Just got done watching the WIRE. Came in knowing it was known as the GOAT show or one of the best shows and while I am not sure how to feel about that, I will say each and every ****ing episode , every season kept me entertained. I still need to think on how I would rank the seasons.1 might be the best or worst depending on how I look at it. but as far as shows goes, the show was CONSISTENTLY good through and through. Will say easily, the best writing and dialogue in a TV show ever, If that's why its the GOAT show, then I can see why.

What are your thoughts on THE WIRE and how would you rank the seasons?

This has already been discussed to death in other threads , many people agree The Wire is a masterpiece in it's entirety so what does it matter which season is more popular ? It's like asking which Act of Hamlet is best .

I rank them 4,3,1,2,5. 4 is the clear number one for me and is the best season of anything I have watched. 3 and 1 are very close. On rewatch, I appreciated both seasons more and I think they are very close in quality to season 4. Season 2 was different. I was already warned about it and told to stick with it. It was a good season and even better the 2nd time around, but it wasn't what I expected. Season 5 had some great moments and episodes, but the serial killer plot drops it down a few notches.

agreed ^ took me several re watches to actually like the 2nd season also. season 5 just fell flat all around. even the gangster stuff overall seemed less thought out. i think 3 > 1 cause more action and characters are developed more, although the info they got into s1 was a really good foundation.

I think The Wire is... good.

If you just saw it your first time, I'd also like to point out it's a very rewatchable show.

The show builds really well to certain moments, and you might like it even more a second time because you enjoy the building up, and are excited about what's coming later.

You also can't appreciate every little detail in just one watch, so you'll also discover a lot of **** you didn't realize when rewatching.

Wrt ranking I can't decide. The things that remain stable for me:
4 & 3 are the best seasons
5 is the weakest

5 is still a very good season, it's just that the lows of the season are significantly lower than the other 4.

My 2 favorite moments that I feel are ofter overlooked:
*When Frank Sobotka gets arrested. It's such a tragic moment because everything comes together and it's in this moment that he realizes that his world is crashing down.
*Carver when he's dropping of one of the kids in the ward and gets back into his car.

I agree, but the Bubbles redemption story line and the parallels of the kids introduced in S4 and the characters that the show started with were really poignant. That's why I think I still but S5 over S2, which I did like better on rewatch.

definitely agree on the top. probably tried to start the show 3-4 times and couldnt get into it, got bored and just started marathon-ing it; by the 3rd season i realized id need to watch it again cause it was good. probably seen it between 10-15 times now

i thought the inside agent part was pretty weak overall. i think when nick says all they want is loyalty, is much more strong, because hes like oh ****, i didnt do this right after all.

snitchin randy. altho when he goes back in s5 and randy is the man, seems pretty unfeasible. i doubt you go from being the snitch to being the tough guy in a year.

imo michael is easily the best, being the new omar after they show him grow up, learn, and adapt. and the kenard scene is probably my favorite

5 over 2 is about the dumbest thing Ive ever seen in this forum and proly the whole internet. so...congrats.

What makes The Wire my favorite show is that it has the highest re-watch value of all shows to me. With so much new content these days there're very few shows I watch more than once or twice, this show is the grand exception.

Watching it for the 2nd or 3rd time was just so enjoyable because you can connect all the dots and discover many details and characters that got lost in the first run.

The dialogue is just just fabulous and so memorable. There're so few scenes that don't add anything to the plot, it is that well written.

I think I probably will do another re-run this year, haven't done one in a while, I think that'll be my 5th or 6th re-run.

My favorite seasons are three and one. Two and four are close. Season four has a couple of the best scenes and episodes of the show but overall I just like the others slightly more.
As mentioned the serial killer plot of season five was a bit of a stretch, regardless, it still managed to give me the right amount of closure and still has very strong moments and episodes in it.

I hear People so often say the serial killer plot is to “unrealistic “ or “unbelievable”. But these guys wrote this show so realistically of life in the police department, street, politics and schools. So would they completely deviate from that in Season 5? I have a hard time believing they would. I don’t think it’s beyond the realm of possibility that something like this could of possibly occurred in the Baltimore PD.

Maybe I missed an interview where Simon and/or Burns addressed this issue and confirmed that they made it completely up. If so, please let me know.

FWIW, I think season 2 is consistently way too underrated.

I think 5 is the least awesome, but it is still fairly awesome. My specific criticism about season 5 is that it seems to be a little bit more far fetched and a bit less 'believable', whereas 1-4 all seemed super super realistic and completely authentic.

+17.

I don’t think there are many other universally loved shows with so much consensus on in which order to rank the seasons?

It's been a while since I watched but I always thought season 2 was often wrongly ridiculed. It may have been my favorite. Season 5 was clearly out of ideas bad with the stupid serial killer stuff but that final episode was in my mind the greatest series finale ever made.

If there was a gigantic poll where everyone in OOTV, or any group of reasonably good TV watchers, would have to rank the seasons of The Wire I'm pretty sure the results would be something like this:

1. S3/S4
2. S3/S4
3. S1
4. S2
5. S5

I think S5 really needs to be the worst season by a pretty fair margin and everything else is negotiable. I'd rank them 2, 4, 3, 1, 5 but I think 1-4 are all really close. I can also definitely understand people who disliked 2 for being slow/boring, and of course Ziggy (worst character in the show). Still I feel like only 5 stands out as a clear drop in quality

Ziggy gets too much hate, imo.

Did Nick’s GF ever appear in anything else? She was the queen until Daddario took the crown in True Detective

People just hated Ziggy because of penis envy

so I kinda think s4 is overrated in a sense. I binge watched the whole thin in 3 weeks so I got them back to back.

after I got done with season 1, I felt kinda hollow thinking "well this is a good show but nothign really really sucked me in" I think i was just dumb and was slow catching up to stuff this season.

Season 2 and 5 get A TON of ****ing **** on the internet and as soon as I got done with 2 i enjoyed it more than 1 at first. season 5 was also very good and felt it was a magnificent ending got eh series

season 1 was polarizing for me because I thought it was one of the "weaker" ones but it just sets up the dam series and show so ****ing well, the introductions and plot lines. the characters and all, super well done. Season 3 to me, i was expecting more. i think the way they did avon and bell in the last few episodes kinda felt hollowin a sense, I actually think 3, remembering back, was one o the weaker seasons for me. maybe in my bottom 2 seasons idk, just expected more I guess but who know son re watch

I think a reddit post described the show so well, you could ask 20 people who watched the wire and ask them each wats your fav character, and each person would name a different character,

for me, my favorite was COMMISSIONER DANIELS

I dont think I can ever re watch a series, but yeah, I coudl see why this series is easily re watchable

Frog was great, the should have done more with him

Im on my first watch, season 2 episode 5 now.

Liked the first one more at the moment, which was really good. Took me some time to get into it again because of the pretty drastic change from season 1. Didnt like that, but its oke now. Love the character of bubbles, hope he gets it together. Actually, i like all the characters so far, all well written etc, something which doesnt happen alot comparing it to other tv series.

Im going to stay away here until i finish the show, would be stupid to ask to talk in spoilers in this thread.

Just finished Jonathan Abrams' oral history on it, All The Pieces Matter: The Inside Story of The Wire. Fabulous book and well worth the read. I finished it in about 2 nights of reading after work. Couldn't put it down and highly recommend it.

for tl;dr of a couple of things in this thread:



Ranking would be 4>2>3>1>5. It used to be 3>1>2, but I really loved 2 upon rewatches. The Greek as a personification of unbridled capitalism was phenomenal imo.

I explained my reasoning, that, while I hated the serial killer story line like everyone else, how a series concludes is a key element of its overall quality and few series do the final episode well. The Wire nailed the final episode. The parallels made between the kids introduced in S4 and the old characters everyone had come to know and love were really poignant. Nothing in S2 is as emotionally affecting as seeing Bubbles climb those stairs up to his sister's house or Dukie become the new Bubbles, and that is the argument for why S5, despite its faults, places ahead of S2. Calling such reasoning dumb while making no argument of your own is the lowest form of posting on the internet. So, congrats.

I think this obsession with ranking seasons is completely stupid, so I'll just say that I think 2 is way underrated and 5 isn't as bad as most seem to think.

Easily the best character and arc imo:

Interview with Andre Royo

Also, put me in the camp that thinks TW is the clear GOAT. Just epic and eminently rewatchable.

Stealing Life: The crusader behind The Wire.

Would you say it is like "remember when" of conversation?