You ain't shit when it comes to policin' - The Wire thread

[Mischief Maker]

If people are reliving The Sopranos on HBOmax right now, you've got to give some love to The Wire, HBO's other all-time greatest show:

The "fuck" scene.

Funeral Flowers.

Omar goes to court.

Grandma's church crown.

And of course, This ain't police work and it's later-season follow-up where's the love?

So many careers launched by this show.

Also love for its true-story spiritual successor "We own this City" (Can't find the jury selection scene on Youtube)

[BIL]

Didn't realise either of these were on streaming, I've been piratin' em up like it's 2009.

"This range, this caliber? Even if I miss I can't miss." <-- shmuppin words for real, RIP Michael K. Williams. 3;

EDIT: Christ, any random scene from this show - much like in The Sopranos - will be of such quality, I end up wanting to highlight a million things other than the line I was remembering. There's a solid dozen quotables in that exchange alone, never mind the cinematography.

[Dochartaigh]

Still doesn't hold a candle to The Sopranos.

I'm one of those people who will NEVER, ever, be a teacher because I can't automatically remember 20+ peoples names given in a short time period. Similar to how I can never really get vested in The Wire when ~half+ of the cast is new every single season. Can't tell who the hell is who (minor characters) half the time, especially when they're just references by somebody else by name (who the f is that??? is a common refrain I say to myself). And this too-quick change-up doesn't let me get to know people intimately.

...Even the main characters of The Wire seem very shallow in comparison to the leads of The Sopranos – who you literally get to know so many nuances of their family, friends, past, their ticks, their annoyances etc. etc. etc. Even when a new character is introduced in The Sopranos, and of course only to get knocked off at some point, it's still WAY less people, and you STILL get a real feeling of what they're really like, or at least a (way more relatable) bit in every day situations (both mundane family-oriented, and criminally).

...or maybe the Sopranos is simply 'more relatable' for the majority of people, period, because I'll bet ~80% of the gamers on this forum are middle-class and grew up in the suburbs (for myself, in the same suburbs in NJ the entire Sopranos takes place...), and not in the crime ridden areas similar to Baltimore... so I relate WAY more to the Sopranos (even if I'm not, as far as you guys know, in organized crime).

[BIL]

The way I see it, The Sopranos is more of a traditional character study in cops n' robbers garb. Its world is marvelously well-crafted, but crafted nonetheless; Tony would last about a week as capo, never mind boss, with the same vulnerabilties that make him a GOAT protagonist. The Wire is almost the inverse; a glimpse of nasty brutish and short (on both sides of the law), and by necessity, more anonymous and fleeting.

Not to say there isn't some crossover, here, with The Sopranos having its share of ugly car-crash ends ("Let's do it before the crank wears off" - another authentic shmuppin line ), and The Wire a core of improbably long-lived favourites. Ultimately I associate them more on their production and design sense, than their respective literary contents... they're 70hr crime movies/novels both, but not entirely in the same genre.

[MintyTheCat]

The Wire is a fantastic crime drama.

I've always had a soft spot for crime dramas and really liked NYPD Blue.
However, The Wire was different: gritty, down at it, no show, no pretense - just as it is.

This gives it an edge.

Some genuinely hard scenes mixed in with really quite hopeful and positive ones.
It's kind of hard to achieve that balance but I feel that it managed to achieve that.

Certainly one of my favourite TV programmes.

[Mischief Maker]

Visiting my mom for the holidays and she's a Law & Order fanatic.

I can't help but chuckle at the recurring situation where the detectives find what's clearly supposed to be an open and shut case, but Van Buren tells them to take several more days following up on the tiniest loose string in case there's a bigger story to be uncovered.

And I imagine Landsman popping in from out of frame and yelling at them about the clearance rate.

[Hoagtech]

I just crept in here to say I have tried to get into The Wire on three different occasions based on high praise from a lot of people.

I always get distracted and don’t let the incremental drama sink in enough to get me hooked.

I’ll have to take your recommendation MM and give it another chance when I clear my evening schedule.

That being said.. Sopranos FTW!

[Mischief Maker]

I found it helps family members to turn subtitles on for all the slang.

[GaijinPunch]

Fans of The Wire need to give We Own This City a day in court. Great stuff. I should go through this again.

[moonblood]

Wasn't Homicide: Life on The Street kind of a precursor to The Wire? Really liked that show

[cj iwakura]

I always think of that hilarious scene of them moving the body to another district to avoid having to handle it themselves, felt wildly accurate to how departments with multiple districts operate. (Though not with stuff like that, just minor things like traffic accidents.)

[Eaglet]

For those who are critiquing the characters, calling them shallow compared to other series;
The main character of The Wire is Baltimore. Every human character is an agent acting as a driver for illustrating various aspects of the city and why it's fucked up.
Changing perspective at least helped me understand what the show was about.
It's my favorite series even if I've only seen it through twice.

[BIL]

^ Excellent post, and good to see you!

[Some-Mist]

snoop buying a new nailgun is one of my favorite scenes of the series

Still doesn't hold a candle to The Sopranos.

I'm one of those people who will NEVER, ever, be a teacher because I can't automatically remember 20+ peoples names given in a short time period. Similar to how I can never really get vested in The Wire when ~half+ of the cast is new every single season. Can't tell who the hell is who (minor characters) half the time, especially when they're just references by somebody else by name (who the f is that??? is a common refrain I say to myself). And this too-quick change-up doesn't let me get to know people intimately.

...Even the main characters of The Wire seem very shallow in comparison to the leads of The Sopranos – who you literally get to know so many nuances of their family, friends, past, their ticks, their annoyances etc. etc. etc. Even when a new character is introduced in The Sopranos, and of course only to get knocked off at some point, it's still WAY less people, and you STILL get a real feeling of what they're really like, or at least a (way more relatable) bit in every day situations (both mundane family-oriented, and criminally).

...or maybe the Sopranos is simply 'more relatable' for the majority of people, period, because I'll bet ~80% of the gamers on this forum are middle-class and grew up in the suburbs (for myself, in the same suburbs in NJ the entire Sopranos takes place...), and not in the crime ridden areas similar to Baltimore... so I relate WAY more to the Sopranos (even if I'm not, as far as you guys know, in organized crime).

I can relate to sopranos more, but I am a bigger fan of the wire. it's intimidating but it's similar to watching game of thrones or reading the sound & the fury or as I lay dying for the first time. you're witnessing all of these interactions between characters that you haven't seen develop yet. it's hard to gauge the importance of it so you just try and remember the characters the best you can. after you're done watching when you go back and rewatch from the beginning of the show and know who all the characters are it feels like you're let in on the secret because you finally understand why in the first episode stringer bell sketches a fun little drawing for mcnulty when you initially thought stringer might just be a lawyer, social worker, or w/e. You start to see repeat characters and who becomes a mainstay by the time you're into season 3, so it's a lot easier to grasp at that point. It's like seeing theon greyjoy's interactions with ned/rob/the stark family in season 1 of GOT before you even learn who he is or what he going to do in the story, and then when you rewatch all those season 1 interactions it's a "holy shit" moment.

[Mischief Maker]

Also Sopranos is a character study of Tony Soprano and his surrounding families while The Wire is a study of a broken system more than the characters who inhabit it.

It's kind of the point that every time the big drug boss gets caught he's immediately replaced with barely a hiccup in the flow of drugs. Avon Barksdale was absolutely ruthless when he needed to be, but the basketball ref who called against him lived, while his replacement Marlo Stanfield would kill you and your entire family just for talking back.

Interesting thing I noticed the second time watching Season 3, both Stringer Bell and Bunny Colwin say, "Just do it, motherfucker!" right before having their world destroyed by a vengeful system for daring to innovate.