"From start to finish, The Wire has been one of the best series ever produced for American television, one in which the commitment to honesty and authenticity has never wavered. Despite that quality, its subject matter — nothing less than the failure of the world's most powerful nation to solve the fundamental problems of its urban centers — was never likely to pull in a mass, casual audience."
It was something my uncle used to do all the time. Growing up, he would do it five six seven times a day. You'd go, "Did you sleep well?" and he'd go, "Ah, sheeet, my head was on the pillow." I would every now and then just do it in conversations.
TVGuide.com: Why doesn't The Wire get its due? Wilds: The show is real enough to strike a chord in [everybody], and most of the time people don't want to see realness like that. Or maybe they think that it's fake TV and we're just being violent for no reason. What you see on the show is really happening, and not just in Baltimore. It's happening in a neighborhood two blocks down from where you live. People don't want to open their eyes to the truth.
TVGuide.com: What makes The Wire different from other cop shows? Wilds: I don't want to say it's a cop show. What makes The Wire a beautiful story is how true to life it is. In other shows, you have a good guy and a bad guy. In The Wire, bad guys are trying to be good, good guys are doing bad. You have real life. The people who do bad get bad things done to them.
It was a harsh night on"The Wire" this week, and a beautiful one, too. Beautiful because it was so true and so human that it hurt. And when a television show can make you care the way "The Wire" makes us care, it is worth its weight in tears.
Like the rest of you, I've been watching this story slowly crack open for several years now. It's been 59 hours of TV time; there's one more hour to go, and I can't wait for it. But for now, this hour, this episode, felt like a coming together. It was simply breathtaking -- the logical, perfect conclusion to all those hours, those years' of stories, at once exhilarating and devastating, just like you knew it would be.
I watched this on Tuesday, and it's haunted me in lonely moments ever since. I'm still a bit hopped up on it, so please forgive my sounding overwrought. The thing is, it wasn't just the plot developments that got me, though these were obviously huge: Marlo! Snoop! Namond! Kima! McNulty! Bubbs!
But there was also something more complex here, something more intricately beautiful. In describing "The Wire" to friends, we've all remarked upon on its novelistic properties. This episode felt like the climax of that novel. Every scene hangs on the subtext of years' of accumulated storylines; the story, now, is not just the script but also all that we've learned of these people's motivations, their impulses, their relationships, the constraints in which they operate. The story is the system, and now, finally, we're seeing the system in full.
We're now less than a week away from the season & series finale for The Wire.
Once again, this show has exceeded expectations. Tonight's episode was, like Alan said, the ultimate roller coaster ride. (Speaking of Alan, I'm glad there's no shortage of TV writers who actually know what they're doing out there.)
This show not only rewards you for paying attention early in the season, it calls back stuff that happened way back in Season 1.
There's no way I can write anything to give this show justice. There are plenty of people who can articulate their thoughts far better than I can heaping praise on The Wire out there. This week, I'll try & link to as many of those stories as possible.
These past two episodes have been unreal. First, dealing with the whole Omar thing. Tonight, there was far too much to even touch on here.
Thank goodness for DVDs, because this is something I will be re-watching many times.
Lots of stuff I want to throw up here, so here we go.
- Watching UConn host Depaul as I compose this. The Huskies are on a nice roll ever since the Dyson/Wiggins suspensions. Things will be quite interesting when Dyson returns next week. (By the way, how sweet are Depaul's unis? I would love to get my hands on a pair of those shorts.)
- If saying a prayer is your sort of thing, please do me a favor and say one for my cat Cosmo. Tomorrow he goes to the vet to have half of his tail amputated. He had been biting the tip of it pretty bad, saw the vet who covered it up & gave him some antibiotics (which he had a horrible reaction to) but it didn't heal properly and they want to amputate just in case there's cancer involved. He's my boy and I'll be a little on edge Wednesday thinking about him. :(
- Mary's away again, this time in Australia. At least this trip is only two weeks instead of three.
- Before she left, we went to NYC last Saturday to catch Lower Ninth, a play about two guys stranded on a roof in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The draw for me was two of the three actors in it. Gbenga Akinnagbe (Chris Partlow from The Wire) & Gaius Charles (Smash Williams from Friday Night Lights). (The 3rd was James McDaniel from NYPD Blue.) All three actors were amazing and the location, the Flea Theater, was unique, to say the least. It seats about 50 people and you have to walk across the stage to get to your seats. It made for a great time. Those guys are pretty damn talented.
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Yup, you read that right. My Dell laptop, which has served me well for almost five years now, is on its last legs. It's been continuously locking up & giving me the BSOD several times. I'm in the process of moving all my files to my external hard drive and just waiting for the next trip to the Apple Store. I've done a lot of research and have decided that the 20" iMac is everything I'll need. I'm looking forward to playing around with iLife and doing some cool things with photos and videos.
- Thanks to this story in the Hartford Courant yesterday, I discovered The Caldor Rainbow, a fantastic blog that documents the current fate of Caldor, Bradlees, Ames and other long forgotten retail giants of the Northeast. There's a ton of fascinating information buried there. I just wish there were some tags or some other form of organization. Great stuff though. Be prepared to waste some time there.
- Another interesting item I discovered yesterday was the story of Centralia, Pennsylvania. In short, it's a town that is basically deserted due to a fire underground that has been burning since the 1960's. There are a ton of eerie photos from this town.
- The Wire is down to it's final three episodes and I'm a little sad. There's talk of a prequel movie, which would be outstanding. To any of my friends who have not watched the show, my DVDs are making the rounds & I will be happy to let you borrow them to experience this masterpiece.
If you're not watching "The Wire", don't worry, this isn't the post where I try & convince you to watch. I've most likely already talked to you about it and if you really need more convincing, just Google "The Wire" + "best show". Wait. I'll save you the time. Just click here. Besides, that post will be coming soon.
Instead, I'd just like to list MY favorite characters from the show.
This show is incredibly written, incredibly cast & acted even more incredibly. David Simon & Ed Burns throw a lot of characters at us over the years, but they all grow on you eventually. I wish I could put into words how great everything about this show is, but again, you can Google for yourself & read what people with far better writing skills than I have to say about it.
For the HM guys, I will try & link to a YouTube clip of theirs. For the other 20, I'll embed the clip right into the post. BEWARE. I can pretty much assure you that all of these videos that will have language NSFW.
One other thing to watch out for. If you plan on watching the show (which I really hope you do), many of these clips will contain spoilers, some pretty big ones too. Just a heads up.
#20 Sgt. Jay Landsman Landsman cracks me up. He's not ashamed to be sitting at his desk, reading some hard-core porn, even in front of the Mayor of Baltimore. He's based on a real Jay Landsman, who happens to play the role of Lt. Dennis Mello. The show really is "all connected."
One of the most memorable moments of the show:
#19 Elena McNulty Det. McNulty's ex-wife, she didn't make the list because of her character, she made the list because I adore Callie Thorne. I've liked her ever since her role of Detective Laura Ballard on Homicide: Life On The Street. (Another David Simon production.)
#18 Senator Clay Davis Senator Davis, a horribly corrupt politician, makes the list for his signature line.
#17 D'Angelo Barksdale One of the many great aspects of this show is how it blurs the line between good guys & bad guys. The guys you're supposed to root against, you end up rooting for. D'Angelo is one of those guys.
#16 Brother Mouzone A small, but memorable role for the Harper's Weekly reading enforcer.
#15 Dennis "Cutty" Wise Cutty's rise during season's 3 & 4 is one of the very few uplifting story lines in The Wire.
#14 Preston "Bodie" Broadus Bodie has lots of memorable scenes in nearly every season. He grows on you.
#13 Det. Kima Greggs Unfortunately for my faithful readers, there aren't many good YouTube clips of Kima that don't involve her & her girlfriend. I wanted to show her police-ness in this space. :)
#12 Michael Lee Season 4 focuses on the problems with the schools in Baltimore. We're introduced to a handful of kids, nearly all of which you will become extremely attached to emotionally.
#11 Chris Partlow I love, love, love this character. The way he goes about his business, expressionless & without emotion (with one notable exception) is fun to watch.
#10 Bubbles How Andre Royo has not won himself a handful of Emmy's for his role of Bubbles is beyond me.
#9 Sgt. Ellis Carver For all the bleakness The Wire shows, there are many, many funny scenes. Sgt. Carver seems to be behind a lot of them.
#8 Duquan "Dukie" Weems Poor Dukie. I love this kid. His interaction with Prez is inspiring to this future teacher.
#7 Proposition Joe Prop Joe, the master of negotiations.
#6 Major Cedric Daniels Major Daniels climbs the ladder, but has a questionable past, which we may learn about in season 5.
#5 Stringer Bell
#4 Det. Bunk Moreland Bunk is a funny man!
#3 Set. Lester Freamon Lester is the Father Figure of the bunch. Stand-up guy & real po-lice.
#2 Det. Jimmy McNulty McNulty would probably be considered the main character. I could post 20 clips just of him. Good stuff here.
#1 Omar Little Omar is not only the best character on The Wire, he may be the best character in the history of television. A modern-day Robin Hood, Omar answers to a code & that's it. For all the cursing these characters do, good like finding one coming from Omar's mouth. (Only one to be exact & that was it.)
