With A Passion

When I first heard of HBO’s program The Wire, I didn’t pay it much mind. The fact that it took me as long as it did to get with the program as it did is something I regret entirely. Blinders go up with critical praise it seems. The same blinders would fall around the time when I read the NYMag article where they compared Ghostface Killah to Omar, The Wire’s gay shotgun-slinger with a code of honor. That The Clipse were the equivalent of cold blooded Marlo Stanfield. These kinds of comparisons really get me, so there I was watching the first season, transfixed by what I now refer to as the greatest piece of art developed for the TV I’ve ever seen.

Now, when The Wire’s brought up, I sometimes think about how my father and I bonded over it, eagerly awaiting the next disc to come in the mail from NetFlix, like we were any of the many addicts in the foreground or background of Ed Burns and David Simons’ lens. Sure, we’ve connected over film and television in the past, but this was something utterly different, something that wasn’t big watercooler talk like X-Files at it’s peak or any episode of The Sopranos ever. This was something that even back when we started to watch it, in late 2006 and early last year, that was still enough out of the mainstream for it to feel sacred and true. Of course, me being me, I wasn’t as focused on the screen as I should have been, frequently balancing my attentions between screen and laptop. Over the past few months, I’ve been rewatching the series, with the intent of getting my roommate caught up with the show that I’d been raving about for the previous year or so.

More talk, spoilerriffic, below the cut. Do not read until you’ve caught up. Seriously, this is going to talk about who dies and who doesn’t and you really need to learn and see that for yourself.

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Released 1/8/08 via Nonesuch records

Since Cliff’s posted the link to the first full trailer, I’ll talk soundtrack.

In terms of supporting a show’s authentic feel, there’s almost nothing as important as a good soundtrack. Over the last few years rare has there been a show that handles it’s music as good as The Wire. As much as I thought it was funny that Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” shot Tony Soprano, it smacks of a show that sometimes values novelty over substance.

Aside from HBO getting down on it’s hands and knees and thanking Ed Burns and David Simon for running the only show that justifies their $13 premium channel, I guess this is best thing the network could do to help pimp the show and give fanboys an easier way to find the many variations on the last great theme song, “Way Down In The Hole.” and music from the showgiving the show a soundtrack to be released just two days after the premiere of the final season.

Also, they know that the fans are crazy and will snap this up faster than McNulty can crash into a wall.

track listing: http://nonesuch.com/Hi_Band/albums.cfm?album_num=687#

(Amazon’s selling it for $21, so no linkage for them)

Facing what may be weekdays without posts, I’ve decided to change the format temporarily; breaking things down even smaller. And without further ado, I bring to you, The Wire Babies.

Thankfully, this isn’t a new animated series with McNutty & Co. as actual toddlers, but they’ve made these small clips which will be shown on HBO OnDemand, and are now available to watch on Amazon’s page for the Season 4 DVD.

I’m not sure whose idea this was, but it seems like something that had Simon & Burns had been kicking around in the back of their heads, rather than forced marketing from the HBO brass. We’ve got Prop Joe’s early days of negotiating, a really young Omar Little getting into the stickup game, and the day when McNulty and Bunk met.

Not only are these clips funny, but it’s another example of the show taking a route that all have fucked up and doing right. Take the inner city schools topic of Season 4: most shows would have fucked it up, or not even tried it. The Wire, on the other hand, made it one of their best seasons.

Who loves ya?

McNulty.

Marlo.

Omar.

Bubbles.

Carcetti.

Either way, it’s another amazing taste of what’s on the way. Admittedly, a little more telling than the last trailer. The words Spoiler Warning aren’t exactly warranted, but if you don’t want to know anything, then you aren’t watching it anyways.

When a criminally overlooked TV show is about to end it’s run, a reliable phenomenon begins, a phenomena known as The Overdue Hype Machine. The earliest proponents, simultaneously with those late-to-the-game, they do their best to make sure all eyes and ears are at attention when the final season starts.

This doesn’t always work right, but when the machine works at it’s best, and when it’s operated by the right people, you might find yourself with a long piece of writing you just want to settle down with. The New Yorker has given us just one of those pieces.

A particular nugget of greatness from Margaret Talbot’s epic piece on The Wire in the October 22nd issue of The New Yorker:

Filming on city streets in marginal neighborhoods carries its peculiar risks and rewards. On one occasion, a car involved in a high-speed chase smashed into one of the actors’ cars, and everybody had to dive out of the way. Another time, a man got shot yards away, staggered onto the set trailing blood, and was treated by the show’s medic. Once, a man pressed a package of heroin into the hands of Andre Royo, the actor who plays the sympathetic junkie and police informant Bubbles, saying, “Man, you need a fix more than I do.” Royo refers to that moment as his “street Oscar.”

The article is great, and the full page version of the illustration you see above, which features Kima, Bubbles, and Prez, amongst others, in typical New Yorker caricature, is worth your time and money alone. Now, if the machine starts to work on you, it’s as simple as NetFlix or HBO OnDemand. The former will work as fast as you watch the shows, while the latter, I’m not so sure of. HBO On Demand’s website, when you start to sift through it, doesn’t make it look like they’re going to get where they need to get fast enough. Who knows, though.

Or, like Huey said on last week’s The Boondocks season premiere, you can “just download it off the internet like everyone else.”