HBO's The Wire

[dvda74]

Sesaon 3 out on DVD today. Don't have HBO so I have to wait for the season sets. Seasons 1 and 2 were amazing so I can't wait to sit down and start.

Anyone else a fan of this groundbreaking series?

[BeardedOne]

Haven't caught this one yet. I have no teevee (Well, I do, but it is only there to support a potted plant), so I catch up via immersion and Blockbuster rentals. I've run out of Sopranos, Deadwood, and Dead Like Me ended with season two (We'll miss you, 'George').

Something new to watch. :)

[TomSelis]

Season 3 was the best one yet. I can't believe HBO even considered axing this show. It's one of the best shows on TV! Much better than the Sopranos, IMO.

Look out for Marlo and his crew in season 3!!!

[popperluv]

I still cant believe they killed off ______ he was the best character!!!

[timxxx]

Just finished watching The Wire season 1 box set on the recommendation of a friend. The same friend who recommend that pile of crap called 24. And I have to say The Wire is just the best cop show EVER.And one of the best series of recent years. Up there if not better than The Sopranos & Deadwood. I am buying Season 2 this weekend. If you haven’t seen it check out.

[popperluv]

Best Cop show is the Sheild!

[dvda74]

Hope this doesn't turn into a what's the best cop show thread.

I think The Wire is great and innovative in the way that it tells its story over the course of a season or seasons. I doubt any other show portrays the day to day going ons of a police op better than The Wire does.

Each season is like a finely crafted novel and that is why I love it.

[castabyss]

Sorry,

Flat out best cop show since Homicide.

CA

[TomSelis]

The Wire is written by the same guys that did Homicide.

[Kurdy M]

I thought NPYD blue was the best but i will look for this in the store.

[NYCe]

New season, great stuff.

[wukinpunub68]

For me the wire is a reason to believe in TV again. I was hook from season 1. It gives you perspective on the day to day life of the police and criminals.

[Dkg]

The Wire is one of my favorite shows right now. Really good show indeed

[TomSelis]

How creepy was it when Snoop and that guy were putting the body in the abandoned row house and all they had the little lantern for lighting?

Damn, this season is going to be good!

No bodies indeed....

[ezed]

I love the way each season takes a whole different direction.

[pinklace]

I'm a fan of both The Wire and The Shield. I can never decide which is better.

This new season of Wire is shaping up to be terrific. Every season has been better than the last.

[kukm4]

Srsly...WTF.

September 12, 2006
HBO Renews, Cancels Low-Rated 'The Wire'
By James Hibberd
With critical acclaim for "The Wire" at a fever pitch, HBO has renewed—and canceled—the gritty Baltimore drama, a network spokeswoman confirmed Tuesday.

Story continues below...

The network has ordered a fifth and final season of the show, the spokeswoman said.

The renewal comes despite an extremely weak debut for the show's fourth season. Sunday's premiere was seen by about 1.5 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research. That figure is down from last year's premiere, which was seen by 1.8 million viewers.

Such figures are very low for an HBO drama. This summer's third season premiere of the recently canceled series "Deadwood" was seen by 2.4 million viewers.

But critical response to "The Wire" preview DVDs has been extraordinary, even by HBO standards. Unconventional critics ranging from author Stephen King to comic Patton Oswalt have declared the show the best series on television.

http://www.tvweek.com/news.cms?newsId=10735

[pinklace]

Srsly...WTF.

September 12, 2006
HBO Renews, Cancels Low-Rated 'The Wire'
By James Hibberd
With critical acclaim for "The Wire" at a fever pitch, HBO has renewed—and canceled—the gritty Baltimore drama, a network spokeswoman confirmed Tuesday.

Story continues below...

The network has ordered a fifth and final season of the show, the spokeswoman said.

The renewal comes despite an extremely weak debut for the show's fourth season. Sunday's premiere was seen by about 1.5 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research. That figure is down from last year's premiere, which was seen by 1.8 million viewers.

Such figures are very low for an HBO drama. This summer's third season premiere of the recently canceled series "Deadwood" was seen by 2.4 million viewers.

But critical response to "The Wire" preview DVDs has been extraordinary, even by HBO standards. Unconventional critics ranging from author Stephen King to comic Patton Oswalt have declared the show the best series on television.

http://www.tvweek.com/news.cms?newsId=10735

That's a misleading article. You have to read in between the lines (and already know that they've greenlit Season 5).

David Simon said in an interview earlier this year that he only wants to do one more season beyond the fourth season, taking the ongoing story into the media around Baltimore and Maryland. That's how he wants to finish the story.

Soooo, HBO renewed The Wire for a 5th--and final--Season. (that's the "cancellation," I think) But Simon's getting to end the story the way he pleases, which elates me to no end.

[TomSelis]

It's on....

[pinklace]

Every episode is better than the one before it. The new episode "Homeroom" is excellent. What an ending! I'm salivating for more.

[RangeHova]

The only reason more people don't watch the show because it takes more for the average viewer to watch. Each and every little scene can be connected to a later bigger scene.

As much as I love the Shield, Sorpranos, Deadwood, or whatever they still have that 'wrap it up in a neat package' formula that most stories have (books, TV, movies).

The Wire is so realistic that it gets out of that mold.

It won't have you on edge each and every show like The Shield or 24 but if you invest the time in the early shows the later shows will have you wrapped up like no other show. Too many people aren't willing to invest the time in the slower scenes, the slower episodes.

[JenESPY]

why do i love the wire? sure, its one of the great shows on television right now-but thats not it...the guy who plays McNulty is actually British, and i saw an interview with him, of course speaking with an accent...does not get any hotter than that!

[pinklace]

He's actually Australian, but his offscreen accent is pretty damn thick, yes.

[bmick2961]

The Wire is absolutely one of the best shows out there...and definitely one of my favorites! Plus, since I have On-Demand, I can watch episodes a whole week before they air regularly ;)

What's the deal with McNulty this season though? I've hardly seen him at all...he was one of my favorite characters...I hope they aren't planning to write him off the show or use him sparingly...

In my opinion, I think Season 2 was the best...but then again, that's just me ;)


*** POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING ****

I was watching one of HBO's On-Demand specials on The Wire, and it showed them interviewing the actor that plays Valchek, except he was dressed up in a higher-ranking uniform than a Major's (it looked more like a Deputy Ops uniform - like Rawls)...I wonder if this is indicative of something ;)

[popperluv]

Looks like Omar is going to rob Marlo.

You gotta love Omar!!

[LcKy]

For all The Wire fans, heres next weeks episode this week. Heres Episode 4 of season 4, its a link to the torrent, enjoy everybody

http://rapidshare.de/files/34546423/TheWireS04E04.mp4.torrent.html

if you dont like rapidshare, you can also get the torrent @
www[]torrentbox[]com
www[]torrentspy[]com

im seeding all night :P :lol:

[partlycloudy]

fyi: the rest of the season has been leaked, so check your favorite file sharing spots to pick it up.

[GroobySteven]

He's actually Australian, but his offscreen accent is pretty damn thick, yes.

No he's British - a good Yorkshire boy. From the same place as Sean Bean I think.

What's more impressive in my opinion, is that the guy who plays Stringer is also British and has a strongish accent (what, their are black people in UK?).
Another HBO series, Oz, a main black character, Kareen is also British and first starred as a little gay home nurse, in "In Sickness and in Health".

I've just started on season 4 - season 3 blew me away, just gets better.

seanchai

[popperluv]

Do you guys think Omar is going to get killed in Jail?

[lou26]

my fav show no doubt but i cheated and downloaded the rest of season 4 all i can say is that i was not disappointed

[popperluv]

my fav show no doubt but i cheated and downloaded the rest of season 4 all i can say is that i was not disappointed

post the link please :wink:

[emmettray]

Fantastic series this. Every bit as enjoyable as the Sopranos, The Shield and Deadwood. Cretitable casting, wonderful writing, great performances.
I've seen seasons 1 + 2 and cant wait to get hold of seasons 3 + 4. Unfolds like a good book and makes it difficult to put down.

[lou26]

i have 7-13 of season 4 new online what a good site to upload them on

[spooker609]

definately the most accurate cop show I've ever seen, and it has become IMHO the best TV show ever!

[Dino Velvet]

I got to buy the earlier seasons. I started watching religiously the last 2 and really enjoy it.

But I tell 'ya, I sure as Hell wouldn't want to go to Baltimore. The place looks like a friggin' toilet overflowing with green diarrhea. Doesn't anyone from that city's gov't object to how Baltimore is portrayed?

[NYCe]

Man, this was a great season and this season finale was a fantastic hour and half. Only reason I still have HBO.

[popperluv]

I learned alot about how politics from this show .

My favorite show hands down.

What are some of your favorite quotes?

Omar aint no terrorist,hes just another nigga with a gun, and you aint no Delta airlines, you just a nigga who got his shit took-Marlo

[NYCe]

"Keep that buck, you earned it like a motherfucker". - Snoop to the guy in the Hardware store while purchasing the nailgun.

We got our thing, but it's just part of the big thing. - Zenobia

"If animal trapped call 410-844-6286." - Baltimore, traditional

"You don't what, motherfucker? This how you pay me back for all the love I showed? Shit, I been kept you in Nikes since you were in diapers." - Namonds horrible moms.

Omar had one of those commando units; he had this one bitch pullin a gun out her pussy! The shit was unseemingly".-Cheese

"I don't know about cards, but dese 4 5s be da full house!." -Omar

"They're gonna beat on your white ass like it's a rented mule" - Bunk to Herc


"Gentlemen!!!" - Donuts while driving a stolen Jeep

Poot: it aint goin be too cold this winter
global warming
Bodie: Then why we so Cold right now!
Poot: We just gettin old yo

"check the bowl, I made a colonel" - Bathroom Graffiti

Bunk:"I'm thinking about some pussy"
Snoop:"Me too!"


so many more.

[popperluv]

NYCe you seem like a true Wire head ,what is the line that Omar tell Prop Joe about not getting twisted up in this here play?



How she ticking Joe :wink:

[NYCe]

Something along the lines of :

"Now, Joe, I need you to resist your natural inclination to do anything twisted up in this here play, you feel me?"

Interesting fact. Omar has never uttered a curse word in the history of the series (or something like that).

[popperluv]

A mans got to have a code!

Thanks NYCe

Do you think they will have another season?


Package up my ass Gump! :lol:

[NYCe]

I heard season 5 will be the last one.

The Left Behind
Inside The Wire’s World Of Alienation And Asshole Gods
By Eric Ducker

Now entering its fourth season, The Wire has always placed itself outside of standard television in everything from its perspective to its construct to its casting. When co-creator David Simon talks about the HBO drama, it’s in terms of literature and theater, and when referring to it generally, he often calls it “the movie.” The message is obvious, The Wire is working on a different plane.

Initially The Wire appeared to be a new take on the cop show—one of TV’s most familiar tropes—with this one following a single case over thirteen hour-long episodes. More importantly, The Wire gave both the police and the drug dealers they were pursuing equal screen time, equal humanity and equal flaws. But as time and seasons progressed, it continued to expand its scope, giving the same treatment to longshoreman, junkies, politicians and, in the new season, the denizens of the public school system.

Before The Wire, Simon was a police reporter at The Baltimore Sun and spent 1988 with the city’s homicide department, researching his non-fiction tome Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets—the basis for Barry Levinson’s similarly named television show that Simon wrote for as well. In 1992 he partnered with former police officer Ed Burns and wrote The Corner about the human fallout of the war on drugs. The book was adapted into a mini-series for HBO, leading the way for The Wire’s creation. For The Wire, Simon and Burns are now joined by a writing staff that includes crime novelists Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos and Richard Price, a trio whose collective bibliography includes Clockers, Freedomland, Mystic River and Shame the Devil.

In the following interview David Simon explains what happens when a group of outsiders create something about America in a medium that they have no allegiance to. As he says, “We’re an angry bunch of people and incredibly, they’ve given us a television show.”



Over time as The Wire has integrated all these different communities and institutions, it’s really become a show about Baltimore and how a city works. Was that always the intent?
That was always my intent and Ed Burns’s intent. We talked about changing it every year and slicing off a piece of the city until we had examined what the American experience had become. Did we go to HBO and say that right away? No, they would have thought we were insane. But after the first season when I started to pitch the transition to the port story, I made it clear that if the show were to keep going, I would address a different part of the city every year.

Do you particularly want to tell Baltimore’s story?
I think we’re just using Baltimore in an allegorical way. The vast majority of Americans live in a metropolitan area and we are an urban people. I think the institutions we’re depicting, people can recognize as being very similar to the institutions and problems of their own city. I think the show feels really different than the rest of American television because it’s made by people who are not supposed to be making television. Two of the writers are ex-journalists, three are novelists who address urban cultures and cities that are not LA or New York. It’s second tier cities and the working class and underclass of those cities. Richard Price may be from New York, but he doesn’t write about New York, he writes about Jersey City, or Dempsey as he would call it. George Pelecanos is not writing about the federalized part of Washington, he’s writing about the northeast and southeast. Dennis Lehane is not writing about Back Bay Boston, he’s writing about Charleston, the white working class areas. Then there is Ed Burns who is a former police detective and schoolteacher in Baltimore. We’re storytellers and we’re professionals doing what we do, so it’s not some sort of proletariat revolution where longshoreman and drug dealers seized the means of storytelling, but it’s as close as you can get to an East Coast, rustbelt, post-industrial city telling its own story.

Thematically it’s a very angry show. I think if there’s one thing The Wire consistently says is that in this post-modern America, individual human beings matter less and less. We’re all witnessing the death of work, of mass employment, of the union wage scale. We’re witnessing an existential crisis in neighborhoods where everyone once worked for Beth Steel or Armco or GM or they were longshoreman. Black and white, now the big employer is the drug trade. This is the America we’ve paid for over the last 20 or 30 years, and this is the America that we’re getting.

When did you start feeling this disenchantment with America?
When I was a reporter for The Sun, when I was covering West Baltimore when cocaine hit and just tore apart families. The factories were closing and moving to where there weren’t unions. I watched the port of Maryland deteriorate. Which isn’t to say there isn’t a lot of growth and there isn’t a new Baltimore being born out of the ashes. You look around the harbor and there’s all this real estate development, but it’s all for Washingtonians who are looking for a good investment and are willing to accept a long commute. It’s artificial and it’s leaving behind generations of people who once had meaning in America. A lot of the commentary on the police department and the dysfunction of the drug war, that comes from Ed Burns, he was a police officer from ’72 to ’92 and deeply involved in the war on drugs. A lot of my disenchantment with institutional America came from what out-of-town ownership did to the newspaper I was at. The Chicago Tribune has just about destroyed The Baltimore Sun.

How so?
The Baltimore Sun, when I first started working there, was family owned and in the mid-’80s it was sold to The LA Times or Times America, which was about as benign a newspaper chain there was at the time. We felt like we had ducked a bullet, but they in turn sold their newspapers to the Chicago Tribune Company. And the Chicago Tribune Company has been sucking the profits and the life out of every one of their out of town papers to prop up their stock price (I don’t think they’re even doing a good job of that). Where once [The Sun’s] newsroom had 500 people covering their city, now it’s got maybe 300. They’ve instituted buyout after buyout, they’ve closed the foreign bureaus, they’ve reduced the Washington bureau by half, they don’t give a shit. All they want is the profit. The civic responsibility of running a viable newspaper, of monitoring the government of Baltimore, of trying to improve the city, of creating an allegiance between the newspaper and the city, they couldn’t give a fuck. They’re in Chicago. And they are despised in Baltimore. There are people in the Able Foundation in Baltimore who are trying to buy the paper back, asking what they will sell it for, and they won’t sell. They’ll suck the last dollar out of the place while they destroy it.

So I’m looking at that kind of an institutional arc and that’s very typical of what The Wire tends to portray. What happened in the police department when Ed was there, what happened with the drug war, what happened to the police department, that’s reflected in the story. What happened to my newspaper, that’s reflected in the story.



How did you get into journalism?
My father was a writer. He had been a reporter briefly before the arrival of my older brother and a desire for a steady wage convinced him to take a job in public relations, but he had always been enamored with newspapers. There were always lots of newspapers around our house. When I was growing up outside of Washington, The Washington Post got on to the Watergate thing, and I actually read the Woodward & Bernstein stuff contemporaneously when I was 12 and 13 and 14. I actually read that chase of the Nixon administration. It fascinated me. That coupled with my father’s interest got me to edit my high school paper and then my college paper. Then I got hired at The Sun. I was a stringer out in College Park and I wrote my way on to the paper in Baltimore.

What beats did you follow?
I was cops, I don’t think I ever got promoted. I did some general assignments, I worked the rewrite desk, I did a little of everything, but my bread and butter was crime reporting.

I know there are some other former newspaper reporters on the writing staff, do you have anyone who covered mayoral races, which is a major plot point of this season? That’s Bill Zorzi. Bill Zorzi was probably the most knowledgeable political reporter The Sun had, at least in state and local politics and I hired him when we introduced the political storyline. I’ve worked with him before at the metro desk. I think I hired him when he was an assistant city editor and he was writing a political column for the paper.

Is the writing staff for this season the same as what it was for season three?
Yeah, there are three novelists (Pelecanos, Price and Lehane), Ed Burns, myself and Bill Zorzi. We added Eric Overmyer, a very talented playwright who I knew from working on Homicide who had gone on to run Law & Order for many years. He would fit that bill of being “institutionally television,” but Eric is different. He’s run with the hounds, but I think his heart is always with the fox. We farmed one episode out to a playwright I admire, a young lady named Kia Corthron who wrote a play called Breath, Boom, which is a remarkable play about girl gang-bangers in New York. I thought she would be interesting for the voices we have this year. Chris Collins, a staff writer who works in the office, he worked on the Bubbles storyline.



Can you explain the decision to use writers outside of the television industry?
I really regard the structure of the show to be novelistic. That sounds pretentious, but frankly, the show has literary pretensions. I’m more interested in hiring people that understand how a modern novel with multiple points of view can work. I bring my own logic to it, which is somebody who wrote a couple of books of narrative non-fiction that had approximately the same structure as a modern novel. I’m not interested in writers who can serve an episodic television drama, they’re not helping us. To hire people who are trying to make television would be problematic.

Is it the normal TV writing process?
I don’t know what the normal TV writing process is. I have some clues from other people who worked on other shows and from when I worked on Homicide, but I don’t even think Homicide was the normal TV writing process. [At The Wire] we have a writers room, but all the heavy lifting happens before the season starts, that’s when we’re trying to figure out everything we want to say thematically with the season, what points we’re trying to address, what characters we need to achieve that theme within the context of the story. We create those characters, then we try to arc them out to see where they are all going to end up, then we start breaking it down to episodes. Usually the people in the room for that this year was Ed, myself, Zorzi, Chris Collins and Eric Overmyer. Then when it got to one of Price’s episodes, Price would come in and we’d work on that episode in the writer’s room with him and then he’d go off and write it.

Are all the scripts done before you start shooting?
No, all the beat sheets are done, we know where we are going, but generally speaking maybe four or five of the scripts are done and the rest are all in various processes of assembly by the time we start shooting.

But you basically know where it’s going to end up?
Oh yeah. By the time the first reel of film is shot we know where every character has to end. Right now we know where every character has to end for season five, if we get a season five.

How far in advance do you guys plan?
We’ve known the end of season five since the end of season two.

How did your creative collaboration with Ed Burns begin?
I met him when I was a reporter for The Sun in 1985, probably the spring of ’85. I was assigned to write a series of articles on a very notable career drug trafficker.

This is Melvin Williams?
Yeah, Little Melvin. Melvin had just taken his third fall on a federal case that Ed and his partner Harry Edgerton had done. I went and met them at the DA’s offices for the first time to talk about the case. It was in the course of working on those articles and then on later coverage that I got to know them. Ed was just a remarkable man. I think the second time I met him he was at the Baltimore Country library branch, that’s where we met. He was checking out a bunch of books and I sort of looked at the stack and it was John Ehle’s novels, I think he had Bob Woodward’s Veil, and he had a series of essays by Hannah Arendt on the rise of Nazism. I looked at them and I said, “You’re not really a Baltimore cop are you?” I was sort shocked at the breadth of his reading. He’s always been very curious, quite the autodidact. I stayed close to him for a couple reasons, one is just that I found him very interesting, but the other one was on a practical level, I was always looking for sources, and Ed being very frustrated and alienated by some of the aspects of policing within the Baltimore department, he proved to be a very good source of mine. When it came time for him to retire in ’92, he was going for his teaching certificate and I convinced him to delay that for a year and go to Monroe and Fayette with me and report and write The Corner. That collaboration has maintained itself now for…we’re coming up on 15 years soon.



How did you guys split the work back then?
Ed had a lot of strong ideas about the drug war that I thought were worth exploring, but the first thing we did, we were just very open to exploring and meeting people, I mean you’ve got to remember what that book was trying to find, the culture of drugs within a family. That is a broken family that was struggling in this neighborhood. It began with Ed in September, I didn’t get free of my paper until December. So in September of ’92, Ed was walking around those corners, introducing himself, handing out cards that said “Baltimore Neighborhood Project.” We passed out a lot of paperback copies of Homicide, we did a lot of stuff you’re supposed to do to convince people you’re not a cop and you’re doing what you are saying you’re doing. We just opened the process and we didn’t lie to people.

How long did it usually take for Burns to tell people he was an ex-cop?
Some of them remembered them. Ed had been a patrolman in the western district. A lot of the older heads remembered Ed. In the beginning there is a lot of distrust, as you’d image, but you wear people down just by showing up everyday and telling the truth. Eventually people get accustomed to the fact that you’re not going to go away. They live their lives. It was what it was, but Ed was the perfect guy to do that project with.

How do you cast people from Baltimore for The Wire?
I think the show does a pretty good job of marrying some very good looking actors and actresses with some regular looking people, and keeps it credible by doing so. Baltimoreans look like people you might expect to be from Baltimore is one way of saying it. We have some excellent actors in the city, Robert Chew who plays Prop Joe is from Baltimore, Maria Broom who plays Marla Daniels is from Baltimore, we have a lot of actors like that who are completely polished. We’ll also find people who are not actors. We realized we can’t give them certain scenes or long speeches, but if they’re comfortable enough in their own skin, they really leaven the project by adding their presence. And to sort of conclude that story about Melvin Williams, Ed got Melvin 24 years on that charge in ’85. Melvin came out I think two or three years ago on parole and we had lunch with him, Ed and myself. Melvin had since joined a Bethel AME Church and we asked Melvin if he wanted to play the Deacon. He was willing to read for it and he read pretty well. The last time I saw Melvin in the flesh before we sat down for that lunch, I was interviewing him in Lewisberg Penitentiary, probably in 1986. Sixteen, 17 years later I’m sitting down in a restaurant in Little Italy with him asking him if he wants to be in a television show playing a churchman. To his great credit, he and Ed shook hands and the past is the past.

What’s the interaction like between the trained actors and these non-professionals?
Sometimes in certain scenes the trained actors have to carry people a little bit. But what you end up getting is at some point it becomes almost beautiful camouflage. People who are trained actors and quite extraordinary in their physical presence, they are surrounded by people who are very much of Baltimore. It makes everybody’s performance more credible. It also allows the actors to rub up against the real. Felicia Pearson [who plays the enforcer Snoop] has been through it. She’s done some time, she’s had some hard lessons, you put her with Gbenga [Akinnagbe, who plays Chris Paltrow] who is a trained actor, and the combination of the two becomes something transcendent, I think.

Are you aware of the impact the show has had on rap music?
We’ve sort of gotten a sense of it. A lot of it filters back through the actors. Very early we were aware that while the rest of America might be slow to pick up on the show, urban America was not. We saw very early on that our actors were getting calls to be in this video or Jay-Z wanted them. We were also getting calls from agents saying this rapper or that rapper wants to be on the show. We were certainly indifferent to the idea of stunt casting rappers. If somebody comes in and they have the best read for the part, we’ll use them in spite of the fact that they might be a rapper. Method Man came in and he just nailed the part, so it wasn’t a matter of giving it to him because he was Method Man, it was a matter of, this guy came to act. This year our music supervisor, Blake Leyh, made an extra effort to hook up with some of the people who are making some of the local hip-hop in Baltimore that you hear out in the neighborhoods. There’s a very fun sampler that these guys Darkroom Productions put out called Hamsterdam. It made us laugh to kind of go circular on it, so we’ve used some of the cuts on that, we’ve hooked up with them and they’ve provided some fresh music. We’ve been careful not to use any songs that are self-referential. When Young Avon is getting on there rapping, we’re backing away.

But now you’re getting guys who the stuff they’re rapping about, you can tell they’ve learned all their knowledge from The Wire? You know it’s funny, we’re trying to tell a story that we think is more universal than that, but at the same time it always made sense that somebody where their credibility rested on their proximity to the game, to the street world, would be interested is some of what The Wire had to say. We always sort of knew that we might hook into that a little bit. What I love is when you get some 50-year-old white guy with a two car garage who’s watching what D’Angelo Barksdale is going through and how squeezed he is by his bosses, and he goes, “Shit, that’s my job.” That to me is subversive. We’re happy getting viewers across the board. This show is for everybody we hope, even though not everybody is watching.



This season there seems to be somewhat less violence, which makes the violence that does happen seem even more upsetting. Was that intentional?
I think we have just the amount of violence the story needed. We’ve always done that. There’s never been a conversation where somebody says, “You know, nobody’s been killed in a couple episodes…” We’ve never been worried about that. People who die, die for given reasons, because it serves the story. We haven’t hesitated to kill someone who’s work we’ve loved as an actor, who we’ve always had an allegiance to, because that’s not the point. We’re trying to tell a story and the story is paramount. So if nobody is supposed to die in that episode, we don’t invent a murder. The whole debate as to whether The Sopranos has enough wackage in any given year, if I were David Chase, I’d have contempt for the whole notion and I’m sure he does. That’s not what he’s after and that’s not what we’re after. We’re not going to shy away from a moment of violence if it’s appropriate. Same thing with sex. What sex there is in the show is there because it states a point about character or it’s necessary for the story. It’s not because the audience wants to see this person bare-assed. We really couldn’t give a shit about that.

How much do current event effects storylines?
We use some stuff, but it’s usually two or three years old by the time we get to it. Some stuff we change. I’ll tell you this, [current Baltimore mayor] Martin O’Malley never ran against an incumbent black mayor. That didn’t happen. On the other hand, the school system did come up 50 million dollars short. On the other hand, that problem went away when the real estate boom filled the tax coffers of the city. That doesn’t happen in our version of Baltimore, we actually address, “What if the money wasn’t there?” Sometimes we use what we see in the headlines. Sometimes we twist it up to say what we want to say. Sometimes we have a fidelity to what we think is the true story and other times we try to use pieces of the true story and say something different. I think we’re doing what every novelist does. It rooted in the real, but it is fiction. And to suggest that we’re copying right out of the local section of the newspaper and just changing the names belies how much work goes into creating a story that we care about in the writers office. Having said that, we love throwing in, every now and then, inside jokes that only people from Baltimore get. I think in every episode of The Wire there is something that makes people from Baltimore smile or laugh out loud. That doesn’t cost us anything, but it’s not really the point, it’s just something we do because we’re here.

Are you interested in staying with the medium of television?
As long as television does right by these stories. If at some point I need to dumb this shit down, I’m going to go back to books. But right now they are giving me enough latitude to say what I want to say within the context of the medium, so it’s really gratifying to have ten million people find your story either through broadcast airing or OnDemand or DVDs. Stuff has a longer shelf life and has a longer tail and more people find the work, and that’s gratifying. One of the great tragedies of books, and I’m telling you this as somebody who has worked very hard and has written a couple books, is how few Americans read anymore. You sell a hundred thousand hardbacks, you’ve got a best seller on the New York Times list probably. In the context of three hundred million people, that’s appalling, but that is what it is. If it the economy of scale weren’t what it is, maybe I would have stayed with books longer, and I may at some point.

HBO was a different place a few years ago in some ways. Their expectations of what a hit is and what cable is capable of have been changed by Sex in the City and The Sopranos. And so our numbers and critical attentions that might have pleased them five or six years ago, it may no longer be enough for their corporate model. I hope that’s not the case. Having said that, they’ve given me 56 hours of television so far, if you count The Corner, that’s an awfully big commitment and they’ve been courageous about it. It’s not like I have them in my face saying, “Can you make the show whiter? Can you show more tits and ass? Can you kill more people?” They’re not like that. They’re smart and they have integrity when it comes to stories, as far I’ve dealt with them. I can worry about all this, but so far they’ve given me four seasons of this show, which is a very unusual show for American television, and they gave me The Corner and they’re talking to me about other projects. There may come a point at which they’ll figure out that David Simon ought to be writing books, but right now they want to be in business with me and I’m trying to do what I do and have them like it. We’ll see how long it goes. We only have five seasons in our heads, if they gave us six we wouldn’t know what to do with it. I hope we get to finish on our terms because the ending we have conceived will make all five seasons incredibly resonant.

Part of what’s great about the The Wire isn’t just that it presents groups equally, but it finds the commonality between them. What is the purpose of doing so?
The theme in The Wire is that everybody who serves an institution in post-modern America is someway betrayed by that institution—the institution no longer serves the people it was intended to, or the people who serve it are misused, or sometimes both. That betrayal is inherent whether you’re a corner boy, whether you are a cop on the beat, whether you are a longshoreman, whether you are an imported sex worker from Eastern Europe, whether you are a politician trying to hang onto your soul and at the same time serve your ambition. The institution will be indifferent to your individuality and your humanity and your innate value as a person.

The drama that I reread before I started The Wire was not Shakespeare, it wasn’t Chekhov and it wasn’t O’Neill, it wasn’t all the stuff that is rooted in the struggle of the individual against himself. The stuff that spoke to me is the Greek drama in which fated and doomed protagonists are confronted by a system that is indifferent to their heroism, to their individuality, to their morality. But instead of Olympian gods that are throwing lightening bolts and fucking people up for the fun of it, we have post-modern institutions. The police department is the god, the drug trade is the god, the school system is the god, city hall is the god, the election is the god. Capitalism is the ultimate god in The Wire. Capitalism is Zeus.

[Trans_Lover]

hbo sucks

[saifan]

Season 4 out on DVD tomorrow!
As I don't have HBO this is a big deal. I've stayed spoiler free and can now look forward to nearly 12 hours of quality entertainment.

[bklynboy]

The Wire is the best show on tv and this will be the last season for it. Season four is about the press. Yeah, some of the writers and producers are the same for Homicide and the CSI series and Oz (Sunil Nayer), but the Wire is based on a book called The Corners which was written by a cop who became a teacher and that's what season three is about.

[popperluv]

The acting on that show is next level cant wait for next season!

[ILuvGurls]

re-renting them from blockbuster......i think it's even better the second time around.

[Quiet Reflections]

the wire is great but i live near baltimore and its worse than the show ever could be

[riguy4tglady]

HBO has a trailer for season 5 on their website.

& lots of posts on their message board regarding characters from seasons past who will appear once again; Avon Barksdale, Nick Sobotka from the docks, Spiros Vondas who appeared briefly at the end of season 4...

The series is a must have for your DVD collection. With the fifth and final season coming soon, I've been watching them again to catch up and there are lots of loose ends that need to be tied up; the 'dirt' on Daniels' IAD investigation which has been alluded to but never elaborated upon, the 'greeks' who got away in Season 2, Rawls 'private life', and the Omar/Proposition Joe buyback, 20 cents on the dollar or 30 depending upon who tells the story. Will Herc be stripped of his new sergeant stripes or kicked off the force, etc etc

I'm sure winter will pass quickly going from Sunday to Sunday waiting to see what happens next...come the end of March all will be known. :-)

While I've enjoyed The Wire over the years, it is sad to see it finally coming to an end and I so hope it doesn't finish with a Soprano's David Chase ending.

And I look forward to the season 5 DVD release to complete a great collection I'll revisit with pensive delight.

[ILuvGurls]

not to change the subject but i was reading that this is also the last season for the Shield.

2 of the better shows on tv going away. :(

[Perverted Monk]

Apparently, David Simon's (Wire Creator) next HBO series will be based off of the street musicians of New Orleans.

[ILuvGurls]

they are starting to re-run season 4 to lead up to the new season. saw the little snippet last night of season 5, looks good, believe it premiers jan. 6

as someone pointed out there are so many lose ends that need to be addressed this year, not sure they will tie all them up.

also saw a preview for Generation Kill, looked interesting.

[BADAZZBODY]

SOMEONE SAID THE NEW SEASON LEAKED WHERE WHATS THE SITE I WANNA SEE..I MANAGE TO SEE THEM FILMING ALL OVA BALTIMORE THIS SUMMER RIGHT BEFORE I MOVED..I THINK ITS GONNA BE HOT.,,,WHERE CAN U FIND PARTS OF THE NEW SEASOB

[JohnnyWalkerBlackLabel]

RIP Snoop
hehe

[2754tim]

I have Comcast and saw this week's episode already.....................
All I can say is fuckin' WOW.After tomm nites episode only two (2) are left.
I'll put it to you this way:I cried after the episode,broke down and cried

[JohnnyWalkerBlackLabel]

I didn't cry Tim, I kind of expected that to happen, just not the way it did

Glad to see Bubs now a Terminator hunter on Fox

[2754tim]

Too much emotional investment in that character Johnny,RIP

[llemming]

i don't think that could have gone down any other way for that character. everyone else was too scared to deal with that character. throughout this season, that was the only person who didn't cower around him/her. go back and watch the "cat" scene in the alley...

damn, i'll miss this show.

[popperluv]

Indeed ! Its all in the game!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8sENoMln2s

[2754tim]

Awesome!!!

[manbearpig]

hm...maybe I should check it out...being a baltimorean and all *shrugs* I never see that side of town lol

[partlycloudy]

fyi: final episode is out.

[TomSelis]

Got damn, that was a great send off!!!

[Wino the SuperHero]

The Wire was the best. I cant wait for the last show. I hate the how its ending. Why does HBO end its greatest shows. Oz. Sopranos. Curb Your Enthusiasm?

[spooker609]

As a former LEO I've always thought "The Wire" was the best cop show ever, as true to life as you can make it and still be interesting to watch, but now I just consider it to be the best drama ever!! I too hate to see it go. But at least I'll have my dvd's .
Also if you like "The Wire" you might check your local video store for the series "Homicide, Life on the street" another good show.

[partlycloudy]

is it safe to discuss the final episode yet? (i don't wanna be a dick and post any spoilers before everyone has seen the last ep.)


the wire article (no spoilers):
http://tv.msn.com/tv/article.aspx?news=304485&GT1=7703

[JohnnyWalkerBlackLabel]

Now that was an ending

[blckhaze]

definitely the way to go out.

[partlycloudy]

it was interesting how they showed everything cycling over. mike becoming omar. dukie becoming bubs. also marlo going down the route stringer tried to go.

[kimjongil]

it was interesting how they showed everything cycling over. mike becoming omar. dukie becoming bubs. also marlo going down the route stringer tried to go.


Not only was it interesting, but the whole ending was very cynical.

Damn, I'm really gonna miss this show.

[partlycloudy]

an interview with david simon

http://sepinwall.blogspot.com/2008/03/wire-david-simon-q.html


main points (copy/paste)

1 cheese was randy's dad
2 the entire point, or one of them, of the newspaper storylines was to show how, with outside ownership, rookie staffs, cut budgets, etc, newspapers these days have no idea whats going on in their cities. the entire point of the storyline was to show how none of the major events of the season actually make it into the paper, not a single one (prop joe, omar, the truth about the serial killer, none of it). Templeton was never the main issue.
3 Simon doesnt belive there were no good guys and bad guys. you may understand marlo a little more at the end of the series, but hes definately a bad guy
4 Apparently, Simon worked with a templeton type guy, and they didnt win the pulitzer but they did apparently protect him, so he claims its true
5 the only TV reviewers who didnt give the last season good reviews were LA and.......Baltimore
6 if they had more time, 12 episodes instead of 10, hey would have had stuff about cutty and prez, but they didnt feel it was neccessary
7 they didnt feel the need to go back to rawls being gay, they said all they needed
8 the guy who played MArlo was actually secretly a really good actor, and they gave him the "MY NAME IS MY NAME!!" speech to let him show it. Marlo's return to the corner at the end was not supposed to signify a full blown return to drug lording, but to show he has an unfillable hole in his soul
9 marlo ends up getting everything stringer ever wanted.......and doesnt want it. to marlo, hell is a room full of real estate developers. to stringer, that was heaven
10 the return to the corner scene was to show that marlo didnt NEED chris and snoop, he was perfectly capable of kicking some ass himself
11 i missed this, but when sydnor went into the judges office at the end, that was supposed to show that he was the new mcnulty, doing whatever it took to advance a case
12 Simon loved clay davis, and to have clay thrown in jail would have gone against everything the show was about
13 Simon believes that in the world of the wire, happy endings need to be earned, and bubbles's ending was the most earned in the history of happy endings, and he loved writing it that way
14 they knew from the get go that all 3 of the "chess players", bodie/wallace/dangelo, would be dead or in prison, that was planned
15. omar existed to show the "wild West" type situation in the inner city, he was intended to be the guy from the 50's western movies
16. it was always planned that kenard might possibly kill omar
17 planned things from the start: mcnulty having to quit/the irish wake at the bar, carver becoming a good cop, Daniels file eventually stopping him from comissioner, carcetti ripping on phony stats, then asking for them at the end
18 omar was based on a real guy, and that guy made the jump like omar except 2 stories HIGHER. true story
19. people were apparently really pissed about mcnultys behaivor this season. they were supposed to be pissed, he let everyone down
20. Simon actually thinks the "legalizing drugs" storyline in season three was far more unrealistic/unlikely then the serial killer thing in seaons 5, he says that could easily be done of someone wanted
21. the greeks let marlo kill prop joe because they realized he was going to do it regardless, and marlo would have taken lesser dope from someone else in order to be the top guy, nothing they could do would stop him

[GroobySteven]

Thanks PC - good summary!

...but where did they find that chick who played Snoop because she was fucking awesome!

Among a cast of great actors, she was great.

Also Stringer being a British actor was pretty impressive - better accent than fellow Brit Dominic West ... although he was great also.

Going back to season one to start again.

[2754tim]

I'm still in "Wire" detox...I don't know what I'm gonna do.To answer seanchai's question about Snoop,she was from the hood in Baltimore and was a gangster.The real deal.I'm still trying to rationalize the ending.
Some of what I predicted came true,some didn't.I knew Slim Charles was biding his time and was gonna whack someone in Marlo's crew,didn't know it
would be Cheese.
Remember,Omar could've whacked him when he ambushed him,but let him
live.Slim was one of the the few real stand up guys left.I'm glad he got the connect.
Great scene,Chris and Weebay in the prison yard.
Best TV,Drama Series Whatever you want to call it,I'm just so sad it's over but like they said,"It's all in the game"

[NYCe]

Felicia "Snoop" Pearson

Pearson was born premature to two drug-addicted and incarcerated parents and reared in an East Baltimore foster home. Hours old and about 3 pounds, doctors didn't expect her to live. She was so small she was fed with an eyedropper until she grew stronger. Days went by and she continued to survive, so Snoop was made a ward of the court and reared in an East Baltimore foster home. While other 12-year-olds were in school, Snoop was learning the drug game. At 14, Snoop was sentenced to 8 years in prison for the second degree murder of Okia Toomer. She said her life turned around at 18, when a man she called Uncle Loney, a local drug dealer who looked out for her and sent her money in prison, was shot and killed. It was he who had given her the nickname "Snoop" because she reminded him of Charlie Brown’s favorite beagle Snoopy in the comic strip Peanuts. She finished school while behind bars. After earning her GED in prison, Pearson was released in 2000. She landed a local job making car bumpers, she said, but was fired two weeks later after her employer learned she had a prison record.

[Wino the SuperHero]

Hands down that was the best show. I didn't like how Omar got killed. I didn't like how Chris got life. The way it ended showed how life in B-more truly is. All i got left is the L Word.

[ezed]

Great post partlycloudy,

I loved this series. I think it was the best TV series ever (don't know of a movie that compares either). And the best last episode ever.

Should be required viewing (all five seasons) for all American History/Socioligy classes.

[GroobySteven]

Wow - the real shit!

[antiasskisser]

Wow - the real shit!Yeah Seanchai, Person wasn't acting. Thats who she is. I was never amazed at what she did for those reasons. And don't see how anyone could really understand half of what she mumbled. Oh well.

[TomSelis]

Yeah Seanchai, Person wasn't acting. Thats who she is. I was never amazed at what she did for those reasons. And don't see how anyone could really understand half of what she mumbled. Oh well.

"Always askin' why. You s'posed to follow orders! You wasn't never one of us..........How my hair look?"

-Snoop

[Malik4Tgirls]

Felicia 'Snoop' Pearson......
the young woman who was plucked off the Baltimore streets and cast as the ruthless assassin Snoop on HBO's "The Wire" -- was arrested early this morning as part of a massive drug bust in Baltimore. Pearson was taken into custody on a state warrant, according to the Baltimore Sun.

This is not the first time Pearson, 30, has been in trouble with the law. At 14, she was convicted of second degree murder and released from prison after serving a six-and-a-half year sentence. And, according to the Sun, she also was arrested recently for refusing to testify in a murder trial.

Ironically, it's her street cred that led to her being discovered and cast on "The Wire." Michael K. Williams, who played Omar, spotted her at a Baltimore club and decided she should be on the critically acclaimed series about the politics of crime in the Maryland city

[south ov da border]

YouTube - The Wire HBO show Snoop Pearson (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE-uY7P3pe4)
...

[Stavros]

She was busted before and was innocent so its too soon to tell if they are just laying into her again; David Simon has already said she represents the 'other America' where the west side of Baltimore is the only factory and the corners the only place hiring young blacks etc -that clip above is amazing as is she; not going to judge her without hard evidence. Ironic that Johns Hopkins by repuation is one of the highest rated universities in the world, I can't say Baltimore is a place on my 'must-see' list of US attractions...(unless JH offers me a job...)