Sweet 16 (Old Dramas): The Wire vs. Deadwood

Two shows where the city is the main character. Which one is better?

 

Ok this one is too early.

 

i went deadwood solely bc i want it to get some votes. the wire is better but i needed to respect milch.

 

The Wire has not aged well.

 

How so? I can separate the content of the show from Simon being dumb.

 

Both are 10's, but Deadwood has my heart

 

two of the best shows ever

Deadwood tho

 

I need to finish Deadwood

 

It is largely pro-cop, even if it recognizes the flaws in Baltimore's system. When you look at the police characters, how many are actually bad? Burrell, Rawls, Valchek, and Herc come to mind. The one with the shaved sides and back of the head, too. Compare that to McNulty, Bunk, Kima, Sydnor, Carver, Daniels, Bunny Colvin, Landsman (for the most part), Prez (after he learns a skill), and Freamon. Even with the bad ones, there is a strong suggestion that the need to play politics made them that way. Our main district attorney is good, Judge Phelan is mostly good until his job is threatened, and so on. It relies on the central thesis of the show, which is that the system changes and corrupts people, but my general feeling as I have gotten older is that people who choose a career of arresting their fellow citizens already have a predisposition toward those things.

 

The Wire.

 

i aint seen neither ::sigh:: i will abstain and also shame myself privately

 

good take, but i think outside of some of the hokey narratives in the last season it holds up outstandingly well (s3/s4 are two of the greatest seasons of television ever imo). the show is at its absolute peak when it shifts away from trying to box up mcnulty as its protagonist and lets the chaos of each intertwining plot thread breathe. hence why s5 kinda sucks ass most of the time, by that point I don't think anyone really gives a fuck about mcnulty anymore and we only want to see omar, michael, etc. but i'm also a season 2 truther so take my opinions with a grain of salt lol

 

I agree that season four is the best. It will cut from amazing scene to amazing scene. I still think The Wire is great, but gone are the days where I would put it over The Sopranos. Ten years ago that was a much more serious debate.

Also, the domestic scenes are really bad. Every time McNulty deals with his family or Kima argues with her girlfriend the show starts to lose steam.

 

Yeah it is nitpicking but that’s what you have to do when you get into the top 5 shows. The Wire is still so excellent and unique at certain things I put it up there with The Sopranos. For me it’s The Sopranos, The Wire, and Deadwood in tier 1. With Twin Peaks kind of 1b because it’s better than all of tier 2 but too out there to really compare well with those top 3.