[khm]

They would seem less implausible if you spent some time in Baltimore. Fond memories of a guy dressed as a hedgehog threatening to blow up a TV station until the police shot him with a beanbag and the bomb robot discovered his explosives were foil-wrapped chocolate. For a while there was an anti-gang gang. Omar Little and Avon Barksdale were based on real people. There is very little bullshit in the show.

[keiferski]

People always say this when you criticize the show. At the end of the day it’s a television show; I’m sure much of it is based on truth, but ultimately it’s a written piece of art, not a documentary.

[ZeroGravitas]

But it is based, ultimately, on a doorstep sized book of hard hitting journalism about the participants and victims of the drug war by one of the writers and the real life experience of a journalist, a cop and a teacher. And it shows.

[khm]

I wonder why, when people from Baltimore "always say this," your instinct is to assume they're also lying. I wonder if there might be other reasons people from Baltimore "always say this"?

[keiferski]

I didn’t say people from Baltimore always say this. I said people always say this when the show is criticized. Even then, I’m pretty skeptical of the possibility that people commenting on random Reddit or HN topics were personally involved in the drug trade in Baltimore twenty years ago.

As I wrote in my initial comment, the show is great but has an irritating fan base that is hostile to anyone suggesting that it isn’t a documentary. It’s a television show that uses fairly standard narrative techniques to tell a story. That doesn’t mean it’s made up; but it does mean that it isn’t a unquestionably factual story, as its fan base would like you to believe.

It’s a very similar situation to people that insist New York is the greatest city in the world. Yeah, it’s an awesome place, and probably in the top ten. But this obsession with “being the best city/best TV show of all time” clouds judgement and becomes a cultish attitude after awhile.