The Wire - what am I missing?

Similar thing happened with me. Just finished watching Season Two which began with a port patrol cop doing her rounds. Big deal. In the season finale, the same sequence brought tears to my eyes.

Think of the Wire as a slow and teasing foreplay - with a big payoff at the end.

 

He is a mysterious character. Just shows up one day out of nowhere.

 

I just finished watching all of the seasons and thought that it was magnificent in every way. Great characters and surprises like attrition in main characters.

It took me a couple of episodes to get into the show, too, stick with it and hopefully you start to enjoy things.

As an aside I had no real problem understanding anything but I did have to go back and listen to some stuff again from time to time. Overall, however, once I got used to the slang it was easy enough to parse.

Someone said that the Wire was the best TV ever - I can't agree - I am watching the Sopranos (again) and have to put those shows into contention for that title if not the undisputed victor.

 

I was definitely scratching my head after watching two random episodes of The Wire. I simply couldn't understand what the big deal was. But more or less every member of my family insisted it was the best thing ever done, as long as you start from the beginning.

I gave the show one last shot. For the majority of the first season, I sat there still firmly entrenched in my belief that this show (while better than I expected) was still not that big a deal. Then I hit this one episode where something major happens, and from that moment forward I was utterly immersed in this TV show. It was almost like taking a drug. I simply could not stop watching until the final episode. It really is like nothing else in the history of TV (except maybe parts of Oz).

On The Wire vs. Sopranos front, both shows are of course amazing. But one thing I will say about The Wire is that in my opinion there's not an episode wasted in the entire run. Some say the second and/or fifth seasons are the oddballs, but to me they complete the experience. The show is truly the sum of its parts, and by the time I finished I'd never felt a series fulfilled its own destiny more than The Wire. Almost any other show I can think of overstayed its welcome in some form or another except maybe Friday Night Lights (which still had an irrelevant second season) and Breaking Bad. I don't say this with the intent of opening a discussion on which shows overstayed their welcome, just as the reason why in the end I personally rank it as one of the best shows ever made.

 

Same here. After a few episodes I realized this isn't your ordinary, dumbed down entertainment. This was smart writing with a broad purpose: showing the extent to which nearly everybody is tied to their organization, and that organization is usually flawed. I concluded this was the best series ever on TV.

I'd gone a couple years without watching it and was starting to think I'd exaggerated it. Then I recently have re-watched seasons 1-4. I was reminded how great the writing is. Every line and scene in it has a point. It's not like shows like "Lost" or "Prison Break" or "24" where you sometimes felt the writers were winging it, toward the end. Each season is thought out from beginning to end.

And not only great writers, but folks with great experience in the professions were involved, so the realism is amazing. It's no wonder it was loved by cops, lawyers, druggies, slum dwellers, longshoremen, teachers, politicians, the press, etc.

 

Also worth noting that David Simon's book Homicide is excellent. I'm just about to start on The Corner, which he wrote with Ed Burns.

Before I watched all of The Wire, I got sucked in to Generation Kill which is only like 6 hours and exceptional (more entertaining, simpler). I was blown away, so I finally committed to renting The Wire. Best. Show. Ever.

 

'The Corner' was done as a miniseries for HBO and features a stunning performance by Khandi Alexander(she's also in 'Treme'). Well worth watching.

 

A co-worker of mine insisted I watch the show, so I recently finished going through the entire first season. Terrific show, very grim and realistic. I particularly enjoyed how a lot of loose ends were taken care of, not always in a positive direction: the good guys win, but the main guys repsponsible were not rewarded; the bad guys lost, but the kingpins and politicians got away.

Dynamite performances across the board. The show takes awhile to develop, but it's worth spending time with. I'm about to start season 2 and looking forward to it.

Also, for a show on this kind of budget, it looks amazingly good. I appreciated the fact that they didn't go for some kind of intense, over-the-top look and just made everything look straight-ahead realistic and unaffected. Baltimore might be one of the saddest, most ruined cities I've ever seen (judging solely from the show).

BTW, I actually put wireless mikes on people for a living -- occasionally -- and I've been impressed with how accurate most of the technical information has been. In the first season, there's a great moment where somebody brings out a Nagra SN, and one of the cops snaps, "what the hell is that relic? Get that outta here! We need a real wire, not that piece of crap!" (The SN was the standard subminiature surveillance recorder in the 1970s and 1980s, and was very cool, Swiss-made, and cost over $5000.)

 

As David Simon says, if you read chapter one of Moby Dick, absolutely nothing happens. That's how he structured The Wire. It's not supposed to hook you in one episode.

I know people who complain about how modern TV is just empty style meant to hook in viewers and keep them glued to the set, and then they complain that nothing happens in The Wire. Go figure.

 

Netflix streaming doesn't have this, nor does Family Video or the former Blockbuster in town. Crap.

 

I've never ordered from DVD Streets before, but they currently have the complete series DVD box set for $64 with free shipping:

http://www.dvdstreets.com/goods-133-The+Wire+DVD+Box+Set+-+The+Complete+Series.html

That's around $1 per episode.

 

I watched the entire series courtesy of my local public library. If your local library does not have it you should ask about an inter-library loan. I used the inter-library loan system to watch the Deadwood series.

 

My favorite lines from, The Wire:
"Deserve ain't got nuttun to do wit it."

"How's my hair look?"

 

You know for some reason that line at that moment really got me emotionally. There had been very little evidence of anything human about her up til this point - and DEFINITELY not anything "girly" like worrying about her hair - and all this pretty much at the moment of her death.

I'm kinda leaving out some names and details, in case its an episode some of you who are currently watching haven't gotten to yet.

 

Best.
Show.
Ever.

 

Supreme television. We'll not see the like of it again.

 

Yeah, I've watched a chunk of The Corner, and I think the first season or so of Homicide. I could watch Yapphet Kotto all day long, he's incredible. I wish he were in the Wire, actually. Good shows, definitely good practice for The Wire. I enjoyed the book much more.

 

A great show, probably the best that I have ever seen. An uncompromising, brutally honest but human look at both sides of the drug war. Shows you how much "unknown" acting talent there is who, when given a quality part, can shine. Stringer Bell is one of the best characters ever devised for the screen and Idris Elba did a fabulous job.

As far as the OP not understanding about 40% of the dialogue despite it being in English, that's a higher percentage then what I can understand when Russell Brand jabbers on in what is supposed to be English ;-). Or, what a lot of us here went through when Monty Python first showed up on PBS in the 70's. (Brand, however, is borderline unintelligible to me).

 

It's definitely a show that takes a long time to build. I was almost ready to give up after Season 1's first two episodes, but I stuck with it and was intrigued by how it turned out. The sad fate of the teenagers in the neighborhood, the desperate poverty in Baltimore, the casual matter-of-fact attitude by the drug dealers... it was pretty riveting, and I generally don't like shows like this. This one was an exception.

 

Andre Braugher, too.

 

I hate to keep repeating myself, but THE WIRE has ruined me for almost anything else. I'd rather watch the entire thing all over again. And again. The level of detail is astounding.

Season Two takes a big unexpected left turn, but that's when I decided I was in the presence of something special. They weren't simply re-hashing Season One. I had no idea where they were going with the story about the docks and yet it all made sense.

That's the sort of thing the creator sweats over. He said something to the effect that his greatest fear is that someone whose occupation is depicted on THE WIRE would watch it and say, "That's not what we do, that's not how we talk and that's not how we act!"

 

If you're a fan of The Wire and are looking for some other similar-in-feel - if not totally equal in quality - shows to watch, I'd suggest the following:

- Homicide: Life on the Street
- The Shield
- Breaking Bad
- Sons of Anarchy

I loved Homicide back in the day when I watched it on TV, and it still holds up quite well. It's not nearly as intense as The Wire, but there are a LOT of stand-out performances during it's 7 seasons.

I watched the first 5 seasons of The Shield, as it aired, but missed the final two. I'm in the process of rewatching on DVD from the beginning along with my wife who's never seen it. Right from the first episode, it feels an awful lot like The Wire.

My wife and I are currently into season 2 of Breaking Bad. It was a bit slow out of the gate, but now we're both jonesin' for the arrival of the next DVD each week. Again, similar - at least to us - in feel and dramatic quality to The Wire.

Sons of Anarchy doesn't seem to get a lot of coverage around here, but we love it. Another series we missed out on and had to catch up via DVD. Can't wait for the 5th season this Fall!

Anyone have more to add to the list?

 

Breaking Bad will blow your mind. The degrees of intensity from Season 1 all the way through Season 4 is pretty stunning.

 

I LOVE The Shield. Probably my favorite cop show drama ever, even over The Wire.

I tried to watch Sons of Anarchy (think it has some Shield connections as far as the creative people behind it?) but I didn't like it.

Breaking Bad has some really mindblowing aspects to it, and an amazing sick sense of humor that I don't think I've ever seen in any show. Judging by the other stuff you mentioned above you should like it a lot, stick with it!

I'd add The Sopranos to that list, as far as worthwhile dramas to watch. Also the new Battlestar Galactica series, which has some pretty cool dramatic thrills and chills. Although it has a "sci-fi" setting it is more drama than scifi IMO. Had some soap opery elements to it that I did not dig but overall I loved that show (except for the last episode).




I'd like to hear your guys opinion on OZ. I had seen scattered episodes here & there on TV (HBO?) back in the day & it seemed pretty intense. Wasn't someone responsible for THE WIRE also involved in OZ?

 

Fans of The Wire are hopefully also watching Treme. It's by much of the same people as the Wire (both on camera and behind it). Instead of Baltimore, it's in post-Katrina New Orleans and has the same level of detail, depth of character, intriguingly slow pacing, etc. Plus music, lots and lots of NO music, with many of the greats playing themselves.