentioned it but I really don’t want to be party to any spoilers). I really do miss Bodie (that’s not giving anything away, he could be on holiday).
I understand why people are drawn to Omar but as much as I enjoy his presence I really have to reel myself in from any hero-worship. He may be hitting on the bad guys and he may be loyal to his own warped rules but he’s hardly a Robin Hood character. I agree with something I read when the show was getting a lot of attention a couple of weeks back. That he, of all the characters, is the most unwire-like. We are asked to almost revel in the ordinariness and the fallibility of everyone else on the show. Whereas he is extraordinary. Almost mythical. I’m not knocking that, I think it works brilliantly.
Having at first found the series utterly incomprehensible (a few pints of best bitter admittedly didn't help) after reading this I have given it another go and finally 'get it'. What amazes me though is that, having such a tiny number of viewers, the programme has been commissioned for five whole series. How does that happen when other things get cancelled halfway through?
I still can't belive it only gets 38,000 viewers. I would be interested to see what the DVD numbers are.
The Mighty Pierre
I agree with you, that charcters demise moved me probably the most out of any of the characters that have been wacked.
I guess perhaps it was because he was one of last links to the old crew of Season 1. Plus he (along with a Norman & Carver) was in my other favourite HBO drama OZ.
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