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7/31/2009

The Wire, Season 3

Season 1 (review here) and 2 (review here) of The Wire were pretty good. Season 3 is right on top of things as well, and a good step up from Season 2.

One of the things that The Wire does very well is to involve the about a dozen different story lines and move them in parallel to show a complete picture of the police department, the drug organizations, and the politics. Imagine how much work went into that! On that note, I'll split the review on the three:
  • Police: well, the premise is simple... the police finally tried the "move the drugs to the worse neighborhood and turn a blind eye" tactic. By the numbers, this of course works. It's like moving all the bad guys to an off shore island and letting them do their thing there. Unfortunately, this presents a slippery slope for the good people in govt, media, and the general public who are not affected, i.e. those who live in already nice neighborhoods. Sadly, that's how I would think about it too. I can get all moral on it if it's not my neighborhood. But hell, if they get drugs off my front door, I'm all for it. Can't blame any of us, huh? It's just human nature.
  • Drug orgs: the fall of Avon Barksdale and Stringer Bell teaches us a few lessons. One, once in a gang, always in a gang. Two, you feud, you lose. Remember, the whole world is out to get you. Three, be the middle man. Why Butch and Prop Joe are still alive is beyond me. Four, trying to leave a gang is inviting death. And five, don't join gangs. Duh.
  • Politics: it's clear from the show that they condemn the higher-up system (police, drugs, whatever) more than the individuals at any level. And a season where they finally put politicians in the lime light, The Wire really put the heat on. Decisions were made/coerced because the higher-ups say so, and for all sorts of different reasons. Politicians do have a conscious... it's just that politics overrule it.
  • One more for Mr. Cutty, the ex-con who tries to help kids on the brink... I love this character. He just snapped out of the gangs and decides he will help however he can. We need more people like this.
Highly highly recommended. Makes you think if any system is ever going to work perfectly (I know, it's a how and all... but it's so realistic!) to move society forward.

By the way, blog is way down because I've been organizing all my photographs from the beginning of time. Do you know how many pictures I've taken since 2003 when I got my first SLR? 24,000. That's right. And I'm organizing all of them. I'll try to blog some about food (NYC Restaurant week!) soon.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

u know what i love about wire it got better and better with every season. and it was good to see that it finished when it was on top i loved it so much that i still watch the wire online whenever i get time

Anonymous said...

Interesting perspective on the morality of restricting drugs geographically. I would argue that we already do that anyway. If you leave in an affluent neighborhood how much drug trafficking is going on in the street? Why is that? Because people living in the neighborhood are more empowered and the drugs have been pushed to the bad neighborhoods where people with power make less of a fuss about it.