The news hole
Now it starts. Episode 3 of Season 5 started to simmer - and not just because we finally got Omar back. I pity anyone who started to watch The Wire three weeks ago, bludgeoned into submission by the media hype. Nick James in his editorial in the new Sight & Sound calls it the "weakest" opening to any of the five series (he's making a wider point about the spinelessness of British broadcasters, not having a go at The Wire), and I'd agree that it was the quietest opening, but that doesn't make it weak. Ep 3 made sense of the slow start; all the threads thus far laid down started to intertwine. We have lift-off. McNulty's seemingly harebrained scheme to cook up a serial killer now becomes a matter of honour, backed by Freemon. They all want Marlo, but need back-up. Marlo, meanwhile, is earning so much money he needs it laundering figuratively and literally. (For me, great to see Method Man again as Prop Joe's slippery nephew Cheese - once again a minor player, but the link between Marlo and the exiled Omar, leading to a truly unpleasant scene with Butchie. I loved Prop Joe's despair at "civilising" Marlo, sending him to the Caribbean so he could actually see the money Joe had diverted to an offshore account.) We're talking about under an hour of drama and yet marvel at the amount of plates now spinning: "buyouts" at the Sun, little Michael taking his eye off the ball (or his corner), the Grand Jury investigation into Clay Davis, McNulty's last stand with the "Ripper", the bounty on Omar's head, Daniels' grooming/Burrell's downfall, Templeton vs. Twigg (Twigg being David Simon, one must assume?), Bubs' rehabilitation (not even touched on in Ep 3 - be patient, as always), the Greeks, the Russians ... and yet the "news hole" is shrinking.
posted by Andrew Collins @ 12:02 AM
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4 Comments:
With every season of The Wire I'd get a little distracted in the first couple of episodes, thinking nothing much was happening. By half way through the season I'd be wanting to go back and watch them again. By the fifth season I'd finally learned my lesson and just basked in the relaxed opening.
Am currently trying out Breaking Bad, which shows a twisted kind of promise.
It's not The Wire though. I miss The Wire.
I have avoided The Wire purely because of the recent hype which really really got on my nerves.
I felt that if I read one more bloody column that compared watching it to 'reading Dickens' I was going to explode.
Bit silly though isn't it ? Refusing to watch something because everybody else is telling you it is brilliant.
*contrary bastard face*
Only 2 replies so far this week? That's 0.00526% of the available 38,000 TV audience. What the hell is going on? How come The bleedin' Apprentice was pulling in 30 odd replies a week and this only gets 2. Maybe everyone is on their holibobs like I was last week.
Anyway got home at 11.00 p.m. last night and encouraged the family to go to bed so I could watch the 3rd episode in peace. I can't be bothered to distinguish between series anymore (although I have said before on here that 4 was the best!). The whole thing was just meant to be seen together as one story. A story that takes around 60 hours to tell. So saying this series started weak is meaningless.
I really liked seeing both Michael and Omar taken out of their normal context. It was great to see Michael in particular still in conflict with his chosen life on the corners and that of a normal kid, doing normal things with his family and mates (he probably wouldn't call them mates but I'm not going to try to drop embarrassingly into the vernacular). If this was another drama there would be no conflict and Michael would now just be the next Marlo in waiting. Which he probably still is, rather depressingly.
More Carver though please (I realise I'm kind of contradicting what I said above by saying that but who cares?).
I'm so sick of everyone going all the time on about how sick they are that everyone is going on all the time about The Wire.
'Generation Kill' has been good too, so far.
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