The Wire

Just get through season 2, Gideon. I promise it gets a lot better and 'back to normal' after that. I've not seen it since broadcast but I think season 2 was probably my least favourite too, although season 5 has issues, so I might prefer 2 on a rewatch?

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

You were right. Honeykid, season three was absolutely superb and my favorite so far and I'm close to wrapping season four, which has been strong as well.

Watched the first two episodes of the final season and it's getting weird again...now all of a sudden the show is centering around the local newspaper. I don't know what's going on, but I have to see this out because I'm totally invested in seeing whether or not the cops ever get Marlo. They've gotten everybody else, why can't they get Marlo.

Felt the need to share some thoughts after finally finishing this show last night. I avoided this show for a long time just because there was a time when it felt like it was the "cool" show to be watching and I didn't want to watch it just because everyone else was. Well, after finally watching it, though I had some issues with it, I found this show one of the edgiest most challenging TV shows I have ever watched. First of all, I can't think of a show I watched that had a larger canvas than this one did. I had a great deal of trouble keeping up with all the characters and stories that made up this show. Even after five seasons, if you named an actor who appeared on this show, I would be hard pressed to tell you the name of the character they played, which is not like me at all. I knew Dominic West was McNulty and Idris Elba was Stringer and Michael K Williams was Omar and Lance Reddick was Cedric Barnes, but keeping track of who was who was so difficult that I have the IMDB page for the show up behind this screen right now to help me remember things I want to say. The show was initially fascinating watching cops chasing drug dealers, even if the whole set up of the story is dated...drug dealers don't stand on the corners anymore or have runners or use pay telephones, hell, just the presence of pay telephones dated the whole thing, but none of this made the drama any less compelling. The presence of small children acting as runners and carrying weapons was beyond disturbing. Unfortunately, when season two rolled around and all of a sudden the show centered around a bunch of dead Russian hookers on a cargo ship, I felt lost. Season three was my favorite because it required complete attention and, like The Sopranos, you never knew who might be dead by the end of the episode. I also can't remember a crime-oriented show that featured just as much collateral damage as it did people who needed to be brought down and walked away unscathed. I did like that most of the characters were written in serious mud tones. The only two straight up characters IMO were Cedric Barnes and Tony Carcetti. Season four built to a chilling climax and then in season five, all of a sudden in the offices of THE BALTIMORE SUN watching reporters write about murdered homeless? Made even more confusing by everything McNulty did in season five, which should have landed him in jail and Marlo Stanfield walked away scott free? What the hell? Just so the police could cover their own asses? Yeah, I had issues with the show, but it was definitely worth the watch.

LOL, drug dealers still stand on corners. 😎

PS, I loved this show.

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I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.

No, they don't.

You know what goes on in the entirety of the United States of America? I live in one of the poorest cities in America & they’re definitely here. Funniest thing I’ve read all day.

Believe what you want, I'm not arguing with you.

Like there is even an argument to be had here. Drug dealers still sell drugs on corners. Full stop. To say otherwise is like trying to claim people don't wear shoes anymore. No public consensus is needed to figure out the answer, since it's not about what people believe. It's observable reality, at least if you know where to look.

Not where I live

And there are no kangaroos where I live, so poor Australia must be missing them terribly.

Everybody seems very irritable today. This is the second contretemps I've witnessed here today.

I don't purchase illegal drugs so I can't comment on the issue either way.

I don't know about anyone else, but I operate from a pretty consistent baseline of irritability.

I've only ever seen a few episodes, so my experience with the show is limited, but I have lived in Baltimore all my life and, like most crime-cop shows, part of the intensity of the show depends on your belief that you might get murdered at any moment. Cops are there to prevent that or catch the bad guys if they don't.

Having lived here all my life and not been murdered yet, I'll throw in some reality comments about not just The Wire, but also Homicide, Life on the Streets. For whatever it's worth most of us who live here don't get murdered. In fact, most of the population here live normal lives in nice places. I, for one, don't go to those relatively small areas like on the shows because of both danger and the fact that I just don't want to be in those places and the fact that they are just not appealing at all. I also don't buy illegal drugs and don't do much murderin' myself and don't belong to a gang.

If fact, where I live is not just beautiful, but affluent, civilized and well policed. I'm not rich, but I live well and am low on anybody's crime list.

It's worth noting that TV shows, especially cop shows, don't do well without some suspense, threat level and fictional stereotypes. You have to know who the bad guy is in the first minute of the show so they can finish up the plot line.

Us locals have a mixed view of those shows, but they serve a purpose, like keeping outsiders at a distance so they don't run up the rents when people find out how well you can live here.

One thing doesn't negate the other. As you said, you "don't go" to those areas because of the "danger", so you're not exposed to the things that are going on there (i.e. theft, murder, drugs, etc.) but as you said, the "danger" is there.

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Noted

Blimey. What do you do?

Plenty to do without guns and drugs.

Indeed.

Sorry, really I was just amusing myself because you said 'you don't' a number of times it reminded of a song from my youth.



And for fans of The Spy Who Loved Me or Maniac (as well as others of course) yes that is the absolutely gorgeous (and one of my first crushes) Caroline Munro in the video.

Managed to lock myself out of our front gate & house one winter evening. My middle bro in England, after reading my email to him, was HORRIFIED that someone could have shot me, a thought that never occurred to me. Yes, I’m in the hood & in one of the poorest cities in America, but I never felt in any danger. And, in fact, I got rescued by a very nice young man who happened to be walking down my street & who climbed over my fence & rescued me.