Skip to main content

How The Wire Ruined TV For Me.

Last year while I was enduring, with great joy I might add, all five seasons of The Wire within about an eight week period, it dawned on me that there would be repercussions.  Many cable and basic have had shows that have been good, but they all, almost without fail, lose their way.  Even shows like the Sopranos, which started off so well, fizzled out into something that became unwatchable.

Last year, a friend mentioned I should watch Dexter and I have to say, it's brilliant, but you can see them stretching the same old cliches and trying desperately to come up with new ideas.  The show, peaked in it's fourth season, thanks in large part to the brilliance of John Lithgow.  Then a strange thing happened, it stayed really good.  Season six, imported another nice villain in the form of Edward James Olmos, who had a side-kick, sort of, played by Colin Hanks.  At the end of the last season, we had the biggest cliffhanger and the initial three episodes became tedious.  Enter one beautiful blond woman with a dark secret of her own and a plot twist I never saw coming and there you have it. The show has gone back to basics with multiple baddies and the ongoing search to catch him.

So what does this have to do with The Wire?  The Wire, despite having it's better season, never had the fall off, episode to episode.  The Wire threw everything we knew about a series out the window, because each season was unique, despite using the same basic characters. Since watching The Wire, I have tried to get into three very popular shows and I've given up on all of them.  It's as simple as a bad storyline for a season (Prime Suspect) or sometimes just really shitty acting (The Walking Dead) and sometimes it's just not worth the effort, even if it is a guilty pleasure (Grimm, Elementary & Person of Interest).

I'll finish Dexter out, because it is a great show, but even it, now pales in comparison to the like of The Wire.  This gives me great pause to get into thinks I've heard boasted about like Weeds, Downton Abbey, Justified and Boardwalk Empire.  I just don't want to commit to something that fizzles, when I'm still waiting to lose myself in more Bergman, Truffaut, and Kurosawa.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

White Privilege

This was a post I wrote on Facebook after surprisingly not seeing any moaning about the Documentary by Jose Antonio Vargas, titled White People Dayyum! I just scrolled my timeline and not a single white person got their feelings hurt by White People. I unfortunately haven't seen it, but the number of fake accounts that popped up on twitter, tells me it was a damn good show. Here's the thing. If someone of color aka non-white says "White Privilege," are you offended? If you said yes, then you are exhibiting white privilege. It has nothing to do with how hard you work or study, how you stayed out of trouble, because here's the thing, that is entirely the point. Somewhere out there, there are 100 Black, Spanish, Native American, Arab, Asian, who worked and studied as hard as you and never got in trouble, but they don't have what you "earned" or achieved. Stop looking at the one person you know who isn't white that achieved as your benchmark. Loo
10 comments
Read more

11 Rules of Life - Bill Gates?

I read this on Facebook this morning.  A friend had posted it and said that every child should have to receive this. I of course read it and started to think.  I immediately wondered who really wrote this, as I rarely see things like this attributed to the proper person.  I immediately found it was written by Conservative Charles J. Sykes when he wrote a book about how America is dumbing down our youth.  I read it twice and started to wonder how true it was.  Below is a link to the actual picture I saw. So let's look at each of the rules and analyze them. Rule 1: Life is not fair — get used to it! - Life is not fair in that we are not all afforded the same opportunities based on race, creed, color, socio-economic background, but in general, those who are afforded the same opportunities to succeed are very often rewarded for their individual efforts.  Sure there may be underlying circumstances, but hard work is proven to pay more often than not and those who strive for succ
Post a Comment
Read more

Quickie Review - Finding Vivian Maier

While I thoroughly enjoyed the film, especially the first 15-20 minutes, I was a little bothered by the way the film played out. The interviews with the clearly disturbed brother, sister and the mother, who obviously, was in for a cut, didn't need to be in the film. Then the woman who suggested abuse, yet seemed to have her life defined by Maier, as she tried to muster every ounce of emotion and fake guilt. Her friend, more than happy to be party of the charade. People who talk about abuse for the first time, usually don't do so on camera. The fact these scenes were so prominent, shows that they felt wronged that they were not rewarded. Maloof on the other hand, seems to disappear from the documentary during this part, almost hiding away from the fact, he went from complete praise, to even making money off of her, to destroying her personal legacy. He almost mentions the family of boys taking care of her rent, as an afterthought. Her burial spot, never shown, yet a video of her
7 comments
Read more