3 1/2 hours! I'm definitely going to get season 1 soon just to see what the fuss is about. If you were ever to do an episode devoted to a TV show again I'd nominate Firefly, Lost and Arrested Development. Or do a Buffy episode when Adam gets finished with it.

The next show like this should definitely do Lost.

The greatest show on TV ever!!!

yippy, I get to listen to the first half tomorrow.

So since I have never seen The Wire I'm going to pass on this ginormous episode. Is there an After Dark episode? Or were you guys too tired after the /Flimcast?

There was an After Dark. We stopped our Season 3 live recording to do the after dark, then went back to do the Wire for another hour and a half. About 5 hours worth of podcasting for the day.

The worst part about finishing The Wire was not having anyone to talk to about it afterwards.

One of the best TV shows ever produced, no doubt. Saw all the episodes when they came out. Better than even The Sopranos in some ways.

Ohhhhh....I can't wait to hear this when I get home... This is probably the greatest show I've ever seen that so many people have NOT seen. And I just saw the whole thing, from start to finish, this past year.

I was late to the party but boy am I glad I finally showed up.

This is your best podcast ever and a great surprise to know you all put SO MUCH TIME into it. Keep up the good work and please do this again for other series. Also The Shield Black Friday /filmcast was dope as well and again a great surprise.

I HATED ZIGGY TOO!!! But season 2 was my second favorite season

I hear ya.

I still recommend checking out the first section of this ep. It's fairly spoiler-free.

seconded

I came on the chat late and had the entire series of The Wire spoiled for me. ='(
I cannot watch it now....

what is ailing the newspaper in S5 really has nothing to do with Templeton and making stuff up - it's a smoke screen. It is the fact that the newspaper is MISSING pretty much all the important stories going on in their city. The school teaching to the test, the police dept. in conjuciton with the mayor juking the crime stats, the death of Prop. Joe... Carpet bagging corportation and thier editors, large scale cut backs, the award culture are also huge problems.

at the very end you guys starting talking about some of the real life people. near the end you mentioned Brother Mouzone's right hand man, I think the character's name was Lamar - not sure, can't remember. Anyhoo, that character was played by the real life Deandre McCullough who was one of the main subjects of Simon/Burns' book, The Corner.

This has been widely talked about on the interwebs, but one of the guys that the character of Omar was based on, Donnie Andrews, played "Donnie" on the show, the guy who is a friend of Butchie and who is killed in assisting Omar when he goes into Monk's apartment. Omar jumps out of a 4th or 5th story window. Donnie did that in real life - jumped out of a 5th story window/balcony to escape a hairy situation (Mr. Andrews also jumped off a bridge once in a similar situation). So, even that situation had a basis in truth.

Hey dudes, FYI. Michael didn't kill Bodie! O-Dog did!

Huge mistake here goes. Jerry Mac mentioned it, Bodie is not killed by Michael Lee. He is killed by O-dog. Sure the light skin may resemble Michael Lee, but David Simon has confirmed it is O-Dog. Not to mention, Chris tells Marlo that Michael's first kill should not be Bodie because he originally worked for Bodie.

Also, if Michael killed Bodie, what would be the point of Michael's initiation scene where he shoots that guy point blank on the corner at the end of season 4. Chris acknowledges this is his first kill by saying "You can look them in the eye now, no matter who they are". That wouldnt be said if t was his second kill. He'd have to say something like " You can still look them in the eye, or you can look them in the eye again" lol.

Anyway, point is, O-Dog is Bodie's killer

While it was a good discussion, I am surprised at how many names you guys did not know (how do you not know from watching the DVDs that Lt. Mello's real name is in fact Jay Landsman? how do you not remember that shot of Rawls in the gay bar?)

and by names, i mean some names on the show. i found myself answering all the spots you guys were blanking out.

I didn't actually butt into the conversation with it, but we did discuss in the chat that it wasn't Michael who shot Bodie. Yet another reason to take part in the chat!

The Wire was the best show on tv period from 2002-2006. Seasons 1-4 were just amazing especially how the Barksdale plotline from Seasons 1-3 ended so great. Season 4 was also very very good and probably the best season to me only behind Season 1 even though Season 4 had the highest ratings of any show with a 98% average.

However Season 5 somewhat tarnished the overall legacy because that season was just crappy and a plain 360 from all the other seasons. It was uninteresting and was more like The Shield(unbleivable circumstances almost every episode) instead of The Wire(realistc circumstances every episode) especially with that horrible serial killer storyline.

The Wire was seriously overlooked by both viewers and especially critics despite the fact it had the highest critic ratings it only got 1 fucking Emmy nod. I think 10 years down the line The Wire will probably get the respect and praise it deserved in the 1st place.

Great podcast, a lot of good ideas thrown around. But what I learned most from this podcast was that 3+ hours is nowhere near enough time to talk about The Wire.

I think you're being a bit harsh on Season Five (which got shortchanged on our discussion, but in my view bought itself the aforementioned storyline with its central thesis), but I will agree on the rest of your points, Bobby.

Although, to clarify, the Wire was nominated for two Emmys, writing nods in Both Season 3 and 5.

The fifth season definitely had problems among them being the fact that The Wire is the kind of show where faking a serial murderer is considered unrealistic compared to legalizing drugs. Reading some of David Simon's interviews he admitts he could have had more time if he had wanted it and I think he should have take it. A slower burn on the whole serial killer thread would have worked better, putting Mcnulty in the position where faking a serial kiler does not seem like a bad idea. This would have worked better if Stringer Bell and Avon Barksdale had been the case as that was much more personal for Mcnulty. I can personally see Mcnulty doing that to get those two, but who's Marlo to Mcnulty?

Just started the pilot last night.. Still get 1hr of the show to check out!

I enjoyed the discussion of favourite characters. My two cents can be found here: http://andythesaint.wordpress.com/2008/04/17/top-...

I really enjoyed listening to this. I'm surprised, though, to hear one or two of you dismiss season 2 for being relatively inconsequential. The Wire is many things to many people, of course, but the most radical thing it does, in my opinion, is offer an honest-to-god critique of modern multinational capitalism. It's intricately wound through the entire series but is given greatest emphasis in season 2.

Five years later, I still can't believe that an American TV series devoted 12 hours of programming to an analysis of the destruction of organized labor and manufacturing. "We used to make shit in this country," and, as we've seen even more tragically in recent weeks, when good people lose their opportunity to work hard and to earn a living wage, the results are disastrous -- economically, politically, sociologically, and psychologically. The "frustrated masculinity" you all discussed is part-and-parcel with Marxist alienation and Drukheim's anomie. (I hope that doesn't come off as too pedantic, but, frankly, I think The Wire is as worthy of thoughtful critical attention as any of the Great Novels.)

Without Season 2, The Wire would have a gaping hole in its structure. It would still be an amazing drama with memorable characters, but Simon's larger goal of dissecting the tragedy of the modern American city would have been a failure. I suspect that one reason season 2 is less popular with most fans (and I still prefer season 3 myself) is because it's the least generic of the five. We understand what police procedurals, courtroom dramas, and crime stories look like, and we've also probably seen a movie set in a school or among journalists, but blue collar workers? Americans rarely make films or tv shows about work. No season of The Wire is just genre conventions, of course, but it's always also those conventions, and so the less generic season 2 is more shocking to our sensibilities. Not surprisingly, season 2 seems to be especially popular among left-leaning critics in western Europe.

My two main complaints with season 2 are: 1. I wish Simon had found a way to really return to the dock characters later in the run, especially Nick, who's one of my favorites. I'm genuinely curious to know what his life became two years later. And 2. I'm still not sure that Frank's death was necessary. I mean, dramaturgically, it was necessary to complete the arc of one of Simon's greatest tragic heroes, but the final act of that story is less elegant than the others.

Darren, I think you've hit the nail on the head on a number of the important purposes of the story - you rightly acknowledge that many of the things that make it less accessible are in fact those things which make it more integral, an important distinction in the broader thematics of the series.

The one thing I will, however, take issue with is this idea that the second season is the least generic; in fact, I'd argue it is the most generic. This is not because of its setting, which as you've pointed out feels the most different from what we've seen, but rather that Simon was unwilling to pair that setting with a "mystery" that wouldn't feel out of place on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. The "Bodies in the Crate" never ascend to being a symbol for anything larger: they are a convenient point of escalation that bring to light the corruption on the dock and discuss the ethics of the supply side of the drug trade.

Yes, the story eventually becomes about how good, working Americans are turning to crime in order to subsidize their efforts; in a way, albeit in a far more believable fashion, what Sobotka does on the docks is quite comparable to what McNulty does on the streets in Season Five, committing crimes to be able to support work that will improve the lives of the people of Baltimore. But I don't feel like the bodies were ever part of that: it wasn't that I disliked the storyline, as it certainly gave us some more of McNulty's meddling detective work and kept him involved in the stories, but the actual mystery itself never went anywhere.

Where the Wire's second season felt inconsequential was that it felt like we only observing, and not inhabiting. The Bodies in the Crate were as much a contrived reason to look into Frank Sobotka as was Volchek's request for a detail, a fact which is admittedly part of the show's message in regards to why police work gets done but, nonetheless, also demonstrates how the season's impact was lost by comparison. And while I will agree that what we saw amongst the workers was not normal by television standards, and would present a barrier to some audience members, I also think that the entry point being SO generic an event didn't help matters.

Another concern is, as you mention, the lack of impact of Frank Sobotka's tragic death on characters that we continued to follow throughout the seasons. While we might have taken something away from it, as it relates to the plight of the American working class and the struggles facing them in a new economy, I felt like the characters we followed from the first season didn't: the interaction with Sobotka and his men was limited, and it never felt like the stories that followed truly dealt with what that season meant (and they have plenty of opportunities with the Carcetti storyline).

I have to wonder whether we might have seen more of this in Simon's original plan, which was to shoot a miniseries of the mayoral race as opposed to cramming it into the first 2/3 of Season 4. Perhaps in that setting we would have seen the dock workers re-enter the focus, to see Simon connect the dots between the financial woes hurting the city and the ripple effect of their decisions on the working class. As it is, he kind of left it up to his viewers, which is not uncommon or unwarranted with a show this intelligent, but which nonetheless raises the questions, as you note, of how the second season could have asserted itself more within the grand narrative.

In other words, thank you for the comments, Darren - this dialogue = awesome.

Myles

I would say the biggest problem with season two is both, as memles said above, that we don't get enough of a ripple effect from season and that there is too much an element of mystery about the Greeks. The Greeks are one of the few things that are never quite explained -- their connection to the FBI agent, quite how they move about so easily, etc. In their vagueness, they are perhaps even more undeveloped than the editors of season five. Season two should have given us a full understanding of the supply side, but because the Greeks are cloaked in mystery, it feels like we are being tricked or led on.

Late to the party. Good long winded blab sesh there. I think the dislike of the second seaon comes from a sentiment that I agree with. It does seem tangential, but that doesn't make it bad. It's just frustrating that we've had this insight into the older Baltimore of catholic/polish/irish feuds and the dock unions and so forth, and a glimpse into working class 'whigger' culture and it's sort of left hanging. I think of it more as a kiss goodbye to the old games and then back to the main issues of the present (ie a totally artifically created situation that all of modern American urban life is influenced by; the drug war). It's like the show is urban baltimore, ever looking into the centre of town. That's its point of view and in season 2 it turned its head and saw a whole lot of other stuff and then turned back again.
And I don't understand the Ziggy hate. He's a brilliant character, brilliantly performed. Sure he's annoying, but disliking a character because he's annoying when he's rendered this well is just self indulgence.
Maybe people have no experience of such types. But every working class work environment I've experienced has a character like Ziggy. They're kinda frustrated losers, usually there because they've got nothing else to do or out of the kindess of a manager (because they're relatives or a relative of a relative). Nobody really likes them or respects them so they clown, and that's their only social value. They mistake laughter for being liked, but the guys will walk away from them so fast if they can get laughs at the expense of these guys. And that has a cost that Ziggy's story portrays perfectly (although they usually kill themselves somehow before anyone else).

My advice for all wire fans. Just keep watching it. It gets better everytime. And I highly recommend watching with subtitles.

This is by far my favorite episode of the podcast. I listen to the whole thing while editing my thesis paper for my major in the library. Well that is what I was doing, other people might have seen it as that laughing asshole by the computer. Since there were times I could not stop laughing, good times with the /filmcast guys.