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The Wire is awesome, British TV less so
KvP:
--- Quote from: KvP on 28 Aug 2008, 12:17 ---I don't get to watch much brit TV, but what I do get to watch are brit mystery / Inspector series. What I generally like to do is pick out a character who's brought in early in the story to help the Inspector in some way and say "that's the guy who done it!".
--- End quote ---
Ebert called it.
Inlander:
If you are in New York this Saturday and you've got some money to splurge, you are one lucky motherfucker:
http://www.avclub.com/articles/play-paintball-with-the-cast-of-the-wire-this-satu,41925/
David_Dovey:
Bump bump bump to say that Sepinwall has finished his Wire recaps with the end of season 3 as of a few months ago (convenient as I am rewatching the series with my girlfriend (her first time) and just finished s3 last night) over at his new blog at HitFix.com. The "veterans" versions (including s4+5 spoilers) can be found here. He also conducted an interview with George Pelecanos on his contributions to the series, particularly his always brilliant-and-heartbreaking penultimate episodes right here.
EDIT: I'd just also like to talk a little about Season 3 in general, which I found very flat and unsatisfying the first time I watched it, but am certainly more convinced of this time. I think part of the reason I didn't enjoy S.3 the first time around was because a lot of it is actually laying groundwork for the two seasons to follow (a ballsy move by Simon and co., considering they didn't actually know they were getting a Season 4 while they were making S.3, and indeed wouldn't get it for 22 months) by introducing Tommy & the City Hall plotlines and Marlo & his crew and Cutty & his gym and setting Prez up for his exit from the BPD and his switch to teaching, as well as a lot of other characters and situations that will reverberate on down through the rest of the series (Slim Charles, looking deeper into Prop Joe's organisation, Omar realising that he needs to continue his vendetta against the Barksdale crew by himself, leading to his gradual decline and fall in S.5, heck there's even a brief bit of newspaper intrigue).
I think it also helped that I am watching the seasons in much closer succession than the first time I saw them, meaning that not only do S.3's connections to S.4 and S.5 become more clear, but the way that S.3 is a culmination of a lot of what happened in the first two seasons carries a lot more weight as well, meaning something like the scene where Brianna confronts Stringer and Avon about the possibility of D's death being a murder, or pretty much any scene with Avon and Stringer together have all the tension and subtext come through clear as day.
Season 3 of The Wire is the mathematical center of the show, but it's also the dramatic center, with most of the plotlines serving as bridges to past or future events. Viewed this way, the Hamsterdam plotline begins to make a lot more sense as well, in that The Wire is largely a story about the inescapable and cyclical nature of institutions, be they political institutions, or ingrained methods of doing police work, or The Game. And Hamsterdam (and to a lesser extent, Stringer's ideas about running The Game) is an example of what happens when someone attempts to step outside of that cycle and use counter-intuitive methods to better the lot of the people in The Game (or in Stringer's case, simply insulate himself from the inherent dangers of the current way The Game is played, dangers which eventually get him killed). It is important in the overall structure of the series that this comes in the middle, after an awful lot of business-as-usual before it, and an awful lot of the same after it. Particularly in the way that Hamsterdam itself falls, due largely to many separate parties all assuming the worst about each other- despite the fact that secretly and without each others knowledge, they're all looking for a way to keep Hamsterdam running, if only they could insulate themselves from the negative press. Seasons 1 and 2 do an awful lot of contending that the world doesn't necessarily need to be the way it is, Season 3 shows us how that this is true, and then 4 & 5 confirm the true nature of things, often ramped up to extreme levels with Marlo's ever-growing pile of bodies or Season 5's musical chairs with the Police Commissioner position.
Algernon:
First of all I'd just like to high-five you for the Sepinwall mention. Sepinwall's newbie reviews are what convinced me to watch the entire series, which I finally did over the course of something like two weeks this summer because I had way too much fucking free time.
I don't think I really have time for an in-depth response right now because I should be studying for my BC Calc test tomorrow, but...
I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say that season three was flat and unsatisfying, but I definitely do agree with you that part of the reason it may seem so was that it was less of a self-contained story (seasons 1 and 2) and more of the sprawling portrait of a profoundly fucked city (and world) that The Wire turned out to be. The first two seasons focused pretty much entirely on one "faction" plus the police, while season three brought in a whole bunch of new players who didn't always seem quite relevant to the rest of what was going on (i.e. my man Cutty).
That said, I still loved season three. Stringer Bell ended up as probably my favorite character, and the episode in which he died may be my favorite of the series. His death scene and the scene between him and Avon on the balcony are both pretty mindblowing. And I'd say it is indeed the most hopeful of the seasons, with Carcetti, McNulty, and Cutty all ending on pretty high notes. And Bubbs has a new protege. And, even though Hamsterdam didn't exactly work out, it at least demonstrated that, if the self-perpetuation machine that is every institution in The Wire can ever get their collective acts together, there are ways to make things better.
One thing that did kind of annoy me (even though I know it was intentional) was how petty and basically incompetent Avon seemed in season 3, especially compared to Stringer. I know, I know, he's just a gangsta and all that, but after seeing Avon in season one it was pretty painful to watch Avon in the later seasons.
Still, I'd say that it's definitely better than season five. Season five, while still great, probably suffered from the reduced episode count. For one thing, the newspaper storyline never really went anywhere, and the Sun people were pretty black and white (Klebanow and Whiting are idiots, Scott is a tool, Gus is the marvelous maverick maven of newspaper). Simon also took the cyclical theme a bit two far in the portrayals of Sydnor as McNulty 2.0 and Mike as Omar 2: Electric Boogaloo, IMO. Sydnor seemed like too much of an upstanding dude to be a McNulty, and while Mike as Omar at least makes sense, he didn't really need to be a direct reincarnation with the same mannerisms and everything. But hey artistic license and all that.
Seriously though I need to study for my test now.
EDIT: Oh and here is an only semi-relevant but potentially interesting new project that Dominic West is working on.
KvP:
It's pretty saddening that aside from a few exceptions, the principal actors of the Wire haven't done much good high-profile work elsewhere. Idris Elba's gotten cast in Tyler Perry films but he also just wrapped up the second series of his cop-on-the-edge (think Prime Suspect, Cracker, etc.) show Luther, and the first series was delightful. Aside from playing a villain opposite another floundering HBO actor in an execrable Punisher film, Dominic West hasn't done much. It's nice to hear that he's getting the chance to anchor another series.
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