As much as I love the Wire, I don't think it deserves to be such an intellectual jerk off session. People that claim, "its so brilliant, its so realistic" don't see the obvious that its pretentious as hell and very over the top. All of the critics claim that it is "unique in not talking down to its viewers" don't see that it is basically childishly explaining how a cynical city works to naive and idealistic viewers. Way too much overstating for my taste. Some examples from this episode
- Daniels is shocked to hear that his wifes career has any impact on his own, that she has to watch "her moves" in and around city hall before they can even think about promoting him from major to lieutenant. As if a smart and ambitious forty something year old who played his cards well enough to make it to major was too naive to realize that "everything is connected", another theme that The Wire is brave enough to tackle but overstates the hell out of it a lot of the time
- Bunny Colvins speech to Deputy Rawls that you can't make bodies disappear, which is followed by Stan Valcheck looking incredulous and asking "what got into you". Bunny replies he doesn't care, he's almost retired anyway. Its as if this scene is not to show us a realistic slice of the Baltimore Police Dept but rather its as if Bunny is talking to the audience, explaining to us how things work. They had to justify him being so irrelevantly stupid, so they justified it with his retirement, and made sure it made a big impact on Rawls who is shown furious and resentful, as if he couldn't stand to be told the truth. Yet again concisely but pretentiously showing us that you don't mouth off to your superiors. A perfect type of scene for critics and intellectuals to get on their high horse and philosophize for hours about how "institutions trump individual thought or achievement"
- Cutty coming out of Prison and feeling so dazed and disoriented and eventually getting screwed over on a drug deal by a younger and shrewder criminal. Cutty comes out of Prison, gets a G-pack (1,000 vials of heroin) as a coming home present and tries to get a drug dealer he randomly sees on the street to sell it and split the profits with. He comes back later that night and wants his split, only to have a gun pulled on him and told to fuck off, the cops took the package. He gives a back in the day speech "a man had to have a police filing report number if he claims he lost his package to the police" and he get ridiculed. "We aint back in the day". The show here plays some tricks on us, pretending to be fiercely and tragically realistic when it is once again pretentious. It is basically telling us obviously people are going to be involved in the drug trade, lets be realistic. Obviously the only thing someone like Cutty has going for him is to sell the G-Pack he got so lets root for him, its not like getting a GED in prison or learning a trade is a realistic option. We're badasses and we've created a completely different show because we don't pussyfoot around with bullshit, we show it like it is. But since the show has to be tragically beautiful so the critics can have a circle jerk, the show has to make a statement, that even within drug dealing communities values have deteriorated, its every man for himself, no one has any pride or honor or anything. This is a theme that is found throughout the Wire and its complete bullshit. Its paranoia and hysteria, making people feel all uppity and deep because oh shit, today's kids are even worse. The truth is if you look at statistics, murder rates have gone down since Cutty got out of prison. Season Three was filmed in 2004 and according to the plot Cutty got released out of prison after 14 years. That would mean that he got locked up in 1990, or very near the very height of the crack epidemic, when murder rates were twice what they are now, family values were at an all time low, and crime was rampant and out of proportion. But that would make for shitty storytelling to show us that the merciless hardcore streets have gotten safer, chiller and more relaxed, we should instead demonize the hell out of everything so that we can sit back and ponder from our cushy beds while watching the Wire and think wow, the producers are true craftsmen, things will never change or get better.
- Daniels is shocked to hear that his wifes career has any impact on his own, that she has to watch "her moves" in and around city hall before they can even think about promoting him from major to lieutenant. As if a smart and ambitious forty something year old who played his cards well enough to make it to major was too naive to realize that "everything is connected", another theme that The Wire is brave enough to tackle but overstates the hell out of it a lot of the time
- Bunny Colvins speech to Deputy Rawls that you can't make bodies disappear, which is followed by Stan Valcheck looking incredulous and asking "what got into you". Bunny replies he doesn't care, he's almost retired anyway. Its as if this scene is not to show us a realistic slice of the Baltimore Police Dept but rather its as if Bunny is talking to the audience, explaining to us how things work. They had to justify him being so irrelevantly stupid, so they justified it with his retirement, and made sure it made a big impact on Rawls who is shown furious and resentful, as if he couldn't stand to be told the truth. Yet again concisely but pretentiously showing us that you don't mouth off to your superiors. A perfect type of scene for critics and intellectuals to get on their high horse and philosophize for hours about how "institutions trump individual thought or achievement"
- Cutty coming out of Prison and feeling so dazed and disoriented and eventually getting screwed over on a drug deal by a younger and shrewder criminal. Cutty comes out of Prison, gets a G-pack (1,000 vials of heroin) as a coming home present and tries to get a drug dealer he randomly sees on the street to sell it and split the profits with. He comes back later that night and wants his split, only to have a gun pulled on him and told to fuck off, the cops took the package. He gives a back in the day speech "a man had to have a police filing report number if he claims he lost his package to the police" and he get ridiculed. "We aint back in the day". The show here plays some tricks on us, pretending to be fiercely and tragically realistic when it is once again pretentious. It is basically telling us obviously people are going to be involved in the drug trade, lets be realistic. Obviously the only thing someone like Cutty has going for him is to sell the G-Pack he got so lets root for him, its not like getting a GED in prison or learning a trade is a realistic option. We're badasses and we've created a completely different show because we don't pussyfoot around with bullshit, we show it like it is. But since the show has to be tragically beautiful so the critics can have a circle jerk, the show has to make a statement, that even within drug dealing communities values have deteriorated, its every man for himself, no one has any pride or honor or anything. This is a theme that is found throughout the Wire and its complete bullshit. Its paranoia and hysteria, making people feel all uppity and deep because oh shit, today's kids are even worse. The truth is if you look at statistics, murder rates have gone down since Cutty got out of prison. Season Three was filmed in 2004 and according to the plot Cutty got released out of prison after 14 years. That would mean that he got locked up in 1990, or very near the very height of the crack epidemic, when murder rates were twice what they are now, family values were at an all time low, and crime was rampant and out of proportion. But that would make for shitty storytelling to show us that the merciless hardcore streets have gotten safer, chiller and more relaxed, we should instead demonize the hell out of everything so that we can sit back and ponder from our cushy beds while watching the Wire and think wow, the producers are true craftsmen, things will never change or get better.
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