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The Wire

Spion said:
Interesting. Why do you think it's 'a better drama'? Actually don't answer that unless you can do so without spoilers
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It has all the same qualities as The Wire, but doesn't rely on any (familiar) character or situational tropes. The Wire, for all it's genius, is still a cop show. Also, there is this thing called 'Season 5' of The Wire which IMO trashed the series. I wasn't the biggest fan of S4, but S5 was just by-the-numbers pish.

I'll be honest, because of the characters, the period, the setting, I'd be very surprised if MM is liked by as many on here as The Wire.
 
kyser_soze said:
Also, there is this thing called 'Season 5' of The Wire which IMO trashed the series. I wasn't the biggest fan of S4, but S5 was just by-the-numbers pish.
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"Fuck the casual viewer"

I thought it was the least precious work and the finest piece of realised irony I've ever seen. Poss the most ambitious as well.

More generally, I thought it completed the season, muliti-season and character arcs very well.
 
S5 was unsubtle, painted-by-numbers rubbish compared to the rest of the series. Ambitious? Nothing like as ambitious as the first 3 seasons. It's nothing to do with being precious, it just wasn't that good.
 
You're entitled to your view of course but, as a factual point, the overt story arc was subtle because all the TV reviewers and Wire pundits missed it. And it wasn't obtuse either. They had no chance with any subtext.
 
I really liked Season 2. Taking it completely away from Season 1 was brave and as a police procedural it was a great, straight forward storytelling.
 
Not to mention that as they roll the credits on the final episode, they break into a great Steve Earle song that got me to go and get reacquainted with his music. :)
 
I went to see Steve Earle one evening only to be surrounded by middle aged old cunts (say, Nanker Phelge 38!) with cameras who spent the whole gig filming him and not watching, listening...I had to leave because the cameras were bigger than the applause.
 
Yuwipi Woman said:
A bit OT, but thanks for the recommendation of Deadwood*. It's like profane, fucking Shakespeare. Love the iambic pentameter dialogue.


* I started with Season 3 because I could get a copy at the library.
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How are you going to do it - assuming you're tacking The Wire, Deadwood and The Sopranos?

Agree, the dialogue in Deadwood is extraordinary. Difficult to imagine anything better than Milch's writing.
 
London_Calling said:
How are you going to do it - assuming you're tacking The Wire, Deadwood and The Sopranos?

Agree, the dialogue in Deadwood is extraordinary. Difficult to imagine anything better than Milch's writing.
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I put item holds on various DVDs at the library. I can only watch them in the order they're returned. I'm used to this, so I won't have any trouble figuring out the story arc when I'm done.
 
London_Calling said:
It's a great shame if you're not looking at them in order.
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I agree. I'd think you only get the full impact, the subtle, delicious buildup of character, of tension, going through it in sequence.

For example, how can you understand Swearingen without first getting the totally loathsome side presented in the early episodes, only to have his humanity slowly revealed.
 
I am just reading the book David Simon wrote after spending a year with the Baltimore Homicide squad and it's very apparent that the people he wrote best in the Wire were the police as he had characters to base them on having hung out with them and got to know them. The dealers and the gangs are obviously more ficticious and cartoonlike as he had to let his imagination run far freer with them.
 
goldenecitrone said:
I am just reading the book David Simon wrote after spending a year with the Baltimore Homicide squad and it's very apparent that the people he wrote best in the Wire were the police as he had characters to base them on having hung out with them and got to know them. The dealers and the gangs are obviously more ficticious and cartoonlike as he had to let his imagination run far freer with them.
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I think the people he wrote best were the news people in the newsroom, and maybe the dockworkers, because that's something he knew about. Moving out one circle to the white cops, the cartoonishness begins. The next circle is the black cops, and the outer circle of cartoon hell, is the black street people.
 
The white cops where comical. McNulty was a joke all the way through....not helped by fairly poor acting.

The Season 2 and Season 4 characters were by far the most interesting and believable...even those that were annoying and patheic (ziggy!).

Bunk, Bubs, Omar, Marlo, Lester, Carver, Chris, Snoop, Prop Joe, Brother M, Bunny Colvin, Norman Wilson, Cutty.....etc..etc..

These characters made the show for me....I wanted to know these people and never really found out anything much about them...yet still wanted to stay with them and go on that trip.
 
Most excellent and most adicitve. I also ended up binge viewing, watched all the seasons in about two weeks flat. :rolleyes:

once you have finished that ... you need to do Simon and burns next project, generation kill :eek::eek:
 
Nanker Phelge said:
The white cops where comical. McNulty was a joke all the way through....not helped by fairly poor acting.

The Season 2 and Season 4 characters were by far the most interesting and believable...even those that were annoying and patheic (ziggy!).

Bunk, Bubs, Omar, Marlo, Lester, Carver, Chris, Snoop, Prop Joe, Brother M, Bunny Colvin, Norman Wilson, Cutty.....etc..etc..

These characters made the show for me....I wanted to know these people and never really found out anything much about them...yet still wanted to stay with them and go on that trip.
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The problem for me, was that the back story of poverty and drugs in black urban centers, is an important story that needs telling in a serious, realistic and gripping manner. This series tried, but I think what ultimately sunk it, was the writer's preoccupation with the story of political and police corruption. If you do some background research, you see that the main characters even look like the real life people they're portraying. I think that the writer had an axe to grind, and the drug/street story was added almost as filler to his real purpose, to expose this story of Baltimore corruption.
 
corruption being entirely divorced from street crime in such an environs obv.

I still maintain that you only watched it to try poor trolls about it.

That said, th re-watch where Omar jumps the stories is a bit much. And yet, apparently grounded irl
 
Johnny Canuck2 said:
The problem for me, was that the back story of poverty and drugs in black urban centers, is an important story that needs telling in a serious, realistic and gripping manner. This series tried, but I think what ultimately sunk it, was the writer's preoccupation with the story of political and police corruption. If you do some background research, you see that the main characters even look like the real life people they're portraying. I think that the writer had an axe to grind, and the drug/street story was added almost as filler to his real purpose, to expose this story of Baltimore corruption.
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That other story would have to be told by somebody else. He could only write about what he knew as that is all writers can do.
 
DotCommunist said:
.

I still maintain that you only watched it to try poor trolls about it.
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Maintain whatever you'd like. It's a free country. :D

I watched it to see what it was that so many people were waxing so ecstatic about. I'll admit that I had my suspicions from the outset, but it wasn't just because people said they liked it. People said they liked Deadwood, too. It was the way they were talking.

I went into it with an open mind, which is why I considered Season 2 to be good tv.
 
Johnny Canuck2 said:
Maintain whatever you'd like. It's a free country. :D

I watched it to see what it was that so many people were waxing so ecstatic about. I'll admit that I had my suspicions from the outset, but it wasn't just because people said they liked it. People said they liked Deadwood, too. It was the way they were talking.

I went into it with an open mind, which is why I considered Season 2 to be good tv.
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Hang on, you didn't like Deadwood?

How can you not like Deadwood?
 
Johnny Canuck2 said:
The problem for me, was that the back story of poverty and drugs in black urban centers, is an important story that needs telling in a serious, realistic and gripping manner. This series tried, but I think what ultimately sunk it, was the writer's preoccupation with the story of political and police corruption. If you do some background research, you see that the main characters even look like the real life people they're portraying. I think that the writer had an axe to grind, and the drug/street story was added almost as filler to his real purpose, to expose this story of Baltimore corruption.
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I think it's good that he had an axe to grind. I don't think there's been a TV series that disected and laid bare the connections in the society of a single city like the Wire did.

Sure, there were lows, but on the whole for me it was a landmark in TV.
 
kyser_soze said:
It has all the same qualities as The Wire, but doesn't rely on any (familiar) character or situational tropes. The Wire, for all it's genius, is still a cop show. Also, there is this thing called 'Season 5' of The Wire which IMO trashed the series. I wasn't the biggest fan of S4, but S5 was just by-the-numbers pish.

I'll be honest, because of the characters, the period, the setting, I'd be very surprised if MM is liked by as many on here as The Wire.
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OK, I'm intrigued now after watching e3. Draper has a hidden past, he and his wife are going mad and the sexual tension/repression is incredible.

It's a slow burner compared to the Wire, there's less packed into it, less to try and understand
 
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