No Justice for The Wire
The Wire, by far the best show in the history of television, got another snub at the Emmys with a lousy one nomination and zero victories. For the show’s relatively weak fifth season that maybe seems okay until you realize that across five seasons the show garnered just two nominations and zero victories. Absurd:
“It’s like them never giving a Nobel Prize to Tolstoy,” said Jacob Weisberg, editor-in-chief of the Slate Group and a correspondent for Slate.com. “It doesn’t make Tolstoy look bad, it makes the Nobel Prize look bad.”
Weisberg, who has been an ardent supporter of “The Wire,” added, “It’s sort of proof if you needed any that the Emmys are not something that should be taken seriously.”
It’s all pretty shameful. On the other hand, The Wire certainly can’t complain that it lacked in critical acclaim. It just seems that all the critics in the world can’t actually force people to watch your show.
68 Responses to “No Justice for The Wire”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
September 22nd, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Shame about The Wire, but in a country where American Idol is the most popular show year after year, a show like The Wire is wasted on most.
On the other hand, Mad Men is teh awesome! and its good to see it get recognition. Shame no one watches Mad Men either.
September 22nd, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Pair this with Arrested Development and it seems like TV keeps getting better while the tastes of TV viewers stay the same.
September 22nd, 2008 at 5:45 pm
It doesn’t matter what the critical acclaim is for any television show, if it can’t pull it’s weight in the ratings, it’s not going to get any Emmy awards. Films are another story entirely though. If a movie gets critical acclaim and no one goes to see it, it just might get an Academy award because it’s art. TV is much more of a free market paradigm. Sarcasm here of course….
September 22nd, 2008 at 5:50 pm
I’m going to copy the comment I made on Ta-Nehisi’s similar post:
I think a big part of why actors like Michael K Williams were never considered for the big acting awards is that there was a subconscious (or very conscious, I’m not sure which) assumption that because these actors were black, they automatically had a familiarity with the roles that made them less of a challenge. Omar was an exceedingly complex character, but if you think ahead of time that Michael K Williams must be pretty familiar with being a thug, since he’s black and all, then you’re not going to give him his due.
Same with the kids in Season 4, or Idris Elba, or Wood Harris. If you think they’re playing a natural role, then they’re not acting, and you don’t have to give them an award.
It’s all total bullshit, but clearly no one on the selection committee (or however they pick these things) thought through their own biases.
September 22nd, 2008 at 5:53 pm
It’s hard to dispute that the fifth season was the weakest one, though. There were only ten episodes, which meant that nearly the only story threads that got any attention were the two dumb gimmick plots–the “cops invent fictional serial killer” plot and the (slightly more plausible) “reporter invents conversations with fictional serial killer and wins Pulitzer” plot. And Gus Haynes, the put-upon Sun editor character, was just a bit too obviously David Simon’s avatar in his own private Second Life. Meanwhile, lots of extremely interesting characters were reduced to one-scene cameos or dropped entirely.
I have to agree that previous seasons deserved a bunch of Emmys, though.
September 22nd, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Depressing != Good.
Homicide was a better show than Wire anyways…
September 22nd, 2008 at 5:55 pm
First, season 5 wasn’t relatively weak, unless you’re only comparing it to season 4. I’d argue that you’re remember seasons 1-3 with rose-colored glasses in the wake of the triumphant season 4.
Second, the Emmys are, by and large, television industry graft for producers, crew, writers, actors, etc. living in LA. So a show like, say, Boston Legal, keeps getting nominations because it provides a lot of jobs to people in So. Cal. Ballmer, Maryland-based The Wire employs nobody in the industry, so the industry players are not rushing to reward it for not doing so.
September 22nd, 2008 at 6:01 pm
I compare The Wire to the New York Yankees from 1996 – 2000. Season 4 was the 1998 Yankees – 125 wins and the greatest season of all time. Season 5 was the 2000 Yankess – 87 wins but pulled it together at the end for a great finish. The first sevem episodes of Season 5 were good (but far from great) television. The last three were great and Bubble’s NA speech should have won multiple Emmys (writing and acting).
September 22nd, 2008 at 6:06 pm
it’s hard for me to say, the Wire was just about the only thing I watched. (well, Deadwood some and House some)
It was always good to see Steve Earle, and it was a joy watching the cast work the stories. I miss it and wish the best to everyone involved
September 22nd, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Homicide was indeed an excellent show, but let’s not get crazy.
September 22nd, 2008 at 6:12 pm
I think The Wire just got off on the wrong foot with critics because it appeared to be not very original. Now, appearances can be deceiving — and in the case of The Wire they most definitely are — still, I can imagine a lot of Emmy voters back in the day saying “Gawd. Not another crime drama.” I’ll personally admit to even sharing a bit of this sentiment myself, after a great Sunday night watching other HBO fare. Thankfully I changed my ways, and devoured the first four seasons of the The Wire in a several day meth-fueled DVD binge last year (in the run-up to the airing of season five). Anyway, that’s my theory.
Matt: you watch Mad Men? What do you think?
September 22nd, 2008 at 6:14 pm
The Emmys are not something that should be taken seriously
Like any other awards show.
September 22nd, 2008 at 6:18 pm
On the other hand, Mad Men is teh awesome! and its good to see it get recognition. Shame no one watches Mad Men either.
True. And think of the product placement cash they must be making. Seriously. I’m sure better numbers would translate into more ad revenue for AMC, but they should be able to make some serious coin — given the critical acclaim and hipster buzz surrounding the series — selling product placements. And I must say it’s an astonishingly effective form of advertising (how ironic!). I’d literally never even heard of Utz potato chips prior to watching Mad Men. Now I see this brand everywhere.
September 22nd, 2008 at 6:22 pm
I can’t fault the Emmys for giving the award to Mad Men–it’s a fantastic show, and the Wire’s fifth season was far from its best. The last three episodes notwithstanding, the show easily plummeted to only the second best program on television.
The true depravity of the Emmys is visible in the nominations. Okay, giving the nod to Mad Men above The Wire, I can understand that; I’d do the same. But to nominate formulaic shit like Boston Legal and House?
And failing to award or even nominate season four is just perverse.
September 22nd, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Anyone else see “Generation Kill”? It was on par with the Wire and a much better showing than The Corner. I’m hoping the Wire team makes a long-form version sometime soon.
September 22nd, 2008 at 6:29 pm
Um, maybe Mad Men gets so many awards because it invokes nostalgia for a lost, whites-only age? While The Wire, on the other hand…
September 22nd, 2008 at 6:29 pm
The best show in the history of television is MacGyver.
September 22nd, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Anyone else see “Generation Kill”? It was on par with the Wire.
Surely you jest. GK was watchable, and mildly interesting, but not much more.
September 22nd, 2008 at 6:40 pm
I’d have to say that the first three seasons of the Wire were better than 4 or 5. Four had one great episode – maybe the best episode in the series – which was the penultimate one of the season, but it really missed the McNulty/Bunk/Daniels dynamic from the first three seasons. For my money, the second season was the best – I loved the balancing act between the docks storyline and the characters from Season 1.
September 22nd, 2008 at 7:14 pm
Jasper –
Look hard and you see Utz in the Wire as well, not because I think there was any placement, but thats what we mid-Atlantic types actually eat.
As for product placement, I thought it was rampant in the Sopranos and it drove me batshit insane, especially things like Diet Coke, the multiple refs to the History Channel, the Porche Cayenne that Tony bought for Carmella and the scene where Tony holds up Coke product Tropicana and tells Carmella, “I wanted orange juice with pulp. This has no pulp”.
Tony also drank a lot of Heiniken.
It drove me insane and reduced my enjoyment of the Sopranos, thats for sure.
September 22nd, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Though season 5 was merely “good” and seasons 6 & 7 were merely “quite good”, The West Wing is clearly the best show ever.
September 22nd, 2008 at 7:31 pm
The Wire, by far the best show in the history of television,
The Wire is probably the best show I’ve seen, and probably my favourite. But there remains some other great television (eg. Sopranos, Deadwood)), so that I think it’s a stretch to say the Wire is the best by far.
September 22nd, 2008 at 7:38 pm
The West Wing is clearly the best show ever.
Good God, no.
September 22nd, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Look hard and you see Utz in the Wire as well, not because I think there was any placement, but thats what we mid-Atlantic types actually eat.
Interesting. I’m a New Englander, and Utz simply had not registered with me prior to MM.
As for product placement, I thought it was rampant in the Sopranos and it drove me batshit insane, especially things like Diet Coke, the multiple refs to the History Channel, the Porche Cayenne that Tony bought for Carmella
I see what you mean, but I can’t see it ever really bothered me on The Sopranos. But the kewl thing for Mad Men with respect to product placement is that the practice is perfectly compatible with the plot. In fact, it’s largely unavoidable — to eschew product placement you’d have to conjure up fake brands for Draper and Co. to work on. It would undermine plausibility. Might as well get paid for it when you use the real thing. Especially if it can help prolong the series’ run given its modest viewership.
September 22nd, 2008 at 7:46 pm
I think the reason so many critics, and political bloggers who wax critical from time to time, love The Wire so much is because whereas most of the time they actually have to work for “what does this show/movie say about Where We Are Now As A Nation?” readings, that is actually what The Wire was about. For me, it was a very very very good show, though flawed in ways that other great shows tend not to be (lots of out-of-nowhere 180-degree character reversals to fit the needs of the plot; cf. D’Angelo at the end of Season One) until the final season, which jerked characters out of character worse than ever because There Are No Heroes and invented mustache-twiddling editor analogues so that Simon could feel better than his audience/his old bosses respectively. The Sopranos and Deadwood were both better shows overall.
September 22nd, 2008 at 7:53 pm
24. Best comedy ever.
September 22nd, 2008 at 8:02 pm
The Wire is second only to The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show(s).
September 22nd, 2008 at 8:05 pm
I’m in the camp that thinks this just proves The Wire was so atypical for television that something like the Emmys was simply inapplicable.
September 22nd, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Homicide was a better show than Wire anyways…
Yeah, like NYPD Blue was better than Homicide, CHIPs better than NYPD Blue, Highway Patrol better than CHIPs and btw have you seen the best cop show ever: Pacific Blue?
September 22nd, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Sean,
To me the brilliance of The Wire was that it was such an engrossing, well-written and entertaining show. The fact that it also had something to say about urban America was just the icing on the cake. Deadwood and the Sopranos simply were not as entertaining to me, but I can certainly understand why someone might prefer them to the Wire. I don’t understand though how you can call D’Angelo’s behavior at the end of season 1 a 180 character reversal. The entire season built up to that point by showing his ambivalence to the game while remaining bound to his family ties.
September 22nd, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Did anyone who watched The Wire religiously actually watch the Emmys?
September 22nd, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Season 4 was the best for people who never attended inner city urban public schools, because it confirmed their stereotypes. Season 5 was considered the weakest because all those critics who loved it didn’t like it as much when they were the ones held up to the mirror. Perhaps it didn’t ring true to them, but that’s the way I felt about Season 4.
September 22nd, 2008 at 9:23 pm
Tony F:
Season 4 was best because it closed the circle of how these people we’ve come to know as drug-dealing gang bangers, who are much more complicated and real than any such characters depicted on any other TV show in history, including Homicide and most of all NYPD Blue, come into being. It was about the four boys and the way the drug game ruined their potential. The school plot was related to, but not the focus of that larger point. Perhaps it asks you to swallow some familiar critiques of under-funded urban public schools, absent parents in inner cities and standardized testing, though I’d invite you to refute those critiques with evidence rather than expecting to be able to toss them off as inaccurate stereotypes. But in any case, you learn more about the boys in Cutty’s boxing gym or when they are hanging out after school than when they are in school. The school is just another Simonian/Burnsian failing institution. Their take on the schools might have stung more because kids were the visible victims, but the highest drama in that season–e.g. Dookie finding his stuff on the street or Michael looking back at Dookie and Bug before he asks for Marlo’s help–are scenes with the boys that mostly happen outside the school.
September 22nd, 2008 at 10:15 pm
“lots of out-of-nowhere 180-degree character reversals to fit the needs of the plot; cf. D’Angelo at the end of Season One”
Huh? The first scene of the entire series is about D’Angelo’s doubts about the life, and the entire first season is built upon that doubt. Homicide was a good show and sometimes a very good show (though often very inconsistent), but came nowhere near The Wire.
September 22nd, 2008 at 10:21 pm
I think what made the Wire so good is that it is a cop show where character can finally curse at each other.
This is a small thing per se, but how often do you watch a network crime show, someone gets arrested and the perp says something along the lines of “forget you man!”.
What HBO affords in dialogue and action can not be overstated.
September 23rd, 2008 at 12:28 am
Did he have hands? Did he have a face? Yes? THEN IT WASN’T US!
-Vladimir PutinSergei
September 23rd, 2008 at 1:01 am
Part of The Wire’s problem with the Emmy’s is that you have to watch the entire season to appreciate the brilliance. A drama only submits one episode to be considered for an Emmy. Even if they submitted the penultimate episode each year, the Emmy voters who had not seen the rest of the season would be completely clueless about the quality of the show. Maybe they would have been better off if they were considered a mini-series.
Likewise, the actors on The Wire could only submit a single episode, so none of their character’s season (or series) long arcs could be judged.
September 23rd, 2008 at 1:21 am
The Wire could only ever win a category like Best 13hr mini-series. I think my Netflixing of seasons 1 and 2 and plowing through each in less than a week was a far superior experience to watching it a week at a time. It really is like a movie.
September 23rd, 2008 at 2:04 am
I’m just about to start Season 5 so I’m disappointed to hear it’s relatively weak. I have a hunch it got snubbed because of a small audience. I didn’t start watching it myself until Season 5 ended, and neither did many of my friends.
Here is how I describe the show to people who haven’t seen it before. In most good TV shows, I think “Wow, that actor is doing a really good job playing a cop.” In The Wire, I think “That guy is a cop.”
September 23rd, 2008 at 2:11 am
Thanks for sticking up for The Wire, one of the best TV serials ever.
F**k the Emmys, ya feel me?
September 23rd, 2008 at 3:02 am
Jasper,
Are you the same guy/gal as the one posting on Ezra’s iPhone thread? If so your opinion on HBO programming is just as bad as your opinions on cell phones or the absolutely ridiculous “smart-phone” buzzword. Generation Kill is right in line with the quality of “The Wire”. Go read “One Bullet Away” and the original dispatches by Evan Wright in Rolling Stone, and then go re-watch GK. You can’t tell me that GK doesn’t deserve an Emmy every bit as much as “The Wire.” Matt has been disgraceful in not commenting on the series, and inferred from that, even seen the series. All wire lovers should go watch “Generation Kill” like.. right now.. don’t wait.. don’t’ read reviews.. treat it like a new season of “the wire”..
September 23rd, 2008 at 7:11 am
Meanwhile, we just had Episode 3 of Season 2 of “Terminator”, which was pretty good. Cromartie got REALLY clever about trying to track down John Connor – and he did.
But he forgot he can’t swim.
That was funny, if a bit terrifying for the Connor character. John ends up floating, looking up at Cameron and saying, “Some help?” To which she replied, “I can’t swim.” To which he replied, “Yeah, I just figured that out…”
Three hundred pound steel endoskeletons don’t float very well…
The method by which Cromartie located Connor was very complicated and very clever. Kudos to the writers for coming up with it. Even I was impressed.
And it ended up with one of the characters dying – and not the last character to be scheduled to die this season either.
The show is getting more interesting with every episode as the plot gets more complicated and the characters develop. Josh Friedman, John Wirth and James Middleton are doing an incredible job with this show.
You can watch the episodes on Hulu, among other places, if you miss the broadcast.
And, yes, Shirley Manson CAN act – at least as good as she needs to.
September 23rd, 2008 at 8:47 am
The Sopranos and Deadwood were both better shows overall.
A good case can be made for Deadwood, maybe just on the grounds that it had less time to screw up, but the Sopranos was exactly the sort of romanticized bullshit that The Wire makes it impossible to take seriously. Wedded to a blatant if two-tiered form of audience pandering (those other rubes watch for the strippers and shootings, but you, dear viewer, come for the searching explorations of Bobby Bacala’s grief over his dead wife and Johnny Sack’s outrage over fat jokes!) that gives the lie to Sean’s crack about Simon feeling better than his audience. Feeling better than the rest of the audience was the only thing that kept the last couple of seasons running. It’s certainly the only way anyone can justify the ending. (Cutting on “Don’t stop!” Deep!)
September 23rd, 2008 at 9:40 am
Asking why The Wire didn’t win more Emmys is sort of like asking why a worthy 10-part newspaper series didn’t win a National Magazine Award. At it’s heart, The Wire was essentially a stodgy not-quite-hip enough newspaper, not a slick magazine. In TV terms, it had mediocre production values, routine visuals, often quite poor acting (though often quite brilliant acting as well). This is where it fails compared to the Sopranos, if you value these things.
September 23rd, 2008 at 9:48 am
I wish the Emmy Awards Committee could hear these words: “Omar comin.’”
September 23rd, 2008 at 9:58 am
Agree with J and Tony Fischer’s comments on Wire season four. That was when you first started hearing people talk about how they loved the “realism” of a show that had been highly symbolic and formalist from, literally, the first episode.
I’m not sure if it was a stylistic change, or whether it has to do with a subject matter that people are more comfortable making assumptions about, but I haven’t heard of the creators saying anything to suggest that the fourth season was intended as a departure in terms of realism.
September 23rd, 2008 at 10:59 am
I don’t know if this has been talked about elsewhere, but let me just say that one thing that I really really hated about “The Wire” is how gross it was. Gratuitously gross.
Examples:
1. Eating scenes. Scenes of the cops eating shellfish. Anytime that fat seargent was eating something. I remember one time he was talking as he was eating a hamburger, and crumbs spilled out of his mouth onto the floor. Yuck.
2. Lots of urinating and talk of urinating. Yuck. Yuck. Yuck.
3. Ziggy exposing himself in the second season.
4. The explicit, but decidedly unsexy sex.
5. All the lesbian sex scenes and kissing scenes.
6. The choice of deliberately ugly for many roles. I’m thinking especially of the fat seargent.
7. And of course, the incredibly obscene language.
Now, I should add that I’m a girl, and so maybe these things bother me in a way that they don’t bother the guys.
I remember having to turn my head away several times while watching the seasons 1-3, and a bit of season 4. Finally I just gave up. I couldn’t take it any more.
September 23rd, 2008 at 11:14 am
As for product placement, I thought it was rampant in the Sopranos and it drove me batshit insane, especially things like Diet Coke, the multiple refs to the History Channel, the Porche Cayenne that Tony bought for Carmella and the scene where Tony holds up Coke product Tropicana and tells Carmella, “I wanted orange juice with pulp. This has no pulp”.
Tony also drank a lot of Heiniken. It drove me insane and reduced my enjoyment of the Sopranos, thats for sure.
No, the product placement on The Sopranos was brilliant because it reinforced one of the central points, that these peopel were deep down consumers, who were defined (both to themselves and to others) not by what they thought and felt, but by what they bought and sold. It was a show about the aspiration towards middle-class respectability, and middle-class respectability is achieved by getting the markers (clothes, cars, products) that indicate that you’re in that class — so of course Tony watches the History Channel (that’s what suburban dads do) and of course Carmela reads “Memoirs of a Geisha” in bed at night (that’s what suburban moms do) and of course Tony buys AJ an SUV(it’s what successful suburban dads buy their layabout sons). It’s their way of signalling that they’ve arrived.
It’s actually far more realistic and tells you more about the characters than the more formulaic network shows that pretend that their characters exist in some fictional alternate universe where Americans’ lives don’t revolve around consumerism. In those shows we never see the characters drink brand sodas or watch TV or shop — but think how much of Americans’ lives are actually spent doing that instead of sitting around and discussing their feelings, and then tell me which is the more realistic portryal.
September 23rd, 2008 at 11:22 am
as-
I haven’t seen The Wire, but I had the same experience with Deadwood. I tried to watch it once. For about 7 minutes. It played like that SNL skit where they were able to say ‘penis’ (and proceeded to say ‘penis’ something like 200 times).
‘How the fuck are ya’?”
‘Fuckin’ fine. How the fuck are you?”
‘I heerd the fucking sheriff is all fucked up agin’”\
And so on for 7 minutes. Ugh.
Sk
September 23rd, 2008 at 11:33 am
if you think ahead of time that Michael K Williams must be pretty familiar with being a thug, since he’s black and all, then you’re not going to give him his due.
I think you’re on to something here, although in WIlliams’ case I believe the viewer can be somewhat absolved for assuming he was in the game not because of his race, but that big-ass scar on his face.
September 23rd, 2008 at 1:14 pm
30, 34–My problem with D’Angelo in Season One is that the entire season was spent showing that he just couldn’t stand all the horrible things his uncle and friends did to keep their racket going, culminating in the murder of Wallace, which really broke D’Angelo’s heart and made him wash his hands of the terrible people who ordered it. Then along comes his Lady Macbethian mom, who we’d only seen (I think) once before and with whom the dynamics of D’Angelo’s relationship had not been established, and one jailhouse conversation later he’s taking one for the team. It had to happen to preserve the viability of Avon and Stringer as antagonists, but it felt forced given how hard the show had worked to demonstrate why D’Angelo would likely make a 180-degree different decision from what he ultimately did.
There was a very similar case with Bodie at the end of Season Four, when he just up and decided to make a suicidal stand after going along to get along during all of his too-brief screen time that season.
43–As for The Sopranos feeling superior to its audience, I mean, sometimes a show IS superior to some of its audience. I didn’t feel particularly blandished by being on the “right” side of the “deep themes vs. titties and shootings” schism the show’s creators seemed to endorse, because to me that’s just a bare-minimum view of how the show should be engaged. Of course you shouldn’t watch it if you’re just looking for action! With The Wire, on the other hand, Simon really had himself convinced, and said as much, that many people in the audience “ally didn’t believe was that their favorite characters were behaving in an unethical way”–when of course that was the appeal of the show from the get-go to nearly everyone who watched it. The problem with Season Five wasn’t that McNulty and Freamon did the wrong thing by inventing the serial killer–like every other character on the show they committed morally wrong acts throughout the series, McNulty in particular–but that they did a stupid thing by concocting such a cockamamie, certain-to-fail scheme, when they had never previously been shown to be stupid (selfish, egotistical, even reckless, sure, but not dumb). That’s not good writing about flawed characters, that’s bad writing in the service of inflated self-regard.
Ditto Omar’s anticlimactic death. I’m as much of a fan of No Country for Old Men as anyone so I’m perfectly okay with that in theory. But for a show that had previously given us the Omar/Brother Mouzone Marvel Team-Up moment in order for Stringer Bell to go out with the appropriately Sonny Corleone-ish blaze of glory, to suddenly get all high and mighty about audience expectations on that score is just willfully thick-headed.
September 23rd, 2008 at 1:16 pm
The first season did have D’Angelo’s doubts on the game throughout, but the first scene of the first season was actually a discussion about why Snot Boogie got ‘got’. I had heard about the Wire for awhile, but when McNutty was told that “This is America, man”, I was hooked. It’s great to see familiar faces from the Wire in big budget TV shows now, from Lost and 90210 to Terminator and the movie version of Max Payne. They may be doing lesser quailty work now, but at least they are getting paid.
September 23rd, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Appaerntly that was Jamie Wright (Marlow) as Knox in last nights Heroes season premiere too. Game recognizes game, indeed.
September 23rd, 2008 at 2:15 pm
The best show in the history of television is MacGyver.
LMAO!! Thanks, S. P. Gas. That needed to be said.
September 23rd, 2008 at 2:46 pm
“My problem with D’Angelo in Season One is that the entire season was spent showing that he just couldn’t stand all the horrible things his uncle and friends did to keep their racket going, culminating in the murder of Wallace, which really broke D’Angelo’s heart and made him wash his hands of the terrible people who ordered it. Then along comes his Lady Macbethian mom, who we’d only seen (I think) once before and with whom the dynamics of D’Angelo’s relationship had not been established, and one jailhouse conversation later he’s taking one for the team.”
No, you didn’t get it. D’Angelo doubts are an inherent part of his personality, which has a lot of weakness in it. Both those aspects of him are intertwined – if D’Angelo was a stronger person he either would have quit the game (and perhaps been killed much earlier or perhaps hopefully escaped the life), OR been a much fiercer and stronger-willed participant in the game. It was precisely because of this weakness that was responsible for the whole package (and essentially all of the first season): D’Angelo’s fondness for Wallace, his doubts about the life and yet his acceptance of being bullied by his mother / Avon / Stringer / McNulty, which is a cycle that’s basically been his entire life-story are all one package.
September 23rd, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Crabb, that’s Jamie Hector, not Wright, though I’m going by memory and maybe Marlo decided to change names with jobs. I saw Andre Royo in the Heroes credits, too, but I don’t remember seeing him last night.
Shame about The Wire, but in a country where American Idol is the most popular show year after year, a show like The Wire is wasted on most.
Ugh, none of this please.
September 23rd, 2008 at 3:06 pm
You left off the part where Weisberg said that abortion is icky, and if the Wire is ever going to win an Emmy, we need to stop protecting Roe.
September 23rd, 2008 at 3:31 pm
You can’t tell me that GK doesn’t deserve an Emmy every bit as much as “The Wire.
Bradford: Yes I can. I just did.
Not that I thought GK was horrible, mind you. As I wrote above, I thought it was interesting, and eminently watchable. But it’s certainly not in the same class as “The Wire.” There’s simply not much of a plot, and weak plots fail to hold my interest in the same manner as the utterly riveting storytelling that is “The Wire.” In Generation Kill not much of anything happened.
September 23rd, 2008 at 7:54 pm
There was a very similar case with Bodie at the end of Season Four, when he just up and decided to make a suicidal stand after going along to get along during all of his too-brief screen time that season.
Ugh. When someone realizes that they’ve been shit upon for years now, is this realization intrinsically a matter of breaking character? “How could he make a suicidal stand after he’s been taking it on the chin all this time? Wouldn’t he just spend the rest of his life on the corner eating shit?”
September 23rd, 2008 at 8:26 pm
As for The Sopranos feeling superior to its audience, I mean, sometimes a show IS superior to some of its audience.
I think this line pretty much ends any right to bitch about David Simon supposedly feeling the same way; in any case, that’s not what he’s doing in the link you provided. I’m not sure what you’re saying was “the appeal of the show from the get-go to nearly everyone who watched it” (watching unethical characters? hardly scratches the surface of what made The Wire different) but you seem to be second-guessing and speaking for the audience a lot more than Simon does.
You also have some pretty selective misreadings of seasons one, four, and five in there. The Bodie turn in particular had been building at least since the end of season three, when both Carver and McNulty started treating him with more respect than he would soon be getting from Marlo. And anybody who doesn’t think Bodie would prefer to go out mouth blazing wasn’t paying attention.
Surprising character actions founded on longstanding character traits aren’t bad writing, unless you’re looking to prove a thesis or grind an axe; Lester’s complicity in the serial killer plot is a perfect example. I despised McNulty’s initial act and didn’t much care for a lot of what followed from it, but Lester’s decision was one bright spot–an astonishing lapse of judgment that was absolutely true to everything we’d known about the character, from his past abuse by the department to his tendency for self-immolation to an intellectual vanity that rivals if not exceeds Jimmy’s. I can even appreciate how the writers reserved the initial stupidity for McNulty, leaving Lester to implement the scam and clean up the details.
I don’t especially want to defend season five, but I can say I much preferred Omar’s anticlimactic end to that newspaper-as-tumbleweed showdown with Brother Mouzone (a perfect example of the romanticism the show wasn’t supposed to succumb to), so what you cite as evidence of David Simon’s self-regard I would simply call a show puncturing its own illusions and getting better for it. One of the bright spots of the final season.
March 11th, 2009 at 6:33 am
I bookmarked this site. Thank you for good job!
March 22nd, 2009 at 7:00 am
tramadol
Incredible site!
April 2nd, 2009 at 7:25 am
Excellent site. It was pleasant to me.
buy cheap viagra
April 3rd, 2009 at 5:07 am
Very interesting site. Hope it will always be alive!
cheap brand pfizer viagra
April 14th, 2009 at 10:32 am
If you have to do it, you might as well do it right
viagra