The Wire

[Pearly-Dewdrops Drops]

Season 2 is easily the best season. Everything firing on all cylinders and Omar not yet a superhero.

[colacentral]

I loved it ten years ago but it's gradually got worse for me over time. I recently watched it on blu ray too and I only really enjoyed it in spurts, with season 4 and 5 being the only ones which elicited any real emotion from me.

Most of the characters are cardboard cutouts, pieces designed just to move the plot forward, and they mostly all talk like David Simon. Would D'Angelo talk that way about chicken mcnuggets, or is that scene there just so David Simon can explain his political beliefs to the audience?

You barely know anything about their inner lives. What little you do see of their personal lives just underlines the weakness of this aspect of the writing - has anyone ever not just wanted the McNulty and his wife scenes to end as soon as possible? (Although maybe not the best example, as I find McNulty to be one of the few characters, along with Bubbles, who does have a bit of dimension to him).

I also think the idea that there's no exposition to explain plot points to the audience is greatly exaggerated. In fact, that's what the majority of the dialogue is. Police officers explain police things to each other, like how a wire tap works, what a burner is, etc. There are several scenes in season 2 explaining different aspects of the docks as it pertains to the investigation. Stringer carefully explains every aspect of drug dealing. Almost every scene is explaining some detail to move the plot forward. It's all plot and no character. This is true of everything Simon writes - the characters in The Deuce have the same way of talking, and also love to stop and explain things to each other.

To elaborate further on what I mean, I think season 4 is head and shoulders above the other seasons precisely because it's about character, not plot. When you think of any other season, the first thing that springs to mind is the "plot," meaning the sequence of events that happen - the initial cops vs drug dealers story of season 1; the docks investigation; hamsterdam; the serial killer. Season 4 is "the school," but the plot is internal to the characters - it's how the kids change from the beginning to the end, and how Prez changes. Episode to episode, the story is moving forward because the characters are moving forward, not because some new evidence has been found, or the wire tap has been approved, or because Leicester had cracked the code. It's the only season that genuinely feels like a fly on the wall slice of life thing rather than a "plot."

I also remember finding on my most recent rewatch that the plot of season 2 is pretty far fetched, arguably more so than the Hamsterdam conceit. I can't remember it all now, but from what I recall, Prez's uncle's grudge against Sobotka leads him to get an investigation started against them, not long before, conveniently, a load of women are found dead in a container. Those two events aren't linked, it's just a coincidence. McNulty happens to be the one who finds the other body floating in the water, also a lucky coincidence. At the same time, the Sobotka kids get desperate enough to get involved in the drug dealing themselves, also a coincidence. Then the whole thing gets solved when the person who killed the women is caught on CCTV being attacked by the Russian.

This is also the season that introduces the absolute worst characters of the series - Brother Mouzone and The Greek. Both ridiculous. The Greek is so thinly sketched, such a cliche of a mysterious shadowy drug lord, standing at the airport check in desk stating "business, always business" into the middle distance as he's asked for the purpose of his trip. Ridiculous.

These characters, along with Omar, undermine the other standard notion you always hear, that the show is realistic. It's highly detailed, and the technical aspects are accurate to life, but it's still a TV show, with TV characters and TV situations, like the absurd characters mentioned, or Hamsterdam, or Stringer holding regular gang meetings with all the teenage street dealers, or the daft paint balling scene mentioned in the OP. I don't mind things not being realistic, I really don't care about realism if the characters and story are engaging, but too often they're not, and more importantly, they are jarring against the back drop of a show that wants to appear documentary like.

That's just what I'm remembering now, a year after last seeing it, but it just struck me how the whole plot of that season is built on a series of coincidences. It's honestly less believable, in pure mechanical plot terms, than the serial killer stuff in season 5, as that is more ludicrous as a series of choices for mcnulty the character to make than something that depends on a lot of unlikely stars to align for the story to work.

On the serial killer story though, I actually have to say that I found that easier to swallow this time than any previous viewing. It's still ridiculous, but I do think it's set up nicely in the finale of season 4 that McNulty is convinced that the department has changed, and he'll get a permanent wire tap unit set up with a decent budget, so to have the police budget immediately gutted worse than it ever had before, and the major crimes unit disbanded, I think you can suspend your disbelief enough to imagine a reformed alcoholic might back slide and become even more self destructive than he had before. I think if you think of McNulty doing it with the thought in the back of his mind that he knows he'll never get away with it, and he wants to get caught just to prove a point and be a martyr, it's somewhat believable.

They also make a point of showing that he hates the regular daily grind of doing normal homicide work, as he comes back from major crimes and is visibly bored of working a bog standard murder. He craves excitement, and creating a big media circus over a fake serial killer is part of that, just as much as any genuine point he wants to make.

I used to think that McNulty was a dreadful, irritating character, and that season 4 was partly so good due to his relative absence. But this time I found him to be one of the few who is a real character, who drives the story forward based on who he is, rather than because the writers want a plot to happen.

In regards to the blu ray itself, I'm not a fan of the widescreen. It's really obvious in a lot of places that the set has been decorated to fit in the 4:3 frame, and it looks dreadful in wide screen with acres of empty space on either side. For example, McNulty's flat is meant to be a shit tip, but in wide screen it looks like he has specifically pushed all of his clutter to either side of his mattress. There are other scenes in offices where filing cabinets and pictures hanging on walls are positioned right behind the characters, with nothing else on the sides. Also, just on a basic compositional level it looks wrong to have characters now standing in the centre of the frame when you know that they would be off to the side normally.

I know the x-files was given the same treatment, but I watched a few of those on Prime a few years ago and don't remember it being that distracting. I would guess it's to do with how different the cinematography of the two shows is to start with, with the Wire being intentionally flat and documentary like, it looks that much flatter with a load of empty space added to it.

[Magnum Valentino]

Brilliant post.

I'd take issue with the idea of coincidence though. Does coincidence exist in fiction, in storytelling, in the same guise it exists in reality? Like, what I mean is, we're following those characters and those events because that's where the story is going. Those are disparate points that converge in a shared single destination. But if you pick that destination and work backwards, "how did we get here" is bound to reveal a series of things that it's surely unfair to dismiss as coincidence right?

[selectivememory]

I've been rewatching The Wire too and I was hoping someone was going to start a new thread about it soon, so cheers.

Prior to this rewatch, which must be nearly a decade after my last watch, I would have put this up there with the best TV shows ever made, maybe not quite Sopranos-tier, but close. Always had a soft spot for Seasons 2 and 4 in particular. I also remember Aiden Gillen being good in it, but not really knowing him in anything else. When I finally caught up to Game of Thrones a couple of years ago I was really shocked at how shit he was in it.

Anyway, up to Season 5 now, have fallen in love with the show all over again, and I can't really choose between Seasons 2, 3 and 4 as the best. Watched the Season 4 finale yesterday and it just destroyed me. There were like four moments that made me cry.

I realised though on this rewatch that while Marlo might be a terrifying, inhuman monster, the real villain of the show is Herc. Just representative of everything wrong with the police at the street level. His behaviour in Season 4 especially is disgraceful. Getting a promotion he doesn't deserve, then lumbering from one fuck-up to the next, destroying the lives of several people while he desperately tries to cover his own arse, throwing his weight about even though he just doesn't have any kind of natural authority. His incompetence and stupidity completely destroys Randy's prospects in life, which is especially devastating as he's such a sweet and enterprising kid. And also he gets Little Kevin killed and helps push Bubbles closer to rock bottom. Utter cunt of a man even if he isn't a sadist like some of the other police characters. HATE HIM. Just started Season 5 and I'd forgotten that he was working for that absolute slime ball of a lawyer. It figures though.

[colacentral]

First, second and third series didn't just hold up for me but I enjoyed them more than ever before, said it right there in my first post.  checkoutgirl, both your posts suggest you've misread something fundamental about why I started this thread.

I am in agreement that season 2 is my favourite, and I also think that season 4 is ace. What lets it down are the scenes concerning the politics - they're vital and essential to what The Wire is, what it was driving towards, but they aren't dramatically engaging in the way the minutiae covered in earlier seasons was.

This is the opposite of my rewatch experience - 1 to 3 dropping quite significantly in my estimation, particularly 2 for reasons stated above, but I found 3 fairly forgettable too. It was entertaining enough and I blasted through it, but I also found it quite light. I hate Avon and Stringer in equal measure, so their betrayal and down fall, which I guess was meant to be the heart of the season, did nothing for me. On first viewing I was mildly pleased that Stringer was killed, as the guy was a grade A cunt, but I feel nothing about it now, not helped by the convoluted way it comes about via the awful brother mouzone story. Season 3 is one that I enjoy while I'm watching, but leaves no impression once it's done.

Season 5 got slightly better. The news stuff is as dreadful as ever, but it might be the funniest season, and as stated above, I found myself surprisingly invested in McNulty, when I previously detested him as a character.

I went into season 4 worried that it wouldn't be as good as I remembered, but it was better, reaffirmed for me as its crowning achievement, close to perfect, and the one season that rivals the best of The Sopranos.

[Shit Good Nose]

Still the best TV drama ever made in my opinion.  An absolutely immense piece of work.

Seasons 2 and 4 on a par at the top - I love that 2 plays out like a Shakespearian tragedy, and 4 is just properly good TV drama.

Season 1 next - as others have said fairly "easy" and straight forward, but bullshit free and a nice pace to getting the team together.

Then 3 - I still struggle with Hamsterdam as a thing that could happen in the world of The Wire.

5 at the bottom - it just feels half-written and made up as they went along.  But it does indeed have the best genuine comedy of all five seasons.

But even the weaker parts are infinitely better than most TV drama.


Still haven't seen Treme.

[colacentral]

Brilliant post.

I'd take issue with the idea of coincidence though. Does coincidence exist in fiction, in storytelling, in the same guise it exists in reality? Like, what I mean is, we're following those characters and those events because that's where the story is going. Those are disparate points that converge in a shared single destination. But if you pick that destination and work backwards, "how did we get here" is bound to reveal a series of things that it's surely unfair to dismiss as coincidence right?

I think it's a question of intent. To take the Sopranos as a counter example: season 2 builds up to a probable war with an antagonist, until that antagonist is unexpectedly killed in a fight with another character that has nothing to do with the main over arching plot. It's unexpected and convenient that the antagonist is killed off, but part of the writer's intent there is to not go through the obvious crowd pleasing route of another mob war, and it's clearly signalled as a lucky coincidence. I think that's different to say a procedural, where a coincidence only exists within the plot in order to make the plot happen. It's the difference between the writer knowing you're aware of the coincidence, and hoping you don't notice it.

I also think it's different where the main focus of the story is on the characters and their internal story, and an external plot. Every season of The Sopranos, in pure plot terms, is virtually identical, but that overarching plot is just a skeleton to hang smaller character based stories off. I think you accept a coincidence where what really matters is how we're responding to the characters, rather than how engaged we are in the external action.

Edit: another season 2 coincidence - Ziggy flying off the handle and killing one of the Russians at a crucial moment when the police could do with some leverage over them.

[AllisonSays]

On Ziggy, I found him incredibly annoying the first time round, just a profoundly dislikeable character. But on my second watch I changed my mind, sort of - he is obviously incredibly annoying but it's actually a brilliant performance, I think, and a brilliant piece of writing. I guess on of the themes of that season is the staggered effects of deindustrialisation; how being from where Ziggy and his cousin are from makes you ready for a world that doesn't exist anymore. Ziggy can't live up to that industrial masculine archetype - partly because it's just not him, partly because it doesn't even make sense to be that guy anymore - but he can drink and smoke and fuck his life up, which is another kind of way to be masculine. And imagine being Frank's son, my god, that would fuck anyone up.

[selectivememory]

I can't remember it all now, but from what I recall, Prez's uncle's grudge against Sobotka leads him to get an investigation started against them, not long before, conveniently, a load of women are found dead in a container. Those two events aren't linked, it's just a coincidence.

Valchek has a grudge against Frank because he got the prime spot for the church window, which cost him a lot of money, and Valchek correctly deduces that Frank and the union have more money than they should. And Frank has that money because of his involvement in organised crime and smuggling, which directly relates to those women in the container - if the Greeks didn't have a man on the inside, they wouldn't be able to smuggle women in through the port. So there's definitely a link between the two events - which is Frank's involvement in organised crime - although that one occurred shortly after the other is maybe a bit convenient I'll admit.

[colacentral]

Valchek has a grudge against Frank because he got the prime spot for the church window, which cost him a lot of money, and Valchek correctly deduces that Frank and the union have more money than they should. And Frank has that money because of his involvement in organised crime and smuggling, which directly relates to those women in the container - if the Greeks didn't have a man on the inside, they wouldn't be able to smuggle women in through the port. So there's definitely a link between the two events - which is Frank's involvement in organised crime - although that one occurred shortly after the other is maybe a bit convenient I'll admit.

What I mean by a link though is that those events all occur so close together and at the exact right time they need to happen for the plot. The investigation could have started a few months earlier or a few months later and the container of dead women wouldn't have played in, and the investigation would come to nothing.

Ziggy kills the Russian when the plot needs Frank to talk to the police, and the killing comes for all intents and purposes out of nowhere, as in, not spurred on by something relating to the police, or the dead girls, etc. It's a self contained plot that happens because it produces a desired outcome in the main plot.

In comparison, I don't remember that many contrivances in any of the other seasons. Season 2 is also the one with the bizarre brother mouzone / cheese story that makes no sense,  leading me to think that the writers were struggling with how to continue the show without just doing season 1 again (which is sort of what season 3 is).

[kngen]

occasionally participating in broad metaphors like the bit where they wonder what the smoke across the city might be rather than going down to find out.

I've been in two separate newsrooms where this has literally happened, so it never struck me as a metaphor (although now it does!). I just presumed it happened at the Baltimore Sun, which is why Simon put it in. But yeah, I can see your point.

The only bit of that that rang true was the editor waking up in the night and fretting that an error hadn't been corrected before going to print.

Yep, that was a lovely bit that really resonated with me.

Also, regarding Season 5, I'll say this till I'm blue in the face. The serial killer storyline could have worked if it was the dodgy journo pushing that narrative, and McNulty - after working out it was bollocks - going along with it, and driving it forward, to get the department funding etc. (Also, I read a lot of criticism of Dominic West's attempt at a B'more accent when he was pretending to be the serial killer, but the last time I was in Baltimore, there was a guy serving me in a bar who sounded EXACTLY like that, like he was chewing every syllable and swishing them around his mouth every time he spoke. I thought he was putting it on at first. It was quite odd.)

The bit I fucking hate in Season 5, and where I actually said 'Oh, fuck off!' to my beloved Wire, is where newly minted lawyer Cedric and Judge Rhonda exchange a knowing glance at the start of court proceedings. Um, mistrial? That can't actually be allowed to happen in real life, can it?

[Dex Sawash]

Wire likers should watch The Corner too. I'm due a rewatch now since it has been 20 years.

[Gulftastic]

The Rhonda and Judge Cedric bit has dialogue with her refusing herself due to their relationship.

[Dirty Boy]

There's a lot to engage with in this thread and i will once i've read it properly, but a couple of things just quickly...

Ziggy kills the Russian when the plot needs Frank to talk to the police, and the killing comes for all intents and purposes out of nowhere, as in, not spurred on by something relating to the police, or the dead girls, etc. It's a self contained plot that happens because it produces a desired outcome in the main plot.

Have to take issue with this i'm afraid. It doesn't "come out of nowhere" when Ziggy spends the whole season being tormented and beaten and laughed at while he tries to maintain a eggshell-thin persona that clearly isn't him, all the while behaving increasingly recklessly ie:  throwing the money Nicky gives him out of the car, being goaded into taking on that bullying oaf that used to be shagging Beadie and racing around and blasting the radio while stealing cars from the docks. Being punked and slapped about by the russian is the final straw (and the following scene in the car when he finally breaks down and realises his life is over is one of the biggest gut punches of the series for me).

Also, this thing about coincidences is a bit daft innit? Surely that's the case with all drama and it never seemed cranked in to me (ok, maybe in Season five). Life is often a string of coincidences. You're right about Mouzone though, i'm guessing he must have some basis in reality at least. Anyone read Simon's books?

The bit I fucking hate in Season 5, and where I actually said 'Oh, fuck off!' to my beloved Wire, is where newly minted lawyer Cedric and Judge Rhonda exchange a knowing glance at the start of court proceedings. Um, mistrial? That can't actually be allowed to happen in real life, can it?

You can't hear it so well under the soundtrack (it's in the final montage right?), but Rhonda says something like "it looks like i have to accuse myself" and makes like she's about to leave court.
Edit - too bloody late.

[Magnum Valentino]

RECUSE!

[Gulftastic]

RECUSE!

Predictive text spoiled my post.

[Dirty Boy]

Hey, i learned a new word!

[kngen]

You can't hear it so well under the soundtrack (it's in the final montage right?), but Rhonda says something like "it looks like i have to accuse myself" and makes like she's about to leave court.
Edit - too bloody late.

Ah, yeah, I totally missed that.

[Ferris]

Russian

George "Double G" Glekas is greek!

[kngen]

Anyone read Simon's books?

I've read Homicide and The Corner. The lie detector photocopier bit in The Wire is taken from a real life incident in Homicide. There's a few others, but that's the one that stuck out for me.

[colacentral]

There's a lot to engage with in this thread and i will once i've read it properly, but a couple of things just quickly...
Have to take issue with this i'm afraid. It doesn't "come out of nowhere" when Ziggy spends the whole season being tormented and beaten and laughed at while he tries to maintain a eggshell-thin persona that clearly isn't him, all the while behaving increasingly recklessly ie:  throwing the money Nicky gives him out of the car, being goaded into taking on that bullying oaf that used to be shagging Beadie and racing around and blasting the radio while stealing cars from the docks. Being punked and slapped about by the russian is the final straw (and the following scene in the car when he finally breaks down and realises his life is over is one of the biggest gut punches of the series for me).

Also, this thing about coincidences is a bit daft innit? Surely that's the case with all drama and it never seemed cranked in to me (ok, maybe in Season five). Life is often a string of coincidences. You're right about Mouzone though, i'm guessing he must have some basis in reality at least. Anyone read Simon's books?
You can't hear it so well under the soundtrack (it's in the final montage right?), but Rhonda says something like "it looks like i have to accuse myself" and makes like she's about to leave court.
Edit - too bloody late.

Again, it's not the believability of the ziggy story itself, it's that it all happens at the exact point in time that other incidents surrounding the docks happen, and that him killing the russian is conveniently timed to allow a break in the case that resolves the season. It's a deux ex machina. That alone would be forgivable as an isolated incident, a lucky break that happens all the time in reality, but the whole of the season is moved forward by one coincidence after another. Again, that wouldn't matter as much if it wasn't so narrative heavy, even more so than the other four seasons.

I've read the Homicide book and it's much more what I wish the Wire was - as it is non fiction, it has no overt story, it shows the police work as a boring daily grind like any other job. That might be another reason why watching the Wire after reading it I felt like all the plotty TV stuff jumped out that much more. I want to see a police show that really is just about the job as it really is, as it's portrayed in the book. The Wire is another form of procedural in some respects, but played out across seasons rather than single episodes. Not meaning any disrespect to it when I say that, but it's not quite what it's often described as.

[colacentral]

Re: brother mouzone. I've heard defenses along the lines of "so and so in the 80's was really like that," but it's more his place in the story than his persona. You're supposed to believe all these hardened street thugs are scared of him... why? And as if half of them would know who he is. Prop Joe talking about being scared of him. He goes around with a one man entourage. And the nature of Stringer's machiavellian plot barely makes sense, it's just there to contrive some conflict between him and Avon, which they could have still achieved without all that nonsense. Just having Stringer kill D'Angelo and waiting for McNulty to reveal it would have been enough tension and believable enough, both that Stringer would do it and that Avon would sell him out.

[Mister Six]

I've been in two separate newsrooms where this has literally happened, so it never struck me as a metaphor (although now it does!). I just presumed it happened at the Baltimore Sun, which is why Simon put it in. But yeah, I can see your point.

Doesn't the scene end with some gnarly old hack telling them to go find out, or saying "Once we would have just gone over there" or something equally on the nose? Am I just making up bits in my head to dislike this season more?

Also, regarding Season 5, I'll say this till I'm blue in the face. The serial killer storyline could have worked if it was the dodgy journo pushing that narrative, and McNulty - after working out it was bollocks - going along with it, and driving it forward, to get the department funding etc.

Strong agree. Although it was Lester going along with it that threw me off more than McNulty. They did a bad job of getting across how frustrated everyone was with not being able to get the hands on Marlo.

(I also thought Marlo was a bit shit and one-dimensional, and it almost felt like the writers were saying, "Ah, these horrible kids today aren't like the nice kingpins you had back when I was young...")

I've read Homicide and The Corner. The lie detector photocopier bit in The Wire is taken from a real life incident in Homicide. There's a few others, but that's the one that stuck out for me.

Yeah, I spotted that bit too. It annoyed me, though, because it seems unlikely that even someone from deep in the projects wouldn't know what a photocopier was in 2005, especially when the first season had Stringer Bell's crew operating... a copy shop.

[Puffin Chunks]

I haven't watched for a while, and lack the eloquent analytical skills of others in thread, but my experience of The Wire....

I remember when I first watched; the oft-repeated "you need to give it 3 or 4 episodes to get into it" was going around. Absolutely ludicrous. I was hooked from the Snot Boogie scene. Blitzed through 5 seasons, but felt that the "gritty realism" and mostly plausible motivations were pretty much thrown out of the window for Season 5.

I have now watched it 3 times in total, but I have never managed to get through more than about 3 episodes of the final season, despite my best efforts.

Season 2 is as good a season of television as any show that has ever aired, and people who don't like it are just wrong. I remember the changing of the opening music throwing me at the time, and not liking it initially, but eventually I found myself looking forward to what the cover would be used next whenever I approached a new season.

After my first watch through, it was my personal "best show of all time", but since subsequent watch-throughs, I have re-evaluated, and now have it in my top 10 (of an arbitrary list that doesn't really exist). To be a top show, you can't have a duff season. The Sopranos would be the best example of this. Not a duff season in sight. A character gets killed off and another (just as good) character steps up to replace them. Motivations are always consistent and in character.

The Wire could have been the G.O.A.T. Season 5 totally kills this for me. It's like a totally different show, and I cannot understand what David Simon was thinking. I should probably force myself through it again to see if I re-evaluate that position, but I just can't bring myself to.

[13 schoolyards]

I dimly recall reading at the time that the cut in episodes for s5 was a relatively last minute thing from HBO that required a lot of rushed work cutting the scripts down. Simon and company were cruising along thinking all the critical acclaim they were getting meant HBO would keep letting them go on the way they had been, then it turned out The Wire rated really badly for what it cost and the critical praise was the only reason they hadn't been axed.

(see also: at least one theory why there wasn't a fourth season of Deadwood)

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Re: brother mouzone. I've heard defenses along the lines of "so and so in the 80's was really like that," but it's more his place in the story than his persona. You're supposed to believe all these hardened street thugs are scared of him... why? And as if half of them would know who he is. Prop Joe talking about being scared of him. He goes around with a one man entourage. And the nature of Stringer's machiavellian plot barely makes sense, it's just there to contrive some conflict between him and Avon, which they could have still achieved without all that nonsense. Just having Stringer kill D'Angelo and waiting for McNulty to reveal it would have been enough tension and believable enough, both that Stringer would do it and that Avon would sell him out.

He has a reputation because he ''has bodies on him'' iirc. His distinct Nation of Islam type otherness and precisely the fact he doesn't appear to be either physically strong or well protected conveys power in a more oblique, alien way.

I think everyone down to the hoppers knows him with good reason. Pretty much everyone who has lived in a tower block or council estate or been to a state school knew the names but not the faces of notorious supposed psychos locally and it is all about power projection through infamy. The kids also know Omar as an ogre figure who clears streets.

Also, you kind of prove your own point and mine above, because when Marlowe comes along fresh and doesn't know anything about him he has nothing to fear.

[Sonny_Jim]

The Wire could have been the G.O.A.T. Season 5 totally kills this for me. It's like a totally different show, and I cannot understand what David Simon was thinking. I should probably force myself through it again to see if I re-evaluate that position, but I just can't bring myself to.

First time through I didn't hate season 5, certainly didn't dislike it so much I stopped watching.  On the 2nd rewatch I kinda braced myself for it and enjoyed it more.  The McNulty serial-killer thing was always bollocks though.  I think I enjoyed it more knowing that paper print was completely dead and buried at the time I rewatched it, giving the newpaper office stuff almost a documentary feel.

I do now use the word 'evacuated' properly due to season 5, so some good did come from it.

Can we do a 'that guy was really good in The Wire, how come he's in nothing else?'  Was going to say Michael K Williams but he's popped up in other stuff since then.  I did read somewhere he was actually an extra in 'Deep Impact' after The Wire had started filming (he's running away during one of the meteor impacts at the start).

Dude who plays Bubs though, man he was just so good at it.  No idea if he's good in anything else or if it was just that his character was well written, but far out, he was believable. 

EDIT:  Does anyone else imagine that Fred Johnson in The Expanse is Cutty Wises Final Form.

[Magnum Valentino]

First time through I didn't hate season 5, certainly didn't dislike it so much I stopped watching.  On the 2nd rewatch I kinda braced myself for it and enjoyed it more.  The McNulty serial-killer thing was always bollocks though.  I think I enjoyed it more knowing that paper print was completely dead and buried at the time I rewatched it, giving the newpaper office stuff almost a documentary feel.

I do now use the word 'evacuated' properly due to season 5, so some good did come from it.

Can we do a 'that guy was really good in The Wire, how come he's in nothing else?'  .... Dude who plays Bubs though, man he was just so good at it.  No idea if he's good in anything else or if it was just that his character was well written, but far out, he was believable. 

Andre Royo. He's told a story about how he was filming something else in France (I think), and Obama sees him and shouts out something like 'Bubbles, my man, keep up the good work'. That must be cool as fuck.

[Endicott]

I've read Homicide and The Corner. The lie detector photocopier bit in The Wire is taken from a real life incident in Homicide. There's a few others, but that's the one that stuck out for me.

The other one I remember is a detective shooting a mouse with his 9.

[Endicott]

Doesn't the scene end with some gnarly old hack telling them to go find out, or saying "Once we would have just gone over there" or something equally on the nose? Am I just making up bits in my head to dislike this season more?

Clarke Johnson's editor I think. Don't understand the problem with it.

Strong agree. Although it was Lester going along with it that threw me off more than McNulty. They did a bad job of getting across how frustrated everyone was with not being able to get the hands on Marlo.

I can't remember specific dialog right now, but generally I am completely happy about Freamon's complicity with Jimmy, and also its juxtaposition with Bunk's total disgust. It fits in with Freamon's character anyway, but there's also dialog in S5 about how he just wants to do a decent case and retire, or something, and his general disgust with the police dept.