wozeree wrote:
I bought this entire series recently because Amazon had it on sale. I don't get why people think it's one of the best shows ever made. I don't hate it, it's interesting, but basically it's a police show. David Simon's previous show, Homicide, I would put on my top 5 list for sure. I don't get this hype about The Wire though.
Does this have something to do with Autism (I'm not diagnosed, btw), but am just not able to understand?
I love The Sopranos, am writing a book about it, thought I would love this too. What's up? Am I the only one?
I don't know that everyone should necessarily love it, or even like it. But I will try to explain why I like it...
I think its for a few reasons...
First, some of the characters really do learn and change and evolve during the show - some for the worse, some for the better, though they payoffs for that may not really happen until season 4 and especially season 5. Some, despite everything that happens to them, revert to their core type at the end and haven't grown.
Second, its the way that nothing in the show is happening in isolation - cause and effect is happening all the time. Institutional dysfunction is rampant - the police promoting the incompetent officers while the good officers languish in the pawn shop unit or never get promoted in any case. There are vicious circles happening everywhere - the rank and file police who want to bring the drug dealers to justice are hampered and undermined by their commanders who are beholdent to their own senior commanders, who are in turn beholdant to the politicians, who are in turn taking drug money for their political campaigns from the drug dealers. The politicians are more interested in appearing to solve problems than actually solving them. A good example of all this in season 3 is the entire command structure, from the Mayor to Sergeant Landsman, making Bunk Moreland not work to put murderers in jail, but instead to work on the PR win of recovering Officer Dozerman's weapon, which will have little impact on actual crime. Stat-driven policing, preventing the police from really getting at the core of crime and fighting it effectively. The Dock Workers too - their own Union rules basically kill them off - driving the junior members to crime because they cannot get more work, and Frank resorting to crime to be able to try and improve the work situation for all his members - meanwhile the corruption of the politicians in dealing with the real estate developers is putting the final nail in their coffins. Characters suborn themselves to the institutions of which they are a part, not seeing how bad these institutions really are for them, or recognizing it but feeling (or actually being) helpless to resist - McNulty's rebelious nature against the police command structure, D'Angelo ultimately succumbing to taking the fall for Avon, Stringer trying to 'escape' his role as drug Kingpin and become a legitimate businessman. These themes end up continuing and expanding in seasons 4 and 5, with the school system and the journalists later on.