[seansoutpost]

In my opinion this is the greatest, television series of all time. The way every loose end is tied up and they show that really nothing has changed, the cycle just repeats itself... it's a master stroke. I moved to Baltimore years after the series ended, but it could still have been made here today. Just with smartphones and encryption. The players are stil the same and the city is pretty much unchanged in terms of the underlying issues.

And my apartment is across the street from stringers copy shop :)

[Larrikin]

I agree that its the greatest TV show of all time. I used to watch the entire thing once a year and always saw something new that I had missed before. I initially didn't like season 2, and its still my least favorite season, but after finishing the series you realize how important the season was to the overall story in fleshing out the world.

It sadly has begun to show its age.

[blazespin]

Season 2 was huge and i think very prophetic. The whole Trump movement is based on season 2.

[tutufan]

Wat?

[ionised]

Jobs being lost to automation and globalisation

[rdiddly]

It's got some clumsy moments, but yeah absolutely essential to show the interconnectedness. Just one example: If you lose those livable-wage blue-collar jobs, you're absolutely gonna have yourself some thriving criminal enterprises including the drug trade. Does Wee-Bey go to work as a Barksdale soldier if he can easily get a good-paying job at the port or in some kind of manufacturing? It's been the story of every "de-industrializing" US city for the past 50 years.

[thirdsun]

This is also shown when one of the dock workers from season 2 re-appears as homeless person in season 5 (I think).

[sdwisely]

Totally with you, season 2 is my least favorite. But it's also not immediately clear the direction the show is taking at that point.

As each season expands in scope and by the end you feel like you've watched the story of a city you really appreciate it much more.

[STRML]

Watching the newly-released HD version helps quite a bit with that perception of age.

[effie]

How do you mean? Is it better to watch the older SD version to make the imperfections less pronounced?

[SubiculumCode]

I watched season 3 for the first time on a single long international flight in an economy seat. I didn't want to get off the plane. Well almost.

[remarkEon]

Stringer explaining elasticity of demand in the copy shop is one of my all-time favorite scenes in television.

[cbanek]

The scenes of him in economics class are also just amazing.

Stringer talking about inferior product in an aggressive marketplace to his teacher, talking about WorldCom, then rebranding... just brilliant.

[dmourati]

"N...., is you taking notes on a criminal f..king conspiracy?!?"

[thomble]

After he forced the lieutenants to read Robert's Rules of Order.

My favorite part of the series is when String realizes he's been conned by Clay Davis, and tries to put a hit out on him. Avon intervenes and scolds String, saying "what I tell you about playin' them fuckin' away games?" Avon (and later, Marlo) understood that they could never go legit, because going legit is just another unfair game with a different set of rules.

The only character that escaped their fate was Bubbles.

[CPLX]

One of my favorite moments in that scene is hearing Avon say "You'd need a day of the jackal motherfucker for that" and Googling that phrase and discovering and watching the amazing movie of the same name. Thus realizing even more just how perfect that line was in context.

The Wire definitely took attention to detail seriously.

[rpenm]

There are a few other characters who escaped eg. Poot, Namond and Cutty.

[blazespin]

And poot! After killing Wallace too..

[thomble]

Right! They show him in a later season, working at a Foot Locker, right?

[praneshp]

Correct, he's the only one to make it out alive. He asks Dukie to come back in a couple of years for a job.

[dmourati]

"You need a Day of the Jackal type m.....f..... basically to do some sh.t like that, not a rumble tumble N..... like Slim."

[pciexpgpu]

I get giddy thinking about The Wire. It's awesome to say the least. Gave me a new perspective of America.

[tnecniv]

I think season 5 was a little weak but it's still excellent.

[bspn]

Agreed, I really didn't enjoy Season 5 and it was a disappointing end to what was otherwise an epic TV series. McNulty was always an edgy character, but planting evidence and feeding it to the media just felt a little too contrived.

[blazespin]

season 5 made sense given that everyone was getting what they wanted. Policemen who would otherwise question the weak case were happy to get paid. Everyone knew it was bullshit, they made that clear.

Well, except for Daniels, lol. But he was promoted way too fast.

[danso]

I actually didn't have a huge problem with McNulty's arc or twist. It was outlandish but it feels organic not just from a character perspective, but from the rift between homicide detectives and the medical examiners office. In Simon's book, "Homicide", there's a chapter focusing on a death that the coroner declines to classify as a homicide. The detective, however, keeps pursuing the case, which is problematic because there are plenty of active homicide cases to spend time on. He eventually cracks the case but it's presented as the detective going above and beyond given the politics/concerns of the department.

So a "good guy" detective like McNulty fabricating evidence seems like an extreme twist, but not so much the idea that a good guy detective feels that some homicides aren't given enough attention. And McNulty, by this point in the show, feels like a character who is tired of all this shit but also has seen how he's gotten away with being a self-righteous dick who bucks the bureaucracy (from the very first episode). And the difference in opinion between the medical examiner and the police can be very problematic, since the former's designation is what ultimately makes a case a homicide or not.

IMO, the 5th season is the worst because of the newspaper setting. As a journalist, it wasn't particularly compelling to me. I mean, it may be the most realistic depiction of a newspaper on TV, and maybe familiarity breeds contempt, but the core problem is that it's not well-developed. The key flaw is that the "villains" of the newspaper setting, Scott Templeton (the reporter) and his enabling editors, are given no qualities beyond being caricatures of bad/evil journalists. This is the same reason why I feel Lieutenant Marimow (named after a Baltimore Sun whom Simon despised) is also a very weak character.

Compare the shallowness of the 5th season bad-guy journalists to the 3rd-season bad guy politicians, like Clay Davis. Davis is most definitely a corrupt character, but besides having an amazing catchphrase ("Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-iiiit!"), he's still got some moral complexity behind him. I think this is best shown in the hilarious scene in the 5th season in which he takes the stand in his corruption trial with such dramatic finesse that he gets acquitted. Davis may be corrupt, but you can see why his community loves him. [0]

I'm not sure how you could make the 5th season journalists interesting, and I'm not sure Simon could either. His rants against the real-life Marimow and the Sun are lengthy and legendary [1], and this was after he was famous for The Wire. Simon is a die-hard defender of the sanctity of journalism and I think he let that overtake his sensibilities when writing the 5th season.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAQv6KTfQow

[1] http://jimromenesko.com/2012/04/05/david-simon-bill-marimow-...