The New WIRE Thread

[supremebve]

3 minutes ago, Chaos said:

One of my goals this year is to finally knock this series out. I am trying to finish Season 1 this week and then get through Season 2 in a month or so.

I took the Wallace ending kind of hard probably because I have an attachment to Jordan as an actor and because he's a kid that should not have been caught up in that.

That is the thing, none of those kids should have been caught up in that, but some kids are naturally more driven and ambitious than others.  If Wallace and Bodie were on a football team, you'd rather have Bodie than Wallace.  If they bothered to go to school, I'd bet Bodie's science fair project would be better than Wallace's by leaps and bounds.  Bodie has the type of drive, ambition, and determination that any of us would like to see in our kids, he's just in a situation where all of those thing have been steered in the wrong direction.  Wallace is just an average kid who wants to be a kid, but he can't because he has to do something for money to take care of his younger siblings.  He isn't the kind of kid who would stand out if he was anywhere else, but in a drug crew where not being driven, ambitious and determined can get you killed he stands out like a sore thumb.

[Curt McGirt]

One wonders what would have happened had he testified. The sentence Avon might've received if he was forced to detail for a jury what Brandon's dead body looked like might've been enormous. 

[ChesterCopperpot]

A good article about how the East/West baseketball game scene came about

https://www.si.com/nba/2017/04/17/the-wire-oral-history-baltimore-basketball-nba

[Curt McGirt]

https://theringer.com/wire-hbo-characters-where-are-they-now-b9ee61c34aa8

A fictional interpretation of what happened to the characters if the show were documentary. Got a kick out of Herc saving up to buy a jet ski haha

[odessasteps]

Presumably, the new book will jumpstart this thread again. 

[Curt McGirt]

Since I can't sit through an hour plus podcast right now, what's that all about?

[odessasteps]

I haven’t listened yet, but normally, posnanski & mike schur (good place, parks & rec) do a draft of goofy stuff (office supplies, fruit, ...) this week, it seems Pos and Abrams (who as it turns out are neighbors) are drafting wire characters. 

[Curt McGirt]

6 hours ago, odessasteps said:

the new book

I should have asked what THIS means. So are those guys making a Wire book out of their drafts or something? 

[EVA]

Oral history of the show.

[odessasteps]

https://www.amazon.com/All-Pieces-Matter-Inside-Story/dp/0451498143

 

[Curt McGirt]

Oh, snap! Yeah I'm picking that up for sure. 

EDIT: Pre-ordered it to save a couple bucks. Now my dumb ass just has to finally order Season Five and rewatch it...

[John from Cincinnati]

Thanks for the heads up on the book and the podcast. 

I feel a rewatch coming on... 

[supremebve]

10 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

Oh, snap! Yeah I'm picking that up for sure. 

EDIT: Pre-ordered it to save a couple bucks. Now my dumb ass just has to finally order Season Five and rewatch it...

If you have Amazon Prime, you can watch it on demand for free.

[odessasteps]

Just got the audiobook. 12+ hours. 

[caley]

I'm rewatching it with my mom of all people. She likes mysteries and is tired of me going "That's Lester from The Wire!" all excitedly.  There's actually a handful of things I missed the first time that I'm catching now.  I think an underrated character is the defence attorney that the drug dealers use; he's soooo slimy!  You just want him to get his comeuppance so bad!

[Curt McGirt]

I'm already 108 pages into the book since I got it this morning and it has some interesting stuff. 

Spoiler

- Sonya Sohn is clearly the resident anarchist and quite similar to her role morally if not an authoritarian at all

- Clarke Peters takes his per diem and rents a house, then turns it into a communal crash pad with no TV and has cast members paint in the basement... good lord, to have been a fly on the wall

- Andre Royo is actually handed a vial of either coke or dope by a tester tout because he looks like... well, Bubbles. He ACTUALLY CONSIDERS BANGING UP TO KNOW THE ROLE BETTER then thinks better of it. Yet keeps the vial for a while. Holeeeeeeeeee... You wanna talk Method? The man seems to be the definition of it. 

 

[Curt McGirt]

Finished the book this morning; highest recommendation. Delving into the personalities of these people and the tests they had getting the show out there is great. There is A LOT of Andre Royo, and I thought he would have been one of the more reticent players (that credit goes to Sonya Sohn who has like one quote. And there's no Rawls). 

More funny stuff: 

Spoiler

- Jimmy and the Bunk did indeed party all the time

- Jimmy and the Lieutenant did indeed have the same relationship off screen as on (Lance couldn't stand him)

- Jimmy was/is, in the parlance of the times, a pussy magnet

- Snoop, the guy who helped out Omar in jail, and of course the Deacon were all indeed real life gangsters and killers. And pretty much everything you saw shot was real -- all location sets and non-actors in acting roles. 

- Prop Joe was the on-set youth acting teacher before he passed

I finally said 'fuck it' and went ahead and bought Season 5. Reports to come.

[Bustronaut]

Boy oh boy there sure is a whole lot of neat TV going on in the springs of 2019.

[supremebve]

If anyone wants to do a rematch, The Ringer has a great podcast called Way Down in the Hole. The episode breakdowns are good,  but the Van Lathan sidebars are the reason to listen.