I have several but my top 2 are when Kima gets shot and when Omar testified. There are so many good scenes I can put up but off the top of my head I think of those.

Edit: had to add 2 more, when Bubbles is talking about Sherod in the meeting and when Ziggy killed the greeks(?)

i love that they hint at great depths of intellect or private curiosity you would not expect using only superficial judgement. nothing is explained—only hinted at: d is deeply sensitive; bodie has subtle philosophies; herc somehow knows about theatrical “props”; relationships like mcnulty and russell’s are made on points of shared values, like the look she gives him very early over his touchiness about the fate of the body of the jane doe…

anything that stood out to you?

Man I felt so bad for Johnny when Bodie, Poot, and Wallace jumped him. The stunt he tried to pull was definitely stupid but damn. Had that man in the hospital. What y’all think though?

He had to be the biggest lunk head. Thought he was smarter than their targets but they usually made him look like a total fool.

It makes you care about characters you initially couldn’t stand.

You start watching for the drug trade and the police investigations. Then suddenly you’re invested in dockworkers fighting to survive, teachers trying to reach difficult kids, and journalists struggling to do their jobs.

The show slowly makes you realize that every person has a story worth telling.

That’s what separates great television from entertainment you forget a week later.

Which character grew on you the most throughout the series?

Wow! I can already tell that I’m in for a treat. I’m a gen Z first watcher who’s used to the super climactic drama shows of modern television, and I have to say the Wire feels like such a breath of fresh air. It’s hauntingly real and it’s so damn engaging, I’m obsessed watching all the horrible drug crime-related scenes from under my duvet.

Also McNulty is unreaaal hot. How was he not on par with other male sex symbols of his era??

Season 3:
- Robs cutty
- gets spared by Cutty , thus making Dennis realize he no longer wants to be in the game. Which leads to him asking Avon for money to start the boxing gym(which becomes a consistent backdrop for season 4)

Season 4:

- Gets killed by Lex which basically start off the entire chain of events for the entire season, outside of a few other subplots.

On my first rewatch and I can’t understand why Joe was so deferential to marlo. Slim warns joe to keep an eye on marlo. He introduces marlo to the connect. He sets him up with a way to clean his money. He introduces him to levy. Hell without joe’s intervention in s4 marlo and his whole crew probably get locked up in the year major crimes can actually work the case. I just don’t get how joe didn’t see that he was making himself expendable and why he was so eager to help marlo at literally every turn. Maybe we have the benefit of the whole picture and hindsight as the viewer but marlo always seemed too fierce and individualistic to ever really buy into the co-op.

I’m about to wrap up Season 4 and something I can’t get over is how upset Bodie was when Marlo’s people killed Littlw Kevin. Especially when Bodie was the one who shot Wallace under a similar pretense. Lil Kevin was killed under the pretense of being a snitch and so was Wallace. In the show Poot even told Bodie “this ain’t no different than what we did to Wallace”. So why is Bodie more angry now with little Kevin than he killed Wallace? I genuinely don’t understand.

What makes The Wire so special is that almost every character feels human. Nobody is completely good or completely evil. Even the smallest characters have motivations and stories that make sense.

The writing doesn’t beg you to love anyone. It just lets you understand them.

And somehow you end up caring about people who barely get five minutes of screen time.

What’s one small moment in the series that made you appreciate just how brilliant the writing is?

Me personally is Cutty staring down fruit
right before the season 3 ending montage.

Terrific acting by both of them.

Ive been arguing about The Wire for half of my life now. So discussing or arguing about The Wire is a sport. I love to argue bc I love to see others perspectives. Because many arguments can be made. Two arguments that I don't understand other people's side is that Wallace and D Angelous deaths were "unfair" or "undeserving".

Here's my thing about Wallace:

Wallace "deserved" to die in every way EXCEPT for the fact that he is a child. (15/16 correct me if I'm wrong). I understand that hes young and takes care of other kids which fuels people's anger at his death. HOWEVER if he was an adult where is the argument that he didn't get what was coming to him?

1. He started getting high on his own supply and lied about it.
2. He was short on the count and lied about why.
3. He asks to get out the game. And claims he wants to go back to school due to being traumatized by Brandon's death (which shows his unfit for the game).
4. He snitches on the two top dogs Stringer & Avon but ALSO snitches on D Angelo for NO APPARENT REASON. If I remember right he offered up the murder D Angelo lied and said he did without being provoked to share. Meanwhile D Angelo is the ONLY one that looked out for him.
5. Then he runs away to the Eastern Shore MD comes back and lies to D about why he was gone and of course never mentions snitching on him.

As far as D Angelo much like Wallace it took me about three watches to realize they were completely asking for it. I assume in 2026 people have rewatched several times. Here my thing with D Angelo:

1. He was unbearably unfit for the game from the first episode. Bragging about Avon and Stringer taking out the security which they only did to protect him from jail meanwhile he's giddy about it bragging like a sucker tbh.
2. When he wasn't getting his way he tried to start his own operation with someone who works for Avon which was an idiotic sneaky move. Why not leave the game or stop using the things your uncle has provided when you need them.
3. He bragged to Bodie Wallace and Poot about killing a woman that he DIDNT EVEN KILL to make himself look cool. Which is one of the goofiest things I've seen someone do on the show. (The murder Wallace told the police about). And notice Bodie didn't even believe D when he told the story.
4. When D goes to jail he decides to get high. In the game if you're doing drugs and you've been in hot water about loyalty at one point it's almost an automatic knock out bc you're not trustworthy. And he was lying to Avon about it.
5. He snitched on EVERYONE even his MOTHER. And while one would say that was the "right" thing to do I don't think many people would offer up their own mother when she's already not a face in the game she's just apart of it. Once again you can say he didn't testify but AS YOU SEE all they need is a statement to start putting their own pieces together.

D Angelo could've taken the same advice he gave Wallace and done something more with his life even in jail. He started doing better but only because of the hot shot situation. But it was still a character arc nonetheless.

Some people's arguments are that Wallace and Ds statement didn't go to trial or he wouldn't have testified. But once you give a statement the police are going to use that to help their investigation even though they cannot legally use the information until they put the pieces together. As you can see time and time again in the show.

What are your thoughts bc this is one thing I never quite understood why people don't see clearly like me?

(Ps I made a mistake and put the spoiler on. Don't be miserable and weird 😂 I forget that people join the community without watching the show that is over 20 years old)

Stringer has Bodie kill Wallace for snitching but eventually stringer and Bodie both turn into snitches themselves

Makes me wonder, how many characters actually stuck to the no snitching code?

So I don't shock easy...But I was just thinking about how rare the Wire is in terms of it's absolute authenticity and what went flashed through my mind as I was thinking this was the show All In The Family.

I mean geez. That was a sit-com. At least if I had to pick a genre that would be the one but it was, like the Wire, pretty damn honest.

The shit Archie would say. Wow. And the way Archie and Edit would relate to the black family the Jeffersons....

I am kind of taken aback that a comedy show is what came to mind but they are both incredibly brave examples of television.

Unsurprisingly, Omar is my favorite character. Can someone please tell me he gets justice by the end of the show? There’s a parallel between Omar and what Beadie was saying to McNulty at the end about family, and Omar had no one left after Butchie died. No one seemed to care except Bunk (..sort of?) when they found out he died, I just want him to be remembered!! I hate thinking that Marlo and his group beat Omar.

Sorry if I’m not making sense, I’m still upset he died:(

Finished S5 recently and wondering if Levy ever suspected Herc of giving Marlo's number to the police?

Nothing suggested he did, probably thought someone Marlo knew or his supplier probably gave it up and he thanked Herc for his involvement and invited him for dinner.

Levy is smart so I always wondered whether he suspected Herc?

I'm rewatching Season 2, and this time around, I'm just not buying that the cops leave the appliance store completely unattended after two people are shot there, one fatally. Ziggy told them about the car smuggling, so they would've had a million follow up questions about how he ran the scam, and how he connected with Double G in the first place. All this would've pointed the cops toward a much bigger case than a small time con man going postal.

I gotta think that even the Bawlmor PD would've at least had the crime scene locked down until the next day. As Christopher Walken would say, "It's crazy."

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPLA3XHWt/

The thing I absolutely love about this show is that it makes me work. And what I mean is that the show shows you how profoundly broken this society is. And you feel it. But you do not just feel the brokenness but you also feel the pushing and pulling and shaking and crashing and repairing that everyone is doing to try and handle all of the brokenness. And by watching this you actually feel as if you are also doing some of the pushing and pulling and bleeding and sweating.

In some crazy way the show has astonishing integrity. We are all part saint and part SOB. Nobody is on a pedestal and everyone visits the gutter.

All church crowns will stay in tact today gentlemen

I'm on the 5th rewatch and it just hit me... At the end of the first episode DeAngelo is looking at the murdered witness Gant, and as he walks away the camera keeps showing the statue with a boy playing what it looks like to be a flute or a harmonica. I thought to myself that it represents a whistleblower! What do guys think?

I recently went back and watched some of the best rated episodes of Breaking Bad. It was great to look back on a show that had me hooked at the time, episode after episode. Truly brilliant TV.

But the appreciation, it somehow stayed at a more surface 'pure entertainment' level. Which made me reflect on why The Wire, for me, just cuts more deeply.

Watching The Wire feels like inhabiting a world. At first, you’re learning its rhythms, its language, the things people leave unsaid. Gradually, it seeps into your pores. You stop feeling like a visitor. These people and places become familiar, and their disappointments begin to carry the weight of something you’ve lived through. It's like donning a VR headset.

Breaking Bad had me hanging on every episode. But I remained conscious that I was watching a brilliantly constructed drama. The Wire drew me into the texture of ordinary life so completely that the plot sometimes felt secondary to simply being there.

Breaking Bad made me want another episode - The Wire made it difficult to leave. Just sharing my random thoughts - sorry if I am articulating something obvious to many of you.

We know you can be in the game and not be an evil person(Wallace)

We know you can even kill a person and not be evil(Poot)

But can you have multiple bodies like slim and still not be evil? By season 4 and 5 slim is basically second in charge for prop Joe. We know the number 2s for the other major organizations in the show(Stringer and Chris) are both extremely evil people.

Is slim and exception? Or is he just as bad as them?

What’s the highest level of rank we see on the show a person can have while still being a “good” person” ?

Maybe corner lieutenant?

Watching for the first time as a marylander who lives near Baltimore, and its funny to me whenever there's a scene supposedly set outside of Baltimore that's very obviously filmed in the city.

Some that stood out to me:

• one of the philly shots (when bodie and shamrock drive there in the van) was filmed on the stretch of I-70 in West Baltimore
• the Newark ICE office mcnulty visits to find the russian girls was filmed at state center, literally down the street from The Pit
• The scene where Carcetti visits the governor is filmed in the Baltimore Circuit Court, the same building featured prominently throughout the entire series (even though annapolis is only a ~45 minute drive from Baltimore)
• The Caribbean bank Marlo visits to launder money is actually a bank on North Avenue (recently famous for the "abolish ice" billboard on the roof)
• Most of the philly scenes are filmed in west baltimore

I find the arc of Justin pretty good and I think it gets overlooked here. What do you guys think about it? From being a corner kid in Marlo's crew to getting out of that lifestyle by focusing on boxing. It is a direct contrast from Spider, who goes from boxing to the streets.