I love crime stuff set in LA, so I know it at least has that going for it. No The Shield thread on here?
Because I am breezing through this, the big moments are kind of catching me off guard and really hitting even more. Wallace destroyed me and I truly don't know how they redeemed Bodie after that, but he's one of my favorites and I love his struggle in season 4 being independent.
I've been listening to Pod Yourself A Wire podcast and they are right that the best way to view this show is as if you're watching a lore heavy fantasy series.
I realized later that it actually might not be so independent in the subtext. One of my biggest revelatory moments when rewatching this show is probably on my 5th watch when I finally realized that Bodie's downfall and how upset he was over Little Kevin's death can all be tied back to him feeling guilt over Wallace. There is a line of dialogue where Poot brings up the equivalency between what Chris and Snoop did to Kevin and what they did to Wallace and he just brushes it off. He is so upset because he did the the almost exact same thing to one of his best friends.
Vic Mackey stands with Tony Soprano, Al Swearengen, and Don Draper as the best characters in dramatic television. Every season of The Shield got better than the last. A lot of people sweep The Wire's flaws (some really bad acting, the domestic life scenes, the heavy-handedness) under the rug.
Every episode of the shield is ohh shit Vic is fucked and then oh shit Vic weaseled his way outta that one!
The Shield has a lot of flaws. The first episode has a Kid Rock song. A lot of the Dutch-Claudette procedural stuff feels like it comes from a lesser show, Julien's character arc goes flat, and it has a lot of that early 2000's basic cable attempts to be as edgy as an HBO show without being able to follow through.
There has been a lot of discourse on the disparity between the good actors and bad actors on Pod Yourself A Wire. One of the hosts makes the "the bad actors in The Wire are tolerable because it adds A level of realism because it makes me think it's just some guy they got off the Baltimore streets" argument A lot especially for Nicky and Ziggy in season 2.
They are 100% right that the guy who plays Nicky Sobotka gives real amateur regional theatre guy energy and seeing him trading dialogue with people as talented as Chris Bauer and Robert Chew really stands out how bad at acting he is.
So glad you like season 2 because so many people hate it. Season 3/4 are generally considered the best.
Yeah season 4 is considered by most to be peak Wire and many consider it one of the greatest seasons of television ever made.
Yeah I think a lot of people did not like season 2 on first watch because of how stark it was from the setting/characters of the towers, and people just wanted more Stringer/Bodie/Poot stuff. But I think a lot of those people came around on it in their rewatches is what I have found.
A lot of people on the first watch. Everyone I know in real life that watched it weren’t big on season 2 at first. They didn’t like the docks.