I finished watching it yesterday. I have some thoughts about the politics of it but to be honest I don’t have a leg to stand on because I know nothing about how majority black cities in America work.
On the non-political side, I really enjoyed the first two seasons. Season 2 in particular was the best one for me. Post that there was too much focus on politicking for my taste and I just wanted to it be over with. That Carcetti guy reminded me of Buttigieg and I found him really annoying. I knew he was gonna be a rat faced turncoat the moment I saw him. But I appreciated the focus on school aged male children even though it was depressing.
The ending was a bit disappointing for me because it essentially said nothing ever changes. The sobriety of it makes sense to me but it feels reductionist because it denies anyone the chance to make a tiny improvement and disregards qualitative changes.
Interested in hearing what you all think about it.
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For the ending, the main writer in charge of the show left after season 4, so season 5 was written by a less experienced team. I noticed that, even in the first scene of the season, it’s much more on the nose and lacked the subtly and nuance of the earlier seasons. Although I couldn’t keep watching because I genuinely couldn’t bear watch Mcnulty get worse again right after he got better.
Overall i like it. I think it helped me understand “lumpenproletariat” more as a concept. I think the writing was astoundingly great for an American cop show (or American shows in general).
And I feel like the politic plot pines were very important, to show
A.How lone wolves trying to change things can get kicked to the curb very easily
B.How decisions are actually made by Bourgeois political agents
C.How easily even…“noble” people get corrupted or get stuck trying to bring about reform even on local levels on local issues.
The second season is probably my favorite, but it is competing with the fourth season for that spot so its hard to choose. The longshoremen union workers had a very realistic and honestly just heartwrenching plot. It’s been a while since I watched it though so I can’t go in more detail.
My favorite character though is probably Stringer Bell. He’s this really interesting Don Quixote archetype, just instead of idolizing chivalrous feudalism he idolized ruthless capitalism. He also has my favorite line of “Are you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy?”
The McNulty relapse made no sense to me. It should be possible for him to cope with the return to high profile policework without “drinking and removed” but the writers willed against it.
Though it’s heart-wrenching, I wouldn’t have it any either way. The show is about how societal issues are caused by systemic failures and not by individuals. “Evil” individuals don’t cause the system to fail, they just take advantage of it and prosper. “Good” individuals can’t fix the system on their own or from within. They just replace one “evil” person with another. Ultimately, the system poisons everybody and McNulty serves as the icon of the system chewing you up, spitting you out, then chewing you up again.
It’s not a cop show. It masquerades as one. It’s actually a political show that outlines how corruption and capitalism destroys a whole city. Each season focuses on a particular level: Justice, Education, Employment, Politics, Media and all of it suffused with Poverty.
I think the tragic fate of almost everyone who tries to fix things also emphasizes that ultimately it’s all the “neutral” characters’ fault, who just stand by and watch events unfold, helping in minimal ways sometimes (and almost always are very sneaky about it), but generally just get out of the way to avoid becoming collateral damage. And if we expand this further, every such character also has the valid excuse that they are just trying to survive and support their families. They can’t afford to lose their jobs, so they can’t risk rocking the boat.
What you said is all true. My view was in respect to the realisation of impotency when trying to enact change and how one copes with that realisation. This gets into the territory of extrapolating from incomplete information. We are never told what Mrs. and Mr. McNulty were like before their marriage descended into ruin. Elena to me does not seem suspect but I never felt that her and James were compatible as a couple. Like there isn’t a throwback to the good bygone days of togetherness. The show kinda makes look like the “b*tch wife” when McNulty seems to be trying make a turnaround but she doesn’t allow him the opportunity. I don’t know whether the writers had the awareness that she doesn’t owe him the chance. But considering there are at least two other “b*tch wives” in the show (Daniels’ and Kima’s) I felt that is what they were going for.
When McNulty gets together with Beadie, which coincides with him becoming a beat cop, it can be interpreted two ways:
- McNulty gives up trying to be an agent of change and tried to maximise his personal happiness
- McNutty has found a partner that understands his situation better and hence gets along with better
I feel kinda stupid for saying this but I genuinely thought it was the latter considering how Beadie is/was something like like a police (I don’t remember exactly what) and they closely worked together on a gruesome case (in season 2). Therefore speaking on a purely hypothetical level, I thought she could be a better outlet for his frustrations that “wh*ring and drinking” since she understands his plight better.
When it turns out that the former was actually true, I just feel like an idiot because I didn’t understand how nihilistic the show was until I watched the last episode.
I’m not going to make excuses for it because I don’t like it either tbh, but I think i get what they were going for. When Mcnulty was on the beat he was able to focus on the then and there and feel like he was making a difference, and so he was much happier [I know that’s definitely copaganda of a sort but I dont feel like talking about it rn], but when he’s working as a detective, he’s constantly struggling, and even when he succeeds in actually arresting suspects, he never feels like he’s making a difference and that everything is pointless, ergo the booze and removed.
I think this mightve been similar to the direction the show was going for at the end of season 4 when he goes back to detective work, but I think it would’ve been better if that was more of a general struggle he was having and dealing with rather than just “ope, he’s back to his usual stuff again.”
Stringer bell and avon is such a perfect pair. One thinks there is method to the madness in this profit seeking system. Other sees through it.
One of funniest plot lines is stringer getting owned by clay davis.
Also best scene in the series is when avon and stringer fight when avon suggests he is not hard enough.
Only character post season 3 I liked was cutty, who tries to string together a community boxing thing. I like him better than bunny colvin.
Clay Davis makes my skin crawl. There is something really unsettling about the character.
He is funny tho and the actor rocks
I think I stopped midway through season 3 but I liked it at the time, until I realized something. You picked up on it too, nothing changes. I ended up feeling like the show was taunting the viewer, saying “yeah these cops are corrupt bastards, but what are you gonna do about it?” Cedric Daniels (rip Lance Reddick) is a character in a show, you can’t really go riot in the streets against him, or prosecute him. He’s not real. But, as long as you watch the show (or any show), you are forced to watch him and others commit police crimes (in the first season he covers up police brutality against a Black youth).
Ultimately the message I got was this is the status quo and the status quo doesn’t change, and that cops can still be good people despite their personal flaws because they’re just people (which makes them complex characters), and I don’t agree with that message.
The writer of that show was a reporter for the Baltimore Sun. He wrote it based his work off shadowing the BPD’s with their support and with their blessing.
Oddly enough some of the cases he covered have fallen apart.
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I like wire. I think the first season is really perfect and unmatched. But I have over the years found it hard to finish the show. I lost full on interest once stringer dies. And once barksdale crew is out of focus the show was really boring for me.
Overall the show really teeters between what it wants to convey. It wants to point to how corrupt police are or how voilent they are but also they are goodie two shoes who want to do good. My biggest annoyance is the attempt to really hamfist and whitewash pryzbylewski. How he becames a great teacher after committing a hate crime. They go real far with it, like him giving sage advice to dukie and dukie in the end falling into addiction. Ughhh if only he let the white savior save him.
The last two seasons are unbearable to me. Especially the last one. Its almost like mr simon channels his inner aaron sorkin and does a newsroom. The noble truth teller journalist vs the dumb new reporter. The whole dumb plot about mcnulty and his murder scheme.
I can’t stand marlo or his crew. I think barksdale crew was interesting and then they lost the plot. Here’s a bunch evil characters who kill people cause why not.
Of course as it goes on they really lose grip on using previous characters. Like omar. Omar’s character arc by the end was just uneventful.
The show just keeps doing this thing where it shows people who suffering in this system and dying. Like the women in the containers or the several homeless people in the show or the kids that get roped into drug dealing. It shows the incomplete response from the state or shows the lack of support systems. But overall the show just shrugs and says well all the different people incharge of this system, their hands are tied. Everyone just wants to get in on the game doesn’t matter who it is. But the people suffering are just hapless and bound to suffer. They got no recourse.
It starts solid but ends in self flagellation. In that sopranos edges it in being way better as it goes on.
That’s not to say its trash. Its just not better. Also valchek is the funniest character and season 2 rocks.
I hadn’t thought about it hard but yeah you are right. The last season is awful. Stuff seems to happen out of nowhere. New mayor finding himself 54 mil in the hole. Marlo isn’t a new character in the season, but his gang effortlessly killing other profile gangsters on top of the whimsical killing of civilians feels just like kinda stupid. The plotline about journalism feels shoehorned in. There isn’t anything about journalism until this point and now they try to show how careerist journalists lie and the newsroom lets them and this whole thing is explained by an obsession with the pulitzer prize. It is all really bad stuff.
Oh yeah. Mr simon worked for the sun (rag 🤮), of course he put like a self insert. Not to mention this show was on during the iraq, which the Usa media help launch and launder.
That’s why I think sopranos is the better show which does showcase putrid america by the end.
Also simon is insufferable outside. He is a huge russiagate guy amd of course now slava ukraini guy. Very annoying liberal. But hey made decent shows.
