>finish watching the wire
>want to watch the wire again
Is there anything that even comes close? I want a realistic police series with realistic characters, doesn't need to have such deep social commentary but just something that lacks the usual capeshit self-insert template characters that are so common in 2020's shows
also preferably without the "you must think this"-political injections of 2020's shows
>The Wire
>Realistic characters
Oz 1997 is perfect for you
Oz is an entertaining watch but it's so wonky it's almost psychedelic
Oz is fun, but there's a lot of peaks and valleys in it to say the least. The Wire was pretty consistent in it's quality, not counting the last season.
Meme opinion. Last season clears.
based opinion. last three episodes of S5 are some of the best
If you didn't tear up for my man, Bubs, you ain't human.
The last season is brilliant in retrospect.
It's not my favorite season (that's 4 obviously) but S5 is the one that grows on you the most by far during reviewings.
Adulthood is realizing Brother Mouzone was the most realistic character.
The characters in The Wire are realistic.
The Shield
Everyone says this becomes great, I found the first episode quite hard to get through though.
Tbh, the first episode is quite misleading. Vic doesnt turn out to be some super-machiavellian-type cop but instead a bit more """virtuous""" (if you can call it that), but that doesn't mean he doesn't get up to some machiavellian shit at all. Give a try to the second episode, if you still don't like it then no need to force yourself any further. The first few seasons are imo fine but it really escalates around the 3rd or 4th (forgot which one exactly).
Homicide: Life On The Streets is written by the same guy about Baltimore. It's great.
I'm always surprised I never hear about this show on Cinemaphile since The Wire is talked about a lot. I started it and the first season seemed pretty damn good so far, great atmosphere and actually felt a bit darker than The Wire. Had some like tropey and hamfisted moments and stuff here and there but I know it was a first of it's kind thing in an era where every other TV drama was nothing nearly as serious. Does it hold up throughout its run? I know the cast switches up a lot in later seasons and stuff.
Homicide holds up until season 7 where the cast changes and network interference get out of hand. 6 becomes uneven because of those problems but still has some great episodes.
Season 7 is ok, but not nearly as good as the previous ones. Also, Gus Fring shows up in season 7 as the boss's son. He's kind of an annoying addition.
The movie that ends the series is passable, but ends on a dark note.
There’s really nothing that comes close to the Wire’s density and willingness to be flatly honest about the world.
The Shield is, in its own way, more honest about the world but from a different and smaller vantage point
I love The Wire, but its characters are almost always too obviously 'characters' first and 'people' second. It works for the show, because its machinery is trying to illustrate how systems function (and also to drop references to movies that influenced its creation), but that's not conducive to conveying what human beings and their relationships are actually like (Brother Mouzone is a great 'character', but he doesn't feel like a real person. Most characters in The Wire have this dubious quality to some degree).
never seen a comment that had it completely backwards this much. mouzone was literally the most generic muslim NY mobster imaginable, that's actually how they acted and dressed and behaved. the only thing unrealistic about it was him having a presence in the early 2000s as opposed to the 1980s, but that goes for just about everything in the show, including the homicide rates and overall gang violence. baltimore wasn't THAT bad when they were filming and developing the show. every character in the wire is a composite of several real people. they only feel like characters to you because so many of them have such blunt and memorable eccentricities, but that doesn't make them unrealistic. the wire also has do many mundane and slow moments and constantly goes out of its way to depict just about anyone with having relatively normal lives. the show does this all the time with major and minor characters. exhibit A: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHYAAR1fl58
whereas in the shield, a show I liked a lot mind you, the characters feel like Hollywood archetypes that just happen to be thrown into a realistic setting. it still had many bombastic moments, one-liners or plot twists that felt like more style than substance, not that that's necessarily a bad thing in storytelling. the shield had to use its circumstances to get across its arguments and commentary. the wire used its people just as much as its setting.
the only time they feel like "characters first, people second" is in any episode where obvious parallels are being drawn between the old generation and the new for the sake of poetic and cyclical "resolution", for lack of a better word. bubbles vs dukie, stringer vs marlo, omar vs michael, etc. even some contemporary parallels too like when kima starts going on drunk benders and fricking random women, mimicking mcnulty.
and as a last point, i unironically think people miss the mark on judging the show in general when they think of it as some outdated modern commentary or charles dickens rip off when from the very get go it's just modern greek tragedy, just like how succession was just modern shakespearean tragedy. in fact, the greek himself if anything is very much "character first, person second" because he has such a mythic, untouchable and almost divine presence in the show - kinda like a greek god. though its a good thing they made sure to clarify he's not literally greek since greece is not known for any international drug trade, let alone intercontinental.
>since greece is not known for any international drug trade, let alone intercontinental.
uhm...
you may wanna check that again
τίποτα προσωπικό, φίλε.
>every character in the wire is a composite of several real people
I too have looked at secondary material about The Wire
What you don't seem to realize is that compositing individuals in this way renders them 'characters' as an inevitable result
Why?
>I love The Wire, but its characters are almost always too obviously 'characters' first and 'people' second.
good. people are fricking boring. if i wanted "people" i would go on twitter or red-edit. there's nothing wrong with this order of operations anyway as long as the writers remember that they have to be people as well. some characters are characters first, people never. thats the real issue
the point I'm trying to convey is that they are 'characters' when they act and speak and fulfill functions in scenes in ways that are clearly 'writerly': they feel more like puppets, or like characters in a stage play (where the rules and conventions are different from a television show).
you still have it backwards. for every time d'angelo is teaching young pups how to play chess as a metaphor for "the game", there are a dozen moments where he gets into an argument over the phone about not having "arguments" over the phone. these people are very clearly people first, characters second, with some exceptions like s4-s5 prez (who was basically ed burns) or gus (who was basically david simon)
You should watch the wire again tbh or at least s1, you likely missed a lot of stuff the first time around given the way the show drops you in the middle of such a large cast. Chernobyl is also excellent, but given it is only 5 episodes it is necessarily much smaller in scope
This was my 5th rerun of The Wire
I've actually tried to convince my friends to watch The Wire with the catchline that it's America's Chernobyl
The wire was a good show for its time, but it has been outclassed and is now outdated. Of you've seen breaking bad then I wouldn't even bother with the wire
brba has no replay value and cartoony nonconsequential plot twists
seasons 5 and 7 were so good
Like if you are searching for a crine show, watch the rest of the top rated crime shows man. dare I say they are better than the wire as well (genuinely not bcecause of racism but because of mediocre seasons like 2 and first seven eps of 5)
using one or two words that are normally used less frequently in conversations won't increase the value of your dogshit opinion moronic gay. whatever that show it is better than the slop you eat up so willingly
why do people shit on wire season 2 so much? it felt closer to a regular police show with the dead women, a crime drama with the greeks and the death of the working man should hit home with about everyone except some ivy league nerds. for me, it had everything
omar definitely wasn't unrealistic
brother mouzone feels strange among the hoodlums but for a gangbanger turned into a well-read nation of islam/black panther he's very credible
>its characters are almost always too obviously 'characters' first and 'people' second
i don't know man, i feel the exact opposite. most of the cops aren't born to protect and serve, they're just people who go to work. the closest thing the series has to a protagonist just disappears for two seasons. the villain of the series doesn't ever explain himself and just drops into the series like a meteorite
Rawls and Valchek are characters, Prop Joe is a character, Avon is especially a character (he's often used as a mouthpiece for the writers), Herc is a character, etc.
Like I say, they work for the universe of the show, but they definitely have the feel of stylized representations more than people
Call me out if this hunch is super off base, butI think you are self-reporting how much you have been living life on easy mode. Rawls and Valchek were easily some of the most realistic buttholes I've seen on TV, down to the incessant nepotism and power tripping nonsense. Landsman is very much a character, though that's mainly because he's very clearly fulfilling the function of comic relief and he is, for unknown reasons, extremely eloquent. Prop Joe only feels like a character because he puts on that wise guy faux-intellectual act around his subordinates, that barrier often dips when he feels outmatched, usually by Marlo or Omar. And Avon as a mouthpiece? Maybe I'm forgetting some season 1 scenes but characters like D'Angelo, Colvin, Gus, sometimes Kima or Frank, and definitely, definitely season 5 McNulty and Lester. I don't see Herc as a character at all, I've met a bunch of Hercs in my life, they just didn't have a badge.
>they definitely have the feel of stylized representations more than people
They do? The only thing that feels sensationalized is the fact that they're all together in the same setting, a sort of greater than the sum of their parts fiasco, like if an earthquake happened at the same time as lightning strikes. Taken individually, they all seem perfectly believable, even if a lot of them are oddballs. And it's not like 99% of these people are speaking loquaciously like in something like Deadwood.
S2 is good but the way it pops up after the procedural-esque season 1 was lets say underwhelming (going from overview of police-criminals with an analysis of baltimore to just a specific part of baltimore was so jarring, its insane that the wire doesn't get more criticism for this)
not to mention the protagonist mcnulty effectively disappearing for a season in 4th, the heart of the show bubbs not getting enough screentime (yes those given to him weren't enough) and then again with the journo bullshit in s5. Wire is good but its not consistent like the other "well written" shows like madmen, sopranos, bbad, bcs, etc
>sopranos
>consistent
i love it as much as the next man but sopranos has the most inconsistent plotlines and inconsequential subplots of the all the goats. the police and feds simply don't exist except when it's convenient for the plot, they can kill civilians with impunity, nothing ever carries over into the future aside from jokes about ginny sack's fat frickin' ass, which almost leads to something, but doesn't, but is later used as an excuse for a lie that's forgotten the second it's said
BB and BCS doesn't have to worry about such things because they have saul goodman meme magic that can make inconvenient things go away, but they do that masterfully so we can forgive it
Tbh its been quite a while I watched sooranos abd maybe I forgot the bad stuffs whike remembering only the good ones
And now that you mention it, the way ton and his glorified crew were doing shenaningans throughout the major part and not facing any consequences (like that russian snow ep) makes it kinda border on a "power fantasy" like the old westeens right?
I love the sopranos and agree with your points. For me I hate how formulaic the show feels on rewatch. Every season that introduces a new major character in episode 1, they're basically guaranteed to die in the last or penultimate episode. The show has excellent short term/episode writing, but it's not greater than the sum of its parts.
>why do people shit on wire season 2 so much?
You unironically answered your own question with
>ivy league nerds
The Wire has a disproportionate amount of ivory tower fans due to its reputation as an intellectual show. This is all despite the fact that the show has gone out of its way to depict academics as indifferent to the issues the show was portraying. When the show knuckled down and became its most down to earth, that's when the phds start complaining about the show feeling like homework.
I really liked Season 2. Giving us a rest from Jimmy was a wise decision, as every time he appeared it felt special. Really the only thing that brings S2 down for me is Ziggy, and even then, I still think I liked S2 more than S4, which moved too slowly for my liking, but I've only watched the show once.
And this was like 2 years ago.
Maybe it's time to give it a rewatch.
why are breaking bad fans always so emotional and hormonal, is it because of the onset of puberty?
Why are breaking bad haters always come up with the same 3 midwit criticisms? bbad isn't my no. 1 show, its just annoying to see a good show getting biased criticisms just because of its popularity
the sopranos is my favorite show and it's just as popular. and pay attention, im not a breaking bad hater, i'm a breaking bad fan hater. big difference.
If I had an opinion this bad I would unironically kms
my dad and some of his relatives were involved in some organized crime shit when i was a kid
i got to meet a lot of various drug and gun dealers, robbers and even murderers and they tend to be very weird and eccentric people -- characters like omar and mouzone are honestly not even that outlandish
The only things BrBa do better are camera work and music. Death scenes in The Wire are million times more emotional, for one thing.
That major character's death in wire s3 was so damn underwhelming while in breaking bad a relatively minor character's death in s2 was more emotional, so no you are wrong
Only the stuff bout mcnulty and his cohorts to be honest
completely disagree it was a perfect tragic betrayal that felt like an impossible situation of two best friends coping mad hard in an unfair life. bros over hoes
>dumb broad dies due to her own incompetence
wow so deep
if you wanna talk about underwhelming death scenes, the other gf who gets capped in s5 felt so sterile
>simplifying things to make it look bad
>"wow so complex"
that death caused by walt to "save" jesse as per his "morality" is literally the core of the show and yet we have brainlets like you not understanding the simplest things and then going on complaining everywhere like a moron
>s5
still better than the journo and killer bs they were peddling
jane ODing was some real kino stuff but Kima getting shot in the wire was still more feelsy, on the first watch, anyway
>that death caused by walt to "save" jesse as per his "morality" is literally the core of the show
no fricking shit. it's literally the only thing the show keeps doing over and over and over. walt sacrificing everything he has for money and jesse. the ending of the show is walt literally taking a bullet for jesse's freedom. everyone understands it because it's grade 10 writing level
>it has been outclassed
By what?
By breaking bad
Good bait.
>That's good. That's like a Breaking Bad thread. Ain't nobody got nothing to say about a Breaking Bad Thread. Sopranos Thread? Bring a smile to your face. True Detective? Shit, homies is damn near barbecuing on that motherfricker. Go down to a Rings of Power thread, homies get their b***h on. Get their blood complaining. But Breaking Bad? Nobody give a frick about Breaking Bad. Nobody remember Breaking Bad, and y'all homies is giving me way too many Breaking Bad threads! What the frick?
why did he never mention that he had a small part in the phantom menace?
holy shit its true, i had no idea
>the frick did i do?
He's a weird guy in real life I think. After The Wire he went back to Europe and does like watch commercials/modeling n shit
>Ayo post dat sneed? Ayo post dat sneed.
>I'm just a gangsta I suppose. And I want my Sneeds.
I like this scene but why is it by far one of the show's most well-known moments? It doesn't stand out that much for me
its when stringer realizes he can''t win the war, especially without Avon
fair
Amazin'
I want to say Better Call Saul, because the lawyer drama side is quite like what you need. But eventually the cartel side starts to get a little capey. Although, by the time it does get to that, you have Lalo introduced and he's a very entertaining character. So it's an exchange, some capeshit side but you also get a very cool charatcer (who isn't necessarily the one donning the cape)
sorry, nothing is on the same level
trust me, i've looked.
there's very few gems out there that can be argued to be on the same level, at least for a season, but nothing can match the wire for consistent quality across seasons, or for depth of plot, or humor, or its ending, which to me is the canonical and most perfect example of the "bittesweet ending" meme.
GoT s01, true detective s01 are the only things which i think deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence.
clearly a level below, but still very good, the sopranos, breaking bad, rome, altered carbon s01 and more.
on a more practical note, what i'd actually advise you to do is to watch "we own this city". its again about cops in baltimore, and by the same creator, with a few cameos by original wire cast members.
>"we own this city"
My girlfriend's mom took one of the photos in the intro for that show.
Homicide Life on the Streets as was mentioned before.
Mare of Easttown is a good cop show where everyone's just trying to make life work at the end of the day, if you like'd that motif form some of The Wire stories. It's also intentionally realistically ugly and dirty, much like some sequences of The Wire.
>The wire
>realistic
BAHAHAHAHA
not as in-depth or good but southland is the only (mostly) realistic cop show that sometimes holds a candle to the wire
The Corner is The Wire but is about the drug addicts instead of the narcos and the drug dealers. There's no Murdaland so it's also more realistic, though obviously not as complex or edifying.
i would love to watch it, as well as homicide:life on the street, but i can only find them in DVD quality, which is currently unwatchable to me
i hope hbo or whoever owns the rights will eventually get to re-scanning them into at least 1080p
I watched The Corner on DVD recently and it looks fine. And you've outed yourself for shit taste anyway, since the optimal way to watch The Wire is in SD and you likely saw the gay HD transfers
nta but i've seen both and prefer the blu rays for the wire, what's wrong with them?
Depends on how much you care for artist's intent, but the show was never meant to be displayed in 16:9. It was shot open matte (like X-Files) but the information outside the original 4:3 boundary was never meant to be seen, as evidenced by the fact they had to edit out boom mics and clean up shots for the HD transfers. David Simon himself has gone on record as saying he considers the HD versions to be a different version of the show, not a straight-up upgrade like you'd expect of a restoration.
Shit, never knew any of that, actually makes me wanna rewatch the show in the original ratio for next time
you're correct, but i think that only applies to s01(possibly also s02? don't recall)
later seasons were 100% shot with 16:9 in mind
anyways, ive seen both versions (im old.) and i have no issues with the transfered s01. there's the occassional scene where i can sort of see it (like hmm, isn't this a bit too zoomed in?), but on the whole its 100% a non-issue and the quality is obviously much, much better.
>later seasons were 100% shot with 16:9 in mind
First I've heard that, source?
>but on the whole its 100% a non-issue
Disagree completely here, it's revisionist and disrespectful to the art direction. I wouldn't mind as much if HBO offered up both versions, but as it is the widescreen transfer is the only version available streaming and on currently in-print discs, which reforms the narrative that it's always looked that way.
>First I've heard that, source?
iirc david simon interview, but i cba to look for it
imo its plainly visible, all the "shit, this looks a bit too zoomed in" scenes are s01
>it's revisionist and disrespectful to the art direction
im also pretty sure the creators were involved with the 16:9 transfers.
and its not a fricking tarantino film, its not kubric. like, sure, cinematography, whatever. thats not the point of this show.
its a show about politics, crime, drugs, corruption etc. the important parts are plot and dialogue, and those carry over just fine even if the occasional shot looks a tad wonky
apparently the first 3 seasons were intended for eventual hd transfers and then prior to season 4 david simon said frick it and they focused only on 4:3
no idea if it's even true though since the source from this article that says so leads to a 404
https://www.avclub.com/updated-hbo-finishes-remastering-the-wire-in-hd-but-d-1798274788
The original aspect ratio definitely makes a lot of scenes feel more close and intimate, especially when it's just two characters talking in doors. They need a version with the original cropping but with the improved resolution.
im watching on a 32/4k monitor
i cannot do dvdrips anymore. maybe on a smaller 1080p display it would be bearable, but im not going to dig up an old panel for it.
as an aside, its insane how much we have progressed in picture quality. i remember watching dvdrips in the early-mid 00s on a 1280x1024 crt monitor and being floored by the picture quality...
frick me im old.
WHEN YOU WALK THROUGH THE GARDEN - YOU BETTA WATCH YO BACK
WELL AA BEG YO PARDONN
WALK DA STRAIGHT AND NARROH TRACKK
>you'll never have a bro like mcnulty
it's over
people like mcnulty are a fricking nightmare to work with
it's a good thing it wasn't a police department but the last place i worked as was a mess where the management had no fricking clue about practical matters and middle management's role was to keep the management the frick away from it for all of our sake and things worked out on duct tape, WD-40 and the holy spirit but as soon as we got our mcnulty that wanted to right all the wrongs, all he managed to do was have the management tear down the status quo, rebuild everything in the same fricked up way it was before but now nobody understood how shit worked and it would take time and manpower to make things run smoothly again
rawls was right, if your job sucks and the bosses don't listen, just eat your plate of shit and don't give a frick when it's not your turn
i feel like the bunk or slim would be more reliable than mcnutty
>slim
loved the way that homie talked
>that was for Joe
Loved him.
Such a wholesome yet kino scene
Only one person said We Own This City. You kids are so fricking worthless.
Stringer getting his shit pushed in was pretty satisfying.
Goofy ass muthafricka had no business on the streets.
He had it made too. He had it sooooo fricking made. But he wanted to assert himself and he wanted to be different from Avon. And he was too damn proud to use resources he had at his disposal.
watch
>The Corner
it's an HBO miniseries from the late 90s. Also made by David Simon, takes place in Baltimore, several of the same actors as The Wire, it was the Wire's predecessor really.
here's the first episode, all 6 are on YouTube. Frankly I think it's better than The Wire, it's just short. It's more from the addicts/street level perspective than cops or higher level dealers.
watching now. pretty good. the constrast cuts between 60s and 90s Baltimore is kino
yeah i normally hate flashbacks but they work really well in that show. used for gut wrenching punches instead of lore exposition
by nothing, that guy is a homosexual moron
you know who got the best pussy? midgets homie
How is the book the show is based on?
i recently read the homocide book and really liked it. David Simon uses a bunch of dialogue from it in the wire and it’s neat to read about how fricking insane being a homocide detective is. I do recommend it as he’s got a great handle on his writing and thats evident by the details and pacing.
Im going to read the corner book soon as that seems like a good fix for when ive been thinking about the wire
>I want a realistic police series with realistic characters
It’s universally agreed among urban cops that there is nothing that comes close
>want to watch the wire again
Why? Season 5 was bad.
season 5 is one of the best seasons to revisit, pleb
>I want a realistic police series with realistic characters
The Fall is good, it's set in Ireland and follows a detective (Scully) trying to find a serial killer.
I'm halfway through season 2, and I still don't get why this show is so acclaimed. It's pretty decent, but nothing amazing.
depressing
keep at it
finish it, try watching something else, realize that you can see right through characters and plot arcs easily, go back and rewatch the wire to see just how much you had missed and how much better it actually is.
pretty standard journey.
The first time I watched the wire was in 2009. I was still in high school and just checked it out because other than the sopranos, it was by far the most critically acclaimed show at the time (even though no one was watching it) and i already had seen sopranos.
i watch the first 4 episodes in one day and i'm bored and confused and am considering giving up the show. but i instead decide later that week to rewatch those 4 episodes, get my bearing on all the characters and plot lines, end up becoming completely invested in the story, fall quickly in love, and end up finishing the entire show within a month
if this in any way sounds relateable, keep going
>A life, you know what that is? It's the shit that happens while you're waiting for moments that never come.
fricking oz mogs the wire
Watched S1-4 last year, kind of lost interest by S5. It was honestly a very good character drama, but Sopranos continues to reign supreme for me. Who with me?
Same exact story peak for me were the dockworkers and when he died i lost interest. Sopranos is funnier which helps
See I don't think it's a character drama like the Sopranos or Breaking Bad. Who is the Tony or Walter overarching main character of the Wire? It's more story driven or city of Baltimore as the character driven. So for me appreciating the Wire vs the Sopranos is more like apples and oranges.
I misspoke a little, it's not a character drama in the sense of Sopranos or Mad Men. The cast is much vaster and proportionately less fleshed out individually, but together they make up an intricate and fascinating mosaic of personalities, and I enjoy seeing the different people flit in and out, like a giant clockwork mechanism. And like anon said, the "character" of Bawlmoar plays an important role
I'd say McNulty, but I get where your coming from. The city is really the main character.
It's a an ensemble. There's plenty of characters to follow, not just one main one. As
says, the city of Baltimore is the main character.
The Wire is the best show ever made imo but it's a pretty crappy character drama if that's the criteria.
The two shows are actually very related thematically, but they go about addressing these issues of societal rot in completely different ways. The Wire shows the mechanisms of America's decline with a degree of autistic precision and detail that is unparalleled. I think it's fair to say that this overall looming sense of decay is also present in The Sopranos, except it's much more focused on how people respond to these types of problems in an indirect way.
>It's good to be in something from the ground floor. I came too late for that and I know. But lately, I'm getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over.
Watching it now for the first time. Nearing the end of season 4.
>tfw The Shield was more accurate to real Baltimore police than The Wire
the shield is based off the rampart scandal of the LAPD. the new thing by david simon i don't even remember the name of it honestly is about that story you just posted. With Jon Bernthal
>the new thing by david simon i don't even remember the name of
Which is why I dont bring it up. Shield was based off LA, but if you look into what happened in Baltimore it really flows like The Shield, including killing a cop to cover things up.
We Own This City. It's not bad. Only six episodes, so not a long commitment. Best part is recognizing all the Wire actors in it.
It's not awful, but its miles away from The Wire. Just really forgettable
Burned things a bit too local.
I lived in Baltimore for a bit. fun to see location I know in the show.
https://www.gttfinvestigation.org/
>In 2017, eight members of the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF), a unit within the Baltimore City Police Department (BPD), were charged with racketeering, robbery, extortion, and overtime fraud.
The show pretty much gives the outline, though I dont accept their ending and speculation on the vents leading to the cop's death.
I think the others killed him.
I would love to see a modern take on The Wire with social media beefs and AR-15s with drum mags and what not. But I know it'd be terrible so I hope they never touch it
shardene would have lost her ability to walk if lester got to do his thing during this social media era
natural po-leese
my homie im gonna need bigger font than that
Haven’t seen it but I keep hearing the Shield is better
lmao
also lmao
i mean it has a sheriff so i guess?
Deadwood
what way was the way? was it the way or was it the other way?
>crookshit