The Wire - Greatest TV show of the decade

Memento Mori wrote:The Wire is the most boring show I've ever seen. It's television's version of Superman Returns.

If I had a list, you'd have just made it. You just laid a big curly turd of an subjective stinker right here.

Tis indeed brilliant. Have 2 more episodes of Season 4 to watch. Has been the best series so far, will be buying season 5 tomorrow.

Favourite characters? For me it's Chris and Snoop who steal every scene there in.

I've started watching The Sopranos. At was first I was like "Meh", but each episode is better than the last and now I love it. This morning I drifted off to sleep and had a dream I was in bed with Tony's wife. It was weird.

Memento Mori wrote:

Cuttooth wrote:

PsychoPriest wrote:Lost > All because The Constant > Everything ever in the universe

The best episode of Lost but the phonecall at the end was gooseberry fool.

The phonecall was great and was integral to the story.

I find The Constant overrated. I preferred The Economist.

Its OK, but in no way is it better than Life on mars, CSI, Lost or Futurecast.

Carlos wrote:Its OK, but in no way is it better than Life on mars, CSI, Lost or Futurecast.

Not I agree about the others, but c'mon!

Carlos wrote:Its OK, but in no way is it better than CSI

Absolutely not.

Phatman wrote:

Carlos wrote:Its OK, but in no way is it better than Life on mars, CSI, Lost or Futurecast.

Not I agree about the others, but c'mon!

I would've highlighted Lief on Marrs out of that lot. I've seen nativity plays with more depth.

Okay, I've decided I'm going to give this a try. When that will be I don't know, it seems a lot to download which I couldn't do on this connection and right now I don't have any money to buy the sets with.

ive got season 1 , 2and 3 and im slowly getting through season 2 now.

PsychoPriest wrote:Lost > All because The Constant > Everything ever in the universe

Long Term Parking (The Sopranos) > The Constant (Lost)

season 4 > season 3 > season 1 > season 2

so far for me. I expect season 5 to slot in somewhere in the middle. I enjoyed season 4 so much because it introduced a load of new characters, and I suspect season 5 won't, so there won't be a similar journey from beginning to end like there is in this one. If you haven't watched the show, avoid the box cover of season 5. Does saying that make it worse? It's like other tv shows; they shouldn't emblazen some of the characters who go through life or death situations in the show on the box of the very last season, and then have huge adverts in newspapers so you can't fail to notice it.

I love the Wire. Even though I've enjoyed other shows like 24 and Lost which, in the case of Lost, the whole premise and style of it is close to being My Perfect Tv Show; I love the mystery, the jungle and sense that anything can happen, The Wire is easily the best written show I've watched. I ought to watch Six Feet Under, Deadwood, The Sopranos, The West Wing, though. But then I found The Wire fresh because it didn't look like an expensive modern tv show (it looked like something from the 70's) so didn't carry the same baggage of overly stylistic cinematography or several melodramatic moments in just one episode.

The director/producer talks about it on one episode, the constant struggle as I think he put it to make it look cinematic but also grounded and real. I love how understated it is, the way characters talk and interact with eachother as though someone has just set up a camera in the corner without them knowing. It's so real and they'll talk about nothing in particular and its gripping, because all the melodramatic flab has been cut away and you're just left with something pure. There are scenes that happen once, and only once, between two characters that reveal so much about what one of them is feeling, even though at that moment you might not realise how significant it is. And then they might not talk to each other for another few seasons, if ever again and looking back you remember it being a pretty vital part of understanding that character. I mean watching Lost at the moment, the show spends 20 minutes to get going, then might reveal one or two things. And it's all about the build up, whereas watching an hour of The Wire can be both really satisfying and filling and at the same you wonder if it's ever going to really get going, because 'it's episode 8 and they've not even set up a wire yet'. It's slow, but every scene matters. I like it because it's always about something interesting, whereas other shows might focus too much on character's relationships and personal problems. I love that The Wire doesn't wallow in any of that.

Nothing really happens - or rather it does, but it's so detailed and rich it happens over the course of seasons rather than episodes - but I always find it watchable because every scene either reveals a different side to a character, is amusing, or is imbued with so much meaning without ever being pompous or self important that it's just amazing (all the stuff about chess pieces; pawns and players). And it's hilarious, I must laugh at least four times an episode. It might not even be something funny, but instead I'm just getting a little over-excited about a character finally showing some emotion after a few seasons. Those moments are pretty rare and the camera will pull away and try to not linger, but they're quietly powerful. Or I might laugh at the tiny looks and glances the characters make. I was watching one of the episodes again the other day, and noticed as one of the characters was ranting on in the street a passer by walks past in the background and sort of gives him a look.

shiiiiiiiiit

And Bodie. His hat and the way he walks off in the coolest manner and spits through his teeth. Every character is so cool. They could just stand there and do nothing and they'd still be cooler than the coolest character in any other tv show. That's what I like most about the show, rather than how well-researched and realistic it is compared to other crime dramas/cop shows. Given that it's written primarilly by an ex detective and ex journalist, the characterisation and dialogue is so good.

reactant mob driven for post of the year!

4/2/1/3>5

Something like that anyway, it's difficult to rate one season over the other and almost pointless to do so.

satriales wrote:

PsychoPriest wrote:Lost > All because The Constant > Everything ever in the universe

Long Term Parking (The Sopranos) > The Constant (Lost)

Possible Kill Screen (The Shield) >> All

My 2 favourite tv shows ever.

House S1>The Wire S4>The Wire S3>The Wire S1>House S4>House S3>The Wire S5>House S2>The Wire S2

House S4 isn't better than House S2 or S3.

Thing with stuff like Lost, you can watch it and enjoy it but you can't respect it. Just little things that are jarring, characters falling out for contrived reasons, people doing things just so you've got a cliffhanger between acts (in the first series, Locke clobbered that Boone kid round the head for some spurious reason, so you're thinking 'is he a bad guy?' then in the next act there's some ludicrous explanation). Even knowing it's just a silly popcorn show, it just drags you out of the programme - Sawyer is a strawberry floating professional con artist, but he gets taken by Hurley at table tennis. Yeah, real sharp operator. This is just stuff that registered at the time as utterly ridiculous, but I'm sure every episode is jam-packed with similar daftness. The thing is sometimes it's exciting and you can just enjoy it, other times it's virtually screaming "bear with us, we need to pad this gooseberry fool out for another 20 episodes".

Filler episodes aren't necessarily a bad thing, it's just bad ones stick out like a sore thumb among bad episodes that actually move the plot along.



Just finished the third season for a second time. The whole Hamsterdam thing is one of the few arcs that could be considered unrealistic, yet it does it such a realistic way it's never unbelievable. And it's only in this second run through that I've realised the unnecessary turf war between Stanfield and Barksdale is a symbolisation for the Iraq War.

Cuttooth wrote:Filler episodes aren't necessarily a bad thing, it's just bad ones stick out like a sore thumb among bad episodes that actually move the plot along.



Just finished the third season for a second time. The whole Hamsterdam thing is one of the few arcs that could be considered unrealistic, yet it does it such a realistic way it's never unbelievable. And it's only in this second run through that I've realised the unnecessary turf war between Stanfield and Barksdale is a symbolisation for the Iraq War.

In what way