macnorton

The Wire is very close to the mundane real life aspect of police work...since in reality not everything is a shoot out or does it involved DNA CSI style. That being said, if every day life bores you, this show is not for you.

I also agree that the show "demands" a lot from the viewer. Ironically, Homicide (I consider that the best show ever, with The Wire at #2) was exactly the same. If you weren't hooked with the first moments of Homicide, you wouldn't like it later either.

slop101

This.

It's not a show like CSI or L&O that you can have in the background, or miss a few minutes and get caught up quickly. There can be some quick scenes or lines of dialog that if you miss, you'd be completely lost, and at the same time, you have to be cognizant of things you've already seen/absorbed in order for things to fit together - I'm not saying the you're dumb or lazy if you don't get into it, it's just not typical TV, and it really does ask a lot of the viewer.

whotony

slop, that's good stuff, very helpful in convincing me to continue watching.
I can see that there are lots of subtle things going on that are like puzzle pieces
that will probably all come together near the end.

FantasticVSDoom

Best description... What I found was you have to watch an entire season. Just watching a few shows into it wont be enough. Now if you do watch an entire season and its still not your cup of tea, then yeah you probably arent going to like it.

DJariya

I purchased all 5 seasons and have them ready to watch. I've heard so many good things about this show so I wanted to give this show a shot even though it's a total blind buy.

I've heard The Wire is a tough watch, so I'm waiting to find the time when I can focus and watch these without any distractions.

jjcool

I too was a big fan of Homicide, and tried to get into The Wire. Couldnt get through the first season. Just couldn't do it. I have yet to try again.

As for the way they say "police" in Baltimore, I rmember Meldrick Lewis on Homicide always using just "police", not officer or anything when referring to cops. Like in the Episode when Michale Michelle gets his Porkpie shot off his head, he calls her "Female police".

slop101

And being completely honest, I caught the first few episodes when they first aired after Sopranos, and I couldn't get into it either - it wasn't until a few years later when I met the show on it's own terms that it won me over.

dpz301

my cousin is a baltimore city cop and his wife used too be, she's now in a different county, but they do talk like that around us, ha-ha. maybe just not as exaggerated.

the former mayor of baltimore did want to legalize drugs so it isn't that far off to what people in the city wanted to do.

i enjoyed the show a bunch, but i can understand why people can't get into it.

Brian Gentz

i'm curious to get your thoughts after you finish the 3rd season. I think I was in the same situation as you, I was liking it, but wasn't on the best show ever! bandwagon. Then there was a certain episode at the the end of the 3rd season where everything clicked. Then after seeing the rest and revisiting the first seasons again, i'm firmly in the best show ever camp.

FatTony

I'll probably get a lot of shit for this, but here goes...

I tried to watch this show a few years ago...couldn't even make it through the first episode. I've been wanting to give it another shot, but after giving The Sopranos a second chance recently and having it not keep my interest for a second time, I'm inclined to just pass on it for good. I think that in general, dramatic television just isn't my bag.

fiver

My wife and I both love this show. I like how each season examines different elements of the drug trade in Baltimore.

The 2nd season often strikes me as the odd man out for this show because it spends so much time talking about the docks and shipping industry (how the drugs get into the city) and not so much time with the drug dealers we met in the 1st season. My wife often suggests skipping this season until you're definitely hooked and then go back and watch it. I find the ending sequence to this season heartbreaking.

It took me a couple tries to get into the first season - there's really a lot going on that you have to pay attention to and is very subtle, and certainly small things that will crop up later on.

Personally, I have never been able to get into The Shield, but find the characters in The Wire to be fascinating, especially Omar

Michael

Timber

Nah, don't skip season 2. I find it interesting and again it plants seeds for things in later seasons.

Damn, all this talk is making me want to go back and re-watch the series but I don't have season 5 on DVD yet.

BlackCapTen

Watched the whole series last year (finished around when it wrapped up on HBO). The first few episodes of Season 1 were complicated, especially just getting to know character names. But I stuck with it and ended up enjoying the show. I had to rewind scenes at times just to be sure I caught everything but I thought it was a great series. I remember some late nights and trying to squeeze in multiple episodes when I got really into it.

story

The Wire was on right after Oz for a few years and while I was a huge Oz fan, I don't think I ever made it through a single episode of The Wire.

siddd5

The Wire is not your typical series. You need some patience to get into its rhythm.

It took me a while too, but once I started getting used to its pace, I loved it.

Not everyone's cup of tea for sure. I remember when it was on sale and everyone was buying it because of all the raves, I posted that you may need some patience with it and that its not 'The Sopranos'.

To the poster who said its like a novel ... that's pretty accurate.

david12

Through reading all these comments, to me, it seems as though other people are having as difficult a time describing why the Wire is great. It is just hard to describe why this show strikes a chord with its most loyal viewers, and why we consider it to be truly trancendent television.

Yeah, maybe you either get it or you don't, and maybe it just isn't your thing. CSI isn't my thing (I actually blame the Wire's realism for this), but most of America loves it. But I think that it should be clearly difficult for anyone not to recognize how truly special this show is. Or how radical. Or challenging. Or thought provoking. Or just plain heart breaking.

To me, it is sort of like Band of Brothers in a way. You may not like war films, but there is no denying that Brothers is not a masterpiece and maybe even the best thing ever made for television. The quality is apparent in every frame.

David Simon, the creator, describes the seasons a 'novels' with each episode being a chapter. But like some great novels, each chapter isn't independent and everything interconnects. Then there are connections through the 'sequels'. Things that were minor in the first chapter can become monumental in the final chapters. Cases don't get solved in an hour, or a season, or even five. Characters who were barely mentions in the first season, or who were just seen in the background, become important players as other characters change, or die, or rat, or just move on. No one is safe because they are good for ratings, and every actor/character is part of the story...as opposed to the story being a vehicle for the actor. It's challenging television that requires attention, and thought, and patience.

Hell, I think there were something like 87 major speaking parts in the second season of the show. Eighty-Seven....

But what gets me the most, and the reason I kept coming back to the show and will watch it repeatedly is a connection to a 'real' Baltimore or any-inner city U.S.A., their stuggles, their lives, etc...and how those things actually affect me. Or maybe how perhaps up until this point in my life, I have ignored that aspect of life because it didn't intergrate with my own.

To me, it is just gut wreching stuff...and real. It isn't 'A body was found stuffed in a waste receptical and was covered in a unique moss only found in the southern parts of Florida...let's solve it in a hour so America can go to bed feeling safe." It's so beyond that...and to me, beyond television. It is important television, the kind of show that might actually change something because it dared to expose what may really happen in an unseen, untalked about sector the America.

Plus, its entertaining!!!

Tracer Bullet

Knowing your political persuasion you should definitely give it another shot.

Sanjuro37

I just finished watching the second season. What few, utterly negligible flaws the first season had were obliterated in the second. Fucking masterful television.

Timber

That's funny because most seem to think that S2 is a step behind season S1. I personally love season 2 for what it is and in the grand scheme of things it fits in perfectly with the rest of the show.

DthRdrX

I like Season two the best actually. And each season does focus on a important aspect of society. A near perfect show but I can see why people can't get into it.

That being said, I still say that the show did have some elements that I did not like. It was always generally easy to predict that one thing on the show would lead to another, and then what you predicted eventually happened. Examples being evidence and certain character actions.

The final episode of season four and most of season five is damn depressing to boot!

Timber

Season 4 ended exactly how it had to though. Any other way just wouldn't have been true to the show. Still though And what eventually happened to

Sanjuro37

Well, I don't know how it'll fit in to the other three seasons yet, but I thought that the first season, though just about perfect, was just an teensy bit derivative. Of course, that was all pretty much because of the setting (black dealers in run-down projects, etc.), and I'll be damned if I'm gonna write a show off as derivative because it works within a given frame. But the second season manages to broaden the scope, introduce almost as many new characters as the pilot did (when just everyone who didn't die showed up from the last season as well), but it never lost its sharpness. Sure it talked about the dock business over the drug trade, but that was the point: by focusing on the economic strife of the working class "unskilled" stevedores, it showed not only how the drugs made it into Baltimore but another side of the socioeconomic strife of American cities. Whereas the black dealers had lived in projects for generations and turned to drugs as an escape either through selling them or taking them, the dock workers enjoyed a decent wage until the Modern Age rendered them irrelevant. I thought it was fascinating.

But again, I've not seen the whole show, so take this for what it is.

DVD Josh

I never thought it was as good as people made it out to be, but it was always well acted and a cohesive, comprehensible storyline, a tough find these days on TV.

7Keys

I've watched the first 7 or 8 shows and don't quite see what all the fuss is about. I don't think it's bad, but it seems a little by the numbers to me and I don't find any of the characters or the stories all that interesting. There hasn't been one "wow moment" yet.

So, my question...does the show take a while to really kick in? I have the first season on dvd and will probably finish it. Not sure if I should pick up the following season(s) or not.

MrSmearkase

Yeah, it does take a while, but it will reward you the further you get.

Hang in there, its worth watching the entire series.