I don't think Baltimore sank The Wire - between Homocide and Hairspray the city is actually cool for a city with no beaches or fashion industry. I also don't think it's complexity - people love Lost and that show doesn't make any sense. But I agree with you and a lot of other people that its largely black cast could not have helped it with white viewers, which is what the Emmy voters are. Did you notice that Prezbo was the only white character on almost every episode in Season 4? Probably most Wire fans didn't notice, didn't care, or patted themselves on the back for watching the show anyway, but I bet my great uncle from NE Pennsylvania who can't articulate why he doesn't want to vote for Barack Obama would.Interesting. I tend to believe that great narrative and character conquers all--even color. But then, I'm a writer. I have a stake in believing that.
But my point is that maybe it's that white people don't empathize with black characters, though it's hard to believe anyone with kids wouldn't be riveted by Nay, Randy, Dukie, and Michael in Season 4. Part of it had to be the dialogue. Some of the characters in the game (I hate that phrase but it's the only one I can think of) would have been pretty confusing for my great uncle to follow. Especially Snoop. The conversation she has with the hardware store employee in the first few minutes of Season 5 is probably how lots and lots of white people viewed the show. And I'll admit it - sometimes I put the subtitles on when she was on the screen, but that was at least partially because she's the most quotable person on the show ("you earned that buck like a motherfucker".) But the dialogue had to be off putting for some people.
Anyway, any show with that much loyalty generates a lot of opinions.
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I agree with his take. I've been trying to get my girlfriend into the show, but I have to explain what's going on sometimes because the Baltimore accent is almost unintelligible at times.
Also, it's the kind of show that demands careful attention, unlike Lost, for example. Every camera shot, every line means something. That can put a lot of people off; it's also why the show's loyal viewers are so enthralled.
The Wire is, simply put, the best television show there has ever been. If it doesn't get Emmys because it's a "black" show, that merely shows that as far as this country as come on race, we still have a long way to go.
"Also, it's the kind of show that demands careful attention, unlike Lost, for example. Every camera shot, every line means something. That can put a lot of people off; it's also why the show's loyal viewers are so enthralled."
I agree with this completely. To compare the complexity of Lost to the complexity of The Wire misses the point I think. Its the complexity of the dialouge which loses a lot of would be viewers. The show doesn't give you many clues. You really need to pay attention to every line.
Also, I believe the hardware store scene was the first episode of season 4. She was buying the nail gun for the abandoned buildings.
Final note- Marlo was on Heroes last night!
Any problems like this, just show the person the "F**k!" scene from Season 1 with McNulty and Bunk. If they don't get that one, they're beyond hope.
I think its an age thing; I don't have any numbers handy, but I'd be willing to bet that the Wire was considerably more popular with younger viewers than older ones...
picking nits, but I think Snoop said "You earned that BUMP like a muhfuckah."
who knows, tho?
I have Season 5 of the Wire sitting here, my wife and I have watched every season, and she refuses to watch it because it lacks subtitles. But she's Dutch; she wanted subtitles to watch "Michael Clayton".
I grew up in DC, and still have to confess I can't understand much of the black characters' dialogue without the subtitles. I do agree it's as great a TV show as has ever been produced.
I know a lot of white folks who can't understand anything coming from the boys on the corner. For those of us who have grown up with hip hop and know a lot of the slang going in, it's fairly comprehensible. But for those who were never exposed to any of that language, it's a pretty steep learning curve.
"I agree with this completely. To compare the complexity of Lost to the complexity of The Wire misses the point I think. Its the complexity of the dialouge which loses a lot of would be viewers. The show doesn't give you many clues. You really need to pay attention to every line."
I agree. Lost may have a nonsensical plot, but they'll still spoon feed you that detail that you missed two weeks ago, one way or another. The Wire repeats absolutely nothing; like a great novel, it assumes that you know everything coming in, and there is no need to explicitly refresh your memory. You don't need to actively watch every minute of Lost to avoid missing something, you just can't miss the big craziness that happens every third or fourth episode. The Wire is all about the puzzle, and you won't understand the big craziness if you don't see each piece clearly.
my wife and i love The Wire, and we do watch it with subtitles. but then, we watch everything with subtitles, because no matter what we watch, we hate those moments where you have to turn to the other person and ask "what did he/she just say?".
better just to leave them on.
"Also, it's the kind of show that demands careful attention, unlike Lost"
LOL, more apologists.
OTOH, I think the accents and the other insider-ish qualities to the show explain some of its appeal. When I first started watching it, I couldn't understand a thing, but that changed pretty quickly, to the point that I didn't even notice the accents anymore. It sounds a bit absurd, but it's suddenly feeling like you have access, like you're part of a community, in a weird sort of way (I don't want to take this too far...it is just watching a TV show, after all).
But no doubt, the language is a barrier for a lot of people, and not just the accents. Go read the Netflix reviews. It's amazing how many people complain about the profuse swearing. I don't even notice it anymore, but for many, that seems to be a deal breaker.
Our homes were featured in The Wire, we had our friends on staff for the script, costumes, grips and so forth, so we appreciated the funds The Wire invested in Baltimore. Ultimately, the show became extremely uncomfortable for us to watch. We found ourselves agreeing with our Mayor -- sigh, another show about the depravity of life in BMore? That might sound peckish of a criticism of a show clearly remarkable, but it does make us wonder about the ease of stereotyping a city already kicked to the ground.
The dialogue is challenging, and most folks probably won't absorb every word, but the words that do get through will make you smile every once in a while out of sheer wonder. It's like Shakespeare--challenging, but mostly intelligible to a modern native speaker. Pay attention, and you'll get whatever you need to get out of it.
I don't get HBO. Some friends who do offered to tape Season 5 for me, but I sad "No, thanks, I'll wait for the DVDs" because I cannot understand much of it without the captions on.
And was there really that little McNutty in Season 4?
The episodes of The Wire that I've seen have all had subtitles, and I've used them. Is this missing from Season 5? If it is, will turning on the closed captioning from the TV itself get you anywhere?
People's hearing goes over time, and unfamiliar accents can be difficult to follow if your ears aren't 100%. Add in the plot complexity and the fact that the stories themselves can be emotionally difficult, and you get more work than a lot of people are willing to do.
The subtitles are the tipping point for me. Without them, I wouldn't watch.
Here's another wrinkle -- the show is very male. There are some female characters, of course, and even some interesting ones, but most do not drive the plot (except perhaps as victims). Anybody else think this might limit the appeal to women?
The Wire is/was a complex show with plots that sometimes played out over the course of seasons. Lost is complex, too, but (and a show I've come to love), in the end, it's just a game. And while the Wire is a 'game' like Lost in that they're both enterainment products, its message steps beyond most traditional faire - incudling the Sopranos - and says something very real and very jarring not just about its charactes and their immediate surroundings but about society as a whole. It was a great show, but a hard one to watch at times. We generally watch shows and movies to escape reality, not to be reminded of it.
Here's another wrinkle -- the show is very male. There are some female characters, of course, and even some interesting ones, but most do not drive the plot (except perhaps as victims). Anybody else think this might limit the appeal to women?
I think women, out of necessity as much as anything, have an easier time relating to male characters than men do relating to female characters. As a female, I know my favorite characters - from books, from tv, etc - are almost all male, but occasionally it does grow wearisome that the character traits I find attractive and/or interesting are rarely found in female characters (and if they are found, they're not emphasized). But more and more, as I grow older and begin to (fannishly) watch more tv shows, I find I have trouble getting into ones that are heavily male-dominated/oriented and homosocial. I think that's one of the reasons I never really liked the Wire. Oh, sure, I recognized its brilliance, but I never had much interesting in actually watching it.
It's not the only reason: I tend to watch more British television and the conventions of American can be a little shock at first, and the density of the Wire was offputting as well - how easier it is as a viewer to be able to miss a line of dialogue or two, or to close your eyes for a minute and not have to rewind and rewatch, but, well, my entire life the books and movies I'm interested in have been about men, and I'd like to watch a show where women are the main characters without it turning into Sex and the City or /random chick flick/.
I'm a white guy who has been watching the wire as of late along with another white friend. Never had any problem with the diaglouge and didn't even suspect that was an issue until now.
But I did grow up listening to hip-hop (among many other things).
But while the plot was complex, it was never confusing. Marlo is a kingpin. Stringer is playing too many sides. Omar.. be coming. If you are confused, you just watch that "previously on the wire" bump.
If I had to choose a reason for lack of awards, I'd say it's the grimm aspects of it all. The only season that has some decent resolution is 3 (since the Barksdale gang gets hit by the authorities), but Stringer still evades police justice (just street justice... just the game).
That and it is probably harder for the critics to find a recognizable archetype. I mean, Tony Soprano is in the game too, but has the wife, and kids, and worries about bourgoise things all the time.
Barksdale or Marlo...always in the game.
The Wire has subtitles? Who knew!
And you musther fluffer are weak. I am Mr. Whitey, lived in the burbs all my life. I don't have a single black friend. Don't listen to hip hop (cept Kool Moe Dee back in the day) I don't have any trouble with the accent.
If you can't understand, it's cause you're not paying enough attention.
Season 2 is my favorite too! Great music in that season -- Stelios Kazantzidis "Efyge Efyge" -- Play it loud in the house on a weekend afternoon and you will feel gangster...but classy. Classy gangster.
Hmm...I can see how race would be a factor. The subject matter, too, I think is also a factor. "A show about drug gangs and incompetent cops? Nah."
I have to say, though, that I found the show's treatment of race to be refreshing. There was one scene in some episode (before Carcetti was elected) where the Mayor, the police commissioner, and the lead detective were taking a meeting and it hit me: they're all black.
And it wasn't played for jokes like a Dave Chappelle skit. Their racial make-up was less of a stunner than the idea that I was watching something revolutionary in television: the transcendence of stereotypes.
If there's one thing the Wire had going for it (and there's more than one thing) it's that.
Deadwood never got its due from Emmy voters, and it too was challenging on the dialogue front. It won a handful of makeup, sound, cinematography awards -- typical period drama stuff -- but never any of the majors.
Maybe Emmy voters don't appreciate having to concentrate to follow dialogue.
My very white husband (if you count half-Jewish as all white -- I mean his skin's very pale and his daddy's from WASPs) turned me on to the show as did my very white friends in Manhattan. My little white children (you may disapprove of this) absolutely love it (I had to let them watch all five seasons because it gave me a chance to watch them again).
Give white people a little credit. I can't imagine that anyone of any background would watch a few episodes of this show and not immediately find a way to get their hands on the rest of them.
(Incidentally, I'm now watching Homicide because a very white woman I know raves about it.)
"And was there really that little McNutty in Season 4?"
He was busy being on the wrong side of the law in 300.
Why is it as an African-American, I can appreciate a show like the BBC version of the "Office" with its thick British accents, and yet, other people can't be bothered to try to extend themselves to the cultural differences of people in their own country?
I think it is because to appreicate anything outside of our "safety zone," we have to be willing to "listen" and pay attention. I guess most people just aren't willing to do that.
Well, I'm a middle aged white Brit, who struggled to understand more than a fraction of the dialogue in the first episode, but was hooked ten minutes in, anyhow.
Part of the fun was learning a whole new way of listening, and I had no real problem after episode two.
And yes, it's the best show I've ever watched.
The reason a lot of people don't like The Wire is the episode structure.
For a lot of shows (like Lost or Prison Break)the whole episode is building up to one big cliffhanger ending that will OMG CHANGE EVERYTHING. And then the new episode starts and things a pretty much back to normal since the cliffhanger just fizzles away or doesn't change as much as people thought (except for episode finales). I remember this really frustrating me watching prison break, there was game changer after game changer that just fizzled away.
However, the structure of building up to one big cliffhanger and throwing cliffhangers around left and right can help focus an episode really well and keep people interested. Kind of a rollercoaster effect.
The Wire doesn't really have that. I watched the first episdoe with my wife and she hated it because there was "no story." And the first episode by itself (and most every other Wire episode by itself) really doesn't, there's no one cohesive build-up to a cliffhanger, there's just a lot of beginnings of stories that will be followed up later.
The Wire is great, its just not very well suited to the medium of TV. Works much better watching it on DVD where you can watch chunks at a time and treat it more like a very long series of very long movies than a TV show.
Someone once advised me that "Television isn't movies, but smaller. It's radio with pictures."
What he meant is that you can't expect the same intense level of interest from a TV audience that you can from a movie audience. People go to a special, purpose-built place, pay a lot of money (compared to nothing) so they can sit and watch. You get their full attention.
TV is watch at home, for free, surrounded by distractions. By "radio with pictures" he meant that a person should be able to follow what's going on while only paying half attention; in fact, they should be able to follow what's going on merely by listening.
If "The Wire" of anything, it is of *not* being radio with pictures. The show demands intense interest from it's audience, interest on par with what is required to watch a film in a theater. If The Wire has failed to connect more broadly -- with audience, Emmy voters, whatever -- it probably has as much to do with audiences being unaccustomed/unable to muster the level of viewing intensity the show requires while sitting on their sofa in their den.
(Of course for anyone willing to give the show their full attention, the show offers rich rewards!)
This over-40 white chick (and fan of The Wire) has a theory:
The appeal of extremely complex plots, characters, and dialogue to a TV viewer directly correlates to whether that TV viewer is also an avid reader of literature.
And by literature I mean Michael Chabon, Ian McEwan, Zadie Smith. Not that Patricia Cornwell/Nicholas Sparks crap.
Discuss.
Discus? I'm barely literate, rarely read non-fiction, and don't recognize a single name on your list.
My wife loves books the way some people love sports.
We both love The Wire.
RE: Jews/White
If you're going to let the jews be white, then you're going to have to let the irish be white, and if you're gonna let the irish be white, you're gonna have to let everyone be white, probably whether or not they even want to be white.
(I loved loved loved the wake in the cop bar!)
I'm Malcolm X
Make that "rarely read fiction".
See? Barely literate!
TNC,
I can tell you exactly why The Wire wasn't more popular.
The pacing is slow. The show has no flourishes. In today's fast-paced moving videography of TV, the show can simply feel emotionally...drab. Uninteresting.
This was my first reaction - "huh, great dialogue, but I'm just bored".
Same reaction by my fiance.
When the DVD's started coming out, then I could watch 2 hours at a time - and THEN I was hooked.
My fiance, it took her a few episodes, before she could start identifying with the characters, and start caring a bit.
But the fact that there was absolutely ZERO - or near zero - over-the-top elements to the characterization and pacing of the Wire - is why intellectuals love the series, and everyone else is "ehh, it's boring".
Even Sopranos, though it had lot of slow elements, started with a very interesting, novel premise, had lots of cinema flourishes, and generally followed the always interesting manic-depressive Tony around.
I'm very clear, this is why the Wire didn't get a bigger audience.