new wide screen HD presentation of "The Wire" (?)

Watching all of Hill Street right now...you're right, an arc only lasted for 3 to 4 episodes.

 

Breaking Bad is a great program but it isn't real life, I always know that it is entertainment. Great entertainment but still entertainment. I may know people like the people in BB but I know the people in the The Wire. Perhaps that is why The Wire was rarely nominated and never won an Emmy.

 

Great post!

Or, we can just undress the whole thing and say that people like to compare sh!t. It's in our nature, every since the first person picked up a rock in one hand, and plucked up another rock with his other hand and decided he liked one rock more than the other. We do it all the time. I like this tune, but not that one. I like these nipples, but not those. The Packers are great, but the Eagles suck. Lumberjacks are cool and rainforests are too green. Whatever.

 

"The Wire" cast a fair amount of people local to the Baltimore area. Usually not major roles, but ones you saw often.

For example, the Assistant Vice Principal at the school had a pure Ball-tee-More accent. If you felt like you "knew" her, it's because it seemed like she wandered onto the set after spending a day at the school.

The Sopranos had a similar feel... but NY/NJ actors are a little easier to find than Baltimore actors.

There were a few strange cameo roles on "The Wire" (Steve Earle playing the part of a recovering addict, and Clarence Clemons playing the part of a preacher) but those didn't seem to contribute much to the overall series.

 

A bit? It's been a huge downer for me. Not even in the same league as the first season (while I did enjoy it, it doesn't top Breaking Bad for me). Seems they tried to apply the same formula for a different set of issues...and it just feels like a poorly done remake. I'll take your advice and stick with it though. Hopefully things do pick up in season 3.

 

My father was a fireman. I remember him watching "Hill Street Blues" when it first came on the air.

I ignored it, until I finally got curious what he was watching.

The moment that hooked me was one of those pre-title-scroll moments... the two cops were standing around at an accident scene debating about whether or not to pick up a severed arm... and the one cop said to the other "no... not me... leave it for the firemen... they love this kind of ****..." Then suddenly the one cop noticed that the severed limb had an expensive watch on it - and he reached for the arm and picked up without really thinking and exclaimed "Hey! takes a licking - and keeps on ticking!" (title scroll)

My father the fireman couldn't stop laughing at that... and he just kept saying "Every firehouse in the US that just saw this is now on the floor rolling around in laughter?!?!?!"

My father worked "rescue squad" (EMT)... I suspect he had seen his share of similar events.

 

Season 3 will pick things up... Season 4 will seem like seem like another step backwards... but then Season 5 will somehow pull the entire thing together.

After watching the whole thing.... you may start to see all of the seasons as equal.

I did think Season 2 seemed kind of dorky when it was getting "the gang" back together again.


I'm curious if anyone else felt that the last Irish wake scene in the last episode of "The Wire" was the highlight of the series?

I don't think that scene can make sense if you haven't shared the time with the characters.

The ups and downs of McNulty - and how he is able to participate as a normal human being - WHEN - he's not out trying to catch a criminal - is utterly heartbreaking. He's a guy I'd prefer to see as part of a healthy domestic relationship - not living his life as a cop on the edge.

 

One man behind Hill Street / NYPD Blue / Deadwood : David Milch.
Of course I'm simplifying here, before any TV Fact Geeks wet their shorts, for details, there is IMDB. That's why it exists.
From one regular guy to another... David Milch !
And my sincere thanks to your father. I have a lot of respect for those that are running in, as the rest of us are running out.

 

You can't judge reasonably unless you've seen all of both.

The Wire: zero Emmys, zero Golden Globes.

Breaking Bad (from Wikipedia): "...widely regarded as one of the greatest television series of all time. By its end, the series was among the most-watched cable shows on American television. The show received numerous awards, including sixteen Primetime Emmy Awards, eight Satellite Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and a People's Choice Award. In 2014, Breaking Bad entered the Guinness World Records as the highest rated show of all time."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_Bad

Higher ratings, more commercial success, far more awards... what more do you want? I think The Wire is a very good show, but this is like comparing The Dave Clark Five to The Beatles.

I found The Wire to be depressing and pointless, especially the last season or two, a grimy and downbeat show for the sake of being grimy and downbeat... but very well acted. Let's agree to disagree.

 

I also loved the scene in Season 5 when McNulty had a little private chat with the reporter.

Another one of those "The difference between you me..." moments... almost as good as the comment about the shotgun and the briefcase in an earlier season...

 

The Wire has earned a pretty solid reputation as being one of the most overlooked shows of its time so pointing out the fact that it didn't garner any awards or a wide audience only proves that it's maybe an acquired taste. God knows it's far less accessible than Breaking Bad, which is an intelligent show but pure entertainment at the end of the day. Additionally, I would say that it's pretty much accepted by this point that The Sopranos is The Beatles of the modern TV era if such comparisons are to be made. Comparing The Wire to the Dave Clark Five accomplishes one thing: it helps those of us who love the show understand that you took nothing away from it.

 

I remember a friend talking about "The Wire" when it was in its second season.

He was over my house for dinner one night and we watched an episode. It was definitely Season 2 because I remember the dock workers were part of the story.

I remember thinking the show was enjoyable - but I did what I do with pretty much EVERY series that has continuing storylines... I refused to jump in to the fray in the middle of the series.

And as "The Wire" progressed, I ignored it.

It wasn't until HBOgo was added to my AppleTV (sometime in the summer of 2013) that I thought about looking for Year 1, Episode 1.

I think it was partly because Simon had made a public comment about an event in the news, but it was mostly I decided to start watching the series because I had access to it.

The whole "snot boogie" discussion prior to the opening credit scroll reminded me of "Hill Street Blues" and got me interested.

The urban street-corners of Baltimore look a lot like the urban street-corners of Philadelphia so that was another hook for me. I walked through an area of North Philadelphia every day as a teen, somewhat terrified, on my way to an elite Prep school, hoping I didn't get killed on the way to/from class.

My high school has been there forever... the school was only 5 miles from downtown and would definitely be classified today as "urban" but it was probably considered to be "rural" when it was founded prior to the civil war...

I never worried about the grime, when I walked through it... just my safety. It didn't help that my high school required us to be well dressed. It felt like there was a target on our backs. The more well off kids at my high school drove through the decay. The less fortunate - had to walk quickly and hope for a "cease fire" around 8:30 AM and 3:00 PM each day... once inside the school, no problem... it was an oasis.

It didn't take much for me when watching The Wire to think that maybe there was a "Hamsterdam" around the corner from my high school, or a "Snoop" walking around with hardware purchased at Sears. The personal value I got from watching "The Wire" is it partially explained how that area around my high school got to the point it was at when I arrived as a stranger in 1977.

As for the "can't judge if you haven't watched both" comment.

I agree... but I don't think I stated a preference. I just mentioned that I didn't see the two shows as similar - despite the common denominator (i.e., drugs).

I have a question for those who watched "Breaking Bad" in its entirety. Were there many (any?) moments that seemed humorous ?

 

I'd consider The Sopranos to be a better show overall than The Wire -- call it the "Rolling Stones" in my comparison. But bear in mind I like all these shows and I like all those groups. None of them are bad. But there's only one "best" in a comparison like this, and I think Breaking Bad beats all comers.

Sometimes, shows are overlooked for good reasons. And sometimes, those reasons are tied to simply the fact that there are better shows out there. This is why I think Jon Hamm has lost the Best Actor Emmy several years in a row -- not because he's a bad actor, but because other actors were somewhat better. I'm hoping maybe he'll get recognized next year, because both Mad Men and Hamm are excellent. A totally different kinds of show from the crime shows, but still very, very well-done.

 

I've seen someone refer to "The Wire" as jazz. LOL

I'd call it Miles Davis - unless we're stuck on British groups from the mid-60s

I'm not the biggest jazz nut - but I understand it has place in the musical universe.

I can listen it now more than I did as a young man - but I'm not loading up on jazz CDs.

 

I'm trying to be somewhat objective when making these comparisons. I probably consider The Wire my favorite show of all time, but that doesn't make it The Beatles of TV in my opinion. Basically, The Sopranos more or less opened the floodgates and raised the bar, informing the next decade of TV, which is why I compare it to The Beatles.

My original point, however, was if you're saying that Breaking Bad is The Beatles and The Sopranos is the Stones and The Wire is the Dave Clark Five, either you really, really, missed something when you watched The Wire, or for some reason you think really, really highly of the Dave Clark Five.

 

I like this comparison because it captures The Wire for what it is--a genre apart from the traditional classics. And I say this being not such a jazz fan. This was not your average TV show. I think people 100 years from now could use it to teach history classes.

 

Yes, especially in the first season. Later on the humor was still there, but in much smaller doses.

 

The most convincing explanation of why this is that I have read is that The Wire was shot in Baltimore, peopled and crewed by mostly Baltimoreans, and so it was never on the radar for the LA establishment that lapped up Breaking Bad.

 

You mean Breaking Bad, the show that was shot with an Albuquerque union crew in New Mexico and got tax rebates from that state?

 

I was going to post a wikipedia link for a character in "The Wire" and say something like "Isn't that amazing that someone spent all that time going in to all of that detail for a fictional character" but I then went looking for something similar and found a similar wikipedia link for a character in "Breaking Bad".

So both shows have inspired people to write long explanatory text on wikipedia.

Looking at the wikipedia link for "The Wire" character, I am impressed that there is a grid at the bottom that categorizes the characters into different groups:

I see the following

Police (with links for 9 characters)
Command (with links for 7 characters)
Courthouse (with links for 5 characters)
Street (with links for 5 characters)
Kingpins (with links for 5 characters)
Soldiers (with links for 5 characters)
Dealers (with links for 7 characters)
Docks (with links for 4 characters)
Politics (with links for 8 characters)
School (with links for 5 characters)
Journalists (with links for 6 characters)


It's not the total number that's impressive (hey, it WAS a 5 year run)... it's the fact that all of the characters have an influence on the lives of the other characters...

Yep... I get that it might be difficult to keep track of all of the above without a scorecard... and that it's easy to feel lost and abandon ship before the voyage is over.

 

I might compare Breaking Bad to Beatles 1966-1970 and The Wire to Dylan 1997-2006.

Me, I love both shows. I believe Breaking Bad's early seasons were it's strongest. As I recall, those weren't all that successful; in fact, the last two mini seasons weren't a lock so season 4 intentionally ended on a possible conclusion. The cultural cachet began building in the last 2.5 seasons (the last of which is where the Emmys seemed to catch up with the show) and were buoyed by Netflix binges.

The Wire was never going to be award fodder. Like David Milch's Deadwood (which I'd put as Tom Waits in my silly music comparison) I think it catered to too esoteric a crowd and worked against popular appeal. I didn't get into either of these programs until after they were off the air, but I'd ultimately rank all three as top notch. Best, worst, who knows. Peabodies, Emmys, Neilsen tracking (which I used to have to tediously pore over professionally), click-bait Top Tens, etc. Dunno. Each show has it's particular strengths and taken together Breaking Bad and The Wire are both intriguing snapshots of our society and how we see it.

I can say that in Baltimore The Wire shone a harsh enough light that when I worked at City Hall in 2011, one of the first things I was informally told was not to talk about the show even if some folks would openly crack wise about Sheila Dixon, a real and disgraced former mayor. I'm guessing that would mean more to David Simon, the show's creator and former Baltimore Sun journalist, than awards.

 

In the words of Clay Davis: "Sh**************t"


I love the fact that the actor who plays Clay Davis is in the movie Cedar Rapids and his character (in Cedar Rapids) makes a comment about "The Wire"...

A real inside joke - LOL

 

But all the actors and creative people were from the LA establishment. The Wire didn't have a single established star of even Cranston's level of fame.

And it's not like Breaking Bad was "about" Albuquerque in the sense of having a serious sociological interest in the structure of that city's society. It was just (excellent) melodrama that happened to be set there. The Wire was intended to expose and upset established structures of power, prejudice, and inequality in Baltimore specifically.

 

Very interesting discussion on NoFilmSchool about the aspect ratio question:

http://nofilmschool.com/2014/09/hbo-remastering-wire-hd-aspect-ratios-attack

I tend to lean towards the people who say the show was shot in 3-perf 35mm and will transfer fine to HD 16x9, no matter what the show's creator says. He's a fool if he thinks hanging on to 4x3 helps anybody or anything.

The problem with any 4x3 TV show in syndication is it looks old compared to modern shows. Same problem when TV went color in the mid-1960s: suddenly, all B&W TV shows looked old-fashioned. Sure, a handful held up -- Honeymooners, Twilight Zone, Lucy, etc. -- but not much else.

If an edgy early-2000s crime show is going to have any afterlife, it's gotta be in 16x9 HD. The day may come when audiences will say, "and we want it in 4K!"

 

When you started talking about "3-perf" film earlier in the thread, I had no clue what you were talking about so I tried to see if I could find a web-site that explains it.

Somehow I found a presentation by Kodak that explained the technical differences between "3-perf", "4-perf", and "2-perf".

Seemed to me that what Kodak was arguing for in their presentation was that filmmakers could remain relatively "future proof" *IF* they thought about it early (i.e. selected the correct film, thought about framing for several formats, and protected those frames).

If all of that was done, as some have claimed, there isn't likely to be any crying about the QUALITY of a new 16x9 HD master for "The Wire".

Simon, who is more of a writer/producer (as opposed to director) may not have even been AWARE that someone was thinking about this as the shows were shot. He also may not have a say in the matter, because HBO paid for the series and may be free to do what it wants.

I saw a comment in Kodak's presentation that "film is an archival medium" that "can (or has?) last(ed) 100 years"... adding that they've seen an inordinate number of digital video formats come and go in a relatively short time.

It sounds similar to what happens with analog tape. Old albums on analog master reals can be made to sound amazing in a new digital master.

I do think your comments about how the series could be given a new life via a new master (or fade from our collective memory without one) are very accurate.

I owned a 16x9 HD television when "The Wire" was first aired, and I could watch HBO in 16x9 HD, but I knew I was in the minority at the time. It wasn't the dark ages - but it was an awkward transitional era. Some shows (usually on CBS - which at one point was by far the leader in HD progamming) looked fine in 4x3 NTSC, but they also looked great on a 16x9 HD ATSC broadcast. "Everybody Loves Raymond" comes to mind.