the Wire

It may be that serial, tv produced narratives are the “art form” of this era.

You can accomplish things in that medium you can’t in film.

In fact I have not admired/enjoyed/”got into” a lot of good films as much as I did shows like The Wire.

Sometimes, with The Wire, I would sit there watching it actually thinking to myself, I can’t believe how good this is.

I’ve liked some others though ironically, given everything I’m saying, I don’t watch as many as I would like to. Right up there though are The Wire, GOT up to season 6, and Deadwood.

Have I you ever seen The Wire joke vid I’ve posted before? It’s a typical scene from The Wire with a laugh track. If you haven’t seen it here it is.

…

Better watch your favorite shows now, while you still can. It’s already happening, but pretty soon, you’ll need separate subscriptions for all kinds of content.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/jun/27/streaming-tv-is-about-to-get-very-expensive-heres-why

All the networks are getting into the Netflix act, pulling their content from the aggregators. And several content providers are (or will be) following in their footsteps.

Pretty soon, if you want to watch your favorite movies and shows, you’ll need a dozen or more separate streaming subs.

Me? I’ll just add to my reading time. I may still carry Netflix and Hulu for their own original content, and perhaps switch from one premium movie service to the next, depending upon what’s on at any given time. But I’m not going beyond two or three, if that. I may just drop them all.

In short, the “cord-cutting” revolution seems to be backfiring. It may well end up that the old aggregator services like Cable will end up being much cheaper overall than the newly balkanized streaming landscape.

We’ll all survive, of course . . .

;>)

The Writing Makes it Different

The Writing Makes it Different

Overall, the main element of The Wire that makes the first four and a half seasons of the show so enjoyable to watch is the writing. The characters wouldn’t be the ones we know; our favorite scenes wouldn’t be as memorable. Everything would be different if the writing was any different or if the writers were different. Sure, the audience might have appreciated some of those changes, but it would not have been The Wire with those modifications.

If anyone else had tried to write a scene with only variations of the word fuck, it would not have come across the same way or been as successful as it was. Life lessons about hierarchies and power from the scenes with D’Angelo and some of the drug runners may not have become a favorite scene for many viewers. Would those scenes still have been in the show if someone else wrote the scripts? Possibly. Would they have worked as well? Most likely not.

The way this show is written allows for these scenes to be written. The Wire is not a typical episodic style television show. In an interview with Nick Hornby from Believer magazine, The Wire creator and writer David Simon said that the show “pursues the form of the modern, multi-POV novel.” In shows that are written episode-by-episode, each episode has a self contained story, with the exception of cliffhanger endings and “to be continued” endings.

With the setup it has, The Wire is an ever-repeating to be continued marathon of episodes, from the season premiere to the season finale. Each of the investigations was not solved in one episode, and the show showed every side of each story it told. For example, the mayoral race started in season three when Thomas Carcetti and the other candidates told people that they were going to make a run, and it continued into season four when they ran their campaigns and were voted for in the primaries.

Despite the positives and uniqueness of the narrative structure of The Wire, the ratings were poor, despite the show receiving high reviews. While there are many reasons for that, including the story structure itself, one of those reasons is how different the viewing experience is from other television shows. Because of the story structure, viewers have to watch every episode in order or risk missing information that carries through the rest of the season, or even the rest of the series.

In his interview with Hornby, David Simon talked about another reason why The Wire differed from other television shows and didn’t get higher ratings. Simon said that a lot of television “providing catharsis and redemption and the triumph of character” and that The Wire differs because it is “a drama in which postmodern institutions trump individuality and morality and justice.”

Unlike other shows, The Wire doesn’t always show that the characters can overcome problems. Many of the investigations are dependents on how the higher ups in the police force want them to be solved. In season four, Kima and Freamon transfers from the Major Crimes Unit when a new major, Lieutenant Marimow, is put in charge of the Unit and wants feet on the ground quick arrests of perps instead of the high profile targets. He shuts down the wire tapping that Freamon is working on. Kima is put onto an investigation off the murder of a witness when the Homicide heads are told to slow the investigation down until after the election. This shows how they viewed the institutions as more important than the individuals.

Despite these challenges in viewing The Wire, the rewards of enjoying this television show is worth any difficulty that watching it may have. The writing tells the story in a creative way and gives it a different structure, which makes it unlike other shows. Other shows in the same genre follow the same pattern. The Wire doesn’t and offers a fresh take on the police drama. These challenges and fresh look make the show worth watching all the way through.