I felt the first episodes of 1 2 and 3 were super hard to get into, each season takes 2 eps to really start gettng a grasp of things, especially s3 imo. but im dumb.


enjoy the ride, its truly brilliant

Will buy it, thanks for letting me know about that book. literally just purchased it

I agree with most everything said in these two statements. I think the show is clear unquestionable GOAT and I'd probably rank the quality of seasons 4>3>1>2>5, but I think personally I just enjoy 5 more than 2. 2 almost operates as a spin off one off self-encapsulated season. It is great, but it is such a departure from the mood and feel of the rest of the seasons that for me it just sticks out when watching the show straight through. Ziggy is the worst, but I've grown to appreciate his character more with each watch. He is very well acted and represents a fringe character without a place in the crumbling blue collar working class. Nick, however, is the worst acted character with any decent screentime in The Wire.

I'd wager that I've seen The Wire through more than pretty much anyone outside of their editing studio and I feel like season 5 is very underrated. It was a bit rushed and a bit unhinged, but still great. The weakest part of the final season imo was the journalism Templeton storyline. Sure the serial killer storyline was a bit exaggerated, but not any more than Hamsterdam, which is a consensus top 2 season. I think the poignancy of S5 is even more apparent today than ever. The serial killer storyline basically showed that people care more about fabricated deaths than the lives or concerns of troubled inner city populations. Marlo WAS a serial killer; he was indiscriminate to whether they were civilians or street thugs (the security guard or any 'snitch') and they couldn't get the funding to run a case against him, but an easily fabricated fake serial killer created loads of funding and even got Carcetti elected Governor.

Favorite storylines:
Bubbles' redemption
Carcetti's failures
Every Bunny Colvin storyline (seriously, he is integral to the 2 biggest storylines on the show)
The Kids
Stringer/Avon's drifting apart
Cutty

Favorite characters:
Snoop
Bunk
Lester Smooth
Bubbles
Slim Charles

This is the only show that I can relate any facet of everyday life to a Wire saying or still find relevant political/socioeconomic points a decade later. The show can be fun or depressingly serious. I still claim that this is the best piece of modern fiction since Shakespeare.

good writeup.

I think COMISSIONER DANILES is my fav character but my next 4? SHIIIIIIIIEEETTTT thats a tough one to list

It's rare that I 100% agree with so many sentences on the interwebs in a row. Well done.

regarding favorite characters:

Like many folks, I'm sure I said Omar after my first watch.

Not sure how many times I've rewatched the series (4? with some episodes more than that), but after so many rewatches, now Bunk and Lester are my favorties. Natural poh-lice. Every word they speak is gold.

I thought a spinoff with Omar and Brother Mouzone as partners would make a good movie.

For a few episodes (probably more like the whole season), I thought his name was Brother Moves On. It made sense to me because they brought him in to do a job and then he moved on.

except he mostly "worked" in nyc until a contract comes down. he was pretty bad ass but you cant tell me that cheese gets shot and punked like he did and lets him sit reading his books for however long after. bodie went to a full on battle over a corner, but he gets to sit there not paying attention by himself? and omar gets him solo no problem?

Okay here we go

1. Cheese couldnt just go blazing on Brother M as that would have led to war w Barksdale, as Avon hired BrotherM. Cheese went back to Prop JOe and Prop Joe went to Stringer. Remember Prop and String made deal behind Avons back in order to get the good dope.

In order for Prop not to pull deal as he cant have his men getting shot up String concocts plan to get rid of Brother by sicking Omar on him.He made lie of Brother being the one who messed up Omar's sausage eater Brandon.


Also people didnt mess with Brother but he still had a lookout/helper guy who had his back. Omar took out this guy and got to Brother, not a stretch at all.

its a slight stretch cause...

joe already cleaned up cheeses' mess once with ziggy for nicky/the greeks.

avon was already weak which is why he hired brother in the first place.
--brother + lookout arent hard to take down, its not gonna be openly obvious who to go after, esp since brother always kept himself quiet; i find it hard to believe hes naming names other than the "east side boys" he was paid to run off in the first place

stringers clear avoiding of violence would HELP cheese, as he'd be still trying to talk avon out of a war (like he did every other time in the show)

cheese kills hungryman in s5 for calling him a *****, but he'll let someone go with shooting him and sitting on his bench? his penchant for keeping his rep wouldnt let that go.

as D said, shooters come cheap. easy to get some no name pawns to light up a corner for him. proven so many times through the show (bodie/poot, the asthma kid, michael, kenard and however many others im forgetting atm)

imagine any scenario in which that were marlo instead of cheese and you know what would have happened, and he still came out the king. cheese pussed out and only lived a couple eps longer than omar who gave zero ****s the whole time. marlo was at war since he came on the scene and had others take care of it for him the whole time (omar calling him a ***** all s5)

and last point, cheeses' dog gets killed and he goes on a hunt for that, so its not like he is great at showing control and tactics

Rewatching for the third time because of this thread.

One of the reason this show is so great is because the secondary characters crush their roles. Rawls speech to McNutty in the hospital after Kima got shot was one of my favorite scenes in season one. If you like Rawls (John Doman) check out Borgia.

I'm definitely enjoying this rewatch the most. I typically hate rewatching but this show is almost a mandatory second view to really appreciate how everything is so connected.

I should rewatch this, was a great show. If you want to rank seasons you can make a plausible case for the first 4 being in any order. The only thing set in stone is that 5 is the worst (and worst of the Wire is still decent).

It's a shame they didn't do that 6th season about the Latino influx.

The shows writing and character development is what sets this show apart from any other show. Very, very few shows ever have been not centered around 1 main character like the Wire. Though some claim that the city of Baltimore is the main character.

Example of how non dependent the show is on any of its characters. Season 4 is widely regarding as the best season of the show and some say the best season in television history. Stringer, Mcnaulty and Avon, 3 of the shows best figures (and personally my top 2 characters in Stringer and Mcnaulty) have little or no role in the entire season.

There's a lot to S5 that holds up really well:

"Americans are generally stupid people; we pretty much believe whatever we're told", and then Bunk nails it: "The bigger the lie, the more they believe".

A few episodes later, the ex-marine explains to Gus: "You lie about combat stories because you *weren't* there."

At one point one of the older copywriters corrects the new girl's use of "evacuate", and then a few episodes later McNulty (has to be the smartest guy in the room) uses the word in a way that would make Gus proud:
Rookie: "The guy stinks."
Jimmy: "Yea he probably evacuated."
Rookie: "What, he left and came back?"
Jimmy: "No, he sh*t himself."

The newer writers complaining about doing "react quotes" surely resemble the frustrations of today's media writers being assigned to publish what folks are saying on Twitter.

Agree with the season ranking consensus. For me and my wife The Wire is there with Breaking Bad..

A couple of things I found interesting about the series.

In most series you can label certain characters as untouchable. In the Wire there would be a scene and you'd think, there is no way this character is going to die in this scene, then.....boom....omg.. that was cool..

Another interesting thing was how we the viewers saw the show from "inside" the Barksdale crew when they were relevant/top dogs, but they took a different approach when the Marlow crew became relevant.

They intentionally has us looking at Marlow from the outside, and though they gave us little in direct character development/insight, it worked really well and kind of matched up with Marlow's persona.... nobody is getting in my head, including you the viewer. Basically, "i am what I do and that is all you need to know."

Omar and Bubbles were awesome

killing people off: except GoT ofc

i kinda agree with you about the crews but also not. marlo just ran his his way. he dictated and there werent arugments (like bodie and poot standing vs stringer in their meeting) or conflict, like avon and stringer disagreeing. marlo told chris what to do and it got done. he didnt maintain his shops the same way because he didnt have to. he took shops and corners and took his cut off them. he played the same game but with zero margin for error in his soldiers. even when fruit had trouble with bodie across the street, marlo barely said anything and it was taken care of. as soon as stringer approached about a deal, he didnt worry about the options, he just went to war. the only time he asked for anything was from the greeks and he still got his way and got rid of the current "king"

I started rewatching due to this thread. Probably 6th or 7th time but first time in 3+ years.

I struggle finding new shows which I stick to & which make me look forward to watching the next episode every episode (which is my favorite thing about TV shows). The Wire just nails this.

This is also the first time I am watching after having a solid amount of experience in corporate life, and it adds another great layer to the show I didn't even appreciate in my previous watches. I used to not care at all about Daniels, Rawls and everything surrounding cop hierarchy in the show, now it are some of my favorite moments so far in S1. Daniels even is one of my favorite characters so far in this watch.

GOAT gonna GOAT

That's funny, because my two best friends have trouble sticking with The Wire. I blame them for being idiots.

De'Londa (Namond's Mom) is great. Perfect match for Wee-Bey. She just oozes sass.

Cheese would have just got himself killed if he went at Brother. He was a blowhard whose uncle gave him a job. Omar was really good at what he did. Mouzone appeared to be late 30's-mid 40's, and had likely gone up against plenty of actual professionals like Slim Charles (who easily killed Cheese), Cutty, Chris, and Weebay. Like Omar said: How are you going to run with wolves at night when you spend your days sparring with the puppies?

Starting season 4 now (ep2) To bad the intro cover song sucks pretty hard this season, it was really good previous seasons. (S3 favorite so far, also best season)

I really enjoy Bunk as a character, along with the probably most common favorites mcnulty/stringer/omar. But all characters are really good, glad to see Prez is back. I was pretty sure he wasn't comming back after what happend in s3. The only character im not so sure about is Carcetti. Its not bad, but not as interesting as everything else so far.

joe also says brother has more bodies on him than a chinese graveyard

Disappointed Bodie's not getting any love itt.