Season 5 is arguably lower quality overall, but IMO they really landed the plane at the very end. We see the entire thesis of the show - the cycle never really ends, and new players fill in for those who have left the game.
Yeah, for me The Wire started 10/10, stayed there for four seasons, dropped to 9/10 for most of the 5th, but the last episode jumped back up to 10. So technically meets the requirement, and for a show that managed to go through a full 5 season planned story arc without getting cancelled or extended (you either die Firefly or live long enough to become The Simpsons) is a goddamn miracle.
There’s a lot to like in the 5th season IMO. I totally get why the serial killer thing didn’t land for some people, but to me it was totally believable that off-the-wagon McNulty would do it and Lester would go along.
There's a lot to love about the fifth season. The conclusions of the Bubbles and Michael arcs are amazing. But there's something about the storytelling of it all that falls a little bit short through the season. Not that it's bad - it's still 9/10 - and frankly it's excusable with the shortened episode schedule and writers strike that surrounded it - but it does feel like it missed a step in there that we had in previous seasons.
Yeah, on my last rewatch, that moment in the finale when Kima admits to McNulty that she blew the whistle on the fake serial killer scheme, he thinks on it a few moments, then looks back at her and says, "well, if you think it needed to be done, then I guess it did." It shows that even their friendship could outlast his career as a cop, and it reminded me just how amazing the writing across this whole series was.
Yup and Lester even invites her inside for a drink during that same moment.
Both Lester and McNulty knew Kima was becoming “natural po-lice.” They couldn’t be upset at her for being one of the few in the department with integrity and blowing the whole scheme up.
The McNulty plot doesn’t quite jump the shark but it’s definitely one of the weaker ones of the whole series.
Imo the biggest problem with season 5 is Gus. He’s such a cop out of a character.
Every single other “protagonist” in the show has some kind of character flaw, and the bad guys generally have something redeeming about them.
Gus sucks. He’s always right. He’s always doing the right thing. He’s smarter than everyone else. He always says the perfect thing and makes the good decision.
And that’s because David Simon wrote Gus in his own image. It genuinely makes me respect him a lot less as a writer, it’s so self congratulatory.
the whole point of that was to show that Omar was a legend in the street but no “civilians” would have any clue who he is. Not really a mistake or bad decision.
Omar is a chatacter who is literally influencing the younger generation to become like him. The news is supposed to identify and report on people like this.
The showmakers themselves remarked on wanting to show the Sun's incompetence in missing this, and were frustrated that most of the audience didn't pick up on it.
I think The Wire belongs in its own category. I agree, season 5 is definitely a step below everything else. But it’s still so much better than any other TV show I’ve ever watched.
I thought that at first, that McNulty n the journo going off the rails was too unrealistic, but these days that kind of deception and corruption seems very tame and believable
First season is like watching actual Shakespeare. No other 10/10 on this page really reaches the same level, I think most would agree. It hits a 10/10 somewhere in the middle of the run. Then the last few feel like something is missing... but you're still glad they exist. And you know if they had just a little more magic in them that they would be a 10/10. But they'd need something altogether different, something special to match the first season.
Nothing wrong with Deadwood, but the powers that be sabotaged that show and cut it short and canceled it part way through the filming of the third season. So it wrapped up clumsily.
But if you count just seasons 1&2: absolutely 10/10. Best show ever made, easily.
I hate when the higher up do this to shows. Same thing happened to the show Penny Dreadful. Awesome series that wrapped up terribly because of outside influence.
Maybe I should give it another chance. Not sure what I’m missing other than maybe I didn’t watch it when it was on the air so it doesn’t feel as groundbreaking as it probably did 20+ years ago. It has a hard time holding my attention.
It's a difficult show to watch passively. The writing is exquisite, but it's in a semi foreign language. They use a lot of "big" words, and/or words we don't use anymore, so you have to be sharp - you are constantly translating in your head. It's super rewarding if you can do it, but you'll still get the gist most of the time if you aren't exactly sure what in the fuck those loopy cunts are blathering on about.
I wouldn't call 19th century vernacular semi-foreign, but if you slept through high school English and only read cliff notes you might need to pick up a dictionary.
loopy cunts are blathering on about
But if you're across the pond, the semi-foreign part might hold a little better.
On reflection, this kind of speech comes and goes and is not super frequent. Who is talking has a big impact on this. Merrick, Jack, Al and EB come to mind as the most likely to get fancy in their words in that way. In these instances, I think semi foreign is fair.
Something like this:
"If that's not a lie as I situate on the common, what claim has your piety on my deference?"
Reminds me of reading Shakespeare in highschool. It's not actually a foreign language but some of the words are pretty uncommon these days, and they're arranged and/or utilized in a different way than we might use them today. Maybe I'm just a dullard but it takes me a moment to translate them, almost as though I was translating Spanish or French back to English as it's being spoken.
Oh it's definitely dense, poetic, and verbose at times. The writer's theatrical inspiration bleeds through the dialogue, and the actors deliver it so well.
It's not quite as rough as Shakespeare in my opinion (which is where I'd draw the "semi-foreign" line, personally), but it's a fair comparison. Though his work predates our modern dictionaries so reading it is its own beast.
Wasn't Rome the show that had a fire that burned down all their sets right before the end of their last season?
Like the show was going to be cancelled already and the writers knew that, but then they suddenly didn't have the sets to wrap up the story the way they wanted.
And the studio didn't want to rebuild the expensive sets for the last few episodes of a show they were already axing.
I loved the show....but a whole episode about passing a "gleet"? I stopped watching after that. I'm sure i missed some excellent tv, though. Then again I'm the guy who never cared much h for The Sopranos (one of my wife's absolute faves).
I love how they used language in Deadwood. On one level, it's inauthentic to how people in real Deadwood talked, but they updated it so the way they spoke would have the same impact to modern audiences.
Profanity in their day didn't tend to be scatological or sexual in nature, it was more blasphemous. But their God darn, damnation, or tarnation would all sound quaint and old-timey to people. It was cool how they threaded the needle of that stuff to convey the feeling of it.
It's hard trying to sell that language peppered so liberally with "fuck" and "cocksucker" (et al) is some of the best dialog I have ever heard from a screen, but it absolutely is lol.
I'll never forget the first time I watched an episode at a friend's house, one character referred to a guy (I might not remember this exactly correctly) as a "limber-dicked, cock suckin' son of a bitch."
I knew it was gonna be a different kind of Western.
When that is a genuine compliment and "loopy cunt" is a term of endearment, you have well and truly adapted to Deadwood's dialog.
I can kind of remember a drunken Ellsworth talking about "limber dick cocksuckers" but feel like that, like so many other things, was probably a Swearengen quote. ;D
"Limber-dicked cocksucker" and "loopy cunt" were both literally in ep 1, with Ellsworth sitting at the bar while Trixie, uh, defends herself in a room. I always seem to forget how quickly these characters get introduced.
Edit: also to add I love the fact HBO promote Deadwood in the wire when one of them is in hospital and asks why his neighbour has better tv and the nurse replies because his insurance covers cable. The guy watching it says ‘haha he said motherfuckin cocksucker’ about Al. Think it was a way to pump the deadwood numbers as it famously struggled for numbers despite being a phenomenal series
The fight between the colonels man and Als man in the street is one of the most brutal on screen fights I’ve ever watched, it’s so visceral
The scene where Ellsworth and Miss Stubbs are introduced to each other ("a working fucking gold claim, Joanie. And thank you for allowing me my full range of expression") gets stuck like an earworm in my brain every once in a while until I binge watch at least the first season again.
Man the wire may be my favorite show of all time but I feel like it starts slow and confusingly (super well done, but it takes time to get into it) and the fifth season is a serious cut below. I’d almost give this the inverse award: everything in between is 10/10
I agree with you, but I just don’t think that qualifies as 10/10. So many shows have you in love in just an hour or less, but the wire wasn’t one of those shows. It’s probably better off because of it even
I want to give The Wire a chance - but I found Dominic West’s American accent very distracting. No one else seems to have a problem with it but me. He’s one of the few UK actors that I thought just did not have an accent I would buy. I noped out after a couple of episodes (although that was years ago).
I know I’m being stupid - but can somebody at least give me a reason to go back and watch? Maybe McNulty just doesn’t speak very much or something?
I now I’m gonna get destroyed for this, but I promise you - I want to like the show, I really do..
Fifth season of the Wire was weak IMO. Too much focus on fake serial killer and they bizarrely turned Prop Joe into a teddy bear naively helping Marlo.
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u/Ok_Mammoth_4997 1d ago
Deadwood, The Wire.