Jump to content

Official BBF The Wire thread


cherdano

Recommended Posts

Best TV show ever and not close IMO. I lend my dvd to many people and everybody love it.

 

Each season is quite different from the others and every seasons has closure and hold on it own.

 

Modern day TV series plans are often

 

1 -write a pilot

2 - hire a bunch of writers

3 - do whatever you need to get ratings up

4 - When the rating are up do whatever you need to get a new season

5 - put a stupid cliffhanger so that the 2nd season start high.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 56
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Just finished watching the last episode of season 1.

 

Loved the scene where Rawls tells McNulty with a straight face “I really want to see you land on your feet here. So tell me, where do you not want to go?”. And the one where Daniels tells Carver “A couple of weeks from now, you’re gonna be in some district somewhere with eleven to twelve uniforms looking to you for everything. And some of them are gonna be good police, some of them are gonna be young and stupid, a few are gonna be pieces of *****. But all of them will take their cue from you. You show them loyalty, they learn loyalty. You show them it’s about the work, it’ll be about the work. You show them some other kind of game, then that’s the game they’ll play.”

 

That wrap up scene with Omar was pretty amazing. Who'd have thought a scene like that could be so heartening? All in the game, yo.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Saw a David Simon story in the Washington Post yesterday

 

Excerpt:

BALTIMORE In the halcyon days when American newspapers were feared rather than pitied, I had the pleasure of reporting on crime in the prodigiously criminal environs of Baltimore. The city was a wonderland of chaos, dirt and miscalculation, and loyal adversaries were many. Among them, I could count police commanders who felt it was their duty to demonstrate that crime never occurred in their precincts, desk sergeants who believed that they had a right to arrest and detain citizens without reporting it and, of course, homicide detectives and patrolmen who, when it suited them, argued convincingly that to provide the basic details of any incident might lead to the escape of some heinous felon. Everyone had very good reasons for why nearly every fact about a crime should go unreported.

 

In response to such flummery, I had in my wallet, next to my Baltimore Sun press pass, a business card for Chief Judge Robert F. Sweeney of the Maryland District Court, with his home phone number on the back. When confronted with a desk sergeant or police spokesman convinced that the public had no right to know who had shot whom in the 1400 block of North Bentalou Street, I would dial the judge.

 

And then I would stand, secretly delighted, as yet another police officer learned not only the fundamentals of Maryland's public information law, but the fact that as custodian of public records, he needed to kick out the face sheet of any incident report and open his arrest log to immediate inspection. There are civil penalties for refusing to do so, the judge would assure him. And as chief judge of the District Court, he would declare, I may well invoke said penalties if you go further down this path.

 

Delays of even 24 hours? Nope, not acceptable. Requiring written notification from the newspaper? No, the judge would explain. Even ordinary citizens have a right to those reports. And woe to any fool who tried to suggest to His Honor that he would need a 30-day state Public Information Act request for something as basic as a face sheet or an arrest log.

 

"What do you need the thirty days for?" the judge once asked a police spokesman on speakerphone.

 

"We may need to redact sensitive information," the spokesman offered.

 

"You can't redact anything. Do you hear me? Everything in an initial incident report is public. If the report has been filed by the officer, then give it to the reporter tonight or face contempt charges tomorrow."

 

The late Judge Sweeney, who'd been named to his post in the early 1970s, when newspapers were challenging the Nixonian model of imperial governance, kept this up until 1996, when he retired. I have few heroes left, but he still qualifies.

 

To be a police reporter in such a climate was to be a prince of the city, and to be a citizen of such a city was to know that you were not residing in a police state. But no longer -- not in Baltimore and, I am guessing, not in any city where print journalism spent the 1980s and '90s taking profits and then, in the decade that followed, impaling itself on the Internet.

The complete story, which is a constructive rant of sorts and a warning, appears here.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

Heh

 

Never heard of the program until reading this thread. Now got through the first 3 series in a week!

 

I could probably understand about 1 word in 3, for the first 3 episodes or so, and reckon I am now up to about 4 words in 5. I just realised that I can get it with English subtitles, but probably will not bother now.

 

It was a good job someone told me to stick with it for the first 3 episodes, or I might have given up after the first, and that would have been a mistake.

 

I bet the Baltimore tourist board is regretting that this program was made :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am halfway thru season 3....a real slice of (the underside of) life.

 

Gritty, intriguing and most of all, entertaining. The acting is superb.

 

How does everyone feel about the theme song? I really still prefer the season 1 version but enjoy the spin of each different interpretation.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Saw a David Simon story in the Washington Post yesterday

Reminds me of an incident in San Diego about 25 years ago. Cops "raided" a private home, did not identify themselves on entry, and one of them ended up struggling on the floor with the homeowner (who was innocent of any wrongdoing). Another officer walked up and shot the man six times — in the back. The DA's official pronouncement: "Yeah, they screwed up. But I'm not gonna prosecute." :-(

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Similar thing happened here. Cops felt that a man was involved in drugs/guns and they broke into his home in the small hours of the morning.

 

Failing to indentify themselves properly (we were having a rash of home invasions at the time with beatings and deaths the result) the man defended himself by firing his gun thru the door that the "invaders" were trying to break down.

 

Result, 1 cop killed, 1 prosecution for 2nd deg. murder of a man defending himself in his home and 1 not-guilty verdict handed down.

 

btw no contraband nor illicit activities were uncovered. It appears that the intel was of the WMD variety...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How does everyone feel about the theme song?  I really still prefer the season 1 version but enjoy the spin of each different interpretation.

I agree with you. The second season was the "original" by Tom Waits, but to my mind not a patch on the blind boys of alabama. Probably heresy to say so.

 

Another thing: What happened to the rank of Captain in the poh-leece? Seems like it goes from detective, to sergeant, to lieutenant, then leapfrogs captain to major, then colonel. I remember when Starsky and Hutch used to report to a captain (Dobey?), but there ain't no captains in Baltimore.

 

News flash: I have just noticed that it is finally coming to terrestrial TV here in UK, next week (Mon 30 March 2009, BB2, 23:30). Always behind the times.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Maybe the pejorative assignation of the typically black "captain" as bell-captain or pullman railcar captain.....there are a lot of black officers in the BPD.

I suspect that it has more to do with the number of officers under your command. In some back-country no-account town, the "boss" would be in charge of a relatively small unit, justifying a captain's grade. In something the size of Baltimore I suspect that once you get above Lieutenant the number of Lieutenants etc under you would be enough to justify a majority (sic).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...
Rented the whole series over the past 6 weeks or so (in part because of this thread.) I liked the first season best. Snoop's my favorite character (even though she didn't appear until Season 3, if memory serves. Kenard's another great character but didn't get much screentime.) I can't stand the theme music, it's goddawful, and I don't care for McNutty, but otherwise great show.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 5 months later...

Omar turned up on Matt Yglesias' blog today in a warning to Democrats who may be second guessing their position on health care reform:

 

 

If you don’t pass the bill, you’ve made your opponent’s case for you. Which might not be so bad except you already voted for the bill. Once you vote for something, you’ve got to try to pass it. Omar says that if you come at the king, you’d best not miss. They’re wise words. Otherwise people are going to spend the fall talking about how they actually voted for health reform before they voted against it.

Lesson here Dems? Mos' def.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 months later...

Where are they now?

 

“You got to think about what we got in this game for,” Stringer once admonished a colleague, his soft, deep voice studded with emphatic profanity (here deleted): “Was it the rep? Was it so our names could ring out on some ghetto street corner? Naw, man. There’s games beyond the game.”

From A ‘Wire’ Star Redirects His Electricity

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 months later...
We just finished watching the last episode of season 3. I don't see how you can top this season.

Haha, man most hardcore wire fans put 4 higher than 3 ime. Personally I prefer 3 but you will be really happy with 4 trust me.

 

This show is just incredible though and seasons 3 and 4 are still easily the best TV ever to me.

 

Season 1 was awesome too but of course part of the greatness of the wire is how the build upon previous things that have happened and reference them, and of course season 1 didn't have nearly as much of that since it was the first, but I am still very fond of 1.

 

My personal rankings are 3>4>1>5>2.

 

Maybe I prefer 3 the most because I am so fond of Brotha Mouzone, what a freaking character.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I guess I go with the multitude. My ordering is 4>3>1>2>>5. I think that it's very close between the first four seasons, especially 1 and 3.

 

5 is still worth it, though. Just because it's may be the worst season of the show, it's still better than most other things out there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think I go:

 

4>3>1>>5>2

 

I'm torn on season 5 as it definitely had a lot of new characters that I don't care about as much (in the newsroom) and too much focus on that, but I found the ability of season 5 to wrap up the series in a way that really fit the whole show for me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Elianna's order sounds right.

It's curious that the media part, i.e. the part with which the author is the most familiar, is (IMO) the weakest part of the story. But yes season 5 still beats any other TV show.

Season 5 was rushed, it was supposed to be 13 episodes and they cut it to 10. Standard TV network BS.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...

×
×
  • Create New...