we got our thing, but it's just part of the big thing.
- Even if I didn't love everything else about this show, the JOY I take in seeing a show set in a major city which is actually demographically proportionate? Worth it all on its own.
- Also, these people just sound right to me in a way people from most shows don't. Colloquialism and cadence and just - I'm not even from Baltimore, but I feel so at home just hearing these people talk.
- BUNNY IS MY FAVORITE. STARS IN MY EYES.
- Shows that are fair to teenagers...shouldn’t impress me. I’ve seen enough good teen dramas, you know? But still. What I thought was most haunting and hurtful was the contrast between Namond and Dukie's fates. Namond makes a big show and has connections in the game, so he gets Bunny's attention; Dukie keeps his head down because he's a well-behaved kid and because he's too hungry to make a lot of fuss, and so he ends up on the corner.
- Prez was so right last season when he said he wasn't cut out to be a police officer, but he takes so well to the classroom. What's really amazing is how much all those years on the force didn't mess with him. He's one of those people that's incredibly adaptable, easily-influenced by his environment when he's there and able to let it go when he's not.
- I am also very impressed with how the show is very fair to academics. It doesn't paint an overly-rosy picture of "information gathered, problem solved!" but information is important (ie, the guy in S3 from Hopkins who explains the public health benefits to Hamsterdam). Bunny's co-pilot in the program is clearly a knowledgeable person who will do the best he can. It's simultaneously allowed to be frustrating that it'll be too little and far too late for too many kids, but still, it's worth being able to make the argument just a little bit stronger.
- So, so appreciative of how the show resolutely avoids fetishizing darkness or violence.
- Man, you know Bodie is doomed as soon as he brings up D’Angelo’s chess metaphor. Still, SAD.
- I'm really intrigued by what the show is doing with McNulty, though I can't quite bring myself to say I like the guy. (I mean, I was pretty much expecting to hate him unequivocally after watching the first episode, so.) It shows his emotionalism in a way that just lets it be, without glorifying him as a ~great conscience or fetishizing his ~fall into darkness or whatever. He just is. It's nice to see him try to get himself together; it's not at all surprising that he lets himself get sucked back into the game after his carelessness causes Bodie's death.
- Simon has referred to The Wire as inspired by Greek tragedy, and I certainly see the wonderful use of that format to tell the story, but it is, at core, a deeply humanist show. Everyone on The Wire is the protagonist of their own story, the center of their own little world - and this never comes across as some self-congratulatory bullshit about ~selfishness, but rather, is an acknowledgment of innate human dignity. These people America writes off, they're human beings with consciousness and subjective experiences, and if their lives are too short when they don't have to be, it's not a thing we can afford to ignore. Listen.
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