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The Wire Season 5 (Jan, '08)

GKarsEye

GKarsEye

Regular
HBO has apparently started showing brief ads for season 5.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q24T3-GRIsQ

And here's a really cool piece in The New Yorker about the show's vision and process:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/10/22/071022fa_fact_talbot

I like how it relates the experience of the show's head writers to the show's contents.

Each season focuses on a different angle of the city's institutions, and season 5 will address the media.

“The Wire,” Simon often says, is a show about how contemporary American society—and, particularly, “raw, unencumbered capitalism”—devalues human beings. He told me, “Every single moment on the planet, from here on out, human beings are worth less. We are in a post-industrial age. We don’t need as many of us as we once did. So, if the first season was about devaluing the cops who knew their beats and the corner boys slinging drugs, then the second was about devaluing the longshoremen and their labor, the third about people who wanted to make changes in the city, and the fourth was about kids who were being prepared, badly, for an economy that no longer really needs them. And the fifth? It’s about the people who are supposed to be monitoring all this and sounding the alarm—the journalists. The newsroom I worked in had four hundred and fifty people. Now it’s got three hundred. Management says, ‘We have to do more with less.’ That’s the bullshit of bean counters who care only about the bottom line. You do less with less.”
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“No other program has ever done anything remotely like what this one does, namely to portray the social, political, and economic life of an American city with the scope, observational precision, and moral vision of great literature.” - Jacob Weisberg, Slate
 
Re: The Wise Season 5 (Jan, '08)

Damnit- the title is obviously supposed to say "The Wire" not "The Wise," but I don't know how to change that. Mod?
 
I have just watched the first three episodes, and I have to say I'm intrigued. I'll definitely continue to pursue this.
 
KoshFan said:
I have just watched the first three episodes, and I have to say I'm intrigued. I'll definitely continue to pursue this.
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Cool. Let me know how it goes.

Like all shows, it gets better as the characters and writing style settles in, and while season 1 is solid, season 2 is way better.

I don't wanna over-hype it, but this is the greatest show ever ever. :)
 
I'm working my way through it, slowed by computer malfunctions and Netflix delays, but I'm enjoying it tremendously.

The contrast between McNulty's boys playing soccer and the black kids running around in the projects, with Bubbles' commentary: "There's a thin line between heaven and here." Beautiful!

Also the young drug dealer seeing his younger siblings off to school as part of his (rather bleak) morning routine, contrasted with D'Angelo primping himself from his full closet before going out; D'Angelo and the mother of his child in the upscale restaurant, making all the wrong moves because they don't know the rules; Kima the Good Cop racing over towards a group of police beating up a suspect, not to stop it but to join in...
 
Glad to see you're enjoying it.

To my chagrin, getting people into The Wire is harder than Babylon 5. For some reason, "This show is great because it shows the depressing reality of urban drug culture, crime and poverty in an artful but realistic way" is more off-putting than "it's like a United Nations... in space!.. but than it gets all different and cool!"

Oh way must I be burdened with such superior taste. ;)
 
This show is costing me some money. I had to upgrade my Netflix plan so I could see more of it. It was either that or read more about the show -- thereby getting even more horribly spoiled.

Cool stuff today: Stringer Bell as a college student, Bunk setting his clothes on fire to eliminate trace evidence of his infidelities, and Omar doing what Omar does best.
 
The Stringer Bell stuff goes to it's logical but really interesting conclusion in the coming seasons. He's one of the best characters.
 
Yeah, Stringer isn't my favorite character -- but he's a lot of fun to watch. That scene in the copy shop, lecturing gang-bangers on elastic products...
 
True, although Rawls annoys me.

Oh, and I forgot another brilliant moment. Daniels, on the War on Drugs: "If you follow the drugs, you get a drug case. If you follow the money, who knows where it'll wind up?"
 
KoshFan said:
True, although Rawls annoys me.

Oh, and I forgot another brilliant moment. Daniels, on the War on Drugs: "If you follow the drugs, you get a drug case. If you follow the money, who knows where it'll wind up?"
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Yeah. Remember that for the season finale...
 
No surprise: Freamon said exactly the same thing in tonight's ep.

Omar walks into the low rises, turns his back to the dealers, and waits until they hand over the drugs. Man, why does he even bother with body armor? Nobody's willing to take the chance of shooting at him! That, my friends, is a reputation.
 
Omar rules. There's a scene that opens one of the seasons... I forget which... with him testifying in court, that is now legendary amongst fans and critics.
 
He just headed off to New York so I doubt I'll be seeing much of him for a little while... but man, he's impressive!

Last night I marathoned a bit: three episodes, complicated by repeated computer glitches. I'm two or three shy of the first season finale. Greggs is down (but not out, I suspect) and Bubbs is clean (but not for long, I fear). Oh, and the Barksdale stash just got raided, probably screwing over their whole case, so the Commissioner could stand in front of the cameras with a pile of drugs.

Oh, and Rawls is still an asshole, but that scene with him and McNulty in the hospital... wow.
 
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