the wire
Out of context: Reply #31
- Started
- Last post
- 64 Responses
- noRBG0
As much as I love The Wire, and think it was the best show ever put on air, I will also say a couple of things against that.
For one, they had probably the easiest story they could ask for, to write. This story wrote itself, and it's been sitting there waiting for someone to write it since Raymond Whateverhisface hit the media's attention in the late 80's. The story was real, so that makes it all the more believable. What they added to it, and how they developed the characters involved, that's what makes the show stand alone as great. Same with the Sopranos. The story was real, or at least based off reality, and so the overall story writes itself, but the proof is in the mini-stories of each episode practically.
The other thing that both of these shows had going for them is that they were both on HBO, meaning the writers didn't have to deal with the challenge of writing around commercials. A full, straight hour of story trumps an hour of story, broken up by seven minute commercial breaks any day.
Where "the cheese stands alone," for The Wire is that all these characters are practically new character sketches for most viewers. Sure, most people have watched black gangsters in some form or another in movies or TV, but The Wire was one of the first to bring it to your living room via television, and for six years.
People LOVE the fictional gangster, but they hate a real one.
- If it's so easy to portray real life, why doesn't anyone else do it?bainbridge