Generation Kill by Paul Schiraldi/HBO
Cheers to HBO for staying connected to The Wire's masterminds with Generation Kill. David Simon and Ed Burns' riveting Iraq War miniseries shares many of the same virtures as their peerless urban drama. It throws you into the middle of a complex, often-confusing world and demands your full attention (I had to watch the first episode twice to figure out who was who and what was going on). But for viewers willing to commit, the rewards are rich: spot-on dialogue, a stellar ensemble (including Wire alum James Ransone in a breakout turn as fast-talking Cpl. Josh Ray Person) and a fearlessness about dealing with dead-serious issues. And the good news is HBO has already picked the pilot for Simon's next series, the post-Katrina New Orleans drama Treme. • Share your own raves and rants about other shows on the Reader Cheers & Jeers discussion board.• We may feature your Cheer or Jeer on TVGuide.com or in TV Guide magazine!
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Question: Over the past month, I have had some time off and spent it watching all of the seasons of The Wire. I don't think I will ever be able to watch network TV the same way I used to. The Wire is a masterpiece and makes a show like House, which is overly praised in my opinion, look terrible. The difference in quality of The Wire compared to most of the shows currently on is vast. I was reading a previous Ask Matt from a person who felt disappointed about the series finale, especially about Duquan using drugs. Few shows would actually show you the true path the life of a child like Duquan will take in the atmosphere he lived in. Similar to Bubbles, Duquan was an intelligent person who inevitably ended up living on the streets and shooting up. And one last thing: As a gay man, I will be forever thankful for the show giving us a character as great as Omar Little. He represents the type of gay man not often depicted on TV. This is not to say that the Jack McFarland homosexual is in any ...
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Lee Pace and Anna Friel in Pushing Daisies by Scott Garfield/ABC
At least now we know which shows don't have the proverbial snowball's chance in Hollywood of getting best-series nomination. Underdogs like Battlestar Galactica, Breaking Bad and The Shield (to name the top drama snubs from my own cheat sheet) and How I Met Your Mother, The New Adventures of Old Christine, The Big Bang Theory (three superior CBS comedies passed over for Two and a Half Men, again) as well as Desperate Housewives (whose creative comeback failed to sway the Emmy nominators) and the beyond-edgy Californication.All were shut out when the TV Academy released its list of top-10 contenders for best drama and comedy series, which now submit themselves for inspection this weekend by a blue-ribbon panel whose rankings will help narrow the cut to roughly five in each category. The lists are heavy on hip cable fare: four in comedy, and fully half of the 10 drama contenders. Critics' darlings that have survived so far include Friday Night Lights, The Wire, Dexter, Mad Men, Damage...
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Question: Do you think someday people will look back on The Wire like we look back on Citizen Kane? I believe you can draw many parallels between the two. Most notably they share an initial commercial failure (poor box office for Citizen Kane, low ratings for The Wire). They both were very different from their contemporaries. And they were both amazingly well-written. I can only hope The Wire can influence TV like Citizen Kane influenced movies.
Answer: Genius is not always appreciated in its own time, but eventually, it will get its due. So yes, I do think The Wire (which to be fair has been celebrated from the start, in critical circles at least) will have a secure place high among the legendary shows of all time. I'm not sure how influential it will be given the current market forces, but I'd like to think the fact that David Simon got to realize his five-season vision of Baltimore will inspire other artists to bring their best game to TV, and hopefully, there will be an HBO o ...
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The Wire - The Complete 5th Season courtesy HBO
New releases announced today, April 2:Birds of Prey - The Complete Series will be coming out July 15 Freakazoid! - Season 1 will be coming out July 29 Shaggy & Scooby-Doo: Get a Clue! - Volume 2 will be coming out July 8 Tiny Toon Adventures - Season 1, Volume 1 will be coming out July 29 The Wire - The Complete 5th Season will be coming out August 12 The X-Files - Revelations will be coming out July 1 Visit TVShowsOnDVD.com for the complete stories on these and other news items.
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Question: What did you think of the series finale of The Wire? Honestly, I was let down. Carcetti seemed like such an ass to me. All the things he prided himself on not doing to get into the mayor's seat, he ended up wanting to do for the governor's seat. I also loathed what the writers did to Dukie. He was one of the smartest young characters on the show, and I fell in love with him in Season 4. I refuse to believe that there wasn't anything else they could have done with the character. I had hopes that Pryzbylewski would somehow make plans to foster or adopt Duquan, but no.
Answer: Because The Wire in so many ways seems so real to me, I'm tempted to say it's the characters that let you down and the bleak world in which they live. Dukie's decline after being stranded by Michael (who's quite clearly the heir to Omar's gangster throne) was one of the most heartbreaking parts of the finale, only slightly relieved by the redemption of Bubbles, who was finally allowed out of the basement
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"-30-" indicates the end of a newspaper article, in the early stages of production. And this was the end of The Wire, with both bangs and whimpers and the lives of the characters mostly just going on... with not a few surprising and unsurprising twists.Jimmy McNulty and Lester Freamon are made aware that their jig is up... their bosses at all but the immediate supervisory levels know about the fraud that they've been running on the department. Freamon learns just as he's reporting the last bit of useful investigation from the Clay Davis affair, the identity and the testimony of the leak in the Baltimore courthouse, who's been feeding confidential information to drug lord defense lawyer Levy and a number of his colleagues. Even as the false pretenses of the wiretap on Marlo and his gang make that bit of their investigation easy grounds for appeal by Levy, Levy learns that if he tries to pursue that route, he'll be hit with criminal charges that will put him away for years. Prosecutor...
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Clarke Peters courtesy HBO
Cheers to The Wire for giving its fans what The Sopranos refused to provide: closure. The HBO drama's finale tied up an impressive number of loose ends: Two major criminal investigations (the serial killer and "vacants" cases) were closed, three cops (McNulty, Freamon and Daniels) left the department, and the mayor was elected governor. Still, it wasn't all good news: Drug lord Marlo Stanfield and dishonest journalist Scotty Templeton both got off scot-free — the latter with a Pulitzer, no less — and two young men (Michael and Dukie) were lost to the streets. At least recovering junkie Bubbles got to come up from the basement and eat dinner with his sister's family. In the bleak world of The Wire, that's a happy ending.
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Dominic West by Nicole Rivelli/HBO
Its final season may have been built around a number of Big Lies, but here's the honest truth: HBO's The Wire is TV for the ages. Though it spent much of its acclaimed existence under the pop-culture radar, despite annual appearances on critics' best-of-year lists, this heartbreaking and searing masterpiece of urban decay and corruption will live on as all great literature does. Any self-respecting DVD library would want to include the five seasons of The Wire. It's that good, and that rich.Sunday’s expanded finale wraps up much of the complex story, but as usual, not in a tidy fashion. Ambiguities, moral compromises, deals struck with a variety of devils, all par for the course in David Simon’s bleak version of Baltimore. No cheap sentiment here, although there is a memorable scene involving a surprise wake at the Irish cop bar.The ironies are deep and dark as McNulty (Dominic West) sweats out the consequences of his scheme being exposed, of having created a fictional ser...
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Question: I've always appreciated your continued advocacy for The Wire, given that it is truly one of the most spectacular achievements in television, as far as I'm concerned. I'm writing in response to your assertion that it will be difficult for the actors to be acknowledged by the Emmys, given that their names are mostly unknown. I don't refute this claim; rather, I'm writing to lament that you're probably right. Here is yet another problem they face: They are all so incredibly good that none of them stands out. I remember seeing Lance Reddick on Lost, and I was absolutely stunned by his presence on screen, how he demanded your eye go to him rather than anyone else in the scene. And this is on Lost, which is already filled with superb actors. Yet Reddick was just one of the bunch on The Wire — great to be sure, but no more so than McNulty or Bunk or Omar or Bubbles or Kima or Lester. I think we need a best-cast-ever Emmy to dole out to all the actors, and finally give them the ...
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