The Wire, Season 5 -- Read Between the Lines

If you're looking to pick up DVDs of Seasons 1-3 for yourself or someone else, they're selling on Amazon for $26.99 each at the moment.

 

Just saw the price of Season 4 at Best Buy. Damn. Thank goodness I just tack that onto my Christmas list.

Oh, I didn't think I could get more pumped about this season, but I think I just have. Read a couple of some early previews, and one of the themes the show looks at is how the journalism community is constantly getting screwed over, down-sized and how some corners are cut in order to generate copy. Just. Can't. Wait.

 

Really? I pre-ordered it for $27.95 on Amazon, Free shipping, too. A bargain, I'd say. Though I know HBO series sometimes get pricey in the store.

 

Starting to go through Season 4 again, and I'm still stuck on the deeper meaning of the season's first scene.

The first three seasons, I think the overarching significance of the first scene is pretty clear. Season 4 though, I'm having trouble with. Beyond the nail-gun purchase, what else is there? Symbolism to the nail gun (a more insidious group in West Baltimore) is the best I’ve got thinking through it at this point.

 

The nail gun sets up the rest of the season nicely.

 

Alan Sepinwall had a few theories about it:

http://sepinwall.blogspot.com/2006/09/wire-nailed-shut.html

 

I haven't read the Sepinwall thing yet, but I always read it, on one metaphorical level, as the bodies in the rowhouses representing the truth about urban American life.

The drug dealers want it covered up, yes, but so to do the bosses at City Hall.

If so, the opening scene makes sense mostly in setting up that ethos -- here you have the embodiment of the street in the person of Snoop and the embodiment of the average American in the employee at Home Depot meeting at a "crack" in the system -- what would Wal-Mart do with those bodies, do you think? -- and the big box retailer and the drug assassin have an ironic little moment. There is the meeting and a foreshadowing of what is to come and a mutual appreciation for "the game" of capitalism (Snoop telling the guy to keep the change is great) but also a sense of foreboding.

And, with that, we're off.

 

For true addicts, The Wire soundtrack comes out Jan. 8.

 

I'm watching Season 4 again On Demand this week, and I realized this was the first time I'd watched that opening scene since finishing the season the first time. Knowing where everything was headed, the message that Zeke so eloquently described above was so much clearer.

Looking back, it was the perfect opening to that season. But I'm afraid it was also the scene that convinced all of those Emmy voters to not even stick around past the opening credits when they got their DVDs in the mail...

 

Anyone watch The Wire Odyssey tonight? I'm watching it on Tivo now. Some good looks at the next season.

 

Damn, I forgot that was tonight.

Realizing this, as I take phoners for the prep roundup, makes me feel like the liquor store worker in 'Superbad'.

"F*ck my life."

 

It's on again in 36 minutes if you're going to be home by then.