Thread for discussing the hit HBO television program The Wire

[killtrocity]

Ok so I'm late to the game, but Season 1 of The Wire is perhaps the greatest thing I've ever seen on television. Every single character from the lowliest drug dealer to the loftiest politician or police major is depicted in such a genuine way that nobody is the good guy. The show very clearly shows that those in positions of greater power or authority are given more liberty to do unethical things and are insulated from the consequences of their behavior. The tragedy is that the real losers are the guys on the bottom, the kids who are murdered so that a drug lord can maintain a stranglehold on his network, the drug addicts who get AIDS form chronic abuse, so that a police deputy can score a photo opp on the evening news, and so all of them can feed their families and amass varying degrees of material shit. Never have I seen such an authentic depiction on the macro scale of the socioeconomic workings of a city. The police are pieces of shit for getting drunk and beating up kids in the projects for fun, but they also possess some tiny semblance of justice for chasing murderers. Everybody fucking sucks but those with more power answer to smaller numbers of people and factions. And everyone is just playing the game.

Also it's extremely refreshing to see a whole bunch of well written, morally conflicted, fully realized black characters.

"You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money, and you don't know where the fuck it's gonna take you. - Lester Freamon

"They fuck up, they get beat. We fuck up, they give us pensions."

embed disabled:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNm3nE-o6ro

Trots if you are reading this you should join in

[Mo]

Still one of my favourite shows, I watch it about once a year. I wish I could watch it for the first time again.

[Run To Me]

Word of warning the Wire can make you pretty angry and it might manifest unexpectedly in your realms of life. For example it motivated me to call out (rather McNultishly) some rank incompetence in high places at my work. Luckily it was absorbed and I kept my job, but I was a little more fired up than I needed to be, and I blame it on my nightly viewing of the Wire, which I was then watching for the first time.

Agreed though, best thing ever on TV. Ranks up there with the best writing I've seen anywhere, in any medium.

[crabshack]

I dispose of all my empty beer cans on top of the local police station.

[teh b0lly!!1]

i also missed the HBO hit television show The Wire, i might start now and join the discussion with you fellow board members

[buzzard]

I'm on the verge of launching a re-viewing of the entire thing with a member of the uninitiated. It feels good.

[Aeris]

you come at the queen you best not miss

[reprise85]

yes, great show