It’s easy to sound hyperbolic calling anything the “best” thing of its category, but no TV has even come close to The Wire for me.

Season four broke my heart with the adolescent kids. I can’t believe how good they all were in their roles, phenomenal performances.

The one minor scene that always wrecks me is where Bodie is talking to McNulty near the end of the series and says, “I feel old...”

The character is supposed to be a late teenager in that scene, and is already feeling worn out of life he has almost no chance of escaping.

That to me was the big takeaway. Too many things are stuck where they are: people, systems, etc.

As Marlo says, “You want it to be one way, but it’s the other way.”

Okay I’m done fan-boying. Yes, I’m this annoying when I tell my irl friends about the show as well.

The Wire really is a remarkable show in that, unlike a most of TV before it, it literally springs from who the characters are. The closest thing to an imposed narrative is the decision to focus on a specific segment of the phenomenon that is Baltimore, the police bureaucracy in S1, the white+ working class (well before DJT) in S2, etc. Literally everything else derives from the who the characters are, not the arc imposed by the writers. The scripts are as much channeled as written.

My issue with such a statement is that it most likely inevitably picks from a very specific subset of shows: that is, american and british shows (although the latter may even be quite a small subset of all british shows, if you are american), maybe with one or two other-anglospheric-country shows mixed in (probably a couple canadian shows, and maybe if we're lucky, one or two australian), and ignores the huge swathes of international tv production. That's without even going into the problem of age (most likely, your subset is composed mostly of shows of the > 1980s at best, probably a significant subset would be > 2000s). I don't mean to say that this is a "bad" subset, that is, I concede that it's inevitable that it contains great, and in some cases, sublime shows: we've gotten better at media production over the decades, and the financial and talent pools of the americans are nearly unparalleled. Yet I can't help but feel like the americano-centrism of the "Best shows of all times" list is worthy of criticism (I have similar criticisms for most "best album / songs of all time" lists), given that I've seen shows of extremely high quality from both european and russian media. (Of course, I myself am guilty of this, with respect to shows from asia and the middle east, for instance, which I've seen nothing of. It seems as though most westerners will consume media of the following categories: either american, or from their country, with at most a handful of what could be considered for them, a "foreign" show.) as I feel like tv in general seems to be a medium in which americans don't tend to really stray beyond looking at what's produced by their country, unlike say, films, where, perhaps because of the more "high-class" sentiment that comes with being a cinephile, there's a stronger push to look beyond the borders in an effort to stay informed and "cultured" about films around the world.

> barring one scene in the first season

Yes! Was that the one where Avon, String, and Stinkum arrive with the cash bonuses? I am rewatching a third time right now and couldn't figure out why it stood out as somewhat clumsy. It even popped into my head while I was driving yesterday. You've just reminded me, so thank you.

It's very good, but the last season gets a little weird with the 'serial murder'.

Paths of Glory is one of my favorite films, after hearing David Simon speak about how it's essentially a movie about middle management and the dangers of being giving a task that's impossible to complete yet will still let down the people who look up to you!

Surely that's part of its power though? The real-life facts of that existence are tragic of course, but shining a light on the issues is surely a positive thing.

Years ago I read that The Wire made The Sopranos look...silly? Or at least not as serious and gritty. I kind of agreed for awhile, but I'm actually rewatching both and appreciate the different styles more. One thing that strikes me is the acting - The Sopranos is filled with amazing performances, particularly the dynamic between Edie Falco and James Gandolfini. I hate Tony Soprano and really dislike Carmella, but I'm so conflicted about both.

I'd say most shows fall short of The Wire. Game of Thrones was /good/ for the first three seasons or so, then got worse and worse. The last season, in my opinion, is so bad that in hindsight I wish I hadn't watched the entire show.

Yeah I just combined an unrelated set of feelings into a single sentence.

> morally ambiguous

No character (save some in S5) is totally black or white. Take Omar, for example. When Omar responds to Levy in the S2 courtroom scene, we sympathise with Omar. When Bunk applies almost exactly the same criticism in S3, we don’t.

> institutional ineptitude

The show covers more institutions than just the BPD. S2 covers traditional economics, S3 has politics, S4 education, and S5 media.

> conservative western cultures

I kinda wanted to say ‘America’ here, but that wouldn’t entirely be true. I’m from Glasgow, a city which has been directly compared to the Wire’s version of Baltimore. Look up the ice cream wars.

These problems aren’t uniquely America’s, but are inherent to all (small c) conservative western cultures. Parts of Europe (Scandinavia, Netherlands) have made huge progress through progressive policy. This isn’t an issue of which government is in power - the US had 8 years of Obama, the UK had 13 of Blair/Brown, and made no progress.

> mitigating the effects of crime

The true victims of the drug trade are the bystanders. However, the war on drugs is fought through virtuous motivation - drugs are bad, impure, and destroy people and society. This motivation omits those most affected by the drug trade, the bystanders. Between street dealing, turf wars, and aggressive policing; the drug trade devastates communities.

I think it’s more that the worldview held by western institutions and police in particular does not equip police to actually solve the problems they are trying to solve - through no real fault of the individuals involved.

I respectfully disagree. The writing on the Shield was good but kind of amateur compared to the Wire. I really want to like Kurt Sutter, and often I do, but he doesn't hold a candle to Simon and the rest of the writers on the Wire. The Shield had some really good socially aware arcs (the asset forfeiture season comes to mind) but even those pale compared to the whole Wire philosophy of institutions as Greek gods in a Greek tragedy. Also the pray-the-gay-away subplot in the Shield has not aged well.

I watched the Wire after The Shield and it was hard not to fall asleep. It was so slow in comparison. I understand art imitating reality but they really kill the pace with some of these stake out scenes.

Season 4 is arguably the best bit of television drama, ever - it’s a masterpiece.

I get the argument that good tv/literature/whatever shouldn't need to be explained, but I think the Wire really benefits from reading a lot of serious criticism alongside watching. There were a ton of details and ideas and motifs that just flew over my head, but upon some reading and a second watching… well I started out loving The Wire, but the second time I loved The Wire. Even seasons 3 and 4. (not 5, at least I understand what they were trying to do)

It may be that your opinion would change if you pushed through to the end. I liked it the entire way through, but I think it took finishing the final season for me to realize how masterful it all truly was.